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Time for an in-depth look at just what utility is in erepublik, in a purely ingame sense. As the hospital rules have changed, this is now possible - before, the unique and 'free' role of the hospital would mess up any real analysis. Before we start, let's see the definition so we know what we're talking about here:
Utility

Utility is a measure of the relative satisfaction from, or desirability of, consumption of various goods and services.

In an ingame sense, I would define utility as anything that provides an increase in the power of the player. Note that this is somewhat of an assumption, as you simply cannot identify wants that apply to every individual. Nevertheless, I would term it as the most common desired outcome for erepublik players. In case you don't know what I mean, by power, look here:
Power

Power is a measure of an entity's ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities.

Basically, the erepublik player seeks in some way to have control over the game - either individual control over their own citizen, or societal control (most commonly influence) over a party, a country, or even a group of nations - any body that contains more than one erepublik player. Obviously, the only way to have any kind of power in erepublik, is for the player to stay alive ingame. Thus there is a requirement for the means of subsistence. Most commonly food, the means of subsistence are the products ingame that keep wellness from falling to 0. Staying alive is the primary requirement of all erepublik citizens.

The means of subsistence must provide an average daily increase in wellness at n wellness at least equal to the average daily fall in wellness.

n = maximum daily fall in wellness

Wellness will constantly fall by 5 points per day, unless ingame products are consumed by the citzen - while usually this is food, it is technically feasible for wellness to be kept up using gifts. However, purely in terms of productivity points, Q1 food is always more efficient than gifts, and higher quality foods at wellnesses below 100 are almost always more effective than gifts as well.

Anyway.

To stave off eDeath, then, it is necessary to consume goods. There are two ways of having the capability to consume - either buying off the marketplace, which requires currency, or having goods donated to you, which requires some degree of societal influence. The first method is by far the most common, although there are some kept alive by the second method, notably Dio Brando, for example. All of the time, though, to have currenct you initially must work, or be donated to by someone else who has worked (and acquired their goods off the marketplace to begin with). The act of working is where we get our daily wellness loss from, and it is always equal to the quality of the company worked in, once we accept that working provides more value to the player than the wellness lost in working is worth. If this isn't the case, then you need to move company 😉

So, our citizen is working in order to survive - that's that most fundamental need taken care of. Now comes the citizen's self interest to expand their power in some way. There are two types of power a player can exert:
Direct power - the actions directly under control of the player, ingame
Indirect power - the measure of their influence on other players

Damage
The most obvious step to increase direct power is to train every day - this adds on another 1 to the daily wellness loss, and requires the worker to make 1 wellness worth of wages every day to utilise this. Training adds a degree of potential direct power, in the form of damage, to the citizen, although it is always relative to the combined damage of anyone else fighting in a particular battle. Damage, then, is the form of direct power that is available to all citizens, in greater or lesser amounts. However, since it is available to all with a 'cap' on effort expended (you can only train or work once per day), individuals do not generally use this form of direct to power to great effect, unless their ability to do damage is much greater than the average (this applies to most older players), or they are tanked by some form of collective body - usually a government. Having a higher capability is usually a prerequisite for this, so the two go hand in hand. However, the act of tanking generally shifts the balance of power from the individual and to the collective sponsoring the individual.

But what increases the capability to do damage of an errepublik citizen? Two things - strength, which can be increased every day at the cost of wellness loss or gold (more on gold later), and weapons, which is the most common form of the use of surplus value (in this case defined as the amount of labour expended, minus the labour cost for maintaining wellness). As should be plain to most people, Q1 weapons are the most effective use of surplus value to increase damage, unless a player has access to an amount of goods equal to more than f Q1 weapons, where f is the number of fights planned in that day.

There is another form of direct power - ingame political power. However, it will not be discussed here, because it relies on an accumulation of indirect power to be achieved.

Gold

Gold is somewhat of a special case, as a commodity. Despite it being - much like in real life - used as a foundation for value, I would disagree on this. Gold is a commodity, similar to others. However, it is a special case because the rate of production of gold is largely fixed, and labour cannot be redirected to produce it. I would say that the decreased gold prices of commodities across the board (house prices in gold are in the process of falling; I had expected the effect to just be more delayed) reflect, in my opinion, an increase in the exchange value of gold. This is because 'dirty lana' increased gold consumption, but the supply of gold cannot react to market forces and increase to compensate for it. Since gold is more valuable now, there is less 'lana-ing' going on, making gold more stable than before. The unique stability of gold is due to it's constant supply relative to the number of players, which places it very close to the exchange value of commodities, which is relative to the amount of labour time required to produce them.

But I'm getting sidetracked. Gold can be used for purposes of direct power through a few ways:

1. 'Lana-ing' to improve the strength, and thus the direct power of the player
2. Investing - as a commodity with a limited supply, and a demand for companies borne out of constant population growth, there is a greater or lesser amount of labour power to be extracted from workers through control of the market, which makes more 'damage increasing' commodities available for the capitalist (note: I consider there to be little to no difference between 'investing in' and 'owning' a company, although the latter also includes the payment of doing the actual job of running the company)
3. Tanking

All of these measures can in some way increase the direct power of the player. Gold has, in my opinion, better applications for increasing indirect power, but that's a different story.

I'll follow up with an analysis of indirect power in erepublik later.





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