My notes on everything mentioned so far (as much as I could decipher), grouped loosely. Im in regular type, source ideas are in italics.
Clarifications
No money from startup costs or business profits is given to the Bank. Startup costs are 1000g legal fees plus a variable amount for physical infrastructure. The profit reduction for businesses covers all of the Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS). That is rent, taxes, workers, coal for the furnace, bribes to petty officials, whatever.
Ever see a diagram of internet communications? The internet is represented by a big, puffy cloud. Things go in and come out but no attempt is made to determine how or why because that doesnt matter. It only matters that there is a big cloud that does stuff to let things go in and come out. The Fanatikan Economy is the same big cloud. We do not have a closed system for the players, they are just the PCs in a huge NPC world. We do not, and should not, attempt to track where expenses go and income comes from. We get salaries from the big cloud and our fees and COGS go into the big cloud. This is good, right, workable and (most importantly) simple.
Increase business expenses
Tax the businesses. 40g/chat per business
Tax 10g/chat instead.
Tax 1% of startup cost/chat.
Limit the number of companies owned to 3
Limit the number of companies you can have an interest in to 8-12.
Multiply startup cost by #businesses started -1.
I wasnt sure if this should be titled as it is or if I should have used Put a yoke on donsig and Shaitan. Donsig and I being rich in the game is not a problem. Im pretty set against any rule that discriminates against certain people, no matter who they are. Id be against these rule suggestions specifically because they will make it harder for everybody to operate a business. We need more businesses, not less.
Decrease money citizens have
Make citizens pay taxes. Corollary: Why? If we get 100g/chat and have to spend 75g to live then why bother?
Force people to buy a food item every turn chat and clothes every other turn chat.
And make everybody subscribe to a newspaper too!
Clothes should last 3 turn chats.
Subscription food and clothing services. Food purchased per turn, clothing per turn chat.
Reduce pay for citizens
Forego 100g/chat when a business is started up.
Forego 100g/chat when employed by a business.
Penalty for having money in the bank
Salary per turn instead of per turn chat
Were back to cloud theory for much of this. I for one do not want to spend time or effort worrying about every meal and whether my character has underwear for tomorrow. The game needs to be ambiguous here. We assume that we have regular supplies of food and clothing, sheets for the bed (and a bed to put the sheets on), firewood for the stove and coal for the oven. We cannot get so granular that nitty gritty things like this are itemized. Let clothing last as long as people want. At the prices we pay for our items we can assume that this is something of a continuous purchase. When styles change people will get a new wardrobe. With food, we go to eat in the restaurants for a role playing experience (same as why we pick out certain clothes). If this is made a mandatory or subscription thing then all that role playing (which is the reason were all here, right?) goes out the window. I go to the rebel pub because its fun. I like Cycs steakhouse because he makes it a really neat role playing experience. If I had to subscribe to these then why would I bother to go to the threads?
Taking money away from the players is not an answer. We need players to spend more money in different places. This requires the owners to get out and sell their stuff. Make it fun for people to go to your shops. At the Bank of Valhalla I try to great each new customer with a new and different slogan. Its my little catch there. I dont want to be an accountant, I want to make a place where people can virtually feel virtually happy about being in a virtual bank.
Incidentally, salary is already available per turn instead of per turn chat for anybody who wants it.
Automate
How? Can anybody actually do this?
Going nowhere
I agree that this is going nowhere. SAAM, you can pursue it if you wish but as far as I can tell theres nobody with the ability, the time, and the desire to do it. I myself have the ability and desire but absolutely no time.
Selling items that we dont have the tech for
Have somebody who shuts down or restricts businesses with contraband items.
Items known to any known civ can be sold. Items that we ourselves dont know about have a higher COGS. Automatically reduce prices by 1/3 when something becomes locally known.
I like the intent here and was going to suggest something similar. My suggestion was to allow one tech higher on each branch than we have knowledge of (either Fanatikan or foreign civ). The reasoning is that we represent the cream of Fanatika. Were the rich and powerful lords of the realm. We are the ones who get things long before they are in common use. We would need to grandfather the businesses that are currently selling contraband or convince them that its in their own best role playing interest to remove those items from the shelves.
Automatically changing prices: Although its attractive to put in systems where things automatically happen when things are gained, they dont work. That is because they are not actually automatic. People have a difficult time following the rules now. I think this would be too much added complexity for too little gain in fun.
If we did implement a restriction like this, it would fall under the Price Managers authority to police the businesses and the Item Managers authority to remove contraband items from peoples inventory.
As an aside, most people bring up newspapers "when we don't even know how to write". Paper is a delivery vector. They had news in the ancient era. They used criers, private meetings, councils, etc. to pass information. In other words, these businesses are just fine for our time, no matter what our time or tech is.
Economy control
Add or remove money to keep economy steady
Each age, increase the basic salary
Give COGS money to the government offices
Were already doing the first one. Each bank update, I check the average personal account size. When it gets below a certain point or above a certain point, a bonus or penalty will be applied to all accounts, based on the relative amount in each account.
I dont like the second one. It essentially is pure inflation, which makes more work. Inflation and recession are bad. A steady economy is good.
The third one goes back to cloud theory. If you want the government offices to have a budget, just give them a budget. Dont create more work by tracking and accounting COGS. More work is very, very bad.
Source Manufacturing
Farming Startup cost 200g
Resource on a tile gives better profit percentage.
Businesses could be set up to supply these things making more economic opportunity.
Some resources necessary for some businesses.
Yes! Absolutely, yes. We have already started doing this as well and have some rules in place for it. Cyc, donsig and I started a company that has access to resources required for building. The whole purpose of this company is to provide the building materials for companies like Acroama Homes. The same thing works with every other resource.
Misc
Banks give loans, etc. as businesses.
They already do.
Governors are leaders
Governors are not leaders. Leaders are the President, Department Leaders, Governors and elected members of the Judiciary.
Tax for land ownership
Already represented in the amount of money made with land. Land must make money because that is a central premise of both real life and the Civilization games. Remember cloud theory.
Travel Charges
Excellent idea. This will fall under Sphere of Influence.
Sphere of Influence
This is my own contribution. Ive been discussing this privately with a couple different people, trying to come up with something to propose. The most workable solution is to have spheres of influence throughout each province. That is, if a business is set up in a city in a province, it can service all citizens in that province. If a person lives in a province they can move freely about that province. This should be just fine. If Im at the Marillion and want to stop at the Rebel Pub in Bavaria that might be a decent trek in virtual life but Ive got 50 years to do it.
When provincial borders are crossed, make actual travel necessary. Bodyguards, caravan, whatever. Make goods more expensive to get to another province. Give a chance that robbers hit the caravan, etc. Maybe reduce profit by 20% per provincial border crossed. 10% if theres a road, none if theres a railroad.
The reason that a province is used instead of a distance (3 tiles or whatever) is because its workable and simple to keep track of. With a straight distance or city defined sphere, business owners will not check that a citizen is registered as living in the right area before doing a transaction. Citizens will get confused about what businesses they can and cant go to. Provinces are easy to check and easy for citizens and business owners alike to conform to. Another reason for provinces compared to another system is we are playing on a BIG, BIG, SUPER BIG world. We will eventually have many, many, many cities. There is no way businesses will be able to expand to more than a few which will then restrict RPG citizens to those few cities. There also wouldnt be country living folk like me and Cyc if you had to live in a city to do business there.
