On Mon, 2017-06-05 at 15:20 -0700, Kerim Aydin wrote: > > On Mon, 5 Jun 2017, Alex Smith wrote: > > I'm starting to get the impression that basing an economy on proposal > > pending never works. Sometimes, distributing a proposal is part of a > > scam, and thus worth paying for / fighting over. However, the majority > > of proposals are intended to be "for the good of Agora" type things > > which give no benefit to the proposer over what they give to Agora as a > > whole. Asking people for payment for those seems backwards; rather, we > > should be /rewarding/ people for them. > > It worked a couple times before. Here's my guesses at why in the previous > systems: > > 1. It wasn't the only way to spend money. It was always in concert with > other things to spend on. > > 2. There was a "Without N Objections" method for distributing "good of > Agora" proposals. So it didn't crater the economy, people would police > it well and object to anything that wasn't a "good of Agora" proposal. > > 3. There were gains on the other end (e.g. Points, or returns to be used > on other parts of the economy) if your proposal was adopted. So it could > be an actual investment. > > Other things that may have contributed: > > 4. A "right to propose" was a fixed item you could buy for cash, save, > etc. so it wasn't just a matter of laying out some fungible currency. > And you could trade it for other things, and the cash value could change. > > 5. The speed of accumulation was such that a good% of people couldn't > propose at any given time, so it was a definite barrier, that required > trading, asking favors, etc., not just a "I can do this anytime with a > bit of extra $$ I have".
In these cases, it seems like proposal pending wasn't actually the /basis/ of the economy, just part of it. (In particular, it crosses my mind that if proposal resolution for its own sake is an important part of gameplay, then limiting pends is also likely to be necessary to avoid flooding. The historical Agoran win records list a time in which pending was free, and having identical FOR/AGAINST/PRESENT records in three consecutive proposals got you a win, /but/ voting was expensive. Obviously, that lead to a trivial win in which someone submitted a huge number of proposals, most of which had no votes on them at all. On the other hand, if you don't get much of a reward from proposal resolution in its own right, then limiting the pends doesn't really close any loopholes and just slows gameplay down.) This is similar to the way in which contracts / promises / organizations / agencies also can't viably be the basis of an economy, but are likely to become important contributors once an economy is in place elsewhere. -- ais523
