International Trade

[Andreas the Wise]

The MITO trade system has served nations like Shireroth, Gralus and Natopia well; but it's about done its dash because they've all achieved the top level of trading, and few other nations seem too interested. Unlike recwar, international trade is inherently hard to do, because it requires multiple nations to be involved to work well - it doesn't work if you have 10 people from the same nation involved.

There was little interest on the MCS for any sort of new system. I ask the delegates here whether there is any interest in a trade system sponsored by the Small Commonwealth.
- The system could use the MCS resource map, or ignore it.
- The system could be complex or simple (preferably simple).
- The system could be a resource or trade route system (resource = you trade x for y once. Trade Route = you negotiate that you'll give a constant stream of x for a constant stream of y).
- The system could involve fancy php coding, but only if there was considerable interest.
- The system could have built in incentives, or ignore them.
- The system would probably involve nations as units, rather than people, but that's open for negotiation.

This is International Trade in the sense of trading resources like gold, wheat, wool etc. This is completely separate from citizens in different nations in the SCUE buying goods and services from eachother.

So, is there any interest? (no is a perfectly appropriate answer, I'm just seeing if there is interest).

[Jonas]

You mean an automatised system to arrange this? And it's separated from the SCUE?

[Andreas the Wise]

I mean a system (that is not MITO); and if there were considerable interest, I could automate it, yes.

[Erik Mortis]

It might actually help if it did use the SCUE...

[Jonas]

It might actually help if it did use the SCUE...

I agree. I would love to see something like that work via the SCUE.
Nations who want to ignore it, don't have to use it.

[Andreas the Wise]

It might actually help if it did use the SCUE...

Possibly. I've tended to design trade systems with the primary unit as nations; and the SCUE (as with most economies) is designed with the primary unit as people. If nations still retain reasonably large reserves of cash, they could use it for trading, I guess (saves the ease of creating another currency). It'll mean I'll need to be put more stuff on your database ... you don't have hosting limits, do you?

[Erik Mortis]

You could restrict it to National accounts.

[Andreas the Wise]

Well, ok, yes, we could do it with SCUE currency (though that of course restricts it to SCUE nations). Now, the much more important questions are things like Do we want a system; What would the system involve; and Who would be in it?

[Kaiser Malarbor I]

How little disturbance to national monetary policies could you pull this off with if you implement this on the SCUE? I mean, you've seen that having and knowing how to use it actually gets you stuff in Shireroth these days, if in no other way then in terms of political positions. I like being valuable. But a valuable depends on a stable money supply. For obvious reasons I don't want Shireroth to lose a lot of money to other countries through this kind of thing, but I also don't want to get into a situation where too much money flows into any country (even Shireroth). To accept something like that would be selling our long-term non-inflationary policy short... and we've put a decent amount of effort into maintaining that policy, you know

[Erik Mortis]

Right now there's NO money going between nations.. well.. very little.

[Harvey Steffke]

I think that's because the nations use the money differently. In Shireroth, it's slowly becoming political power, while in Gralus I believe it's used to fund their SCOWL-based recwars (Andreas et all can feel free to correct me on that if it's inaccurate). It's not the system that's having trouble; it's the lack of real need for goods or services across national boundaries that's causing it not to move.

[Jonas]

We will see what effect it will have when Batavia has integrated the system (yes, thanks to the current, very slow, government, I hope it will be finished at the end of this month... ).

[Andreas the Wise]

I think that's because the nations use the money differently. In Shireroth, it's slowly becoming political power, while in Gralus I believe it's used to fund their SCOWL-based recwars (Andreas et all can feel free to correct me on that if it's inaccurate). It's not the system that's having trouble; it's the lack of real need for goods or services across national boundaries that's causing it not to move.

No, no, SCOWL was deliberately designed to function sans money. In Gralus it isn't doing much apart from the occasional government contract. It's something I hope to look at in the next couple weeks.