Shireroth

Let's kick things up a notch in here, eh?

This is my plan, cut to bare bones since the actual technical aspects haven't been worked out yet. I'll provide a few options within it as well.

The way I see it, the fundamental issue with micronational economies in the past is that they require extra effort on the part of the people. We all know that micronationalists are lazy--otherwise we'd be outside doing something--and so our past economies have failed.

The only one that wasn't like this was Scott's gift economy, which is arguably the most successful form of economy we've ever had within Shireroth. I largely attribute its' success to the fact that it was new and different--and, fundamentally, easy.

However, it failed, due to a variety of different things.

A post-based economy would be similar in that it was easy, and that it measured activity literally instead of the "I build wood" posts in the past.

Option I: Simple
The simplest form of a post-based economy would be to receive one erb for one post. Easy enough.

Option II: Extended
Another form would be to have the poster receive one erb for each hundred characters/forty words/some other undetermined length of post. This puts a modicum of quality onto the posts involved, as posts with less than a hundred characters wouldn't receive anything.

Option III: Verbose
The Verbose method would take Extended and extrapolate, measuring things such as post length, word length, spelling accuracy, et al. This version would probably take a bit of time to set up, as it would require a great deal of effort to first agree on the different measurements within and then to program them.

Option IV: Job-Specific
Job-Specific posting would be most similar to the Simple format, except that the amount received would change according to one's position within Shireroth. That is to say, a Minister--for example--would get 5 erb per post, while a Baron would get 3. Someone with multiple positions would take the highest income...though we could potentially add them together as well.

The issue then becomes, "how do we prevent spam?" Unfortunately, there's ony one way to do that: fines. People spamming would be fined for 1.5 to 2 times the amount they received for the post (a number I believe is fair and preventative at the same time).

Finally, this handily sets up a taxation system. Those who have entered into Feudal Contracts have to pay for a forum. You can have your Duchy simply by signing the contract, but in order to have a forum for it, you have to have 40 posts per week. Again, the number is an example.

If we stuck with Simple, I'd go with the numbers below for taxation purposes:
=Barony: 20 erb per week +3 for each subordinate County with a forum

=Duchy: 30 erb per week +5 for each Barony or County with a forum

=Independent Organizations (SSHIT, MAS, JASO): 35 erb per week unless sponsored by the government

In addition, members of society could also be granted monetary compensation for work they had done above and beyond the call of duty. For instance, if Delphi handed me a shiny new site with all the subdivision pages complete, I'd give him some erb. Since I'm the Kaiseress, it'd come out of the Imperial Treasury. However, if Greg just made a shiny new map for me and I'm only a Baron, I'll have to either pay him out of my pocket or petition the Throne to compensate him.

I think this will work if we give it a shot. I recommend going with Simple first, and then seeing if we need anything from there.

Sounds interesting - might even work. Who would get the thankless task of skimming through posts for spam and fining people?

I think it'd be pretty self-regulating. Most people don't spam now, and I don't think they'll spam if this happens.

And then there's always the "Hey, you, person of importance! Look over there!" approach.

Good point. Is there money in existence at the moment? Where will posters be paid from? The Imperial Treasury, which will receive it back as taxes? Wouldn't prolific posters impoverish the Treasury then? Or would the money just "appear", creating huge inflation quickly.

I'm not trying to pick holes in your plan, just checking for wrinkles.

Simple + Job Specific = Perfect

Historically, like in the old AIN and what-not, people used to get paid for their jobs. Ministers and officers all had salaries. Even Cyberia (the forsaken ones!) does it.

BUT...

The issue of fining people over spam is questionable. The definition of spam varies from person to person and, thus, will always be debated to no end when someone is fined for it. Clearly, if such a system were to be instituted, what constitutes spam would have to be clearly defined in writing and followed to the word.

Forums like GaiaOnline, which work on a post-based economy, thrive on spam. So I see little point in regulating it beyond those who are obviously abusing the system to make personal gains.

Granted.

I don't think spam would be a problem, though. And I personally like the Job-Specific the most, as it encourages people to not only be active, but be active in positions of authority.

This then brings into question, though: who gets what salary? Do the Ministries have different salaries? How about Dukes and Barons? Do they even HAVE salaries, or do they get their income from their underlings?

Well, this has the advantage of definitely working. It has the disadvantage of being totally useless.

Chances are that people will continue posting at about the same rate they did in the past, getting money for it, and having the money taken away by taxes. Although the taxes will probably get annoying, both in the sense of people not wanting to pay them and in the sense of some official having the boring job of going and levying them each week.

It definitely means that there will be no incentive to ever sell products or perform services, since someone can get money just by posting a lot, which is much easier. Add the worse disincentive of awful inflation, since there is an unlimited "supply" of erb and more of it gets "printed" every day. That'll make any attempt to exchange it for foreign currency a losing proposition, too.

I predict this economy will be a lot like having no economy at all, only more annoying.

Of course there'd be incentives to sell products or services. At the very least people will make them up.

Besides, there won't be an ever-increasing amount of money, at least not on the scale that I think you're thinking of, because the Imperial Throne will take taxes from the subdivisions and thereby remove money from the overall pool.

EDIT: And how does it being "bothersome" differentiate it from real life?

The I believe... fifth (IV?) option would be the best way to go.

Option one would make for me simply spamming in example... "I hate Babkha" 30 times to make a weeks worth of salary. Though, granted, I believe the Erb should be made to fit with a decimal system, because if each post is 1 erb, then erb becomes DRASTICALLY over infalted (with over what... 20,000 erb just in archives?). Perhaps .2 a post (even numbers), then the inflation could be stemied.

A rate of tax should also be decided, and something should be devised to tax directly as well.

(IE, barons make 30 a week, they are charged 20 a week by the Imperial Treasury)

On another note, having worked with invision free money codes before (dont know if they differ, if they dont I can find the codes somewheres....) I can help assist when necessary.

I must add my concern to this, now that I have a free moment.

The more I think about it, the problem with a post-based economy is that it doesn't take into account the very basic theory of a real-world economy: Limited supply.

A post-based economy keeps dumping money into the system without anything to back it up. Money is put into the pool, but has nothing to back it up. Taxes would get paid to the throne, and would not get removed from the pool. To have a properly functioning economy, there needs to be balance.

I personally think we need to find something to base the economy on that has a solid value.. or at least something that isn't infinite. I'd recommend something to do with land size, or land resources, or something. I dunno... but I just don't know if a post-based economy would work.

The other question I have would be this - if a forum could not pay their taxes, would they be deleted? Or simply hidden? I guess those are the main points I have to bring up, really.

Just adding my two cents... (and Oz, five is V)... The way I see it, economies don't work right because there's no need. In the real world, I need a place to live, I need food, clothing, etc. Here, I don't need anything, and my very existence in Shireroth is by my own will. So we have lots of people with money, and limited things to spend it on. I echo Scott saying it very likely might end up without a point.

I find the idea of someone going around and calling my posts spam to be insulting and scary. My two cents tossed in. Anyone remember the Off-topic at Apolyton? 'Nuff said (thanks MarkG and Ming...).

BTW:

MOOSE! This rocks.

So, then, if there's no point to having an economy, why don't we just disband the Ministry of Trade?

There would be a point to having some economy, just not that particular one. I've already lain out an economy I think would work, there are some people who think a fantasy economy would work, et cetera. I think everyone wants something, we just disagree as to what, so as a compromise we keep the Ministry of Trade around but never use it.

He's correct. I want SOME sort of economy, but it's hard to find a good one because micronationalism isn't based on needs, it's based on fun.

Perhaps we introduced a certain.. erm..... simulated system?

IE, it costs 20 E to live in Elwynn, and 25 to live in Kildare for housing.

Why not create exchangable goods graphically that can be exchanged through a php database? Kinda like how you aquire items for your avatar on Gaia, and by buying them, you reduce your money. Selling them increases it.

Kinda like a graphic-enhanced MX2.

Just a thought.

Since I'm sure half of us have no clue what Gaia is... could you explain and/or provide a link?


And perhaps we could integrate graphic items? I know it sounds farfetched.. but Gotzborg did this:

They had estates that cost money, and tax. Naturally, everone wants to show off as a graphic of a huge mansion is equal to a ten foot title list, so, you could set up those kinds of things to buy with the erb.....

Though we still haven't handled inflation...

Gaia = http://www.gaiaonline.com

Inflation can be handled quite simply. Give the government an account within the database and put x amount of money into it as a base fund. This is the money the government has printed. Say 100,000 erb to begin with. Then whatever initial sales, salaries, incomes etc are had, those are deducted from that fund and the rest remains government surplus. An exchange value can also be set by that initial printing, and can go up or down depending on the demand/surplus rate of that account.

Oz actually has a really good point - adding a graphical element will REALLY boost support. I'm sure there's a mod out there to do something like it, and if not, it doesn't seem terribly hard to replicate from something else with a bit of coding magic.

Oh, and rocks.

osmose1000 wrote:Oz actually has a really good point - adding a graphical element will REALLY boost support. I'm sure there's a mod out there to do something like it, and if not, it doesn't seem terribly hard to replicate from something else with a bit of coding magic.

Oh, and rocks.

You heard it straight from the Canadian animal's mouth folks!

Hmm. Not a bad idea.

I actually had kind of a thought revolving around the trade requirements of individual counties, based upon certain resources that those counties made, and the needs of the populace (yes, it has a very Civ ring to it.)

For instance, according to the MCS map, Florencia has, as a resource, Exotic Fruit. With a bit of magical coding on the part of someone with the knowhow, you could set resources like that as a Luxury, give it a certain inherent value based upon how well it filled the needs of a luxury item, and then set a certain rate of production. Then, you create a virtual populace and give them needs and wants. The more people you have, the more of said items you need. This would encourage trade between nations. The happier you kept your populace over certain time periods could result in an increase in productivity.

You could get really complex with it, of course... and it would take a fair bit of effort to get going, but it would be more or less self-regulating (you could set certain assets as renewable, and others as non-renewable) and it would have not only a graphical element, but a complete backend, and it would be the closest to a real-world based economy while still staying a simulation that you could get.

Just a thought.

The thing that has doomed economies before was that they were complex - and required a person or persons to run it (I wasn't there for DStryker but I dug around enough to know). If you can find someone to code all of that in to where someone only has to go in for a weekly update or even just monthly figures etc, then it would work.

That's exactly what I was thinking. a self-managed backend where participation on the part of the user was minimal, but enjoyable.

And the nice thing is, it's self managing. Worst case scenario is that someone stops participating in the economic features. Their citizens lose productivity, and resource production from that nation dwindles. It WOULD pull away from the available pool of resources coming out of there, but as they wouldn't be USING resources, those would be more readily available as well.

Also, for future reference, I'd be willing to help in anyway I could. Even if that was just googling through billions of images finding the rights images for our 'oil' or what-have-you.

I suppose we could give it a try.

Now, just to let you guys know, there is an easy-to install and configure cash mod I've found. It's fairly customizable, and prevents simply spamming for money. I say this because I can integrate it right now, and we can work with it and test it out. If we decide it's not for us, it's simple to turn off. Here are the features included in this mod:

Current Version (2.2.1)

1. Multiple Admin-configurable currencies
   • Enable yourself to create, rename, and remove as many currencies as you want
   • No longer necessary to install multiple systems just to have multiple points/cash etc, this is your one-stop solution
   • Images supported!
2. Points System back-compatibility
   • Allows mods that run off of Points System to run off of Cash Mod with minimal (if any) work
3. MySQL & MSSQL Installer
   • SQL installer for MySQL & MSSQL users
4. Admin Control Panel
   • Smooth, sleek, and slightly sexy ;-)
5. Custom Forum Options
   • Turn any or all of your currencies off or on for any of your forums on your board.
   • Easy to use Admin Control Panel makes this a snap!
6. Donate Cash
   • Let your users donate cash to other users.
   • Send PMs with donation!
   • Also (optionally) allow moderators to edit user's cash via the profile page. Admins come with this option automatically
7. Spam prevention
   • Worried about users spamming your board for cash? not a problem! Use the easy spam tools to determine how many posts a user can make within a given time period and be able to gain cash for them
8. Custom Cash Settings
   • Set how many cash points a user makes per post
   • Set how many cash points a user makes per reply,
   • Set how many cash points a user makes per character
   • Bonus for each reply (Rewards for popular thread starters!)
   • Set maximum amount per post
     (or any combination thereof)
9. Cash Groups
   • Set bonus amounts for user in different groups, ranks, and levels
10. Quote Include/Uninclude
    • Capability to disable users from gaining points for quoted sections
11. Enable/Disable User Debt
    • Feeling mean and want to put your users in debt? :twisted:
12. Set all users Cash
    • With a click of a button, you can set/reset the cash amounts of all users!
13. Currency Exchange
    • Allow users to exchange one form of currency for another, at rates that you set!
14. Log Actions
    • Log cash-related actions that go on over your board
15. Decimal Cash
    • Cash now comes in decimals!
16. Plug-in Events
    • Cash Amounts for events, generated by board actions, or other mods!
17. Cash Mod API
    • Application Program Interface, allows for much simpler dealing with Cash Mod by other mods needing or using a rewards systems
18. Cash on PM
    • If you feel the need to encourage your users to spam... (by default, this is turned off)
19. EasyMOD Compatible
    • Install in seconds with EasyMOD!

Psst.. Greg.. if you'd check the forum, I had that and a billion other mods listed down south... or, atleast, an older version of this....

But hey, Id prefer you do it (really, I would)

Cheers