So Inflation Is Killing Me - Video In Thread

[Thunderbrd]

, but do traders, great characters and slaves increase inflation if they are use directly (I don't think so, but I'm not sure)?

No. I don't believe unit missions create inflation.

It was just that both hurry types were equally applied to inflation without a filter to keep slave whipping from doing so.

Yes, inflation is a national property rather than a local one.

 

[canexpthat]

One thing I've observed from working in the Mortgage industry is that it appears to me that the demand for housing and existing inventory (supply and demand of land and residence) has a very central impact on inflation across the board, as does supply and demand factors on finite energy sources.

I think interest rates would affect the demand for housing. Generally speaking, I think interest rates have the largest effect on large purchases like investments (as mentioned in my previous comment, although that was for inflation) and housing and smaller effects on smaller purchases. But this gets difficult for a game I feel unless you're trying to literally make a pure economic sim game.

I feel the key thing for a game at this point is that inflation creates winners and losers (in the case of housing, asset owners win because asset prices rise and non-asset owners, like renters, lose, because they get priced out of places they could afford before). As a civ ruler, you're most concerned about unhappiness that inflation causes to the losers. Theoretically, government finances aren't necessarily suffering when there's some inflation in the economy, as government costs may go up but so should your tax revenue (both nominally speaking). But with very high inflation, people have a harder time planning their finances in the future, so that could be a malus to commerce. <-- Regarding this, the present system of tacking on an inflation cost to your government costs satisfies this mechanic (a malus to commerce can be thought of as equivalently modeled by an increase in your costs), though I disagree with inflation being an automatic increase per turn.

Some other possible complications:
-Commerce gained from trade routes: does this cause inflation? Is this new money introduced into your economy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_silver_trade_from_the_16th_to_18th_centuries

Chinese goods were in demand and so Spanish silver from the Americas flowed in, causing inflation in a silver-denominated economy. According to wikipedia, "The increasing supply of silver from the Spanish and other Europeans caused the price of silver to inflate, which eventually affected the deflation of values of all commodities. Because the Chinese economy was based on silver, this soon led to the collapse of the Ming dynasty.", although I imagine reality was a lot more complicated than this, lol. So if you're making a lot of money through trade - in a metals based currency civic, should this cause inflation to you?
-What if you're on the other side of the trade but you don't have a lot of silver like colonial Spain? You can find references to ancient Rome concerned about the outflow of precious metals (e.g. gold) in order to import Chinese silk. "In his Natural History (77–79 AD), Pliny the Elder lamented the financial drain of coin from the Roman economy to purchase this expensive luxury. He remarked that Rome's "womankind" and the purchase of luxury goods from India, Arabia, and the Seres of the Far East cost the empire roughly 100 million sesterces per year"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations#Asian_silk_in_the_Roman_Empire

But honestly, I don't know if it's worth trying to go down these roads of complications lol... Cause now I'm wondering how trade income works in the game. What decides which cities a city has trade routes with? And if two cities have a mutual trade route, do they both make the same amount of commerce from that trade route? (In other words, it's not like one is exporting more than the other, it's just "mutually earned money"?) And how do caravans affect or not affect all this.

 

[tmv]

Here is the same graph with velocity of M2 added

Is it just me, or is correlation indeed stronger?

As a civ ruler, you're most concerned about unhappiness that inflation causes to the losers.

If labor unions aren't suppressed (civic choice?), inflation should also drive wage demands and thus strikes => less

 

[Noriad2]

Economy is circular, the money flow is the mirror flow of the goods and services, i.e. it flows in the opposite direction. Person A buys from person B, money flows from A to B and goods flow from B to A. Then B has a bunch of money and uses that to buy goods from A, leading to money flowing from B to A and goods flowing from A to B. The net result is A and B exchanging goods. Money just makes the exchange easier.

As long as the flows are balanced there is no problem. The value of money is determined by the size of the economy against the amount of money available.

Messing with the money supply throws the system into unbalance, but the economy continually re-adjusts itself towards a new balance. You can artificially create adjustments to quickly counter an existing imbalance if you are impatient (like Keynes is suggesting, for example with Quantitative Easing) but that causes a ripple effect over time that takes longer to auto balance.

 

[DC0]

employers aren't evil - but the thing that seems to stand out to me is that the ones that care the least about the humanity of their employees tend to be the most successful.

Apparently, you never employed a single person.

If a person is willing to find a data on "caring" employers, he will find plenty. For Americans, start with Henry Ford.

In Russia, during Russian industrial revolution (19th century), most prominent and economically successful bourgeois were building and sponsoring schools, hospitals and accommodations for their factory workers. Savva Morozov is the most prominent one.

And this was not charity. Contrary to popular belief. Even Wikipedia says he was philanthropist

It was investment. This investment allowed him to get best people for his factories.

Was he evil selfish capitalist? I say "never!" He was a good, clever capitalist. He understood one most important thing in making money: your most precious resource is people. "Quantity and quality of human capital", as they taught us in University.

See, humans are different.
But communist professors, teachers and propagandists are saying that all people are the same. That you can easily replace American worker with some Zimbabwe emigrant with same results. According to same communist propaganda, if people are the same, then it's grave injustice that one person is employee and another is an employer. And disparity of their income, therefore, is exploitation of one class by another.

But this is a lie. Carefully planned and implemented in evil ways to tear society apart. "Divide and conquer".

BTW, human capital is the most ignored resource in all computer games. Especially in the Total War series, where you can make military units like you have endless supply of military age males.

While in reality loss of the people literally destroys civilizations. Russia is again a great example. Communists conducting genocide of own people, civil war, more genocide (hunger, repressions), Second World War, more genocide. And now there is no more communist Soviet Union and Russia has only 135 million people. I can only imagine the great (in all aspects) country Russia would be if it had freedom. Population would be around 700 million by now. And imagine how much good can so many people do.

So yes, it's a big flaw computer games have, not emphasizing the importance of people. And people are society of persons. And each person is a greatest creator possible.

 

[DC0]

Communism is basically an economical idea that states that cooperation is better than competition, that all citizens in a society should own equal shares in important infrastructure, production and services within the society. It does not exclude private property and business unless taken to the extreme.

This is propaganda. A trick to fool useful idiots, as Comrade Stalin called them. You should read Lenin to understand how real communism should be implemented. If you don't want to read Lenin, just learn some history. Several hundred millions of people were killed during implementation of communism around the world. Look at North Korea. That how real communism looks like.

 

[DC0]

What about "free (or dirt cheap) needs, work for wants" system?
If AI steals 50% of jobs, then there will be 50% unemployment.

Basically Norway + Japan on steroids.

That's the every reason why population in Western societies would be declining, if not for immigration. Declining population in Western countries with developed capitalism is a result of self regulation. It's accompanied by increasing GDP per capita, without increasing unemployment, increasing education levels, increasing IQ of population. Last contradicts to regression to the mean theory, according to which people should get dumber. In reality in Western countries mean IQ increases 3 points every 10 years.
So when left to it's own devices, human society self regulates to avoid bumps. And it's useful to note when birth rate decline started to happen, and when talks about AI and robots replaces humans started. Decline in birth rate started in the middle of last century. While any realistically sophisticated AI appeared only like 4 years ago. And robots are still making their baby steps.

In other words, Western societies were making preparations for computerised future well ahead of time. And it's irrelevant that these preparations were for completely different reasons. The end result is important.

But then communists decided it's a high time to strike and destroy freedom. So they started immigration project. Another, but so far the greatest eugenics project ever conducted on humans. First was attempt to create Soviet Man in USSR. Problem is, any and all government projects fail. They are designed to fail. To blame capitalism and to remove freedom from people bit by bit. You boil the frog by slow, but steady increase of temperature. Slowly, but steadily you Americans were deprived of your freedom. You sold your Republic for immediate, but illusory, material gain. And it's a blessing for entire world some of you has awaken to the fact.

 

[raxo2222]

Corporatism, Fascism and Communism are "No personal freedom" government types. Gold, black and red flavors of Despotism.
Democracy is worst type of government, that we didn't invent yet.
Are computer assisted government types possible? This mod has lot of future civics
<---Here is technology taking over politics.

There is 175 civics and 15 types of civics in game.
There can be a lot of different communisms, corporatisms, fascisms, democracies and so on.
Communism as civic doesn't exist in game

You can have USSR communism, luxury fully automated socially liberal space communism and religious corporato-communism in game among many alternative flavors of communism.

You can have political system that would instantly explode in real life though.

Here I listed all civics. I separated civics, by Modern and earlier eras, and Information and later eras.

Grid and E-Education should belong to Information era.
In game you can unlock them in Modern era - before 1990s.

 

[Toffer90]

This is propaganda. A trick to fool useful idiots, as Comrade Stalin called them. You should read Lenin to understand how real communism should be implemented. If you don't want to read Lenin, just learn some history. Several hundred millions of people were killed during implementation of communism around the world. Look at North Korea. That how real communism looks like.

I don't see the world as black and white as you obviously do.
All the examples you are referring to were societies and people who could be described as many things, not just by the term communism.
Dictatorship is the least communistic power structure one could imagine while direct democracy is the most communistic power structure imaginable. This is something communism shares with capitalism, that they are both in principle leaning towards democracy as the ideal way to implement either one. The terms in question are completely neutral towards governmental structure and therefore their definitions should not include a mention of it for either one.
Cooperatives are ideal communist business where every worker owns the business, (usually achieved by having a part of the salary taken off for buying shares until the employee is an equal owner to fellow employees) in cooperatives there is internal democracy where each employee have the same vote in any decisions that is made, even when it comes to salary differentiation.
There is nothing about communism that contradicts liberalism, it is a neutral term with regards to individual liberties, why do people mix up communism with authoritarian and liberty restricting government just because the kind of cultures that have tried to implement their subjective version of communism, created a system that was based on cultural values that are completely detached from what communism in itself represents. There is no reason why communism and capitalism can't coexist either, Norway is quite communistic for example, its social democratic system is by a large part founded, in the years following the 2'nd WW, on communism, socialism, liberalism, democratic values and a healthy skepticism towards political power through wealth. The state owns oil companies, power production, banks, dairy production, and a lot of other industries.
There is nothing communistic about North Korea, what kind of political power does the regular working man have in North Korea, it is non-existing I tell you. It is a society owned and driven by a elite minority, a fascistic kleptocracy dream. Communism is in its essence a reaction to a society that is defined by an elite/minority, a wish for society to be defined by the commoner/majority.

Just because power hungry individuals who has misused communistic arguments to gain power are evil doesn't mean that communism is reserved for evil people. Stalin was a totalitarian fascist with not an inch of care for communistic ideals.
Capitalist countries does terrible things too sometimes, but it would unfair to define capitalism as something terrible because of it.

You are the one who is dealing propaganda the way I see it, saying that my personal definition of a word is wrong without even trying to argue what was wrong about it. I perceive it as hate speech that make it real hard to argue against a plutocratic development. You are mixing totalitarianism, fascism and the lack of ethics into your definition of what communism is, and that is completely irrational in my opinion.

 

[raxo2222]

USA Classical Democracy:

USSR Communism:

Norway Social Democracy:

North Korea Dictatorship:

How close I was to real examples?
I could goofed some categories though.

Edit: future style governments.
Cyberpunk - corporations fully took over.

Proto Star Trek - Norway/Japan hybrid on steroids.

 

[tmv]

USA: Volunteer Army, Secular (mostly), and probably Corporatist Economy, Corporate Welfare

USSR: (probably) Socialized Welfare, (possibly) FIAT currency

 

[Thunderbrd]

USA: Corportist, Volunteer Army, Corporate Agriculture Otherwise looks about right except that we really don't have a good representation of the scant state program welfare system we have.

 

[Toffer90]

@raxo2222 Some good approximations there, though Norway would be "volunteer army" and "compulsory education"; not pacifism and E-Education. E-Education is on the rise, but far from the standard, only a few private collages is offering E-Education.

except that we really don't have a good representation of the scant state program welfare system we have.

It's not a perfect characterization, but nevertheless, subsidized is the closest thing in C2C for the welfare in USA.
Socialized would mean state runned welfare (could call it completely subsidized), while private would mean minimal subsidizing into welfare.

 

[raxo2222]

What would be Corporate Welfare?
Low taxes for richest and or corporations?
Or just no state welfare at all, and corporations are doing welfare, if you are lucky employee?

What about moving Grid and E-Education to Information era tech?
In excel file I listed all civics with their types, tech requirements and locations of such techs.

I added two Nanotech/Transhuman era possible governments

 

[Toffer90]

What would be Corporate Welfare?

That civic category is quite vague overall.
Socialized must imply a public universal health care, with or without private solutions on the side.
Subsidized probably means that private sector offers the main welfare solution but the state is heavily involved with funding and regulations.
Private: that the public sector is involved in welfare but is not the dominant part of it, private sector is mostly in control of it.
Corporate: Purely private sector is involved in welfare solutions.

Then we have Public Works that is a bit like subsidized.... ^^

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Then we have Public Works that is a bit like subsidized.... ^^

I always assumed that Public Works here meant individuals doing stuff for the public good not the government nor the church nor businesses.

 

[raxo2222]

I always assumed that Public Works here meant individuals doing stuff for the public good not the government nor the church nor businesses.

So Public Works is welfare in form of state employment then.
That is nothing else is provided by state but employment.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Apparently, you never employed a single person.

If a person is willing to find a data on "caring" employers, he will find plenty. For Americans, start with Henry Ford.

In Russia, during Russian industrial revolution (19th century), most prominent and economically successful bourgeois were building and sponsoring schools, hospitals and accommodations for their factory workers. Savva Morozov is the most prominent one.

And this was not charity. Contrary to popular belief. Even Wikipedia says he was philanthropist

It was investment. This investment allowed him to get best people for his factories.

Was he evil selfish capitalist? I say "never!" He was a good, clever capitalist. He understood one most important thing in making money: your most precious resource is people. "Quantity and quality of human capital", as they taught us in University.

I have employed people and I have managed those employed by my employers. What I see in the modern world, at least in the States, is the attitude that Ford was completely nuts and that his approach only works if we all cooperate as employers to do the same (pay high wages). But as soon as margins tighten and shareholders whine about the bottom line, it will come out of the pay and benefits of the workers as quickly and silently and in ways to evade notice as much as possible. A little cheapening here a little there and before you know if you have 90% of the company making minimum wage without benefits and another 9% being paid just above that to make them feel more important and the last 1%, the executive level guys, raking in as much as the board lets them get away with. Small mom and pop businesses tend to think more like Ford... and then they go under because the big corps underprice them. Look at what Wallmart has done to the country. For an example.

Totally agree with the rest of that post, though, and have previously suggested ways to improve on how we model that stuff. 3 Kingdoms, an older console game, and I'm not even getting the whole name in there because I only remember it as 3 Kingdoms, was a war game about the ancient Chinese world and they had a very good system for that that basically accounted for all available men. I'd like to do more with this human resources issue but it's not a project to undertake for a long time.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

So Public Works is welfare in form of state employment then.
That is nothing else is provided by state but employment.

The state has nothing to do with anything welfare under this option. I was under the understanding that Civic represented individuals doing the welfare as philanthropy. The obligation, whether from religious ideals or enlightened self interest, of the wealthy to help the poor.

History shows that the poor kill the rich when conditions for the poor become very bad. They have done this many times. This shows that sometimes the rich are either slow learners or they forget the basic truth, they are outnumbered.

I have employed people and I have managed those employed by my employers. What I see in the modern world, at least in the States, is the attitude that Ford was completely nuts and that his approach only works if we all cooperate as employers to do the same (pay high wages). But as soon as margins tighten and shareholders whine about the bottom line, it will come out of the pay and benefits of the workers as quickly and silently and in ways to evade notice as much as possible. A little cheapening here a little there and before you know if you have 90% of the company making minimum wage without benefits and another 9% being paid just above that to make them feel more important and the last 1%, the executive level guys, raking in as much as the board lets them get away with. Small mom and pop businesses tend to think more like Ford... and then they go under because the big corps underprice them. Look at what Wallmart has done to the country. For an example.

Not sure why it works that way in the USA but our leaders seem to think it is the way to go even though elsewhere looking after your workers increases company income.

 

[Toffer90]

Public works are historically considered as large infrastructure and public area improvement projects initiated by the government, it is not so much about welfare as it is about public areas, water supply, sewage and the like.
The roman empire funded such large projects, like the building of aqueducts, paved roads, Colosseum, etc. all stuff that was meant to be used indiscriminately by all citizens.