Modern Economics & Create/Snatcher

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Avoiding unnecessary attention is part of his intent, right. An accomplice he can hide behind is sounding like a good idea.

You do seem to grasp something that some of the posters didn't and that's the problem of the non-existent paper trail for his created items. The problems shows up for people wanting to make mponey out of worldjumping and similar things too.

No matter how much you pay in taxes the IRS will want to make sure you aren't hiding more. They'll want to make sure your non-existent business partners and employees are paying all their taxes too.

The DEA will want to make sure you aren't laundering money for a Mexican drug gang. Homeland Security will ant to know you aren't doing that for a terrorist group.

OSHA and EPA will want you to prove you're doing whatever you're doing safely and the Department of Labor will want to know that you're not cheating your non-existent employees.

So mass creation of valuable goods could be problematic. Even dumping small amounts of gold to "We Buy Gold!" places could hit the issue of them not expecting to get the stuff in unmarked geometric blocks. They might decide he's stealing the stuff and melting it down.

The authorities are trying to tighten up on copper scrap sales to deter thefts too.

His best bet might be some sort of one-off. Find a deceased family member who travelled and claim to find something valuable that person could have brought back from their travels. Perhaps an uncut diamond that was mistaken for quartz. An emerald might be even better. He could probably rack up a million or two this way without raising suspicions as long as he doesn't repeat.

What I'd actually do is go into business with the US government and avouid legal problems that way. The gov wants to lower the price of gold? Sure, we can do that easily. Supplies of strategic metals from titanium to lithium? I know the whole periodic table by their first names.

[DemiBenson]

Find a shipwreck reputed to have contained treasure, setup a fake diving operation, and "discover" a large amount of middling-value seawater-corroded coins spread out nearby. Not a lot of museums would want to buy 10 tons of tarnished copper and silver disks/bars, so I imagine you could get away with selling most of them for scrap.

Or if the PC lives in a country with treasure trove law, you can legally discover a bulk amount of silver/gold and simply claim it as found treasure. But you can only do that once, lest the long-arm of the law takes an interest.

Someone mentioned the "buy a scrapyard" method, which I think would be the least questions-asked of all the ongoing methods. And your PC could use the treasure trove as the seed money to buy a scrapyard.

[reddir]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

...
Finished goods are something he can't do. Mining is going to require an accomplice he can hide behind.
...

I was suggesting supplying the raw materials for use in finished goods production.

Basically, he's going to have to find some way to disguise this creation of stuff out of thin air. High production endeavors are the best way to do this if you are going for repeated large quantities.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Electricity isn't matter, alas, though might be able to use a weight-driven generator by creating matter up high over a long drop. 1000 kg dropping 100 meters produces 0.2725 kw-hours less conversion inefficiencies. This can be as little as 5% for big turbines, so he could produce 7800 kw-hours in an 8 hour day at a 100-m deep reservoir - about $1000. But I don't see a good way to launder it, unless he dresses up as a some kind of monster to scare people away from an abandoned dam....

Using a technicality, electricity is simply the movement of electrons, which are matter. Sure, you'd have to argue that one really well with a GM, but the physics would work.

[DangerousThing]

This is a supers campaign. Are there other known people who can create/snatch matter? Even if the volume isn't as much, I'm willing to bet that the powers that be have thought through the ramifications of this sort of thing.

In our world, as far as I know, we don't have to worry about this, but in the worlds of either of the two US comic book companies there are matter creators and transmuters. I think that the various governmental departments concerned with such things would have a careful eye on every way to get things to market.

Does Captain Creation, or whatever his name, create matter with a unique energy signature? How are the isotope and impurity percentages? Is there any odd energies associated with the creation?

And the government is the least worrisome of the organizations to avoid. What would the diamond cartels do to keep there monopoly if they thought there was somebody who even had the possibility of creating diamonds?

[martinl]

Other have had lots of good feedback, but please also consider the sheer fun potential of creating a few 1-tonne diamonds in inaccessible and unobserved locations.

[reddir]

The more I consider this, the more I think that dealing with private eccentrics would be better than entering general markets, at least to start.

As martinl suggests, there are ways to use this that are more 'fun' than economic. And fun is something people will pay massive money for.

Eccentrics have paid ridiculous amounts of money to have something unique....

Even building something from 1-ton blocks of rock would be great, especially if you don't have to figure out transport-to-site.

And being able to show off a single sheet of something not normally stretchable, like granite, that is huge but thin would have its own novelty value.

For some reason, I am stuck on rock just now, but so many other materials would be cool to have in forms that are for pure show.

And billionaire people/corps would pay a lot to have something unique.

[Anaraxes]

The supers genre seems to be one of those where it's better just to put Wealth on the character sheet, explain that he's wealthy because of his economic skills and ability to create matter, and call it a day.

Does this game need to go the Papers & Paychecks route of accounting for all income and expenses, as though it were a tramp freighter space game?

Paying CP for Wealth also has the virtue of defusing munchkins trying to think of ways to use their powers to make money, rather than getting on with the game.

If the game is about making money with your super powers, then there's some nice ideas on this thread. There are other powers as well; there have been past threads on several such, particularly for mentalists. There would be any number of adventures in setting up your cover organizations and maintaining them from external threats (like the IRS) or internal ones (embezzlers and whistleblowers).

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Using a technicality, electricity is simply the movement of electrons, which are matter.

Creating electrons in bulk is a losing proposition, starting with there being no safe way to examine a sample.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So mass creation of valuable goods could be problematic. Even dumping small amounts of gold to "We Buy Gold!" places could hit the issue of them not expecting to get the stuff in unmarked geometric blocks. They might decide he's stealing the stuff and melting it down.

I think with a little creativity, he can make precious materials that are slightly less suspicious than unmarked geometric blocks. If he can manage pipes, he can probably manage simple rings, if nothing else. He might have some luck with parts of jewelry, being less complex than the finished product. Both stuff that looks like jewelry making supplies (beads, precious metal wire) and stuff that looks like remains of damaged jewelry.