Join the new world

I'm taking a break from my normal format in order to have fun with some ideas for the new economics module, which, let's be honest, will probably resemble nothing like this article. These suggestions are my invention as far as I know. No kittens were harmed in the making of this article.



Part I - Ideas Already Out There

Okay, so I borrowed the theme more or less from Vincent Garibaldi's article, and I want to say up front that I support four good ideas that others have thought up already and that appear in that article.

(1) Bankruptcy (i.e., selling the farm)

There are many good examples in which a Q1 company can be converted to 10 Gold with benefit (i.e., more benefit than keeping the company around).

(2) Economy of Scale (i.e., buying a bigger operation)

The productivity hit of hiring more than the optimal number of employees essentially puts a cap on the number of employees worth hiring (about 10, or 20 for Construction). I'd support a scheme to upgrade this to as much as 10 more (20 for Manufacture, Land, or Service and 30 for Construction) for less than the cost of creating a new Q5 company. This would simulate very large mines, factories, and so on. For example, for a 10 employee company, 20 Gold gives you 12 employees as the ideal number, another 20 Gold gives you 14 employees as the ideal number, another 20 Gold gives you 16 employees as the ideal number, another 20 Gold gives you 18 employees as the ideal number, and the last 20 (for a total of 100 Gold) gives you 20 employees. The Gold cost doesn't rise because the improvement of having more employees is a linear one, even though it may combine with greater advantages such as company Quality and the to-be-discussed Branding upgrades to create a family of three possible upgrades to a company (Quality, Capacity, and Branding. . . plus their cousins, Export Licenses).

Why is this good? I like any reasonable way in which more expensive companies can be made more profitable, especially if it isn't to the detriment of the little 20 Gold Q1 startup. As a linear improvement, this is the least destructive to the little guy, and it really pays off only if it is combined with other improvements.



(3) Pay by Productivity (i.e., the non-salary, performance option)

I kind of like the idea of keeping the current system and adding an alternative job-market offer type based on a minimum skill and pay-by-productivity payout (instead of a minimum skill with a set payout). Why? The laziest managers will want to pay-by-productivity so that they can make their spreadsheet add up without any fuss. This will create a job marketplace that is as close to "frictionless" (efficient in distributing wealth from the product to the employee) as is reasonable in that job environment, to the advantage of those "lazy" employers but also, especially, to the employees. At the same time, those who can tolerate messing around with educating employees and bargain hunting, or who want to stay with the old payment structure for whatever reason, can still list a flat starting pay. Furthermore, low-wellness employees finally will be employable because they can actually be paid what they are worth, which is less than average.

If I were forced to keep only pay-by-productivity or the flat salary, it would definitely be pay-by-productivity. Making the employee care about productivity in the same proportion as the employer does is excellent.

In the case of both pay-by-productivity and the flat salary, a minimum wellness can be specified for applicants, without which they will not be able to apply for the job.



(4) Open a secondary product market (i.e., let citizens and organizations pawn goods on the marketplace in an automated way)

However, I have a different idea for it. Instead of just further depressing the prices on the hypercompetitive marketplace, it can provide a corrective effect. It achieves this by taking advantage of two premiums, the first one being the premium on convenience (instant selling) and the second one being the premium on patriotism (profits to the national coffers).

It works pretty simply: For everything traded on the marketplace, create a government-associated inventory. Keep track of the average pre-tax sale price of each item (including government sales but not the redemption purchasing, which is essentially off-market) for the past two weeks. Allow the government to set a redemption price that is 99% to 0% of this amount for each industry, as part of the taxes law. When citizens, organizations, or even companies with the appropriate license want to sell their stuff, they can move it through selling to the government inventory for the redemption price. However, only companies can list on the marketplace directly, as it's always been. Further, the redemption program automatically lists its own inventory on the marketplace at 100% to 199% of the same two-week average (how much more also being set through the tax law)--plus any applicable taxes--on the marketplace. (If no sales of that item type have been made in the last two weeks, then the maximum price per Quality of the product, set by the government, times the Quality, is used. . . the third and final number added to the tax law for this scheme. The number also is used if the average goes higher than it.) When bought or sold from the government inventory, currency is added or subtracted from the government treasury.

The ways in which this could be used can be left to your imagination: they include government stockpiling, government purchase of excess product, and market manipulation by government stimulus to increase or decrease the prices on products. It also allows governments to provide goods on the marketplace that have been neither imported nor produced domestically but which have been sold to the government stocks and is just really helpful to those citizens and organizations needing to sell goods conveniently. The most business-friendly policy would have neither too-high buy points nor too-low sell points relative to the average (20% in either direction sounds good in a typical case).



Part II - Raw Materials Enhancing Land Companies

Now we're starting to get a little more exotic. One of the possible problems in the New World is overproduction and devaluation of the resources of eRepublik needed in less quantity: anything but Iron. Another problem in the eyes of many is that Medium regions are completely unworkable in the global economy because they produce at half the multiplier of High regions (1.0 to 2.0). The concept of base RM production and enhanced output through an input RM is meant to address both concerns.

It addresses the first concern by making a little more demand for the other products of the New World by making their use a potential part of the production of other Raw Materials. It addresses the second issue by readjusting the multipliers--Medium has 1.0 still but High is adjusted to 1.33--while allowing enhancement to exaggerate this difference just a bit more--Medium has 1.5 but High has 2.0 after the use of input RMs.

The 0.5 or 0.67 produced with the enhancement of inputs is obtained at the same exchange rate of input RMs to output RMs in both types of Land companies: 0.6 of each input produces 1.0 of each extra output. Or, in some more-comprehensible whole numbers: When the Medium company produces 30 RMs and the High company produces 40 RMs from their workers, the Medium company gets 15 extra RMs from 9 inputs and the High company gets 20 extra RMs from 12 inputs.

We're also going to introduce a new Raw Material and call it Chemicals, corresponding to such materials as Ammonia, Sulfuric Acid, Potash, and many other mineral compounds. These are used as a principal ingredient of explosives, fertilizer, and medicine (among other things). It is suggested to have an abundance of regions, both Medium and High, roughly similar to that of Wood or Oil.

And here are the suggested inputs used to enhance RM production:

** Grain requires Chemicals (for fertilizer) to get enhanced production

** Oil requires Grain (representing alternative energy) to get enhanced production

** Wood requires Grain (representing reforestation) to get enhanced production

** Chemicals require Oil (for combination and extra recovery from petroleum) to get enhanced production

** Diamonds require both 0.6 units of Chemicals and 0.6 units of Oil (for explosives and fuel) to get enhanced production

** Iron requires both 0.6 units of Chemicals and 0.6 units of Oil (for explosives and fuel) to get enhanced production

These are arranged roughly by order of the approximate value that these products are assumed to be priced on the global market, now and in the future.

To give an example: An Iron mine on a High region that formerly produced 500 units of raw materials a day will still produce 500 units of raw materials per day but will require 100 units of Chemicals and 100 units of Oil to get there. Without those, it will produce only 333 units of Iron per day.

At the same time, an Iron mine on a Medium region that formerly produced 250 units of raw materials a day will instead produce 375 units of raw materials per day but will require 75 units of Chemicals and 75 units of Oil to get there. Without those, it will still produce the mere 250 units of raw materials a day.



Part III - Some Tweaks to Existing Products

(1) Weapons will require 4 Iron and 1 Chemicals, the latter representing mainly the explosives and propellants also used for Weapons of war. This will create the primary demand for the Chemicals raw industry. The stress on the Iron industry will be only slightly reduced, given that people would prefer to buy more and higher Quality Weapons even if there is any slip in the costs of production.

(2) Moving Tickets will transport you only after a timer has elapsed, that timer being 26 - Quality^2 hours. That is one hour for a Q5, ten hours for a Q4, seventeen hours for a Q3, twenty-two hours for a Q2, or twenty-five hours for a Q1. As you will easily notice, a Q1 ticket does not allow you to move twice in a day, and higher Quality tickets allow you to do so more often, with more pleasantly short time periods.

(3) Gifts and their relationship with Diamonds will be redefined. In real life, a large diamond is geometrically more valuable. So is, basically, a large gift. Yet the effect is linear with Gifts, as is the RM consumption, with higher Quality Gift companies mostly just sapping more Wellness from their employees. Two measures are suggested to correct for this. First, a maximum of 3 Gifts per day may be made from anyone in particular to anyone in particular, and this requirement is on top of the fact that no more than 10 Wellness from Gifts may be received on one day. This provides a utility value for higher Quality gifts, whether gifting others or as a self-gifter with less than four Organizations. Second, lower-quality Gift companies do not take full advantage of the potential of higher-quality Diamonds, but higher-quality Gift companies also do not obtain full advantage of the use of lower-quality Diamonds. For every point of Quality difference between the Diamond Quality purchased and the Gift Company purchasing or receiving, there is a 10% loss of RM units (e.g., a Q2 Gift company buying a Q4 Diamond would receive 80% of 4 units, or 3.2 units; a Q5 Gift company buying Q2 Diamonds would receive 70% of 2 units, or 1.4 units). The general effect of this is to favor higher Quality Diamonds and Gifts, while also still keeping Q1 Gifts as a viable product. Diamonds may also enjoy a slight increase in value due to their specialization for certain Quality Gift companies (or, rather, the waste of Diamonds when purchasing an unequal Quality will increase demand in general).

I will just say in passing that, as with the entire economy module, there should be a grace period of roughly four weeks or more between the specification and announcement of the changes (with that time including, perhaps, sandbox beta testing) and the actual implementation. This would allow adjustments to be spread out over a long period and capital to be raised to implement plans instead of just throwing a spanner into things all at once.



Part IV - A New Profession and 5 New Industries

The main problems that these suggestions treat are a lack of useful things on which to spend money and just a plain old lack of variety, which is boring.

One problem, which is helped somewhat by one of the products, is that the Construction industry is sagging in wages and could use more consumer products. For this reason, I have slightly miscategorized automobiles as a product of construction on the basis that it is a durable good (not quite as much in reality as in eRepublik) and not an everyday consumable. It also, like the House, carries a high cost.

A new professional career is also adde😛 Services. Things that you cannot wrap up in a box such as medicine, education, conveniences, finance, advertising, entertainment, and so on. If we were realistic, we would recognize the major force that this is in the modern day economy.

Unlike all other industries, Services cannot be purchased by Organizations, and they cannot be donated. They also cannot be exported. They can be purchased only from the domestic market. They are immediately consumed. Three of them are intended for citizens, and one of them is for companies.

I will be suggesting, therefore, 1 Constructions product and 4 Services products. I have already suggested a Raw Materials industry. The result would be 18 industries: 6 Raw Materials, 4 Manufacturing, 4 Constructions, and 4 Services.

(1) Automobile (a Construction product)

This is viewed as both a symbol of status and achievement as well as a real productivity booster allowing the employee to seek out jobs further from home both quickly and comfortably.

The effect: For each Quality of Automobile, a bonus effect to all Job skill levels occurs to the amount of 0.25 skill per Quality (up to 1.25 skill from a Q5 Automobile). This is a temporary effect for one day that applies only to the highest Automobile in inventory at the end of the day. The Automobile can be donated, in which case the effect is no longer calculated at the end of the day.

The RM cost: Each Quality of Automobile requires 100 Iron and 100 Oil. (So, a Q5 would require 500 Iron and 500 Oil.) In all cases, production equal to the number of RM's consumed is also needed, so 200 production from the Construction workers per Quality is also needed.



(2) Restaurant Meal (a Service product)

This is a luxury that is enjoyed by the citizen.

The effect: 1 Wellness gain per Quality. It does not share the maximum wellnes gain per day of Gifts. But it does have its own maximum of one use per day. Thus, a Q5 Restaurant Meal company would be quite viable.

The RM cost: Each Quality of Restaurant Meal requires 3 Grain. (So, a Q5 would require 15.)

(3) Emergency Care (a Service product)

Like the previous product, it is administered immediately and is for the person purchasing to recoup Wellness. It opens up some interesting possibilities of extreme "berserking" (fighting at low wellness) without obsoleting "tanking" (fighting repeatedly at full wellness). It also helps those who need to get up to fighting strength.

The effect: 1 Wellness gain per Quality. You must be below 40 Wellness when you purchase. You may purchase a maximum of 5 times in one day.

The RM cost: Each Quality of emergency care requires 2 Chemicals and 1 Oil, representing medicines and plastic medical equipment and products. (So, a Q5 requires 10 Chemicals and 5 Oil.)

(4) Job Training (a Service product)

Education helps those who would like to switch careers (such as to Services or any other career). It also helps those who are just starting out to advance a little faster if they would like. So the rules are designed for those purposes.

The effect: An increase in skill at a job equivalent to one day of working, subject to these restrictions: (1) Maximum of one purchase per day. (2) Cap of 5 Skill in all but the following case: (3) Cap of 5 less than your highest skill if increasing a secondary skill to something above 5 (so that you'd need 10 Skill at your job to raise a secondary skill in tandem to something higher than 5).

The RM cost: Each Quality of job training requires 10 Wood (representing books and paper). Q1 takes away 5 Wellness, Q2 takes away 2 Wellness, Q3 has no effect on Wellness, Q4 adds 2 Wellness, and Q5 adds 5 Wellness.



Marketing, the ultimate Raw Material?

This is really just (5), Marketing (a Service product) . . . If you've made it this far, you've read all but one item of the article, way to go!

This refers to product research, advertising, entertainment tie-ins, and the whole media she-bang. It is how most businesses get more business than they would with just a shingle or tiny classified ads. . . although, indeed, those themselves could be seen as Q1 Marketing! It's a "raw material" in the sense that it can be used by other Service companies, by Construction companies, and by Manufacture companies. And it does a wondrous thing: by attaching a brand to a product and using marketing, you can get more for it than you otherwise would.

There is a catch: Companies must invest in the creation of their brand first. A brand can be Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, or Q5. These are upgrades to a company, just like licenses or Quality or the suggested ideal worker capacity upgrades (see Part I section 2). Suggested costs are 20 Gold, 20 Gold, 40 Gold, 70 Gold, and 100 Gold respectively (total would be 250 Gold for a Q5 brand).

There is a further catch: You must match the quality of the brand to the quality of the Marketing purchased. Marketing is not quite as fungible as corn.

One last catch! Your brand level cannot be higher than your company Quality level. This is to limit the extent to which the extra income from brands further intensify the competition amongst entry-level Q1 companies. It also reflects the real-life tendency for brands to be more useful in promoting the best, most expensive item.

There is a considerable rewar😛 When you produce a product along with Marketing as an optional input material, you don't merely produce that product; instead, you produce that product alongside the enhanced branding value. Each Quality of Marketing gives you currency equal to 2% of the current moving average price computed over the last twelve weeks. This doesn't come from a player but is, rather, created. In the end, it is still just a Weapon or just a Restaurant Meal or just an Automobile, but currency appears in the company's finance sheet whenever a unit of Marketing is consumed.

The average price used here is calculated over twelve weeks and must involve twelve different entities (i.e., citizens, not organizations). Otherwise, the price is set at the "redemption price" discussed in Part I section 4, which is a reasonable peg because the redemption price can be used by any Organization in the world to dump goods on the local government.

One example: If you have a Q3 Housing company with Q2 Branding, you would get 4% of the average price of a Q3 House (600 units) every time your company used 6 Q2 Marketing units in the production of Houses. Supposing that average price was 800 currency, the amount of currency would be 32 for the input of 6 Q2 Marketing. The 6 Q2 Marketing would require 36 Service productivity from the workers in order to be made. If, say, the Q2 Marketing sold for 4 currency each, and if employees were paid 0.5 currency per Service productivity, the total 32 currency value would be distribute😛 18 Currency to the workers (for 36 service), 6 Currency to the Marketing company (for a sale of 24 Currency), and 8 currency to the company using the Marketing for their Q3 Housing company with a Q2 Brand.



Are you still with me? Amazing!

The effect: Each unit of Marketing is combined with the units of productivity of workers at a Manufacture, Construction, or Service company in order to produce currency (in the amount of 2% of the moving average value of that production per level of Branding) from each Marketing unit consumed, each of which pairs with 100 units of production. The Quality level of Marketing must match the Brand level of the purchasing company, which must have already purchased the upgrades to Brand at the company. Any excess Marketing input is lost in a Brand upgrade, and production continues as normal but without the extra currency if there is no Marketing input. The currency payout happens when the Marketing units are consumed, so aligning the production of the company or an interruption of Marketing is not a great concern.

The RM cost: This is produced out of thin air. Each unit of Marketing requires 3 Service productivity per Quality level (Branding level). Due to the way Service productivity is computed, a Q1 Marketing company can serve about 33 companies, about 5 times as a Q5 Marketing company that can serve less than 7 companies with the same employees. Combine that fact with the fact that Branding becomes more valuable for higher Quality companies, and it is apparent that higher level Marketing will be in more demand.



How does this picture all fit together? Well, there are two big features in Part I that can increase production of goods (Capacity upgrades for levels of ideal productivity, performance-based pay and wellness minimums to incentivize higher wellness work) in addition to the effect of Automobiles and Job Training to increase the skill of workers. These are balanced out well by the increased demand for both finished goods and raw materials from the concepts outlined in Part II (RMs enhancing production of other RMs) and Part IV (several new, useful products; indeed, roughly twice as many consumer goods). Solutions for the widely-recognized problems with Moving Tickets and Gifts at higher Quality, as well as a slight rebalancing of Weapons so that it offers a use for the new RM of Chemicals, occupy Part III. Last but not least, companies can at last do more than transfer currency and generate products when they successfully use Marketing to make a little extra. Several of these features make higher Quality companies (with higher Branding and Capacity) more appealing, while the suggestion of a government-based exchange (explained in Part I) allowing instantaneous sales below market value could provide just the release valve that an impatient and competitive marketplace needs.

That's all, folks! As always... I like votes, and I love comments!