Economic issues

[6_4]

Created thread to talk about economic issues (continuing discussion from discord), here are some of the random ideas talked about:
- Existence of pawnshop means that I get to buy stuff at lower than market prices
- but this is one of the only ways new players can get krist easily!
- Not enough people who have big amounts of krist are spending it, because they already have all the goods/services
- There is too much supply and not enough demand
- Not enough people are selling programs that they write
- Real estate on SwitchCraft is unideal in general
- Prices falling, deflation/inflation
- Land value taxes, or taxes on asset holders
- No mining has caused reduced spending
- are faucet/UBI enough?
- turtles causing post-scarcity economy
- land claims first-come first-served
- large quantities of krist accumulated years ago
(these are just a bunch of ideas or points that I copied while scrolling through the discord conversation)

[osmarks]

Some vaguely relevant things: taxes on Krist itself would just incenticize alternate currencies; I wanted to see (and probably should implement, admittedly) an automatic commodity market system (which would help new players sell at better prices and be cool and convenient); making Krist even more fiat and just issuing large amounts to new players might be good to compensate for early block reward.

[6_4]

Personally, I am in favor of either making an alternate currency, entirely resetting Krist, or causing hyperinflation (after SC2 is finished). I don't think balances and wealth transferring across servers is a good idea; it just results in continuing inequality. I like the alternative that gosmllarks suggested: making SwitchCraft into a currency issuer and then increasing the faucet to lots of krist: this would cause inflation and help offset current inequality, but people can still "keep" their krist. (If massive inflation is caused, decimalization can be delayed!) A gold standard or diamond-backed currency sounds strange to me. One idea that I just had is to make a new currency, and only allow a maximum certain amount of Krist to be converted to the new currency per player, (or have some kind of marginal tax rates or tax brackets), this would lessen inequality but still wouldn't evaporate all wealth

I'm not sure about land value taxes. The scheme that gosmllarks suggested is "people state their land value, pay a fixed proportion, somebody can buy their land for that value", but I don't think people should be forced into selling land. I do think that spawn real-estate markets are concerning, though. A fully managed spawn area could be good, but in general, spawn areas could be auctioned off instead of "first person to claim it gets it". Having different districts and neighborhoods of spawn would also be fun. (actually, when I think about it, people having bases in random areas of the world is probably better, so spawn should not allow bases/houses) (maybe spawn could be semi-managed: huge chunks of land could be auctioned off, and then whoever buys the land has to sub-allocate it to others) (Also, if krist resets when SC7 starts, it might be more difficult to conduct auctions for spawn)

Of the pawnshop: I'm not entirely sure why/if dimaguy is complaining about me "getting to have stuff at lower than market prices". I do think that an automated commodity market would be cool, but it would be slightly hard and also nobody has deployed/made one yet, despite it being an idea literally every new player has had for years. I'm not sure if/when/how I should clean up and release the pawnshop code for other people to use (it is moderately simple, but somehow hydro and I are the only ones to create one - are other people just not interested?)

I don't have much to say for now on the problem of "too little demand for goods and services". Maybe this is just a consequence of player inactivity? Forcing trade for the sake of it doesn't seem fun, but maybe recipes could be made harder or something. (Making computers, for example, require 7 iron blocks instead of 7 stone would probably have the effect of reducing lag as well). Maybe we just need to acknowledge the consequences of a post-scarcity economy. Speaking of forcing trade, I think removing tpa/home to force transport networks and stuff is an interesting idea that could be considered, but it could have a lot of consequences.

I think selling programs is not common enough and should be more common. Recently this seems to have taken the form of "pay me krist and I'll post the link to my program for all to see on this discord channel", which is interesting.

Sorry if this semi-rant doesn't make sense, I didn't proofread it very much and I am going to go to sleep now

[SquidDev]

I think selling programs is not common enough and should be more common. Recently this seems to have taken the form of "pay me krist and I'll post the link to my program for all to see on this discord channel", which is interesting.

I'm not really involved in SC much nowadays so don't have many thoughts on the rest of your post, but I am always a little wary about people selling code.

I feel one of the best things about the CC community is how ready people are to share code, and the openness of development in general. The second you introduce paywalls (using real or imaginary currency) you loose some of that openness.

Obviously people deserve to be rewarded for their work though, just it'd be nice to do in a way which incentivises open development. One option would be to do something similar to CurseForge - once a week distribute a fixed amount of Krist between developers of "useful" programs¹. I have no idea if/how this would work in practice - any way you'd determine a useful/popular program is susceptible to manipulation - ideas welcome!

[1]: It'd be neat to do this on a CC-wide level with actual money in the mix, but I think that introduces a whole lot of challenges I'm not prepared to deal with :D.

[osmarks]

One idea that I just had is to make a new currency, and only allow a maximum certain amount of Krist to be converted to the new currency per player, (or have some kind of marginal tax rates or tax brackets), this would lessen inequality but still wouldn't evaporate all wealth

This seems very ad-hoc and prone to workarounds.

Having different districts and neighborhoods of spawn would also be fun. (actually, when I think about it, people having bases in random areas of the world is probably better, so spawn should not allow bases/houses) (maybe spawn could be semi-managed: huge chunks of land could be auctioned off, and then whoever buys the land has to sub-allocate it to others) (Also, if krist resets when SC7 starts, it might be more difficult to conduct auctions for spawn)

Why would you want bases to be more spread out? Lag?

Another possibility here is requiring cuboid claims around spawn, although people might just claim up to the height limit. Obviously, a dense 3D-stacked city is cooler.

Of the pawnshop: I'm not entirely sure why/if dimaguy is complaining about me "getting to have stuff at lower than market prices". I do think that an automated commodity market would be cool, but it would be slightly hard and also nobody has deployed/made one yet, despite it being an idea literally every new player has had for years. I'm not sure if/when/how I should clean up and release the pawnshop code for other people to use (it is moderately simple, but somehow hydro and I are the only ones to create one - are other people just not interested?)

People have weird fairness intuitions. And the idea new players always have is a stock market, not commodities, which is a problem since a stock market cannot actually work without boring things like accounting.

I can only speak for myself regarding the sellshop thing, but I haven't set one up because writing shop code is annoying and it would be tricky to set the prices/limits to avoid having too much useless stuff. There isn't seemingly much demand for the things which get sold, as you say, so prices presumably have to be low. Market automation could at least bring buy and sell prices closer together.

I don't have much to say for now on the problem of "too little demand for goods and services". Maybe this is just a consequence of player inactivity? Forcing trade for the sake of it doesn't seem fun, but maybe recipes could be made harder or something. (Making computers, for example, require 7 iron blocks instead of 7 stone would probably have the effect of reducing lag as well). Maybe we just need to acknowledge the consequences of a post-scarcity economy. Speaking of forcing trade, I think removing tpa/home to force transport networks and stuff is an interesting idea that could be considered, but it could have a lot of consequences.

It isn't just player inactivity. Most long-term players can make anything they want from their farms and mines and autocrafters; shops can really only sell things which are annoying to get in some way, or sell to new players until they bootstrap their own automation.

Arguably automated flight to target obsoletes non-Nether transport networks anyway, although I don't think this is in very wide use even though I released code for it.

I think selling programs is not common enough and should be more common. Recently this seems to have taken the form of "pay me krist and I'll post the link to my program for all to see on this discord channel", which is interesting.

An interesting model which keeps some amount of openness is software commissions where the end result is made public, maybe with multiple people pooling their Krist, but this has obvious "free rider" issues.

[6_4]

Why would you want bases to be more spread out? Lag?

The reason I am most concerned about is chunkbanning, but I'm not sure if/how that could still be a problem. Lag is also a factor, though

Another possibility here is requiring cuboid claims around spawn, although people might just claim up to the height limit. Obviously, a dense 3D-stacked city is cooler.

Wasn't chorus city meant to be cuboidal before everybody made 2d claims? I also think 3D-stacking things is cool, but it seems like nobody does that. Although this is slightly off-topic, speaking of cuboid claims: A while ago, I made a cuboid claim above another cuboid claim near spawn, and then the admins arbitrarily decided that the original cuboid claim "wasn't meant to be a 3d claim", then took my cuboid claim and resized the other claim over it!

One option would be to do something similar to CurseForge - once a week distribute a fixed amount of Krist between developers of "useful" programs¹. I have no idea if/how this would work in practice - any way you'd determine a useful/popular program is susceptible to manipulation - ideas welcome!

I'm not sure if there are currently enough "useful" programs developed to do something like this - also, CurseForge makes money through ads and other stuff, but there's no equivalent to that for Krist.

An interesting model which keeps some amount of openness is software commissions where the end result is made public, maybe with multiple people pooling their Krist, but this has obvious "free rider" issues.

Maybe a "pay-what-you-want" model would work? I don't know how many people would be "free riders" though. Alternatively, make an extremely complex program with an incomprehensible configuration or interface, then have people pay for support

[osmarks]

Wasn't chorus city meant to be cuboidal before everybody made 2d claims? I also think 3D-stacking things is cool, but it seems like nobody does that. Although this is slightly off-topic, speaking of cuboid claims: A while ago, I made a cuboid claim above another cuboid claim near spawn, and then the admins arbitrarily decided that the original cuboid claim "wasn't meant to be a 3d claim", then took my cuboid claim and resized the other claim over it!

How mean of them! Anyway, I don't actually know what the original design philosophy for the city was, but it might have been. The roads certainly weren't cuboided, so it seems unlikely, though.

I'm not sure if there are currently enough "useful" programs developed to do something like this - also, CurseForge makes money through ads and other stuff, but there's no equivalent to that for Krist.

People paid a lot of krist for early swarm mining software on SC, at least.

Maybe a "pay-what-you-want" model would work? I don't know how many people would be "free riders" though. Alternatively, make an extremely complex program with an incomprehensible configuration or interface, then have people pay for support

I have had surprisingly large amounts of success selling people software I had already written and sort of publicly released without even providing support.