Quote:
Originally Posted by Tussi
Problem is that all dominant economic systems feature compound interest on money, which inevitable leads to an exponential growth of financial assets (which are generated through liabilities in the current systems), which in turn puts pressure on the economy to produce exponential growth to cover the financial market.
Only problem here is that no natural system (like a planet) can sustain an exponential growth rate - so as you stated correctly the hypothetical possibility you started with has no real chance to be witnessed in reality.
I think the lag with the highest impact is that a good group of people sees EU as leasure time and not work - and should the gap between 'i want' and 'i get' be time- or money-wise to wide then it's percived as discouraging.
Also the service should be usable with the minimum required setting, there should be no need to have a 4GB RAM (2 on gfx-card and 2 as RAM) with Dual-Raid-0 setup (one raid for swapping, the other for serving game assets) of solid state disks (which can transfer faster than harddrives) to run the game smoothly.
At time i experience lag, is's preferably somewhere in the wilderness. And this type of lag was introduced some VU ago (together with fun-stuff like flying mobs, or the where's my brain periodes for eg. feffs W of Fury where they only ran around like headless chicken).
Back to topic: The economy isn't collapsing, it's overheated and starting to choke. Go and ask a newcomer if he's ready to shell out - say 10k PED which is a reasponable figure - for gear in 1/2 to one year (because then he'll need it) while accepting that he won't be able to compete with high-level people the next 10 years.
Same goes for current midlevel players, but with a zero more left of the comma.
What answers do you get?
Tussi |
Again, as long as the rates stay below GDP growth, hypothetically that compound interest is covered. I didn't say it'd be easy, just that with the proper knowledge (including better forecasting techniques than we have today, which IS a possibility) then it'd be mathematically possible.
The planet may not sustain life indefinitely, true...but A) even with current technology, at full productiont his ole earth of ours could sustain something around 10 billion people, B) all countries follow the pattern that many EuroUnion countries have in which you reach a population "tipping point" and then decline (such as the gradually slowing rate of pop growth in the US after the baby boomers, the low rates in China, Japan, Germany, etc., and eventually the slowing rates in India, though that wont fully be realized for another 20-30 years), so the exponential consumption of resources will slow and it'll be a matter of technology growth, which tends to make more efficient rather than less efficient use of given resources. Further, as far as forecasting indefinitely, who says the earth will be fed resources only from terran sources? Asteroid/extraplanetary mining's been a possible, but currently too costly idea for about 30 years now....
Good points on the ease-of-use by lower rate computers. Everybody complains on graphics, but as games like Halo and WoW proved over the years, people will still play if they enjoy themselves, regardless of graphic quality to a certain extent (not an indefinite one, but up to a point).
Long-horizon returns on investment are a problem for asking people with a low commitment (newbies) to drop alot of money. Personally, I play the game with about 400ped to my name. I trade ME and occassionally other enmats, build up the profits to a certain point, then go mine a few favorite spots of mine (I'm a miner, not a hunter), sell that, and sometimes make a profit, sometimes don't, but then I take what I've got left either way and expand my money further. I started with 100 ped, so all in all not a bad bit of work. (note: I got lucky, admittedly. I had 2 strange signal events on my 4th day playing the game, expanded my money at the time out to about 300 ped, which I've since built up to 400 ped of seed money plus all the mining equipment and whatnot).
However, how exactly does one stop "overheating" in a game with no set interest rates? I don't think the overheating thing will present a tremendous problem; even if newbs slowed down entering the economy, there's enough core players in place to keep it slowly growing even in the absence of new blood for a significant period, I think.
Either way, it's kind of an interesting economic structure, because you infinite upward mobility but at the same time few start out in the "middle class," they generally roll in at the lower levels and either "cash out" quickly or stick to it and then start to invest or become a reseller. Thus you have an "older" upper class and younger lower classes relative to the game, so it's an interesting demographic and economic pattern.