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Old 04-18-2011, 02:46 PM   #11
starslayer
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

You might have a lot of trouble convincing PCs of this fact however, I think I would need a very good reason to understand why 'spaceship currency' is not transferable to 'personal equipment currency' in order for my suspension of disbelief to not result in me trying to figure out some way in every game to turn spaceship currency into personal currency.

One way you might be able to do it is to have something that people who build/maintains spaceships want very badly, but actually has a somewhat low value in the world of personal equipment currencies.

For instance, if the only way an individual can upgrade his spaceship is to visit pirate engineers, and pirate engineers love the easy and cheap to produce, but very difficult to acquire (without proper paperwork) substance sillitarium; then $50 personal gear in sillitarium might translate to a free install of 'that missile rack we have left over' from the pirates.

There would of course be the potential for someone to get the proper paperwork, buy the silitarium and then get the pirates to build them a 'basically free' spaceship, then sell the spaceship for a large amount of personal funds- but making it be a capital crime to sell silitarium to pirates and having effective enforcement can keep its value down and largely prevent that.

silitarium could very conceivably be 'nanofac nanites' or some other primal industrial supply that is regulated to prevent the masses from building all the spaceships they like (So basically, anything on the open market can be purchased with normal funds, anything that needs an illegal nanofac to produce can be bought with either a small <comparable> value of nanites, or a huge value of personal funds)
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Old 04-18-2011, 05:18 PM   #12
Tyneras
 
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

Since we mentioned spaceships, I figure I'll mention this one I've been fiddling with. It's basically a multi-tiered economy with many non-interchangeable forms of currency.

At the top is the Federation Credit, used for big purchases like spaceships, warp drives, dilithium stockpiles, replicators, fusion reactors, basically anything that cannot be mass replicated, or replicated at all. These are seen mostly by those who operate on at least an interplanetary scale, such as Starfleet officers, various manufacturing & resource extraction companies, shipping companies, etc. Colonists on planets that do not yet have enough infrastructure to have energy credits also earn FCs. You can trade these for more energy credits, but not vice-versa.

Below that is the Energy Credit Welfare Economy. Every month you get a batch of energy credits (transporter, food, clothing, housing and general purpose) that you can use. These credits are non-cumulative and non-transferable and everyone gets an equal amount, even those who have jobs that give them Federation Credits.

Below that are the various unofficial gift economies. With the majority of people permanently unemployed, many strange sub-cultures of life long hobbyists have sprung up, and they trade with one another for new, unique, rare or interesting things or ideas.

The whole thing works because the tech is advanced enough that they only need about 5% of the population doing anything productive to keep everyone in replicated luxury.
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Old 04-18-2011, 05:45 PM   #13
malloyd
 
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Originally Posted by Tyneras View Post
You can trade these for more energy credits, but not vice-versa.
Here's the broken bit. If you trade your Fed Creds for e-creds, then the guy who sold you the e-creds *did* manage the reverse trade. If you want to enforce that trade can only happen when the e-cred seller is the state or something, you are going to need a totalitarian state to do it. You have to close down all the little trades that go "Hey Jimmy-boy, I know you have 20 e-creds about to go stale, instead of using them up on something you don't really want right now just so you don't lose 'em, I'll give you 1 Fed Cred for 'em. Yeah, yeah, but the G-Men'll only sell me 10 for my Fed Cred....
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Old 04-18-2011, 05:52 PM   #14
Anthony
 
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

It's actually relatively easy to have non-interchangeable currencies for characters; just give PCs separate budgets, and don't let them swap money between the budgets (the obvious situation where this occurs is if the PCs don't own their own ships). This doesn't necessarily imply anything about currency types in the game setting, though it will tend to result in player shenanigans with trying to buy personal gear with ship funds.

Other than separate budgets, there isn't really a way to prevent converting spaceship currency to personal currency, though -- just hire out your spaceship for a payment that's wholly or in part in personal currency.
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Old 04-18-2011, 06:05 PM   #15
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
This is done by simply declaring that (e.g.) private property and personal property use different non-interchangeable currencies, and declare ships and houses to count as private property and stuff you can carry as personal.
Even if exchange is forbidden, equilibration is still possible through transformation. For example, private property and personal property are made with the same factors of production. Capital, labour, and raw material and other land will be re-allocated from firms that make private property to firms that make personal property until the marginal rate of substitution (in consumption) is equal to the marginal rate of transformation (in production).
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Old 04-18-2011, 06:09 PM   #16
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Here's the broken bit. If you trade your Fed Creds for e-creds, then the guy who sold you the e-creds *did* manage the reverse trade. If you want to enforce that trade can only happen when the e-cred seller is the state or something, you are going to need a totalitarian state to do it. You have to close down all the little trades that go "Hey Jimmy-boy, I know you have 20 e-creds about to go stale, instead of using them up on something you don't really want right now just so you don't lose 'em, I'll give you 1 Fed Cred for 'em. Yeah, yeah, but the G-Men'll only sell me 10 for my Fed Cred....
This is why I like this board, it's great for error checking. Hmm, I'll have to think about this. I might need to think about what you can get with Fed Creds that you can't with e-creds.

But yes, the state is the only one who can add e-creds to your account (end of the month, use em or lose em). In order to actually get those 20 e-creds he owes you for that Fed Cred, he is going to have to replicate 20 e-creds worth of stuff and hand it to you, which is perfectly legal, it's how the gift economy works. Abuse is probably limited by anything you can replicate being very close to trash if you don't want/need it. "10 kilos of diamonds? What am I gonna do with this junk?" *dumps it in the waste chute*

There will no doubt be cases where it will be useful to consider this, so thanks! :)
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Old 04-18-2011, 06:22 PM   #17
starslayer
 
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It's actually relatively easy to have non-interchangeable currencies for characters; just give PCs separate budgets, and don't let them swap money between the budgets (the obvious situation where this occurs is if the PCs don't own their own ships). This doesn't necessarily imply anything about currency types in the game setting, though it will tend to result in player shenanigans with trying to buy personal gear with ship funds.

Other than separate budgets, there isn't really a way to prevent converting spaceship currency to personal currency, though -- just hire out your spaceship for a payment that's wholly or in part in personal currency.
My issue is again with suspension of disbelief.

Your second problem though is not really a problem; if you use your ship-credits to build a cool ship and then do a job with it for regular credits then you are still doing a job for regular credits which is the core of what you want PCs to do (do jobs for money with there cool ship). If they are insane enough to LEND there ship to someone in exchange for money they will end up with no ship one time.
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Old 04-18-2011, 06:37 PM   #18
Anthony
 
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Originally Posted by starslayer View Post
My issue is again with suspension of disbelief.
What SOD is required? "You're a member of a military force. There is a budget of $X set aside for vehicle maintenance, and you are paid $Y. You are not allowed to transfer unspent maintenance budget into your personal paycheck". The problem occurs when the PC has full ownership over the vehicle.
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Your second problem though is not really a problem.
Uh, yeah it is. If it's possible to leverage currency of type X to generate currency of type Y, you have an implicit conversion process, and if you operate your vehicle (paid for in V$) until it's value has dropped to scrap, collecting only enough V$ to handle operating costs and everything else in P$, you have (slowly, and with effort) converted the entire value of the ship from V$ to P$.

Last edited by Anthony; 04-18-2011 at 06:49 PM.
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Old 04-18-2011, 06:46 PM   #19
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Other than separate budgets, there isn't really a way to prevent converting spaceship currency to personal currency, though -- just hire out your spaceship for a payment that's wholly or in part in personal currency.
Yeah. If you have a ship, you get a choice between jobs that will pay in personal currency and jobs that will pay in private currency. If you find yourself accumulating more of either than you really want, select more jobs that pay in the other. Everyone doing this will result in an implicit exchange ratio defined by the different prices of shipping services (etc.) that pay in the different currencies.

Among the "et cetera" is included wages. Firms that produce personal goods have to pay wages in personal currency because that's what they get paid with. Firms that produce private goods have to pay wages in private currency. The means that everyone with skills used in both industries sees and can exploit an exchange rate implied by the ratio of the wage rates.
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Old 04-18-2011, 11:42 PM   #20
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Default Re: [LT/Fantasy Economics]Societies with non-interchangeable currencies/barter catego

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Well, not quite everything. Taking a woman out for dinner and entertainment, and spending freely, produces a very different reaction than if you just offered her the cash.

Bill Stoddard
I expect she'd be equally offended (Or at least close to it) if she were told the dinner was payment.
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