Currency or economy of some form. Why doesnt it happen?

[SekoETC]

In RL, the money in your wallet is useless paper without being able to trust that wherever you go the stores will accept it...also that the store will be open sometime in the next decade and have goods in stock and a shopkeeper awake enough to do business with you who won't drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of a transaction.

lol When you put Cantr things into real life perspective, that's so ridiculous that it's hilarious. I wonder why no one bothers to mention when their character is usually awake, maybe because converting from real life time to Cantr time is too difficult. Or maybe their daily schedule drifts two hours forward each day like mine.

Cantr sounds a bit like Soviet Russia. Money is worthless, the stocks are limited, there's only one size of shoes and people might accept something they don't need in trade just because they could barter it with someone else later on.

In cantr nothing really rots away unless you leave it on the ground. If our world behaved the same way, we'd go around with slices of carrots and leaves of salad in our wallets and not bother with coins and bills.

So if things got stale and rotted away if they weren't prepared properly, that would give the economy a boost. It would be interesting if there was a pile of wood on the ground then after a while it would be a damp pile of wood, then a moldy pile of wood, then a mossy pile of wood and finally a decomposing pile of wood. Then no one could spawn and say "I thought it was abandoned!" when someone had in fact put it down just minutes before the person spawned. When someone picks up the pile, it would say "X grams seems to be still usable while the rest has decomposed".

Keeping food in tins or glass jars or maybe any sort of container would make it last longer. It would also be handy if people could stop to grill meat at the side of the road... and hunt on the road. I guess that's not going to happen. It could happen if animal encounters were random, based on local frequencies but people insist on sticking to the individualized system. I think it would be enough if animals became individuals only when they're starting to get tamed.

[joo]

Cantr sounds a bit like Soviet Russia. Money is worthless, the stocks are limited, there's only one size of shoes and people might accept something they don't need in trade just because they could barter it with someone else later on.

In Soviet Russia, onions stop you from crying.

[ceselb]

So if things got stale and rotted away if they weren't prepared properly, that would give the economy a boost.

I'm afraid it's not that simple either. All locations with a certain resource gets equal yields, so you just go to the nearest place. All roads are standardized per upgrade level and all that.
There is a kind of limping economy based on the DoW as a measure for value, but I don't even know how much it'd take to get it to anywhere approaching even a 12th century economy. Probably a very drastic redesign indeed.
You need a certain number of people in a community to allow for specialization. At current total cantr population a real country would struggle to have anything much besides sustenance farming. Where would the fun be in that for most people?

(Yes, I do think about these things rather a lot. It interests me and helps me in my job as RD chair.)

[Arlequin]

Given how peculiar Cantr economy is, it probably could use some medieval schemes to dynamize it.

I. e. a fixed citizen contribution in goods to be paid back with coins.

[Sillysavage]

It doesn't happen because free trade area's won't allow it to happen. If town leaders or the equivalent there-of, shut down resource gathering to only a few people or, if 1 person 'owned' a particular resource where no one else could dig, farm...etc., that resource, then an economy would form.
Think about this for a moment if you would...

1) A select group of people get together and form an pact stating that no resource gathering is permitted by anyone who spawns or travels through their town.

2)That selected group distributes what resources are avaiable to each individual...ie. Joe gets to own potatoes, Susan owns the cotton, Fred get's the grapes, Michelle get's to own the hematite. Now that each individual has complete ownership of said resources, what can they do with it?

3) They farm, gather, dig it for themselves...Now what?They have a stockpile of one comodity! But since it takes (most of the time) another resource to be used to make a tool, weapon, clothing etc. those selected individuals must find a way to 'get rid of' the resource they own.

4) When this pact was formed all agreed to use coins as the system to buy other resources with. Period! No other form of was to be used, no trading, giving away, or any of that nonsense. So Fred Michelle and Susan are hungry and need Joe's potatoes to eat. Joe says Ok, give me 'x' amount in coins and you can have 'x' amount of potatoes. BOOM! You have just started using currency! A form of economics right?

5) But Fred, Michelle, and Susan need more potatoes than Joe can dig up by himself...what now? Joe needs more workers! So Joe hires some newspawns that dropped in. He pays them in coins to work his potatoe fields. Now his workers can buy that cotton that Susan owns, so they can make clothes to have. Or Freds grapes becuase of the animal attacks that have been happening to heal thier wounds....


So what happens when that local trader drops by and wants to peddle his wares to whomever needs them. That pact that Joe, Susan, Fred, and Michelle made stated:

Whenever a trader came to town a percentage of whatever resource was owned was to be given to the local govenment so that it could be used to trade with other areas or to traders looking to sell/trade their wares. Until such a time that when other area's could see what Joe, Susan, Fred, and Michelle were doing and started thier own economic currency. After which, coins would be used as a way in which to barter for other area's resources.

All this takes time to develope, but it can work this way. But you have to shut down local resource gathering to only a selected few. Not everyone can just start gathering away and hoarding it for themselves. If that happens...economies will stay at trading level and coins will never be worth the machines used to make them.

Anyone care to elaborate on this?

[Slowness_Incarnate]

There is almost ALWAYS another place to get what you need. You don't have to rely on that one location most of the time.

Every region has something they need or want. For example in one town I have a character where steel/iron are USELESS to me.However, uncooked food stuff...is always welcome.

[viktor]

there are to my knowledge at least 2 places in which there exists a multitown economic system, maybe not fully implimented and one may be just lacing in stock and operators but they exist and are followed and used. some places use it for profit always taking in more than they let out, some balance it where a gram of this put in is worth the same if you want a gram of it taken out.
few and far between but they do exist in cantr just need more time development and dependable chars to operate it.

[Sekar]

I think K-Island is probably the best example I've seen of a currency being implemented in Cantr. A lot of it comes down to trust, and supply and demand. Supply and demand are way off in Cantr, and often the banks in Cantr are slightly more trusted then the banks in the U.S. were after the Great Depression.

I recently started playing Cantr II again, after a long absence. Not much has changed in Cantr since I left, but I have noticed that animals seem far more vicious, and that healing food and food is harder to come by. I'm not sure why I'm mentioning this yet, but something tells me it might have an impact on Cantr's various economies.

[Dev]

I just want to say...

Currency FTW

[Slowness_Incarnate]

Currency just annoys me in cantr, and I'm glad it doesn't work.

[Surly]

Firstly: There are economies in Cantr. Barter economies worked pretty well for most people until the past few centuries... it is unrealistic to expect Cantr to sustain a more complex economy than would have naturally developed at this point.

Secondly, the reason that there is no advanced economy is a direct result of the management of consumption. The idea of an economy is entirely dependent on the consumption of resources. With tools that never rot away, with food so freely available and stockpiles of resources that never dwindle despite incredibly poor management... it is currently much easier to take what you need than work for it. The reason that Cantr has been so much at the whim of pirates for so long is due to the fact that the pirate has no needs: he never needs to replace his weapon, he has a stockpile of spare tools that he can't even use.

Even for the non-pirate, there is no need to replace things. Every single character has almost no needs, just wants. Every time something is implemented there is a short term drive to build it, which sparks the IG economy, but there is no long-term stimulation.

In my opinion (and it is of course, just my opinion), a proper review of the rotting/deterioration system and a long look at the implementation of appropriate storage is the most important step in sparking the in-game economy.

[SekoETC]

Requiring proper storage would make things interesting... if liquids would have to be stored or at least transported in some sort of containers, gasses would require even more advanced containers, some foods would require cold or dark or dry storage... that would create needs.

Yesterday irl I was making a fence. Today my back and my right hand are achy. I certainly couldn't keep doing that for several days in a row, although I assume if I did, it would make my muscles grow and it would hurt less. I also came to notice in a very short while that having water within reach makes working easier since you get tired and thirsty, and having work gloves makes your hands hurt less. So it would make sense if Cantr had a system where you would be able to work more efficiently with proper equipment and conveniences. But first projects should give more notable tiredness, otherwise there's not enough from which to reduce from. There could also be environmental modifiers. If the weather was hot, people would get tired faster and they could hire someone to wave a fan to make them feel more comfortable. Drinks could also reduce tiredness, and not just coffee and tea but also water, since that's refreshing. It just shouldn't be possible to drink endless amounts of it. Likewise in a cold environment I don't think you could work very efficiently if you were freezing stiff. Wearing clothes would allow you to redirect energy from keeping yourself warm to working on projects. And clothes should deteriorate and require patching. They should get dirty and require washing. Dirty people should smell bad, encouraging them to improve their hygiene or cover it up with perfumes and such. But I find it silly that water gathering rates are what they are. I don't see why we couldn't allow people to carry up to 50 kilos instead of 15, it would just make them clumsy. And maybe containers would be required.

[Cogliostro]

Each time this is brought up, people start by asking: "why isn't there money in Cantr yet?"

Good question, right? But after that everyone starts lecturing about economies, the theory of supply and demand, scarcity and so on. Which has nothing really to do with the question that is being asked.

There is no widespread money use yet in Cantr because there's no automatic mechanism for converting it into the goods you need, you have to wait everytime for someone to wake up and sort you out. As soon as such a mechanism appears (in any form), within weeks money will be in use all over Cantr.

[Dudel]

I'd 100% LOVE to see economy, religion all KINDS of things form in Cantr BUT...

...they require others to "play along" as things are now.

Few people wish to "play along" with even simple things. Why would they waste their time with your silly economy or religion where there is **** TO COLLECT?