[MUD-Dev] Re: [DESIGN] Re: Economic & Currency Solutions

[Vincent Archer]

According to Taylor Daynes:

> Many of the inflation problems that people seem to be combating stem
> from having *the gold piece* as the only type and size of
> currency. If *the gold piece* becomes devalued, and the item you
> want now costs 1000 times as much as it used to, you are forced to
> acquire and carry around a huge mass of coinage. Unweildly in all
> senses. If instead, you have several different values of coin, when
> something used to cost 1gp and now costs 1000gp, but you HAVE a
> 1000gp note, you're fine. You just scale your economy upward and
> everything is now based on 1000gp notes. Just remember to add bigger
> notes as the economy requires, and remove tiny ones from circulation
> eventually.

The main problem isn't that things cost 100 times what they used to
cost.  The problem is that items become priceless. Literally; because
you cannot get them at any price. People are not interested in your
cash.

Devaluating currency isn't a solution. In fact, I'd argue that it
makes problem even worse: if your cash is devaluating, then you're not
interested in cash. You're interested in goods whose "value" will not
change over time. Cash is even less attractive in that scenario, and
it exacerbate the switch to non-currency based economy. For example,
it impacts severely the holiday-goer. If I go on a holiday, and come
back 3 weeks later, I'll be pretty pissed if half my cash has
"vanished" due to hyper-inflation.

--
Vincent Archer                                         Email: archer at nevrax.com

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!
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