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[thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr]

I still think people are focusing on the wrong things. The main point of my first post was that economic activity in dwarf fortress should be realistic, it should be the emergent result of creatures seeking utility and minimizing costs. I think that if we try to do it any other way then it will be broken and rigid and will not behave smoothly, realistically, logically etc. Toady PLEASE read about basic economic philosophy before coding this. You did that with geology didn't you? And economics will have at least as much, if not more, of an impact on the game.

I am NOT saying that there needs to be a particular "economic system" that fortresses ought to have. The player should be able to arrange things however they want, sure. Maybe different civs will have different levels of "communist" or "capitalist" organization, sure (btw, unsurprisingly everyone is using those words incorrectly, even I used them incorrectly just there, just for the sake of consistency with the other posts, anyway-).

I am NOT talking about how dwarven "economic culture" should be organized. Shazbot it seems like you interpreted my post as saying that I wanted "free markets" but that is NOT at all what I'm saying. I am talking about how Toady should program the game to model MARKET FORCES, which are a natural force that can't simply be ignored, and are completely separate from "economic system". The economy can be planned or "free market", it doesn't matter, and I don't care, market forces will be present either way, and how should those market forces be simulated? That is what I was talking about.

It needs to be emergent and based on creature psychology. Otherwise we'll just be aesthetically simulating the symptoms of market forces and not actually simulating the market forces themselves. That is ultimately the most important thing here, and "economic system" doesn't really matter, especially since in the end it will probably be procedurally generated for each civ anyway.

[Shazbot]

I absolutely agree with you THDR and do not intend to imply anything should be taken away from your suggestion. I found it excellent. I would be happy to have it implemented stand-alone. I also recognize the terms capitalist and communist are being misused, and I really don't think the terms are productive for our purposes. I should not have used them. I think more accurate terms could be 'dwarf-controlled' and 'player-controlled' fortresses. This will also help keep this conversation in the abstract, away from the last century and a half of human history. You are absolutely right in that properly simulating market forces is the crucial point, and I see it as foundation on which other mechanics can build.

The ultimate point of my post was to point out ways in which properly simulated market forces (as you advocate for) can create dwarves who generate economic activity to meet their own needs (which I advocate for), and that the game should allow whatever degree of dwarf-controlled activity the player is comfortable with (which I think we all can agree is best). I was creating hypothetical examples of how dwarves could act of their own volition to improve their personal happiness while a proper model for item value minimized waste. Unless I am mistaken this is the sort of emergent result you were interested in, THDR, although certainly not the only result. With a solid foundation we can build anything we like, granted we have the tools. What we lack at present are the tools to allow dwarf-controlled activities, because up until now fortresses are almost entirely player-controlled. Players see a need, say 'create' and dwarves decide if they're done with their beer. I would like dwarves to see the needs of themselves and others and decide, based on market forces and personalities, if they want to create without being told.

[GoblinCookie]

I still think people are focusing on the wrong things. The main point of my first post was that economic activity in dwarf fortress should be realistic, it should be the emergent result of creatures seeking utility and minimizing costs. I think that if we try to do it any other way then it will be broken and rigid and will not behave smoothly, realistically, logically etc. Toady PLEASE read about basic economic philosophy before coding this. You did that with geology didn't you? And economics will have at least as much, if not more, of an impact on the game.

Economics is not Geology.  Geology is basically neutral, Economics is basically Politics. 

I am NOT saying that there needs to be a particular "economic system" that fortresses ought to have. The player should be able to arrange things however they want, sure. Maybe different civs will have different levels of "communist" or "capitalist" organization, sure (btw, unsurprisingly everyone is using those words incorrectly, even I used them incorrectly just there, just for the sake of consistency with the other posts, anyway-).

I think that the words are being used correctly.  At the moment dwarves are pure Communists, they all work for the common good to produce collectively owned property that they collectively consume for free according to a central plan.

I am NOT talking about how dwarven "economic culture" should be organized. Shazbot it seems like you interpreted my post as saying that I wanted "free markets" but that is NOT at all what I'm saying. I am talking about how Toady should program the game to model MARKET FORCES, which are a natural force that can't simply be ignored, and are completely separate from "economic system". The economy can be planned or "free market", it doesn't matter, and I don't care, market forces will be present either way, and how should those market forces be simulated? That is what I was talking about.

It needs to be emergent and based on creature psychology. Otherwise we'll just be aesthetically simulating the symptoms of market forces and not actually simulating the market forces themselves. That is ultimately the most important thing here, and "economic system" doesn't really matter, especially since in the end it will probably be procedurally generated for each civ anyway.

Market forces are not a natural force, they are a result of economic/political policy.  At present there are no market forces because the economic/political system by which the settlements of the game world internally operate under does not permit them to exist.  You have no exchange of any commodities within a fortress and no private property. 

[Scruiser]

I am NOT saying that there needs to be a particular "economic system" that fortresses ought to have. The player should be able to arrange things however they want, sure. Maybe different civs will have different levels of "communist" or "capitalist" organization, sure (btw, unsurprisingly everyone is using those words incorrectly, even I used them incorrectly just there, just for the sake of consistency with the other posts, anyway-).

I think that the words are being used correctly.  At the moment dwarves are pure Communists, they all work for the common good to produce collectively owned property that they collectively consume for free according to a central plan.

Agreed.  The dwarfs right now are communist in the idealist sense, they have a pure communal society.  I think be giving the player the option to set goods as free or set prices on goods and or let the dwarfs determine how much they are willing to buy/sell goods for you could simulate the entire range of economic modes.  Setting everything to free market and you get "pure" captalism, with the con that worthless unskilled, economically worthless dwarfs may go room-less and starve to death (no wait that is a plus by most players standards), and being unable to control key industries.  Setting prices on everything would let you control the economy exactly, but one wrong price can lead to shortages and surpluses (like in the USSR).  Leaving it on the default commune could cause unhappy thoughts about lack of freedom or inability to obtain personal wealth (I personally see at least some dwarfs as too greedy to be happy with communism).  The solution most players would go with would be a mixed system like real life.  Critical economies like weapon production and food production would get some player micromanagement, with each player developing there own personal mix of capitalism, communism, and socialism.   

It needs to be emergent and based on creature psychology. Otherwise we'll just be aesthetically simulating the symptoms of market forces and not actually simulating the market forces themselves. That is ultimately the most important thing here, and "economic system" doesn't really matter, especially since in the end it will probably be procedurally generated for each civ anyway.

I agree that it needs to be dependent on the individual dwarfs psychology and behavior, but I think I disagree on how low a level it needs to be simulated to.  For instance, with room rent/prices it can be abstracted that each dwarf (individual or married couple together) will want a room.  The overall free currency available to the fortress population, the average dwarf income over time, and the average free time of each dwarf can also be calculated.  In between values and calculations like this, it should be possible to abstractly calculate/simulate the total sum market force without actually needing to let it emerge from individual interaction.  This approach may or may not be easier to program, but it should at least generate more easily understandable mechanics for the player, (i.e. raise wages to get one outcome, raise prices to get another, increase production to fix this economic problem) as opposed to a fully chaotic system which may be sensitive in the same way real chaotic systems are (as in things go wrong for no understandable reason leaving players confused with no way of correcting).

Market forces are not a natural force, they are a result of economic/political policy.  At present there are no market forces because the economic/political system by which the settlements of the game world internally operate under does not permit them to exist.  You have no exchange of any commodities within a fortress and no private property. 

There is also this point to consider.  Under the right conditions (constant struggle for survival, military outpost at chokepoint) economic forces simply don't come together in the way that they do in modern societies.

[thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr]

I think Scruiser and Goblincookie you guys are misunderstanding what I mean by "market forces".

Let's just forget the words, you can define communism however you want, I don't care. And like I said the degree of "free markets" or "planning" really does not matter to and has nothing to do with what I'm saying. And market forces are natural and unavoidable, and they do exist in the game already, and if you don't think so then I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by "market forces". Dwarves already seek utility, to an extent. They like to eat, and go on breaks, and socialize etc. They already have limited desires, and the compelling effect of those desires on their behaviour is literally a market force. That's what I mean.

I'm literally just saying that "exchange value" in the game needs to come from supply and demand, and the more things have their exchange value based on supply and demand, the more smooth and realistic the game's markets will be. If we don't do that then the system will break when supply changes because the price won't be able to adjust. That's why Toady needs to put in dynamic exchange values based on supply and demand, so that prices do adjust.

Right now everything in the game has a fixed "exchange value" http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Item_value that doesn't necessarily correlate to the actual "use value" (ie the usefulness to the player, or its ability to make dwarves happy, etc.)

Because of this, we have nonsensical and annoying things happening like caravans coming to your fort that can be completely bought out with useless crafts that don't even do anything. In real life these crafts would have virtually no exchange value because they don't have any use value (see my first post) except maybe for the idiosyncratic "likes" of certain dwarves. There are plenty of other examples of inefficiencies, self defeating caravan actions, and even slightly suicidal AI behavioural choices in the game, and I think all of these things can be fixed if Toady just expands on creature psychology and makes exchange values based on supply and demand (in other words, based on the actual use value).

What I've basically been trying to say is that Toady should expand the current preference system so that dwarves will have preferences for and against all goods and services in the game (including crafts, so that they will finally actually have a use value), thus simulating "demand". Then, he needs to find some way for dwarves to keep track of a good or service's availability to them, to simulate supply. Then he needs to simplify this system and generalize it to whole populations at a time outside of the player's fortress so that the entire global economy is dynamic and lifelike.

Remember that eventually caravans are going to be going around and civs will trade with the player and with each other. If we have a system of fixed exchange values then their trades will easily become lopsided because sites with a surplus of one resource will waste money buying more of it, and sites with a scarcity of a resource won't buy enough of it, and both those things are pretty much guaranteed to happen unless the prices are dynamic and based on supply/demand.

Currently, the inefficiencies of fixed exchange values are not noticeable because there isn't much market activity, as you guys have pointed out (although there is some).

That doesn't change the fact that a lot more of it will be coming later, and when Toady puts in some more economic stuff and has caravans going around trading and items moving around the map, at that point it won't matter if all the civs are "communist", they will still have to deal with market forces (utility seeking/labor-cost minimizing), and if the exchange values of goods and services are still fixed like they are now, then we will end up with a broken system where the AIs will constantly make irrational decisions because they won't know what things are actually worth to them. In other words, the use values and exchange values will be totally different (currently, a craft can have a higher exchange value than armor, for example, even in a site that has little armor and is constantly under siege) and this will cause the AI to suicide themselves.

I repeat yet again, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with the type of "political-economic system" that a site or player fortress has.

And before someone says anything, yes, I know that there are plenty of irrational economic decisions and "clumsiness" going on in the real world too. But I guarantee you it will be way worse in a computer game trying to simulate an entire world with trading civilizations using fixed prices...

[Scruiser]

   I am definitely NOT advocating for fixed prices, I am saying that in theory prices can be calculated based on data drawn from overall populations, instead of needing to track every single individuals' preferences and buying power. 
   A dwarf nation is going to war, it has x number of soldiers, thus it needs approximately x weapons and x sets of armor, it can make y set of weapons and z sets of armor on its own thus it needs x-y additional weapons through trade and x-z additional sets of armor through trade, if it has W amount of money it will be willing to spend so much of it on weapons and armor etc.  A human nation has food shortfalls, it need x amount of food, it has y amount of exports, it can spend at a rate of x/y to get the food it needs.  I am saying it should be possible to determine prices from collections of data, as opposed to simulating every single individual action to determine prices. 
     In the war scenario, to get a fully 'emergent' outcome as you describe you would need to dynamically calculate every single entity and sub entity (a civilization has multiple sites, site may have multiple group associated with them, etc.) involved in the wars relative desire for weapons, armor and food, dynamically calculate their buying power (whether through trade, stockpiled wealth, extortion) and then have them compete for supplies.  You would also need to dynamically calculate all entities and sub-entities capacity to produce weapons, armor, and food, who they are willing to supply, how much they can increase their production by short, medium, and long term.
    Getting a fully emergent system from bottom up rules is nice in theory, but will be extremely hard in practice.  Any failure to accurately emulate the base component will cause the entire system to fail.  Since you want it to be simulated out of individual behaviors, that means you would basically need a full AI on every individual to account for some of the more dynamic scenarios.  In the war scenario, you fail to fully develop the AIs, so the dwarf end up selling weapons to their enemies, or they don't balance food production and starve, or they sell their food for my weapons and starve, or they sell off their premium weapons and buy cheap human weapons, because the AI is trying fulfill its priorities and the priorities are incomplete.  I gave all easy to think of simple examples, but what's worse, is that with a bottom up emergent system, you may have weird failures in the top level that you can't isolate the cause of on the bottom level.  For some reason your dwarf civs keep failing to get ready for war, and when you finally figure it out it turns out the economic relationship between hillocks and fort sites was screwing up the flow of goods and giving hillocks a net surplus in trade and the fortresses deficits which in turn was caused by the priorities the AIs have for food, which you had thought was realistic and balanced, and now the only way to fix it is to totally rewrite your AI from scratch, or to add in some high level rules to brute force the situation and "aesthetically simulate the symptoms of market forces" in order to get your emergent system to have a sane outcome.
    As a pragmatic solution I am advocating for a mix of some bottom-up emergent characteristics, some mid-level abstractions calculated from bottom level data, and yes "aesthetically simulating the symptoms of market forces" in order to get something playable and programmable.  To be honest, if prices for weapons go up in war time, prices of food go up in famine, and crafts fall in price after I flood the market with them, I don't care if a dwarf on the other side of the world map is having his preferences abstracted away.  Once those basic cases are taken care of I want development to focus on individual fort micro-economics. 

[Shazbot]

But I guarantee you it will be way worse in a computer game trying to simulate an entire world with trading civilizations using fixed prices...

Or, Armok forbid, no prices, in which our woodcutter selects a cotton candy battle axe because it is of equal cost to him (none) as a copper battle axe. I believe that we are on the same page with regards to the importance of determining value correctly, THDR.

Additional interesting concepts that your model brings are inflation and deflation. Consider the fortress with exactly one masterwork door. Its scarcity would enhance its desirability and with it the happiness of the dwarf who owns it. The same door in a fortress with a hundred masterwork doors would not shine so brightly in price or mood enhancement. This dynamic would reduce the dwarven euphoria caused by a flood of high-value goods, as their value diminishes with increased supply.

Likewise coins could be subjected to supply and demand value determination; the local and global supply of coinage will be considered. A fortress rich in coin metals might try to mint its way to wealth, only to find its currency losing purchasing power as the world becomes flooded with money. A player might recognize this market signal and switch to conventional industries, hoarding the coins foreign merchants buy his products with. Eventually the global currency pool shrinks relative to its population and the fortress' financial reserves are once again put into action... unless a pesky dragon attacks. World map events causing price changes at the caravan would also make foreign affairs feel more alive.

In addition I think that THDR is allowing for abstraction outside of Dwarf Mode, but fine-grained simulation within Dwarf Mode, so he and Scruiser are not in complete disagreement. Correct me if I am wrong.

[Scruiser]

In addition I think that THDR is allowing for abstraction outside of Dwarf Mode, but fine-grained simulation within Dwarf Mode, so he and Scruiser are not in complete disagreement. Correct me if I am wrong.

We are not in complete disagreement compared to people that are fine with fixed prices as they are or think one easy trick will make 40d economy work right.  We both want more simulation/emulation.  But in details of the method we are disagreeing I think.  You are right we both want "abstraction outside of Dwarf Mode, but fine-grained simulation within Dwarf Mode" in general.  thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr seems to want finer grained simulation than I do I think...

What I've basically been trying to say is that Toady should expand the current preference system so that dwarves will have preferences for and against all goods and services in the game (including crafts, so that they will finally actually have a use value), thus simulating "demand". Then, he needs to find some way for dwarves to keep track of a good or service's availability to them, to simulate supply. Then he needs to simplify this system and generalize it to whole populations at a time outside of the player's fortress so that the entire global economy is dynamic and lifelike.

I basically agree with this idea, I just think it will be easier to design, program, and play a system that abstracts some of these thing almost immediately.  And yeah, I definitely think Dwarf Mode should be the priority, once the basics of world economy are at a good enough point.

[GoblinCookie]

I think Scruiser and Goblincookie you guys are misunderstanding what I mean by "market forces".

Let's just forget the words, you can define communism however you want, I don't care. And like I said the degree of "free markets" or "planning" really does not matter to and has nothing to do with what I'm saying. And market forces are natural and unavoidable, and they do exist in the game already, and if you don't think so then I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by "market forces". Dwarves already seek utility, to an extent. They like to eat, and go on breaks, and socialize etc. They already have limited desires, and the compelling effect of those desires on their behaviour is literally a market force. That's what I mean.

If this is what you mean then you chose an odd choice of terminology.  In 'ideal Communism' (yes the definition does matter) there is no market so really there cannot be said to be any 'market' forces. 

I'm literally just saying that "exchange value" in the game needs to come from supply and demand, and the more things have their exchange value based on supply and demand, the more smooth and realistic the game's markets will be. If we don't do that then the system will break when supply changes because the price won't be able to adjust. That's why Toady needs to put in dynamic exchange values based on supply and demand, so that prices do adjust.

Exchange value in real-life does not come from supply and demand.  It comes from percieved (collective) market strength and the presence or absence of competition.  There total supply and demand sets nothing because nobody normally has any awareness of the total amount of goods in circulation against the total number of customers when setting the prices.

Prices are set according to political power-relations between economic actors, they represent how strong or weak the actor is relatively.  If you have a good merchant in the game, you get better prices so the actual source of prices is already represented in game.  The prices are therefore not actually fixed at all. 

Because of this, we have nonsensical and annoying things happening like caravans coming to your fort that can be completely bought out with useless crafts that don't even do anything. In real life these crafts would have virtually no exchange value because they don't have any use value (see my first post) except maybe for the idiosyncratic "likes" of certain dwarves. There are plenty of other examples of inefficiencies, self defeating caravan actions, and even slightly suicidal AI behavioural choices in the game, and I think all of these things can be fixed if Toady just expands on creature psychology and makes exchange values based on supply and demand (in other words, based on the actual use value).

What makes you think that the caravans are private entities that are actually motivated by profit-margins when nothing else in the game is?  Given that the whole world economy is based on a 100% communist basis as I have explained already in length, it is rather likely that traders likely see the whole thing as an 'exchange of gifts'. 

It could be more like two people having a birthday party on the same day, both sides are expected to tell the other what they want for birthday, but if someone says "I'm not giving you any presents" the other party will do likewise.  You are supposed to break even rather than make a profit. 

I repeat yet again, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with the type of "political-economic system" that a site or player fortress has.

And before someone says anything, yes, I know that there are plenty of irrational economic decisions and "clumsiness" going on in the real world too. But I guarantee you it will be way worse in a computer game trying to simulate an entire world with trading civilizations using fixed prices...

It has utterly everything to do with the political-economic system. 

A trading system based completely upon fixed prices works best in the real-world and it will work best in the game-world too.  This is because it directly motivates production, banishes speculation, eliminates hoarding and also effectively reduces the risk of investment in something that is in demand to nothing. 

I know exactly how much I can safely invest because I know exactly how much the total value of the finished items will be, so I can reliably make a profit.  If I know that the value of a sold object will alway be something, one is never going to over-invest or underinvest in anything. 

If a shirt is worth £10 and it will always be worth that, the only way one can make £20 is to make 2 shirts.  If I buy up all the shirts on the market in an attempt to create a shortage I can still only make £10 so no reason to engage in hoarding/speculating behavior at all.

[alertrelic]

It would be interesting to see the game simulate underlying market forces while keeping a feudal economy. This means that there wouldn't be full freedom of exchange, and things like noble privileges, serfdom, subinfeudation, guilds etc. could be implemented, at least to some extent. The game already has the beginnings of a feudal hierarchy so this seems like a logical progression.

Some more detail in terms of coin debasement/minting might be cool too. DF already has loads of detail in its geological and forging systems, and in the way significant figures/events can be represented on items. I know we have coins that carry images, but they are obviously not fully implemented yet.

I do agree that you need to be careful in describing historically contingent motivations and forces as eternal 'natural' laws, we have a habit of projecting every aspect of classical economic theory backwards through time. There is a reason that it took until the 19th century for the enclosures to happen.

A centrally planned and totally harmonious economy would be fine too, but it would be a bit dry in terms of laying the groundwork for politics (if that ever happens). Shortages, hoarding, conflicts between merchants and nobles etc. all existed historically. That doesn't mean that they need to be in DF, but it might be another interesting system for the player to interact with, and it might make the world a bit more lively.

Part of the problem is that there is no scarcity in DF, players can create all the food and booze they need forever from a tiny patch of dirt. Most things can be easily constructed from rock, which itself is easy to extract. I'm not sure how this can be fixed while keeping the game flowing, but in general I think some more complex supply chains and dependencies would make things interesting and would give sieges some more gameplay significance. Then we might see booze riots break out during sieges, and other interesting stuff.

[Shazbot]

I really must point out that DF has scarcity, nothing is without scarcity, and always will have scarcity. Even with hacked smelter reactions producing gold from rock, there is scarcity of labor, not to mention the input materials. But what of completely free inputs? Even with the infinite and eternal source of water in an aquifer, there is scarcity of water in DF. Consider wanting to fill a cistern from the aquifer. Water is presumably free, yet the job to fill buckets and dump buckets requires labor. A mechanism or structure could be built to pump water (as a capital investment), but this requires labor create the components and build the structure. An obsidian farm producing infinite amounts of stone to be mined still has labor and capital costs, and only so much stone can be produced from the farm in a given period of time. Even with a completely hacked reaction where a legendary dwarf inputs a bucket of water and produces two buckets of water and ten tons of gold, there is scarcity in labor. Scarcity is truly a part of Dwarf Fortress and managing scarce resources is the basis of gameplay.

Even a game of chess is an expression of scarcity and economics; you can only make one move at a time and must weigh the benefits of each possible move against your other options, selecting the most positive course of action not only for your immediate move, but investing moves with little short-term gain for long-term payoffs. Likewise players managing an idealized 'communist fortress' (which is not the case, ever, but seems not to be an argument for this thread so I will presume it exists for the sake of this example) makes economic decisions; weighing the supply of cloth to the demand for clothing or bags, deciding to turn oak logs into beds or doors, economizing labor-intensive steel to weapons or armor based on how expendable his dwarves are.

In short, to claim there are no economic choices being made in Dwarf Fortress is to claim the player makes no choices whatsoever, as every choice in life, be it to act or not act, is an economic choice. I inhale, I live. I do not inhale, I die. Very few people willfully stop breathing because the price of air (calories expended by the diaphragm) is less than the cost of dying.

I hope we can put the notion of Dwarf Fortress not having scarcity or economic activity to rest, and move on with developing a price system that accurately reflects the factors illustrated by THDR.

[GoblinCookie]

It would be interesting to see the game simulate underlying market forces while keeping a feudal economy. This means that there wouldn't be full freedom of exchange, and things like noble privileges, serfdom, subinfeudation, guilds etc. could be implemented, at least to some extent. The game already has the beginnings of a feudal hierarchy so this seems like a logical progression.

Except it does not.  A feudal economy/society is at core where you have innumerable small essentially self-employed peasants and craftsmen being ruled over and taxed by a beaurocratic/clerical/military group that claims ownership over their land. 

In Dwarf Fortress the 'Feudal' titles are really collective property like everything else.  Someone becomes a baron/count/duchess/prince because they rule over a settlement that is of sufficiant size and importance.  It is the really your settlement that is rewarded with the status not your lead character even as the character simply enjoys the attributed status of whatever from being the beurocratic head of said settlement. 

For this reason we get the numerous goblin nobles in dwarf civilizations as discussed in my other thread.  Your 'duke' is more like the head of the settlements Politburo than a duke in the Feudal sense.  The king/queen is the supreme leader.

A centrally planned and totally harmonious economy would be fine too, but it would be a bit dry in terms of laying the groundwork for politics (if that ever happens). Shortages, hoarding, conflicts between merchants and nobles etc. all existed historically. That doesn't mean that they need to be in DF, but it might be another interesting system for the player to interact with, and it might make the world a bit more lively.

Part of the problem is that there is no scarcity in DF, players can create all the food and booze they need forever from a tiny patch of dirt. Most things can be easily constructed from rock, which itself is easy to extract. I'm not sure how this can be fixed while keeping the game flowing, but in general I think some more complex supply chains and dependencies would make things interesting and would give sieges some more gameplay significance. Then we might see booze riots break out during sieges, and other interesting stuff.

There is objectively no scarcity in real-life either.  If there was then the world population would have hit Malthusian point rather than reaching 6 billion+ people.

If there is scarcity it is someone's fault somewhere.  In dwarf fortress the fault is with the beurocracy (the player) because as I keep having to point out, dwarf society is Communism.

Dwarves do already riot and go on strike essentially if you do a bad job.  I do think you should be able to be overthrown leading to be game-over eventually if enough dwarves go on strike.

[Shazbot]

It appears I cannot persuade you, GoblinCookie.

To the original post:

Modern Money Theory is an interesting concept, but does not completely describe economics in the pre-Classical or Classical world, by which I refer to Greek civilization and not Scottish economists. In my first post, my proposal would make it be possible to coin money directly into the 'fortress coffers', from which MMT behaviors would be emergent as dwarves work to acquire their pay to make rent and various purchases which fund the coffers and then cycle back out as pay again. However unless taxes must be collect in the fortress coinage, dwarves could engage in their economic dealings using foreign currency, reducing the effectiveness of MMT-based controls on activity. I could see it as a toggled option, but if dwarves have a concept of exchange rates we can start to see very complicated behaviors. A dwarf might hoard as much fortress coin as possible, spending whatever foreign currency he acquires as it is less valuable to him. This could cause all sorts of shortages in fortress coinage as "bad money drives out the good", as the old adage goes.

THDR's suggestion remains the foundation on which anything else must be built.

[Scruiser]

To the original post:

Modern Money Theory is an interesting concept, but does not completely describe economics in the pre-Classical or Classical world, by which I refer to Greek civilization and not Scottish economists.

I actually agree with  thgntlmnfrmtrlfmdr more on this one.  There may be different circumstances in the ancient world, but the underlying assumption of modern economics holds true.  There are scarce* goods and resources and unlimited wants and needs*.  Increasing economic production still required investment of capital (even plowing land or training skill are forms of capital).  Some social structures alter the way these facts are expressed (i.e traditional economies and ideal communism), but these assumptions are still true.  Ancient and medieval societies didn't understand them the same way, and as a result often had misguided or outright stupid economic policies (loans with interest being illegal in the middle ages for christian to give, the obsession with gold supplies during the colonial era, devaluing currency in countless empires), but that didn't change the reality.  That said, there are some historical monetary policies, that, misguided as they are, are both realistic and likely to generate interesting game play mechanics.  I like Shazbot's idea for currency hoarding and other such situations.  Some of the policies of Feudal societies are also likely to be interesting.  Anyone else have any ideas in this regard?

*A few clarifying points.  "Scarcity" and "unlimited wants/needs" have specific economic meanings and applications.  Scarce doesn't mean rare, it just means there isn't enough for everyone to take indefinitely.  This assumption has held true for all of history, although there is speculation that high enough levels of automation and advanced technology will render this assumption invalid in the future.  I think you need to look up the economic meaning of the word, GoblinCookie, because your criticism of the term seems to rely on the everyday meaning and not the way it is used in economics.

[Shazbot]

Oh don't misunderstand; I understand economic forces are constant and the theories we use to describe them are what changes, much like how physics are constant and our theories to explain them are constantly refined. What I'm saying is that MMT has holes in it and cannot be the basis of the system, but can be a model players use to interact with that system. A player could run his dwarf economy through high rents and issued currency as a means of forcing dwarves to work, which is the core of MMT as I understand it. Or a player could run his economy through central command means, or through free markets...

Basically, if there were ever a game to simulate an economy and not merely pretend to have an economy, this is the game. We have every nail on every finger of a dwarf, lets have every economic nuance as well (in Dwarf Mode, at least).