Modern Economics & Create/Snatcher

[Sunrunners_Fire]

I have a pregen I'm writing up for a supers' setting set about three years in the future I'm noodling about with and I'm curious as to how y'all would answer this question:

He can create bulk matter, in up to one ton (2000 lb) mass increments, per second, every second that he spends concentrating. He can form this matter into simple geometric shapes as he is creating it. He requires a sample and the created matter will have the same properties as that of the sample; within certain arbitrary limits anywise. Think stuff the Create advantage lets you do (though the ability as it appears on his character sheet is a heavily modified Snatcher; its' just easier to say Create). Raw, bulk matter. Stuff listed on the commodities exchange, essentially. I believe the proper term is "Hard Commodities"? Something like that anywise.

He, himself, is chasing an economics degree at the University of Toronto. He is interested in using his ability to make money on the side, without neglecting his studies, without flooding or crashing markets and without putting anyone out of business/a job. So how would an aspiring economist with matter creation abilities go about building wealth in the least disruptive manner? And what level of Wealth would that give him?

Emphasis on "least disruptive manner". Supers are new enough that if he breaks something, its' not going to be a good thing for him or anyone else.

*casts Summon Economist ritual, waits to see if anyone answers* // Educational or informative tangents more than welcome! Heh.

[Anders]

Props for movies? They are meant to last the production and then be sold on eBay anyway.

[reddir]

Finished goods or the mining industry.

I think Stirling wrote a book where people with access to an alt timeline earth did mining there and sold the raw metal in this timeline. They bought up all the 'depleted' mines in this reality and claimed to have a new way to reprocess spent ores.
= minimal disruption but need bought people in your refining facility, lots of effort setting up essentially useless infrastructure.

Can set up factories to make products needing exotic materials (gold/crystals/alloys/etc). You might be able to get away with creating smaller amounts of the raw materials and supplementing what your suppliers deliver. You would be able to undercut your competition and still make a hefty profit.
= more prosperity, can become indispensable to global consumers, might be hard to find you out.

[Opellulo]

"Least distruptive manners" for who? The PC identity? The market? The workers? The environment?

Since we're talking more about stock market commodities than "real" selling products, the only way to get away without much hurt is clever investing in the stock market itself: following (if he doesn't want to expoit) the market trends: as long as he keep behind the main investors he can cut his multimillionaire fortune without much hurt. But since this is a murky business I bet that, in the long run, there will be other investors ready to discover why the PC firm seems never to fail an investment.

Mining business require large investment in infrastructure and personell: the lack (or faking) of that is a sure way to being discovered: what would a safe working condition inspection, find? Setting business in a Third World country could give more freedom of movement, but it would surely impact on the low wages in the area, dramatically changing the socio-economic picture.

Building a factory for finished products and supplying the raw materials could blur the things a bit; but a lot of book cooking is nedded to hide the materials origin, a risky choice but the only way to go.

On the other hand, make limited quantity of precius materials could be simpler: every tech company will be more than eager to buy your cheap, available coltan; but its origin must be certified, like in any other precious commodity (gold, uranium and such).

...and this is the reason we cannot have nice superheroes.

[Nereidalbel]

His best bet would be to obtain samples of precious metals that are very, very high value for small quantities. Gold, chromium, and iridium are good choices for this. If he sells 5lbs/week, he's making plenty of money and spending minimal time creating matter. 3 seconds of concentration (1 for each metal) will last him a very, very long time and have virtually zero impact on the economy.

[dcarson]

Might be able to work through scrap yards. How detailed a shape can he make? Copper wire and pipe are worth decent money and easy enough to explain. Eventually becoming a scrap yard might make sense, that lets you add quite a bit of value to the normal business without questions.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

He, himself, is chasing an economics degree at the University of Toronto. He is interested in using his ability to make money on the side, without neglecting his studies, without flooding or crashing markets and without putting anyone out of business/a job. So how would an aspiring economist with matter creation abilities go about building wealth in the least disruptive manner?

If he's any good he knows that he can't do it without disrupting someone. Economists believe in creative destruction. And it is often very poor people who depend on income from producing or extracting the most frivolously costly luxuries.

Anyway, there are four approaches that spring instantly to mind.

The first that would occur to a mediocre undergrad is to pick a very thick market with a high unit price. High unit price gets you a lot of money with minimum time spent. A thick market (i.e. enormous turnover) lets you skim out a take without a significant effect on price. I'd have to do a bit of research, I guess, because commodities aren't my field and I don't know what the figures are. There might be something better than gold or platinum. One second spent producing gold would make 29,000 ounces, worth $36.5 million or so. And that's 1/2,700 of world annual production, so the direct effect on price would be pretty small. The danger is that someone might figure that you could spend a whole hour per year making gold, and then the price, which is supported by confidence, would collapse even if you didn't collapse it.

So the second approach, which occurs to a slightly better student, is to pick something that has a high unit price and very elastic demand. Increase production by a few tonnes per year and the price won't shift, so there will be little effect on the price system and pattern of activity. I'd have to do some research to come up with a suitable candidate. Vanilla, maybe.

The third approach is to pick something that is a significant resource constraint on global economic well-being, at high unit price. Accept that producing this stuff will make a big difference, but rely on it being an general improvement. Platinum. Rare-earth oxides. Of course you want high unit price. A smart student will understand that he's much better off producing something that is exchange-traded, because otherwise finding buyers, negotiations etc. are going to eat into his time study time or brokers into his revenues.

The fourth approach is to pick someone you don't like, and not mind that the cost of your disruption falls only villains. With fairly conventional views you might make diamonds (screw DeBeers and the Russians) or rare-earths oxides (screw the Chinese government).

And a really good student picks a diverse portfolio of resources and makes a few tons of each thing.


As for the income it can produce. Gross world product is about $72 trillion per year, and any significant fraction of that would be disruptive by sheer scale. The character should probably hold it down to about, say, $500 billion per year. If he figures that it would be grossly disruptive for people to even know that he is capable of crashing any commodity price on a whim, then he probably tries to keep what he is doing a secret or disguise it as a bunch of other things. Then figure that he probably ought to hold it down to a couple of hundred million per year or so, and avoid commodities such as coffee and cocoa for which provenance is usually tracked.

[ErhnamDJ]

Another option would be to create things that are dangerous or expensive to transport, bypassing that particular expense. This guy would be pretty great to smuggle onto the International Space Station. He could make quite a lot of water in Arabia too.

If he didn't mind, he could get a job as a magician and have a gig in Vegas. Or he could start churning out the antihydrogen or even regular hydrogen, but he'd probably need an accomplice he could trust for anything big like that.

Brett's right that anything he can do will have an economic impact on someone. Even if he starts making giant stone blocks and pyramids out in the desert, then he'll still be pulling tourist dollars away from somewhere.

[Anthony]

In general, not flooding the market means that his production is fairly small next to the total size of that market. He could probably create a billion dollars of crude oil per year and not flood the market, though it would be annoying on a practical level because that's something like a million tons. If he's only interested in a million dollars a year or so there are vast numbers of choices. However, if he's concerned with drawing attention it's going to require a fair amount of work to make yourself seem like a plausible legitimate source for whatever it is.

[gilbertocarlos]

Create Iron.
It is created 2.4 billion tons of iron every year, that means 275 thousand tons per hour, 76 tons per second.
Iron is worth US$100-150/ton.

If he sells 1 ton per day, he'll have a good life and will be worth only 0.000015% of the world production.
Even on the US only, his share will be worth only 0.00075%.
He'll change almost nothing on the market.

If he wants to be risky, he can sell 0.01% of US market, that'll mean US$500K-700K each year.
If he wants to be really risk, he could try 1% of US market, 50 to 70 million each year.

This will probably reduce the price of iron by 0.5-1%.