Zefram wrote: > So, anyway, I don't know. Maybe you did have a playable currency > game. I'd like to see mail logs for it. I maintain that currencies > fundamentally don't work in a nomic.
Wish the logs were available. By then (I was part of the Slashdot influx) bugs were still there, but the system was playable. > Officer discretion bad (for the most part). > Shades of fascism, and other authoritarian governmental systems. You see, here I really disagree. Officer discretion good, as long as there are checks and balances (So Officer exercising Discretion in direction X is countered by another officer in direction Y). At a ratio of 1/3 officers/players, a small game can't spread powers around enough officers to do that (a conspiracy of 3 officers out of 10 players could create a dictatorship). But with 20 players, that means a 7 or 8 officer conspiracy would be needed, and power and discretion can be spread well enough that the fascism is limited, and more powers granted. > We didn't have auctions in my era. Maybe that's a significannt > component. It was... here were some aspects that occur to me were important: 1. Overall money supply (Stems) was set by the Treasuror in a budget that set salaries. The budget wasn't freely changable, a candidate for election would propose a budget, and then the difference between budgets was frequently a deciding point in an election. (also made elections interesting). 2. Stems were converted to useful currencies (three of them) through auctions in which only a subset of players (specialists in each currency) could participate. Officers decided how many units to auction, which had an impact on supply and final price. Since auctions were only available to subsets of players, a lively secondary economy in these currencies was sustained (ultimately leading to bonds and a full-blown privately-run currency exchange: see the last bit of evidence in CFJ 1325). Bonds themselves, by the way, self-destructed in bugs and scams (even involving shell companies). But that was fun too. -Goethe
