The Economist ~ Housing Industry: Coda

Day 2,454, 03:28 Published in Poland United Kingdom by Spite313




Dear friends,

This is my third article on the housing industry, and is more or less a conclusion rather than an article in itself. It’s the first one that isn’t speculative, so I guess we can look back at predictions that I made.


Firstly I said that wages would rise due to demand. Although they are higher than they were before, wages aren’t significantly increased. This is I believe because the current housing system is a bit crap. Until we have Q6 and Q7 houses, demand won’t really increase. Most of us don’t really need 100 health so much we’re willing to be thousands of cc for it. Hell, I can afford it more than most and even I don’t see the point.


This leads I suppose to predictions about price rises in other industry. As it’s a cascade effect, nothing much happened there either. Prices rose by about 15% in most countries for 3-4 days in line with wages, and dropped just as sharply afterward. Basically the whole thing hangs on wages. I could go into maths, but as I’m hungover and nobody cares about maths, I’ll just talk a load of shit and hope you get the general picture.


Housing needs workers. If people need houses (and people will want Q7 houses, I know I’d like more health regen) then people will need workers. Problem is, the only workers are us, the people who need the houses. If we all owned a housing company and all worked to make houses, it would take us months to build a single Q7 house for ourselves. People are going to need more than that, so logically there will be a lot less houses made than people to use them. Maybe one person in ten, or one in twenty will be able to have one. Prices will therefore constantly be straining between the kind of affordable limit people are willing to pay, and the constantly upwardly straining prices created by market demand.





We don’t see that now because Q1-3 houses are rubbish. They give you nothing really, except maybe a few hours sleep extra for people who really must spend every last bit of energy. I’m not sure who those people are, since tanks just buy energy bars and ordinary players aren’t crazy enough to give up their lie in, bacon sandwich and litre of coffee to get up and fight anyway. At least I wasn’t. So yeh, the market for Q1-3 housing is basically people who want to show off their Q3 house and people who just got one to test it. Even that market is shrunk since the admins are now giving them away for missions.


But anyway, imagine Q7 houses come along, and they’re great. They give you health regen, loads of extra energy in the tank. Now suddenly you can have a lie in, fight, get your health back quicker. You don’t need to pay the admins anything for the pleasure of it, like with the power pack. History has shown that health regen is the most sought-after perk of the game, so it’s safe to say there will be demand for them. So everyone is hiring workers because one of these companies uses a lot of raw materials and those raw materials must be gained from somewhere.





So at the minute you’ve got wages balanced at about 40cc. It’s completely arbitrary since the only thing you can buy is weapons, and everyone works for weapons companies anyway. So if price of wages go up, the price of Q7 goes up, and it just feeds on itself. Nothing therefore to disrupt the balance save a few random elements (see: stupid missions). Now imagine everyone is shifted into housing. Or even half of people. Suddenly what happens is every Q7 weapons company in the world is short staffed. Well, not suddenly since people have a lot of workers stored much of the time. But if wages go up, then costs go up. Paying workers 40cc in Poland means that 2cc of your weapon is wages. If you’re paying them 80cc, then 4cc of it is wages. And so on, and so forth. So weapons prices will rise. Arguably the people with the houses will be fighting more too, which could mean more production. Oh and work tax will rise, which will mean higher prices for WRM, which will push prices up again.


Or so the theory goes. I’m back in the realm of speculation again, since nobody knows what stupid idea the admins will come up with next. I’m hoping for gifts, because if there’s one thing the man with everything needs it’s 313 Q1 gifts.


Enjoy your Saturday!


Iain