Hi all, I wanted to share some observations on what makes Agoran
economies function, and where we're not quite there yet. These are just
observations from watching systems go by.
- To get trading, you need SPECIALIZATION and DIVERSE GOODS. For
trading to work, you need the Cost of Specialization (in time or funds)
to be much greater than the cost of a specialist producing those codes.
Otherwise people just rotate through specialties to get the goods they
need. (This is Econ 101 for Free Trade between nations).
- Our current system has none of this. What the current system is is
an abstracted and volatile stock market. We can invest stamps or
proposals when price is low to sell high. It's basically each player
against "the system" (where the "system" is our collective behavior)
and it's kind of interesting. But it doesn't, at all, promote cross-
person economic activity.
There's nothing wrong with an "abstract stock market" game. But we shouldn't
mistake it for a trading system.
So the way I see it, we should do one of two things:
1. Embrace the current system as a stock market/gambling system, and
increase the Stamps and aspects of gambling, and make more ways that
speculation can happen. But not try too hard to make this a "trading
economy".
2. Scrap the volatile aspects entirely (fix FV, mint more shinies than
we'll ever need). Instead, create a system of Specialization. We can
use things like Land as a vehicle - either by making Land *one* limited
specialty (limited supply) but creating other specialty directions...
OR by making Land a basic low-level commodity (lots of supply) but with
customization (Farms and so forth).
I think *either* system could be fun. I do enjoy the "buy low/sell high"
simple gaming we've got now, and (in past history) we've done (2) much
more often than (1).
But we should really not try to go in both directions, because this hybrid
is just a *bit* of a mess. [Once we've answered this basic question -
what are we trying to do - then we can talk about details like incomes,
supply level, etc. etc.]
