Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: Bank Actions

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoth Dan Waldron:
>  > Hmmm. Yeah, I agree that the Bank needs more funds as it currently stands.
>  
> > As it is, our economy is sort of odd. The Bank is the only "employer", yet 
> > no one "buys" much from the Bank. In such a situation, the Bank can't help 
> > but become impoverished---unless it has mint powers, which our Bank does. 
> > So, to keep afloat, the Bank will take the inflationary step of issuing 
> > more Points. Our current Rules and the traditional size relation among the 
> > Awards forces us into a position of continually devaluing our currency. On 
> > the other hand, we have an absolute goal, in the sense that the condition 
> > for winning is not relative to the total quantity of Points in circulation,
>  
> > which somewhat mitigates inflation. I'm not sure what to make of this---I'm
>  
> > no economist---but because of the win condition, there aren't any 
> > real-world analogues.
> 
> We could make it so that players have to buy the ability to make proposals
> from the bank.  Instead of a failed proposal fine, usually large, that
> whacks players when their proposals fail, we could charge 10 points to
> make a proposal and give out maybe 15 when one passes.  The banker and tax
> collector would have to adjust those values to keep the system about even.
> 
> Poulenc.

Hmm. Proposals are anomalous. We want to encourage them since if there are 
no Proposals, there isn't much happening. So, it seems that we should offer 
some compensation for Proposals. On the other hand, their introduction 
creates wor, so it seems like we should charge a fee for making them. There 
is a tension here, since we cannot both charge and reward makers of 
Proposals. Your suggestion is a compromise between the two.

I'm not sure we should charge for the introduction of Proposals, since that 
might discourage Players from formalizing their suggestions. For example, 
if I have some idea, and aren't sure whether anyone will like it, I might 
toss a vague version of it out---free of charge--rather than writing up a 
specific Proposal, for which I would be charged a fee. This could hinder 
discussion if it diminished the number of formal Proposals posted on the 
page, since informal versions would be available only by email. (Of course, 
this is all speculative, since there hasn't been a lot of discussion going 
on lately.)

Another idea I had today was that the Banker could have at eir disposal 
several different fees, from which e would be free to choose which to 
implement each turn. Maybe a Proposal Fee could be one of these, so it 
could be employed, but need not be every turn.

-- 
J.