Join the new world

Now I read this forum topic and it said the new economic module might take a months to implement, so that's still a lot of time before that, so I might as well continue until those days come.

This is the finished version.

So what is to be done when the communes start to play a big part in the overall role of the economy in a country? Let me first lay down the conditions in which this is to take place. The communes pay minimum wage and distribute food, tickets, weapons, etc, back to the workers and sell the surplus on the market. Now let’s say, for the sake of the theory, that the communes make up half of the workforce. The capitalists who laughed at the idea of a commune are now worried that their workers might want to sign up, that their profits might sink, that when they log on their workers might be gone. This is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. (For the people not familiar with the term, it’s not a real dictatorship; nobody here advocates the rule of one person, just check out this work by me if you don't believe me.)

During this epoch there will be many different things that will happen, if you take the road of the minimum wage and distributing products back to the workers, basically if you follow the general outline of my last work. Now let’s see what I think would happen:

1) A drop in the prices of commodities on the market.
There's a couple of reasons why this will happen. First the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand states that if there is too much of X commodity being produced and sold on the market it's value will fall. It's basically capitalism's way of saying there are too many people making X commodity, go produce Y commodity there's not enough of that. The market has now lost half of their demanders but not half of their suppliers. The communes become self sufficient and worker's don't have to go to the market, but they can create surpluses which can be sold on the market. Now because the worker's of the commune get paid minimum wage they can sell their surplus for a lot less than the capitalist could, and the capitalist has to compete with those low prices, so the prices naturally go down. This can also lead to overproduction, with half the people already getting what they need, they dump their surplus on the market. With too much on the market, the prices would go down.

Prices will also go down because wages will decrease. Because so many people now make less money they have less money to spend on the market, which means prices have to lower to accommodate the fact that they have less money to spend. Sure many could have saved up money but it's inevitable that it will run out sooner or later. This brings us to another point.

2)Wages will decrease.
Wages will decrease because they have to compete with the communes which only pay minimum wage. Let's stand in the capitalists shoes for a minute. You pay your workers well and you get a good profit. That is until the communes came along. Now you have to compete with the low prices from the communes and still try to get a profit. You keep getting less and less profit because you have to keep selling lower and lower as the communes grow bigger and bigger. Pretty soon because you pay your workers so grandly you're not getting enough money to pay them from the smaller amount you now get on the market. You're pool of capital is running out and you need to do something. What you'd need to do is lower your worker's wages or risk your business going under. But that's almost a double edged sword because so many companies are going to have to lower wages to keep their necks above water. Like I said before you have to lower costs too now, but at least your company is still afloat.

3) A drop in the exchange value of gold.
This basically follows the same thinking as the above two, with less money in the capitalist workers' and company owners' hands the exchange between gold and USD will have to drop to accommodate that fact.

During this epoch there are two ways to go when it comes to government, either get involved in the government or distance yourself from it.

During the last epoch you might get a congressman/congresswoman once in a while, but chances are you can't push a socialist agenda with the support of the capitalists. Many people with jobs in the government have companies themselves, have fun getting them to give up their profits. During the last epoch chances are you get mocked when you speak your ideals(I saw this many times with Robert Bayer). You have to work with a capitalist economy, by this I mean you have to do what's best for your country, which means you have to pass laws and proposals based on what's going to happen to the capitalist economy, not the socialist one.

Now during this epoch if the socialists have half of the people you can start to get stuff that the socialist economy needs done. I'm not saying this can only happen with one party either, in Portugal the socialists basically have 50% of congress and a president in office, but they're two different parties, and both have very similar views which can be expressed very effectively in government. If the commune economy ever become prevalent in Portugal I feel these powers will have to collide, but either way the communes win, just to a lesser degree in one of the cases. But anyways the point is once you start getting a majority of the population into the commune idea you can start taking measures with the commune in mind. Lower income taxes, lower VAT taxes, increase import taxes, etc. At this point you really need to get involved in politics, I think it would be irresponsible to have a huge part of the population not have their voices heard in government.

I want to make sure that you don't get the wrong idea though. I don't want an all powerful government that has control over all of our lives. If we get people elected to congress or the presidency, or to other positions in government, we need to make sure we regulate them, to make sure they're making policies that the workers in the communes agree with. Remember this is eRepublik, we can't have a dictator, we can kick who we want out when election time comes around. In the end the workers would decide the economic policies of the commune, not the government.

That option is better in my mind because you get more people interested this way. If you're big and are constantly in the public's eyes doing good things, you're bound to get people that want to join your commune or political party.

The other option is you don't get involved in government. I really don't see anything positive or progressive about this option that can't be done with getting involved in government. I suppose you can't bitch and moan about the policies if you make them, but that's all I can think of.

-Fredrick Engels