Hello, Philippines!

Day 1,197, 17:29 • Published in Philippines USA • by PigInZen


A Quick Story

I thought I would take the time to write up a little article about why I relocated to the ePhilippines and what my plans were. There are a few items I'd like to announce and a few people I'd like to thank and I figured that my paper would be an appropriate place for this.

I'm not another American fancying himself an eRep-version of Gen. MacArthur. For starters I never lived in the ePhilippines before now and saying "I have returned" in some grand fashion would be quite arrogant. Besides, there are other celebrities from which we can draw inspiration, most importantly Filipinos and not Americans. So no MacArthur allusions in this article. I'll get to that later, though. First, a brief history.

Last March I was elected President of the eUSA. At the time Phoenix occupied much of China and the USA and her EDEN allies were plotting to kick Hungary, Serbia and Russia out of their Chinese possessions once and for all. Since the USA needed to maintain an MPP with China at all costs to prevent Phoenix from taking more territory a joint war with a third country was needed to conduct region swapping. The Philippines was that third country and had open wars with both China and the USA in order to do just that.

It needs to be said that so much of foreign policy is the ability of individuals to simply get along and do what's needed for the interests of some larger group. Then Philippine President cruelbear and Hekter were both integral to the success of the operation and gracefully ignored the time I fell asleep, literally, at the switch during a region swap. We persevered along with The Samurai, CP of China, and Lucius Varenus and NxNW of the US JCS through some challenging moments and setbacks. Ultimately, however, we succeeded, albeit that success came far after my term in office.

Fast forward a bit, to the recent war vs. Colombia. I was more than happy to arrange the MPP with the USA at the request of Aren Perry. It was at this moment that I started considering relocating to the Philippines.




Where To From Here?

Let me first preface this section by saying that I really have no plans politically. I am not here to run anything but will gladly pitch in when/where asked. I'm no PTOer, I'm a Filipino by choice but sadly not by birth.

Upon landing in Luzon and relocating my companies here I noticed a few things right off the bat:

1. Our media is relatively sparse.
2. Prices are much higher in gold equivalent terms.
3. The Monetary Market offerings are thin.
4. There is no standing army.

I hope that folks won't mind if I take the time to address each of these and hopefully, help out with some of them. I'm not here to be a BMOC or a BAMF but rather to create a new home for myself and perhaps make things a bit better for everyone else too. If I'm overstepping my bounds let me know. I think Hekter or Aren Perry or Jelly9473 can attest that I'll listen and not be a dick about things.

On to the issues:

Media Scarcity

Again, this is based on only a couple day's observations so I might come off as half-baked here but I personally think that the media is the one section of the game that all can participate in equally and the one that binds communities together the most. I am planning on writing more frequently now that I'm here in the Philippines and hopefully this will spur others to do the same.


Economic Activity

Look, I'm no idiot. I realize for starters that the market in the Philippines is much, much smaller than that in the USA. That, however, shouldn't mean that we don't run our affairs in an orderly fashion. I would love to start dumping product on our market at rates more in line with those found elsewhere but don't want to run afoul of certain economic policies or agreements. I've read allusions to some sort of communist-based system of prices/wages but haven't found anything concrete. What's a company owner to do? 🙂

Example: Q1 food is currently 1 PHP whereas in the USA it's 0.67 USD. In gold terms that's 0.00954 in ePh vs. 0.00698 in the eUSA. That means it's costing us 1/3 more in gold to buy food here versus having someone buy it in the USA and donate it to you. I would love to start dropping food, weapons and raw materials into our market at lower prices. But it's sure to piss someone off...

Just a thought.

A second thought is that I would love to help encourage company ownership in the ePhilippines. I view this as being the key to the future given the recent addition of the work as owner feature. It is possible for citizens to feed themselves with four grain companies and two food companies. This should be our goal for all active citizens - company ownership and self-sufficiency. Looked at this way, production costs are the same across all economic skill levels - the cost of 10 health (currently 5 PHP or .0477 gold). I can produce over 300 units of grain per company (that's 50 Q1 food, btw) for 5 PHP. That puts the cost of production right at 0.0167 PHP per grain unit. There is no reason for me to sell below 0.02 PHP and if I could produce enough grain to supply the nation I would.

But collectively we CAN produce enough grain... we just need to own companies. The same goes for iron, food, and weapons.


MM Woes

I see that we're no stranger to the problems with currency that have been found elsewhere in eRepublik. Here's a little anecdote, however, that might illustrate what I'm talking about. I like to self-supply my needs for food and weapons, daily. That's 300 health in food and about three or four Q5 weapons a day. The PHP needed for this runs to 465 PHP a day or about 4 gold. Yesterday I had to purchase enough PHP off the monetary market for a few day's supply and ended up pushing up the peg from 0.01 to 0.012.

I'm not sure how fast gold sales go but I plan on finding that out today. One of the key ingredients to consumption is the speed of currency. That is, not the total amount of currency in our system but the speed at which it changes hands. Currency flow is a method for gauging sale and purchase of products and raw materials throughout our economy; the faster sales occur, the faster currency flows.


A Standing Army?

I for one would love to see some team building occur through the creation and organization of an ePhilippine military. It's one of the first things I asked about in IRC. I know there used to be one. Is there a reason we don't have one now? Again, I'm not saying I have to be the guy in charge, I would just love to have a place where we can coordinate our activities some more.





Manny Pacquiao is a BAMF



It's time for the ePhilippines to take a bigger piece of the eRep pie. I don't expect that we will ever rival the bigger nations in eRep in terms of absolute population, power or wealth. But we can strive to become the pound-for-pound best nation in eRep by harnassing our collective commitment to building something better than we can do alone. By building efficient community systems that reinforce how to play the game we can also give a reason to play the game.

With Manny Pacquiao it's not the size: it's the execution and ability. He's no heavyweight, he might not be able to win a fight against someone in a much heavier class. Likewise neither is the ePhilippines but together we can be the baddest mofo in our weight class. Let's do this.







Maka-Diyos, Maka-Tao, Makakalikasan at Makabansa

For the Love of God, People, Nature and Country!