Collectivistic Borrowing-Based Economies and 80% Wealth: game-mechanical effects

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

As Kromm has pointed out, Wealth is really primarily a social trait (even cross-linked with Status in most societies), and not a detached measure of just how much physical stuff you happen have at the moment of character creation. So, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to use the rules more or less as they are. The 80% just reflects the amount of social currency you have which justifies your perceived and accepted "need" for the toys you demand, so that observers don't get offended and take whatever sorts of retribution society inflicts on the perceived-as-greedy.

(It's no worse of an approximation than the Wealth rules are themselves.)

Abstraction is good. But the difference between the two is that with normal abstract 80%, you have your stuff. But only the stuff you could've conceivably bought. But it's yours and you are free to do what you want with it. While with a shared pool, you can get access to stuff that you wouldn't normally buy from your personal 80%/lifestyle. But it's not yours, so you may need to wait in line, and you can't do just whatever with it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Abstraction is good. But the difference between the two is that with normal abstract 80%, you have your stuff. But only the stuff you could've conceivably bought. But it's yours and you are free to do what you want with it. While with a shared pool, you can get access to stuff that you wouldn't normally buy from your personal 80%/lifestyle. But it's not yours, so you may need to wait in line, and you can't do just whatever with it.

I would look at the Pulling Rank supplement, which has rules for getting stuff from an organization, and adapt those rules.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Greetings, all!

A certain society tends to keep individual property to a minimum, instead preferring to pool most of their resources, and for individuals to borrow the collective stuff on a per-need basis. Essentially, instead of buying a personal home and a personal car and so on with their 80% Starting Wealth, the things bought (or 'bought') with it go into a collective 'reserve' on the assumption that not everyone needs everything all the time, that carpooling is usually more efficient etc. Of course, sometimes that means needing to get in line to get a thing if there's a period of unforeseen demand for it within the social unit.

For the record, social units in the society in question tend to be between 200 and 20,000 people (but that's a high number; usually the actual maximum is around one or two thousand adults), but the people in these groups tend to have bigger monkeyspheres than we do thanks to a combination of psychological differences (Chummy and Sense of Duty being common) and some reputation-tracking goodness (split between the technological and the neurological). Also, this isn't quite the same thing as a gift economy.

There are of course various complication that I'm glossing over in this thread, such as evaluation and performance of contributions into the pool. What I'm interested the most right now is how do I best game-mechanise:

• The question and answer about how many (if any) of a given item are available in a pool (preferably with adjustments based on TL, average Wealth, and the adult population of a given social unit) and
• The question and answer about how high the demand for the item in question is, thus getting a way to estimate the waiting time for getting to use something, depending on category, price relative to default starting wealth etc.
• How long would an item be allowed to be borrowed without repercussions?

Thanks in advance!

Isn't that basically a Kibbutz?

Like Whshs I find "collectivistic" a distasteful way to describe it. In fact it is in essence no different from any other type of corporation, certainly from the legal standpoint, and would function perfectly well in a free enterprise society, possibly better. It would work best if the members have some tie outside the strictly economic.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would look at the Pulling Rank supplement, which has rules for getting stuff from an organization, and adapt those rules.

Yes, I was in fact looking at Pulling Rank as another approach. It would probably require both (a) a different base value and (b) a more detailed set of modifiers.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I would look at the Pulling Rank supplement, which has rules for getting stuff from an organization, and adapt those rules.

Seconded! I think that the idea was first published in Action.

GURPS WW II had some similar thoughts, with Wealth representing how much access you had to weapons and equipment. I don't remember a formal mechanic, but I only had the core book.

There is also a Pyramid: Alternate GURPS issue with abstract wealth. The difference between "I can't afford that until August" and "I am in the queue and can't borrow it until August" can be abstracted away. I would not even try to estimate the total numbers of whatevers in circulation on a given day: that is way too complicated (its hard to even measure in the real world). Modelling demand over time can be equally complicated, and is different for each type of good.

[jason taylor]

I would actually be for something like this in real life because it provides a local protection both from the government and the difficulties of life. Alliances between different whatchacallums could be made as needed to form something larger as needed. For say larger investments, or political bargaining and lobbying or just sponsoring a politician. Or defending a frontier colony as with the Yishuv.

It has the advantage of being able to cover each other's financial needs. That can be a disadvantage for business as the commune will look askance at someone using money in an unconservative way, as the onus will be on them if he goofs. That is not necessarily a disadvantage depending on the goal. The real problem is to make sure that individual members have motive to work as sometimes organizations of that type have problems along that line when clearly others are doing their work for them. But clearly it is not hard to adapt the system's rules to account for such problems.

Basically it is a system assuming an "individualistic" structure. That is, it works reasonably well in a society that assumes the right of property, contract, and free assembly. "Collectivistic" to me implies "centralized" rather then "communitarian" or "communal" the latter two of which concepts do not in principal stop the individual from making a choice about joining or leaving though they might make for a lot of difficult baggage along the way.