Re: DIS: Proto for a new economics system
On 9/16/19 8:19 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote: Oops, forgot this part: In addition to proposals and voting, we did do blot-expunging tokens. I was actually thinking about the exact opposite of this - gaining Coins in exchange for also gaining Blots, sort of a lender of last resort thing. I'm not going to actually propose it because there's not that many uses for coins right now. -- Jason Cobb
Re: DIS: Proto for a new economics system
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 4:44 PM James Cook wrote: > What other shortages has Agora had in the past? CFJs? Voting? Tradable > blot-expunging tokens would probably be an even worse idea than > putting a price on voting, but oops, too late, I guess I just > suggested that. Oops, forgot this part: In addition to proposals and voting, we did do blot-expunging tokens. It wasn't horrible, but it did tend to gamify rules breakages a bit; e.g. there was more "I'm willing to pay the cost of breaking this rule because I've got plenty of tokens" and we weren't so stuffy about insisting on full criminal procedures for blots, and in fact had a few ways to blot people as a game tactic since the tokens were also a game tactic. People may or may not like that nowadays. More recently (2017?) we tried pay-for-CFJ and didn't like that at all - if someone raised an interesting question, people felt it should be asked and answered without impediment. -G.
Re: DIS: Proto for a new economics system
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 4:44 PM James Cook wrote: > Did shortages make the gameplay worse? I worry they might discourage > new players, or encourage people to submit big proposals combining > unrelated things. Shortages do sound fun, though. > > In the spirit of markets, it might be fun to limit proposals by having > a limited number of proposal tokens sold off every quarter, like a > reverse of the quarterly cheque buy-backs. That was what the system was; the number of total proposal tokens in circulation was the same as the number of players, and the only way to get them was via monthly auctions. The officer-in-charge could control currency flow by choosing the # to auction, but that global limit kept the flow low. Later we had a deck-building game with a finite deck, one of the "base" cards was a proposal token card, and similarly low numbers were available for the draw. For new players in particular (new = first 90 days or something), we had a bonus which was "if your proposal is adopted, you get your token back". This actually gave new players a getting-started advantage, because they could offer to use their token on a proposal in exchange for some other thing, then get the token back. You also had genuinely worthwhile officer advantages - if you're holding an office because you "like to play and be useful", you're probably also the type who likes proposing things, so an extra proposal per month or whatever actually felt like a valuable and concrete thank-you. It didn't feel limiting in a bad way at the time (to me anyway) - people tended to collect omnibus "bugfix" proposals that fixed lots of little errors at once, but didn't tend to jam big concepts together (because it wasn't worth the risk of voting down once concept because the other one was unpopular). I think it also made people more patient to play with whatever the current subgame was rather than spend a lot of time proposing changes. I think the big problem that built up was voting tokens, not proposal tokens. Those weren't spent, they gave permanent voting strength boosts to whomever held them - and people held onto them, they were really expensive when they were auctioned, and new players were stuck at lower voting levels indefinitely. -G. > What other shortages has Agora had in the past? CFJs? Voting? Tradable > blot-expunging tokens would probably be an even worse idea than > putting a price on voting, but oops, too late, I guess I just > suggested that. > > -- > - Falsifian
Re: DIS: [proto] Markets
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 17:52, Jason Cobb wrote: > I was thinking my system could be used to implement Auctions (by opening > a Market for each Auction and having the Rules specify what Orders the > Auctioneer accepts - that's part of why I included a provision for Agora > doing stuff). I do like the idea of implementing auctions using Orders. Hopefully the resulting rules would be shorter than having separate auction and Order rules. -- - Falsifian
Re: DIS: [proto] Markets
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 18:04, Kerim Aydin wrote: > Maybe call them all "trade orders"? They're symmetric after all and it > avoids people asking "sell? what about buy?" Or you could just call them > "offers". Agreed. I like "trade orders"; "offers" sounds a bit generic. Judicial orders sound fun. Maybe I'll go look at some past rulesets some time. -- - Falsifian
Re: DIS: Proto for a new economics system
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 16:32, Kerim Aydin wrote: > On 9/14/2019 9:57 AM, James Cook wrote: > > I'm being an officer to have fun, help out the game, and earn brownie > > points with you all. I wouldn't do it just for the Coins. > > Agreed, for the most part. > > > That being said, if we do assume Coins motivate people, I think there > > is an argument for balancing. If officers aren't completing reports, > > or people aren't judging CFJs on time, etc, it might be a sign that > > the rewards aren't high enough relative to the other ways of making > > money. So a system that automatically decreases the reward for things > > people are already eager to do, and increases the rewards for things > > people are not eager to do, may be desirable if we imagine Coins are > > how people are motivated. > > No amount of coins will motivate anyone if there isn't an actual shortage of > goods (to buy with coins) that people want to use coins to compete for. > > We've played with "true" shortages before (e.g. when pending proposals was > so expensive that players could afford 1 per month as a baseline). But none > of the "recent" (back through 2016) economic systems have had true shortages > like that because we weren't willing to have them. > > -G. Did shortages make the gameplay worse? I worry they might discourage new players, or encourage people to submit big proposals combining unrelated things. Shortages do sound fun, though. In the spirit of markets, it might be fun to limit proposals by having a limited number of proposal tokens sold off every quarter, like a reverse of the quarterly cheque buy-backs. What other shortages has Agora had in the past? CFJs? Voting? Tradable blot-expunging tokens would probably be an even worse idea than putting a price on voting, but oops, too late, I guess I just suggested that. -- - Falsifian
DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3773 assigned to Murphy
> You can't accurately match something that /doesn't yet exist to be > matched against/. > > TRUE. No objection to TRUE, but I don't think I understand this argument. If the date were in the past instead of the future, could I argue that I can't accurately match something that no longer exists to be matched against? What differentiates past and future here? -- - Falsifian
Re: DIS: [proto] Markets
On 9/16/2019 10:52 AM, Jason Cobb wrote:
> That seems reasonable enough - although I'm not sure that I see why it's a
> "sell" order - you're selling what you have just as much as you're buying
> what someone else has.
Maybe call them all "trade orders"? They're symmetric after all and it
avoids people asking "sell? what about buy?" Or you could just call them
"offers".
off-topic historical ramble:
For the first year or two I played, "orders" were used in the legal context
of commands given to people to do things: e.g. a "judicial order" to apply
a punishment, etc. There were complicated rules for executing orders,
staying orders, vacating orders, etc. Technically, any time a Proposal
set a quantity, it was a "legislative order". Due to huge amounts of
confusion at the time, even to this day, whenever I'm talking about the
order things happen in ("these events happen in order"), I flinch from the
term "order" and tend to use "sequence" instead.
-G.
Re: DIS: [proto] Markets
On 9/15/19 10:52 PM, James Cook wrote: It seems a bit complicated, maybe because you've tried to make it very general. You're right, it is a bit complicated. Do you have any applications in mind other than selling cheques? First was the Supermarket - which was just a rules-defined Market with all the defaults. But, as you point out, that role is already filled by pledges/contracts. I was also considering something with permitting free trade of zombies - a Rule could require a fee to submit an Order, then in exchange permit flipping the Master of that zombie, but that's not fully fleshed out (pun not intended). If not I'd rather start with something simpler, e.g: --- Any player CAN create or destroy a sell order by announcement, specifying a set of assets to sell (the lot) and a price. When a sell order has existed for seven or more days, it is destroyed. Whenever a sell order exists, any entity (the buyer) CAN match that sell order by paying the price to the seller. When e does so: * the sell order is destroyed, and * if the creater of the sell order CAN transfer the lot to the buyer, e immediately does so; otherwise e SHALL do so in a timely fashion. -- That seems reasonable enough - although I'm not sure that I see why it's a "sell" order - you're selling what you have just as much as you're buying what someone else has. Two more notes: * Players can already trade with other players, using pledges, contracts, auctions, or just trust. So we may not want to add rules like these until we need a market with non-player entities (like my cheque market). * My rule text has a bit of overlap with the end-of-auction rules; maybe they could be combined somehow. I was thinking my system could be used to implement Auctions (by opening a Market for each Auction and having the Rules specify what Orders the Auctioneer accepts - that's part of why I included a provision for Agora doing stuff). -- - Falsifian -- Jason Cobb
Re: DIS: Proto for a new economics system
On 9/14/2019 9:57 AM, James Cook wrote: I'm being an officer to have fun, help out the game, and earn brownie points with you all. I wouldn't do it just for the Coins. Agreed, for the most part. That being said, if we do assume Coins motivate people, I think there is an argument for balancing. If officers aren't completing reports, or people aren't judging CFJs on time, etc, it might be a sign that the rewards aren't high enough relative to the other ways of making money. So a system that automatically decreases the reward for things people are already eager to do, and increases the rewards for things people are not eager to do, may be desirable if we imagine Coins are how people are motivated. No amount of coins will motivate anyone if there isn't an actual shortage of goods (to buy with coins) that people want to use coins to compete for. We've played with "true" shortages before (e.g. when pending proposals was so expensive that players could afford 1 per month as a baseline). But none of the "recent" (back through 2016) economic systems have had true shortages like that because we weren't willing to have them. -G.
