[Mud-Dev] Broken currencies

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 12:13:38AM +0000, Matt Mihaly wrote:
  
>> That's not entirely true at all. The use of a currency most
>> definitely is also in making commerce easier (barter is expensive
>> to both parties).

> Agreed, but it works both ways. A stable but difficult means of
> transaction isn't very useful and neither is a volatile but easy
> one. And how is barter expensive to both parties? If we live in the
> same village, it's pretty easy for me to trade you a suckling pig
> for a new scythe. Or did you just mean "expensive" as in "expensive
> if there are transport costs"?

It's expensive because of the nature of the transaction, as well as
because of transport costs. If a common currency is in existence, then
I can get _exactly_ what I want out of a transaction, because I can
sell you exactly what you want, you give me money, and then I go out
and buy _exactly_ what I want. On the other hand, in a barter economy,
both parties often are forced by circumstance to accept goods in trade
that are not exactly what they want. Because currency can be easily
denominated, you can come much closer (in the US economy to within a
penny) to trade of the exact value that both parties think is
reasonable (trade in terms of trading goods for currency). In
otherwords, barter is wasteful (expensive).

>> I'm going to be concentrating on Achaea's economy > within the next
>> >> few months sometime, and I'm going to try and > institute an >>
>> interesting economy.
 
> I look forward to hearing how it works (and how it works out). I
> assume it will be heavily PvP-oriented like most of Achaea's better
> mechanics?

Yes, it'll be almost completely PvP-oriented. I have to say though
that over the past couple days as I've written these posts, I'm
starting to doubt my ability to do it as more and more fundamental
problems with the medium crop up in my mind.

--matt

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