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#### Why I don't agree with a formal Glitchian economy

Ever hear of One Red Paperclip? If you haven't then go Google it. That was the idea that got me to thinking about Ur's economy, or lack of a formal economy if you will.
Relative Value, that, for me, is what this game is all about. I am of the opinion that breaking things down to simple economics, like putting an exact currant value on an Emblem, Icon, or even a Señor Funpickle, is counter to building a dynamic Glitchian community.
Truth of the matter is I would have liked it better if there was no formal in-game currency. In order to pay vendors you would have to barter them the basic resources in the game; cherries, beans, planks, grain, bubbles, spice, milk, meat, and gasses. True each item has a corresponding trade value, but there would be no abstract currency involved.
Relative Value. Think about it and let me know what you think.
— Mal'akh, Primate of Lem, Primus Inter Pares of the Orthodox Church of the Giants of Ur, Hubby of Aranna, Shriner of Mullangi Meda

Posted 13 months ago by Mal'akh | Permalink

### Replies

- I like getting more money for something that I've worked hard on, instead of gifting it to the auction.
  Posted 13 months ago by Rook | Permalink
- That's impossible to code in any way which doesn't invite exploitation.
  You can have a bartering economy but the items would either a) have to map to explicit, but hidden absolute values or b) map to to ever-changing varying values.
  In scenario A the absolute values would be theory-crafted into a nice google docs spreadsheet in short order, introducing a layer of obscurity for the average player and "currency" for the research player.
  In scenario B it would be wildly easy to play the short term market -- either directly or through the inevitable greasemonkey script which would appear -- to barter item X for item Y for item Z and so on -- producing gross imbalances in supply and demand.
  The auction house is a barter economy, carried out via an abstraction known as currants.
  Posted 13 months ago by Hydi | Permalink
- No.
  If vendor A prices X above Y, vendor B prices Y above Z, and vendor C prices Z above X, can you see what would inevitably happen?
  If all pricing was consistent anyway, then an abstract currency would be implicated in all transactions, in which case what's the difference?
  Posted 13 months ago by Saro | Permalink
- Economies are too depressing.
  Posted 13 months ago by Rook | Permalink
- There's nothing wrong with currency. If you really want to return to the hair-pulling agony of the coincidence of wants problem, go right ahead and enjoy your rotting commodities.
  I believe that FFXI had a system where vendors had limits on how much of each sort of "vendor trash" they would purchase from players; I've never seen a critical analysis of how that's played out. However, it amounts to a quasi-barter system, in that no individual resource would glut the market.
  With our current system, the issue of gluts is self-correcting; all price of resources are competed down to the vendor value when there is sufficient labor devoted to their collection.
  The items you've expressed concern about don't have vendor prices, IIRC.
  Of course, this is a real-world perspective, where people actually need food and houses and other such frivolities, and don't have the time or the effort to waste on haggling - that is, very plainly - any additional possible profit for either side is lost when haggling, bartering, or competition takes place. The convenience of currency and price satisfy nearly all participants, and "dynamism" is a pain in the ass when you're just trying to meet your basic needs:
  For Glitchen with nothing better to do with their time, as they certainly aren't piloted by busy human beings, stunting and blunting the ability of transactions to take place... in order to promote a dynamic economy? Er.
  As for your concern, Saro: I've seen a few games where this kind of "hack" exists - the first Paper Mario for N64, for example. You could buy items in one area and sell them for more than you paid, elsewhere. The reason these systems don't occur consistently in reality is because the number of market participants is large enough - but there are people who make their livings as parasites on the slack.
  Mal'akh - there already is a barter system in play, and human players barter with each other over high value items. No one is going to accept 16 full bags of beans for a Rube Cubimal, however, even if they could auction them off in a reasonable time frame. Trades take place over low value items, too: "I'll give you an Awesome Stew if you repair my Fancy Pick!" The only role the NPC vendors play is a kind of decentralized federal reserve, taking various resources out of circulation in order to inflate their prices above each particular floor.
  I spent too long on this! Yes, economies are depressing!
  Posted 13 months ago by Stuv | Permalink
- We did One Red Paperclip on here quite recently.
  Posted 13 months ago by Kake | Permalink
- > True each item has a corresponding trade value, but there would be no abstract currency involved.
  As soon as you identify "trade value" in some predictably-defined way, there's an abstract currency implicitly involved. Unless we want to make the vendors moody or otherwise unpredictable, there's no way to avoid that with computer controlled vendors.
  If we didn't have currants, we would probably be using cherries or beans to accomplish basically the same thing. Free-form bartering gets confusing on a large scale and requires human-to-human communication that includes a lot of overhead.
  Posted 13 months ago by mirth | Permalink
- I'm still wondering what backs Currants. And exactly where is the gold stored that the Central Bank of Ur claims to have on its books?
  (...resumes reading Ludwig von Mises for Dumminers)
  Posted 13 months ago by dmnddgs | Permalink
- I like the idea but share the concerns of the original responder.
  However, if the prices that an individual vendor bought/sold at *slowly* changed as a result of what was bought and sold to them, I can't see that that would be a dreadful thing.
  And if that meant we had people making currents by buying at one vendor and selling at another, I'm cool with that. One more aspect to the game.
  Posted 13 months ago by KesterFay | Permalink
- It would be nice if the housing market at least worked more like it does IRL. Those prices would be negotiable and would fluctuate based on what upgrades (TS please give us house upgrade options!) the owner has made. The houses are way too like for like except that one neighboorhood right now. I think I would be a lot more interested in the game if my house had more real value to me - provided partly through opportunity for customization.
  Would it make sense to do away with teleportation and have regional economies? Better prices for rocks in one "state" (whatever they are called), better for vegetables/meat/etc. in others?
  OT but I also dislike that higher level players can easily rake in tons of money with little effort yet have nothing to do with it. I have far more than enough for a $50k home but there isn't one out there - period. The few that were a couple days ago were very unattractive. The most rare item that I can see in this game are those amazing $15k, non-existent, colorful groddle homes. Yet you can't get one even if you had a million currants.
  I would love if it were not as easy for more advanced players to make piles of cash, but have some ongoing and interesting things to do with the money they do have. There's nothing I've found that I can't buy in the game but also nothing really worth buying now that the basics are covered. At least there are still fun places to explore and fun people to do things with :)
  Posted 13 months ago by Orange Jello | Permalink
- It's interesting to see others thinking about this, because I've started to study the economy and am working on an (in-progress) implementation of the API to compile some statistics to try to create meaning from the economic data. I'd like to see something come out of it, so I'm always looking for help:
  www.glitchonomics.com
  Posted 13 months ago by Pokkit | Permalink
- I knew I should have qualified the terms I used first...
  formal currency = currants (dmnddgs, it's a fiat currency)
  vendors = NPC vendors (not player Glitchen)
  barter = trade with the vendors
  @Kake
  That was pretty cool! Let me know if you guys start another one
  @KesterFay
  That's actually a good idea.
  — Mal'akh, Primate of Lem, Primus Inter Pares of the Orthodox Church of the Giants of Ur, Hubby of Aranna, Shriner of Mullangi Meda
  Posted 13 months ago by Mal'akh | Permalink
- The true currency of Glitch is time.
  Posted 13 months ago by Glitchard | Permalink
- Just want to +1 the housing market. I think the economy here is pretty good. It would be neat to see what TS does with housing.
  Posted 13 months ago by Gliffard | Permalink
- Malakh - Did you look at the number of transactions, and the length of time it took the Red Paperclip transactions?
  Do you want to spend half an hour in 17 swaps bartering your way to 80 guano?
  Posted 13 months ago by Tsu Dho Nimh | Permalink
- @Tsu Dho Nimh, this may come as a shock to you, but I found what they did quite engaging. Like I said, relative value.
  Posted 13 months ago by Mal'akh | Permalink
- @Glitchard: I agree. That's the basis of the study I intend to do on Glitch, is try to interpret Currants as time, and relate it to the real world, in a way, but also to measure and index the economy on relative terms.
  @Gliffard: I would love to see a housing API for a real estate index. I also would be overjoyed to see mood and energy from each player indexable - and that's something I'm pushing for API-wise. I'd love to attend an API developer meeting and chat with the TS guys.
  The real problem here is that the money supply is unlimited, so real study of transaction values and volumes is kinda superfluous, unless there's an API component that allows us to look at the actual money supply in the game. Heh, kinda like a GlitchFed.
  Posted 13 months ago by Pokkit | Permalink
- Lol shameless plugs at the bottom.
  Posted 13 months ago by Volkov | Permalink
- Is there anything in the game that keeps track of the entire money supply in the game? I would think that would be a fairly arduous calculation to make, especially after-the-fact. Even a register that kept track of the amount from game onset and tracked when the game dispensed currants would be mondo-busy all the time, and it's too late for something like that now. A function that polled Net Worth of all players periodically could be added, but each player's currant balance is sort of a private matter.
  Posted 13 months ago by Parrow Gnolle | Permalink
- I'm really not trying to get a shameless plug in, sorry if it seems that way. I'm really looking for helpers and it seems that this would be the logical place to do it :(
  Posted 13 months ago by Pokkit | Permalink
- @Pokkit: Yeah, well like I said I believe Glitch's true currency is time. There are additional factors to take into consideration though if you're doing a study which would be Skills and Rarity.
  While skills are a minor factor for most of the older players, for newer players it's still a factor.
  Tertiary to that is Rarity. While most items can be readily harvested by almost anyone there are certain items that have very low drop rates.
  Of course, with any economy supply and demand is always a factor although, technically the potential supply in Glitch is unlimited for the majority of items, however the actual supply may vary.
  Posted 13 months ago by Glitchard | Permalink
- I don't agree with your hat.
  Posted 13 months ago by Xev | Permalink
- idk, is it any worse than the collector phenom that's started to burgeon? I like the idea of barter, but maybe that's best left to player-on-player transactions?
  Posted 13 months ago by Woochi | Permalink
- @Glitchard: I agree with your points, specifically about the worth of skills. When I played other MMOs, I spent a lot of time working on studies of how new servers and character development contributed toward stilted economic measures. There were some interesting conclusions about how the volume of lesser-developed accounts that have proven true across persistent world games.
  It's also very true that measures are complicated by the fact that all supply in the game is unlimited, but if you just consider the microcosm of what is posted on the market as the basis for Qd and Qs, there's a semi-finite gross product that can be measured and observed. Over time, I hope that I can collect enough data to index it, and that's what I'm working toward right now; I've been collecting for about a week throughout the day with an automated polling system.
  We'll see what I come up with I guess.
  Posted 13 months ago by Pokkit | Permalink
- @ Mal'akh, I agree that on the surface it would appear that Currants are just another fiat currency, but I have wondered if it is in fact the case that an endless supply of Currants can be generated within the game. Most of my currants have been gained by selling the product of my labor (almost all of it chunks of sparkly) to street vendors. It seems that just about every Glitch I come across is involved in buying and selling of one or more commodities. So, I wonder, what exactly happens to all the shiny sparkly I have sold since I started mining seriously. There must be a huge cache of the precious held somewhere on Ur and for what purpose exactly? :)
  Posted 13 months ago by dmnddgs | Permalink