Banking law.

[Erik Mortis]

We need some laws governing the bank. This might be a MiniTrade issue. so if we don't wanna put it in the lawbook, I'm down with that.

Some ideas.

1. Accounts not be allowed to go negative.
2. You can only have 1 account (confirmation codes required for creation?)
3. Only citizens can have accounts.
4. Who runs the bank? Is it under the jurisdiction of the MiniTrade directly? Or another body. of a subbranch.

Actually.. the more I think about it.. some of these are MiniTrade issues, some are Landsraad. Basicly.. who controls the bank is the first question.

[Andreas the Wise]

Well, if MiniTrade controlls the bank that'd be me. But all the money is owned by the Crown, so perhaps it's better to say the Crown controls it ... and MiniTrade administer it. At this stage MiniTrade does nothing so I see no point in creating a Bank Committee to run it ...

I'd definitely agree with 1 and 2. For 3, yes for now, but provisions need to eventually be made for foreign access.

[Erik Mortis]

Yeah.. as I was writing this I more and more realized that the Landsraad didn't need to have a direct hand in the bank. So. Maybe we should start up a thread for banking regulations?

[dr-spangle]

2)Seems a bit dodgy, I see reasons for it but I see reasons against it, people would inevitably do some stupid things but many people like to keep their money separate, a savings and a "frontline" for spending as such.

4)MiniTrade seem a good idea, I don't have much opinion on this bit :P

1)I agree, as people know this is "fake money" (no offence) people would have no worries about going deeply into the red so blocking going into the red to stop people sending absurd amounts of monies they don't have is a good idea.

7)My counting rocks, don't disagree with it.

3)Seems a good idea, if they want a bank account they can use one of the many odd international bank systems in use.

[Erik Mortis]

On muliple accounts, I honestly don't see why people in shireroth would need more then 1 account. There isn't enough money moving around to make it an issue as I see. But I plan to rig it as an option. So we can change it at will, it won't be hard coded.

[dr-spangle]

That's generally the best option...

[Yvain Wintersong]

Some of these are programming issues and not legal ones.

For the first one, the programmer should make the bank deny any transaction that would put an account in negative. For the second and third, the bank could include a bank admin who has to validate any accounts (or who's the only one who can create them in the first place).

I think the MiniTrade should administer the bank. The Landsraad takes too long.

[Kaiser Hasan I]

Agreed. Landsraad control will be too contentious. I think it should be minitrade. As previously stated, when disputes arise it can go to the courts and I think the courts should act as an overseeing committee to ensure no corruption takes place.

[Jonas]

2. You can only have 1 account (confirmation codes required for creation?)

And what if you create a company and want another account for it?

[Jacobus Loki]

Would there be a separate account for Duchies, Baronies, etc, or would it be considered the Noble's account?

[Erik Mortis]

I presume we would create a rule allowing companies to have their own accounts. And as for duchy/barony accounts, once again, another rule that we would have to have the MiniTrdae set down.

Some of these are development issues, yes. But as I can go either way with some of them, I need the MiniTrade to tell me what to do. Currently negative is not allowed, but I could change that with very few keystrokes.

[Kaiser Hasan I]

I've tried organizational accounts before and they tend to complicate things. I believe for now it would be best to have individual accounts and perhaps company accounts. But when we get into Duchy budgets etc... it overcomplicates things.

[Erik Mortis]

I could add a tag to distinguish between personal and corporate accounts.

[Andreas the Wise]

Do we need company accounts, really? This economy is very much a pragmatic, not simulationist one. People do a service, they get money. Unless a company involves more than two people, separating your service into a company account is irrelevant - it's all your money. As I see it - that's the whole point of the system ...

[Yvain Wintersong]

I was reading an article recently that traced the origin of corporations as legal fictions. They were quite controversial when they first started up, and people thought it was absurd to allow some nebulous group to own money and use the legal system in its own right as if it were some kind of person.

Since Shireroth has no laws permitting incorporation, we ought to believe until someone tells us otherwise that corporations are not legal here. People can run companies, but they will legally be related to that person rather than a separate entity.

Although corporations are probably necessary for the rise of a global macronational economy, I don't think they fit Shireroth's image very well and our economy isn't big enough to need them anyway.

[Jacobus Loki]

Companies beget stock market.....

I don't know how to feel about that....

[Erik Mortis]

No they don't. Publicly owned companies beget stock markets... Privately owned ones do not.

I could make a stock market...

[Kaiser Hasan I]

Lets get the bank finished and the economy up and running first. Once we start with international trade, we can look at a Stock Market. I would be very interested in this, but once again, lets work out the kinks first.

[Jacobus Loki]

Kinks!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kinks

[Erik Mortis]

Kink!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kink_%28sexual%29

[Liam conToketi]

...I dunno, I like Erik's better...

[Andreas the Wise]

Lets get the bank finished and the economy up and running first. Once we start with international trade, we can look at a Stock Market. I would be very interested in this, but once again, lets work out the kinks first.

Stockmarkets are hard to keep active ... but I'd welcome anything that actually works.

[Erik Mortis]

Most of the failure in the past was from record keeping and calculations. We have the tools to automate it now.

[Kaiser Hasan I]

Could work, but micronations are generally short on commodities what with the two dimensional space and all.

[Andreas the Wise]

The problem, Erik, as I see it, is not with the buying - that's easy. It's with the demand. In the real world we have millions of people buying and selling stocks each day. And why? Because they can make money on it. Capital Growth, and, just as important, Dividends.
In my experience micronational stocks rarely have dividends. And how would one do it fairly? The only option I've come up with for Novatainia is, as all companies on the exchange are Resource-based, make it on how well resources are trading. But trading resources has never got off the ground ... until now ...

Actually, Hasan, my proposal for trade might be able to help Shireroth in more ways than I first thought ...

(on the matter of Demand, I was giving it a bit of thought after what Liam said about the Gralan economy. In RL, we have unlimited wants and limited resources. In Micronationalism, it's almost the opposite - people have limited wants, no needs, and ... effectively unlimited resources - we want to sell something, all you have to do is design it, and production is done instantly (and if you're in a post based economy, money is sorta unlimited .... in the strictest sense). I'll give it some more thought, maybe write a serious paper on it, but in it's most basic sense, that is why micronational economies don't work too well.
And, to be honest, even the Shireroth economy has that problem. Only Dukes can vote. So only they truly have another reason (or want) to get money - the citizens in their duchy have their money automatically contribute to the vote, as far as I can see, and so have much less 'want' for it ...

[Erik Mortis]

On the nosey!

I think that's one of the clearest explanations I have ever seen for economic failure in micronations. Limited wants, with unlimited resources.


On a side note. I wish we had DStryker here...

[Jacobus Loki]

Where'd he go?

[Erik Mortis]

He left long ago.. college I think.. though I hear word of him now and again...

[Andreas the Wise]

On a more serious note, how much currency is floated? How will we work out initial values - equal between duchies (some have more people than others, though), or based on individual effort, and if so, who decides?
Can more money enter the system - do new citizens start with 0, or get something? Can money leave?

Is there any real way to exchange, even to similiar economies - 1 erb in Shireroth may not directly equate to 1 Babkhan camel, it would depend on the amount of cash in circulation, whether more could enter it etc ...
And finally, the cash the Crown has to pay for bounties - is that cash used for voting? Is Hasan thus giving up voting power for ... well, Froyalan, by paying money? And can the crown tax to recover that? It would, IMHO, be invalid to tax for any other reason in this system - dukes taxing money from their peasants makes no sense as all the money counts to the Duchies vote anyway.

And if we decide that the crown's money doesn't count for voting, but can enter the economy for bounties, then one wonders what the real difference is between this and, say, Novatainia's post based economy, where technically the government has funds of 10 million NCU, from which the 10 NCU per post is theoretically paid. The government pays people to do specific things (very similiar to bounties), and taxes them to get the budget for paying for the next period (and this budget is kept quite clear from the crown's 10 million funds, and a law was actually passed to stop the King dipping into those whenever he wanted a new castle). Oh, and people get paid a pittance for jobs like Minister, Senator etc. The only real difference appears to be that in one you get a reward for posting, and in another, you don't.

[Erik Mortis]

Well, my plan was to keep the Kaiser's personal account (which is the account of the person who is Kaiser) different from the admin account which could also be called the Imperial Account, which will hold all the extra money. So a Kaiser can tax money to them directly, or we could have the money go to the Government.