Securities, bonds, stocks, banknotes, bills

[Savanik]

[quote = "Jos Elkink"]But well, I wrote a long article on this for the next Webzine, so read that before continuing the discussion ...[/quote]

But the next Webzine isn't out yet, and we wanna talk noooooow....

The reason people don't use the coins is not so much that they need resources, but that they can't convince other people that the coin is really worth something.

Resources is an issue (why make coins out of perfectly good iron when you could be making useful things with it), but relatively minor compared to the big one:

We already have a form of money! Iron!

Iron is very stable in value because it's hard to manufacture. It requires materials from multiple locations, so its value is even stable across a region. Roughly 24 grams of iron is equivilent to a day of work, so it's quite easy to transport (even for fairly large transactions) and divide up into hours of work.

It's impossible to counterfeit - you can't debase metals in Cantr. And one gram is the same as any other gram. Why make paper money when we already have a perfectly good currency?

Sav

[Skimpen]

You beat me to it . Yeah, iron is the perfect currency. Steel even more valuable I guess.

[Peanut]

You beat me to it . Yeah, iron is the perfect currency. Steel even more valuable I guess.

We'll that's an entire other debate.

For around 1g of iron you can make 2g of steel.

So steel is generally cheaper then iron.

Also because steel uses the same resources as iron.

[Savanik]

You beat me to it . Yeah, iron is the perfect currency. Steel even more valuable I guess.

We'll that's an entire other debate.

For around 1g of iron you can make 2g of steel.

So steel is generally cheaper then iron.

Also because steel uses the same resources as iron.

Well, when you take into account the cost of the additional resources and time it makes to steel, it evens out. Iron and steel are actually almost identical in cost!

Sav

[The Industriallist]

Well, when you take into account the cost of the additional resources and time it makes to steel, it evens out. Iron and steel are actually almost identical in cost!

Sav

Not really...if you're sitting on hematite, iron is probably cheaper. If you have one of the other key resources, very likely steel costs you less than iron. Though it's rather a silly question, since they aren't at all interchangeable.

Iron makes a much better currency, since it's needed for more and simpler things, and can be refined to steel.

But in most places the concept of currency isn't a useful one anyway...there are very, very few towns with enough actual businesses (as opposed to misnamed tribes/clans/employee-exploitation organizations) for a medium of trade to become an issue. How many places do you think host more than, say, one trade per year?

[Hellzon]

Ba-BUMP!

Every matrix (die) should be unique (like keys) but able to copy with a special tool or machinery.

Methinks this got lost in the discussion. I like that idea. As it is now, seals can easily be forged by changing your own name (right?).

And sorry for bumping.

[Sho]

We have seals; I don't know if anyone's managed to use one (though with some recent changes, I expect it to happen soon), but they are uniquely identifiable objects that can be used to stamp things, and I think they're copyable.

[Hellzon]

Oh. All is well then.

[WojD]

We have seals; I don't know if anyone's managed to use one (though with some recent changes, I expect it to happen soon), but they are uniquely identifiable objects that can be used to stamp things, and I think they're copyable.

Yes, they are... And you must have sealing wax in inventory.

[PRUT]

We have seals; I don't know if anyone's managed to use one (though with some recent changes, I expect it to happen soon), but they are uniquely identifiable objects that can be used to stamp things, and I think they're copyable.

I don't think it can be good for money.
When You must take much efford to make money (getting wax for example), You give up. Money should be very cheap and easy to be made - in other way we will always use barter exchange to avoid loosing resources or time.

[Sho]

That is true. The seal won't work for money, and was never meant to.
Really it should have been made a lot easier to use - I still think it was reasonable to require some use of resources for each use of the seal, but the required resource should have been a lot easier to make than sealing wax. The problem is that so much work has gone into that production chain that nobody is going to change it so drastically.

[The Sociologist]

Coins just might become a possibility if:
(a) They could be made and manipulated in large stacks;
(b) They could be melted down again, also with the option of doing so in large stacks. In other words the cost of pressing/melting them must be much less than the cost of the metal used.

On the whole coinage simply originated as a means whereby an authority certified the value of the quantity of metal in the coin. If Cantr cannot get beyond that stage, you can forget about negotiable instruments, bills of exchange and other paper.

There is simply too much sleeping sickness and sleeping death in the game for enough trust to develop in any kind of coinage other than what I set out above. Also, there are very few strategy players left in the game. Mostly just people who survived the "Days of Tiredness" because they spend all their time farming raw potatoes or carrots and chatting. You have no idea how hard I battle to get just a few characters together whose players are even capable of thinking strategically. So there is little incentive to develop such things.

As of now I've only ever seen one coin in my entire time in the game. A spy character saw a factory worker for the MacGregors give one to Lord Gregor, but I think they stopped making them after that.

As for me, I do not intend to build a coin press in New Xanth or any of the other towns until it makes a lot more sense, and would vote against it if asked in meetings or the like.

[Sho]

I agree completely with Sociologist. There are no societies in Cantr structured enough for an unbacked currency to work, and even backed currencies have a lot of trouble. Money will only become popular if the coins have an intrinsic value and are easier to handle than coins are now.
Unfortunately coin stacking feels like it might be very hard to implement.

Incidentally, my character built that coin press and made that coin. The Mac Gregors never had any plans to use them as currency - we built the press just because we didn't have anything else to do in the workshop.

[PRUT]

But think about bonds?

City AAA promises char XX that for some service he will receive for example 10000g of iron. But sometimes there is no sense to walk with all that resorce or just resource is not avaible in the moment, but char XX trust the city and agree to receive a bond for 10000 iron which can be exchanged in some time for a resource.

Then char XX goes and do the service for the city but in meantime find a very good oportunity to buy sth - but has no resource to exchange. He remins that he has bond and gives bond instead of resource. Char YY who also trust in City AAA agrees to that and goes there to exchange bond for iron.

And next we suppose that char YY finds in meantime another oportunity do trade, he can exchange his bond to someone else, i.e. char ZZ, who also trust in city AAA wealth, for example for bond (of 5000 steel) which ZZ received for another service.

Then finally YY can exchange his bond for steel (or myabe once again trade for sth else), and ZZ can take his iron.

This is true curency
which is based on trust that city AAA can afford the payment

Comparing to barter trade, in this system, no resource in needed immidietly, chars don't have to take all that kilograms of multiple rare resources to be sure thay wouldn't loose good oportunity to trade.


If we imagine more, cities or countries CAN build a network of storehouses which can exchange bonds for resources for someone who needs it. But to let people trust in bonds, we must have notes which can't be falsyfied and cheap enough to let cities play with that instead of making more useful things.

That's why I put this thread and disagree with the idea of expensive seals on notes (they wouldn't solve the problem)

[Sho]

But how does the city know that char YY has a genuine bond for 10000 grams of iron, and not a copy or a forgery? That's where the seals come in.

EDIT: Okay, I checked your original post (which I should have done before I made this one). What you're suggesting is the same thing we're talking about with seals, just with a different name. Nobody is disagreeing with you.