A thanks to Plato

Day 1,949, 03:47 • Published in Sweden Sweden • by SintherX

I would like to dedicate this article to Plato.

Dear Plato,

In a little less than one month, I will have been an eRepublik citizen for a year. In this time, I have heard extremely many speak about you in a very negative manner. This I believe is wrong, and here is my article to defend you.

When I started one year ago, I remember taking my first job, and recieving a paycheck of (what I may incorrectly recall) 90 SEK per day. Now, since I am a man with a keen interest in finance and economic stability, I obviously wanted to ensure that my personal production would generate a profit to (in good time of course) make me able to do whatever I would feel like in this eWorld.

As a beginner, I made a few mistakes. One of the biggest ones was purchasing gold. When sale-prices started crashing, I had recently recieved a nice paycheck from The Swedish Military, and figured I'd place the money in something which had great value; Gold.

Looking in retrospect, that was the most stupid decision I have ever done in this game. As the sale-prices of everything plummeted, of course so did the value of gold. I figured "Hey, it can't go down much more! Like a normal market, it should head up again soon. Invest in gold now that it's cheaper than before!" The gold price was at that point around 900 SEK.
Needless to say, I've made A LOT of stupid decisions, and lost A LOT of money.

I've kept the hope up for a recovery of the market, but I am slowly coming to realization that it's not going to happen anytime soon. On my daily salary of now 12 SEK (excluding the few factories I've managed to purchase), it takes me exactly 708,33 days to be able to afford a Saltpeter mine.

Now, since I am not an entirely new player, I have a little bit more income through factories and well-upgraded training facilities, I get by okay. But it is (AND ABSOLUTELY NO CRITIQUE HERE *cough😉 very weird that the price of everything goes down, except for factories and storages.

But hey, let's look on the bright side! Imagine a new player comes into the game, let's call him Sven. Sven has no clue of anything on eRepublik, and is just now figuring out the website-layout. He spends his beginner-gold on warfare, and later comes to the realization that he is unable to sustain his warfare simply through his (almost) monthly SS-medal, one HW-medal, and his monthly salary of 360 SEK (12 SEK/day). Per month, his income is thereby 360 SEK and 10 gold (9.08 gold to be precise).

Let's say that Sven invests his ENTIRE income in the saltpeter-mine he has been drooling over for the past few weeks. It will take him just a little under three months to be able to afford it (counting it as 10 gold/month). He is overjoyed by finally getting a serious business for himself. Soon though, he notices that for his profit to hit break-even (The point at which the investment in the company starts to pay off) is (with todays value of 0,02 SEK per WRM, and a daily production of 175 WRM(No bonuses since we're wiped) making a daily profit of 3,5 SEK excluding food costs) only 2428.6 days, equalling only 6.7 years.

But Sven is ambitious! He doesn't want ONE Saltpeter mine, as that will not cover his needs. He wants dozens! So there, 15-20 years later, Sven has finally managed to get an income he can feel proud of. Then he starts wondering what he has done with his life.

So THANK YOU Plato, for making it neigh on impossible to get anywhere economically. A salute to you.



Kind Regards
SintherX
(This article is written only from my viewpoint, without any other participating party)

P.S THANK YOU for the initiative with the gold mine! Feels so good to know that almighty Poland will get a better budget to keep screwing and oppressing smaller countries.