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[GoblinCookie]

GoblinCookie, may I suggest you (and everyone else) take a look at counting's suggestions about the economy and proposed mechanisms for commodity valuation?   The mechanisms proposed there would allow for procedural and non-arbitrary determination of value for commodities, as well as procedurally determining currencies (well, commodity monies)!  No player input required!  No messing with gold values, prices, or crap like that unless you want to!  Here are two of them:

• http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85289.msg2296845#msg2296845 
• http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=88258.msg2413199#msg2413199
  

And these kinds of models actually have been implemented in simulations developed by researchers as well as at least a few games.  I do intend on expanding on counting's suggestions at some point when I have time to finish studying the papers he referenced... But, from what I have read so far, in principle, they could work in DF and it would be a beautiful thing.  The thing that I can't quite get at right now is the initial determination of value... the language is dense in some of these.  I have a feeling that this is a large part of where heirarchy-of-needs-based valuation might come to fore in particular.

There is little purpose nor function for having internal commerce and every function that supposadly requires it, the commerce side of things turns out to be a redundant irritant.  Largely what we want is dwarf behaviors and hardly any of them require that money be involved at all. 

The person you link too just looks like the usual economist snake-oil salesman insisting that if only his own pet real-life economic ideas were implemented in the game then everything would work smoothly. 

The socks thing was just an example, I dont even think dwarfs care about the quality level of their clothing right now, but I have no doubt they eventually will. In which case being able to ensure your metal-smiths are happier than some random group of haulers is important and since the current system basically hands things out randomly, this gives some a guarantee the wealthiest dwarfs have the best stuff.

The present system currently just randomly hands out clothing to the first dwarf to pick it up, that's not much of a system. Pricing and more importantly the setting of wages gives the player some control over it.

The example might work better with prepared meals though since dwarfs do currently care about what they eat, only gaining a happy thought if the meal contains something they like.

Do you have an example or some idea about what sort of disaster could arise from [Player creates job with wages, Player sets rent, player sets starting price for goods then lets dwarfs work it out for themselves]?

I have spent many, many posts pointing out the huge number of disasters that could arise using that system, I do not have the time to waste reposting it all over again.

What we fundamentally need is for individual dwarves to demand specific items from the player, which are then collected.  Dwarves that estimate their value higher make more extravagant demands of the player.  If we want to keep a specific dwarf happy then we could even fine-tune things ourselves by having his personal demands highlighted say a particular colour or highlighting those demands that specifically pertain to dwarves that meet the criteria. 

The whole system can be automated with ease by the player setting demands for particular goods to be automatically sent off to the manager the moment they are reported.  The production of goods that do not require scarce resources or labour would work well if automated, scarce resources goods would be better dealt with manually.  Or we perhaps make it so only the demands of particular dwarves are automatically met. 

This way we have exactly what we want, without having to fiddle around with prices and such.

[Andeerz]

There is little purpose nor function for having internal commerce and every function that supposadly requires it, the commerce side of things turns out to be a redundant irritant.  Largely what we want is dwarf behaviors and hardly any of them require that money be involved at all.

I respect your opinion.  However, I am curious as to what game you have played that involves internal commerce.  On what do you base your opinion?  And of course none of the behaviors of dwarves, regardless of what we want, require money be involved at all.  Keep in mind that nothing I have suggested requires money even exist.  And value and price doesn't have to have anything to do with money. 

Also, no dwarf behaviors, planned or existing, require money.  But a lot, if not all, require some method of ascribing value to things in order to make believable, non-arbitrary judgements that have some degree of predictability and (more importantly) use.  And right now, commodity value is not handled well at all.  And hopefully by the end of this post I will make it somewhat clear as to why this will need to be addressed and why internal commerce (as opposed to just taking things as needed from communal stockpiles) is something that is often needed for effective resource management that maximizes happiness, productivity, etc. (in other words, avoids tantrum-spiral death).

 

The person you link too just looks like the usual economist snake-oil salesman insisting that if only his own pet real-life economic ideas were implemented in the game then everything would work smoothly. 

What a sad and ignorant thing to say, especially without any meaningful evidence presented.    Being dismissive of ideas without critical thinking helps nothing. 

What we fundamentally need is for individual dwarves to demand specific items from the player, which are then collected.  Dwarves that estimate their value higher make more extravagant demands of the player.  If we want to keep a specific dwarf happy then we could even fine-tune things ourselves by having his personal demands highlighted say a particular colour or highlighting those demands that specifically pertain to dwarves that meet the criteria.

First off, for the following, I am only talking about stuff going on in the fort, and am not talking about anything relating to the outside of the fort, including visiting merchants, etc.

Indeed we do need a way for individual dwarves to make demands.  And, guess what?  We DO!    Just take a look at the nobility in the game.  However, these demands are really really basic, and the way these demands are communicated to the player leave something to be desired.  As things are right now, other than subsistence demands universal to all dwarves and entities, the demands of the nobility are quite arbitrary.  And the demands of all entities in so far as basic survival needs are not directly communicated to the player, though one could determine the consumption of this or that commodity by dwarves in a fort sort of easily (though it would could be time consuming) by looking at stockpiles and doing simple math.  From there you can determine how much of this or that you need to make (well... have your dwarves make) for a given population and scale up as more people come to avoid tantrum spirals.  Fine.  This is pretty much how gameplay is right now (though we often do nicely without the math).  From the demand you observe, you determine value (in a manner of speaking) and affect supply of whatever it is that is demanded.

So, from what I understand, all that you are suggesting is a way to make exactly what I just mention not an aspect of gameplay the player really needs to actively participate in.  That is fine.  And it would be fairly straightforward to have the computer do this to an extent (provided enough workshops and infrastructure and resources are available to assign appropriate jobs).  And this works just dandy with dwarves and entities in the game as they currently are (other than nobles), since they have little to no personal goals, and little if any way to make value-based judgements on their own about what they are willing to give for something else to satisfy their goals (with the exception of pathing).  They will pretty much work and do whatever you tell them to (with few exceptions) so long as they are not in a tantrum.

However,  this system might not be robust if behavior of dwarves ever become more complex and realistic, particularly if they ever come to have any sort of personal goals.  And, actually, in a way, the kind of stuff I mean is already really loosely present in nobles...  Anyway, if all dwarves (and entities in general) become able to exercise a bit more autonomy, come to have a way of ascribing value to things (as in... I am willing to give this much of my time towards carpentry to receive X plump helmets) and have individual goals in mind (as in... I want to have a big domicile in a reputable fortress in which to raise my family), then I wonder what will happen...  As things are now, if a (non-noble) dwarf meets all their hard-coded needs, they just sit around doing nothing.  Otherwise, they either die or throw a tantrum.  Now, don't get me wrong, DF does a pretty damned good simulation of individual behaviors, definitely qualitatively MUCH better than a vast majority of games and simulations out there.  BUT you do not have you average dwarves acting as anything except mindless ants (that could blow up at any moment). 

Nobles are another matter.  They make demands that, if not met, lead them to become unhappy.  This in principle is pretty realistic of not just nobles IRL.  If I don't get to do or fail at what I want to do in life, I get depressed and/or angry.  I'm sure the same goes for all of us forum-goers and any human being ever.  Anyway, though the demands and mandates of nobles are arbitrary, even if they weren't...  How many times would it take for you to wish that damned noble could just go do things by them self instead of you having to make it work (and ultimately interrupting your own goals for your awesome fort)?  Now imagine if every dwarf in the fortress, as they would in real life, also had their own demands beyond immediate survival?  This would be a rather tricky thing to manage centrally (possible, but tricky... just look at any centralized economy).  If this happened right now, then individuals in your fort would have no way to meet their needs/wants other than waiting on you, the player, to micromanage their asses even more than now to make it all work (which, admittedly, might be a fun game for some in its own right).  THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE INTERNAL COMMERCE WOULD BE A GOOD (not to mention, realistic) THING.  It would give the tools for dwarves (and any entity in the game) to exercise their autonomy towards meeting their individual wants and needs instead of exclusively relying on a hive-mind or greater power (you) to do so and/or just taking things from communal stockpiles willy-nilly.  How free this commerce is (or whether or not it exists legally in the first place) would be completely up to the player (so, you could easily do things the GoblinCookie way if you wanted to, and it would work beautifully in some circumstances!).  And the role of the player in ensuring the success of whatever system of economy will lie not necessarily within micromanagement of individuals, but in management of the fortress as a whole, including infrastructure, economic policies, etc.

It sure as hell isn't an issue now, but look at the development pages with regard to the behaviors of individuals and groups in fortress mode.     

I hope I am making sense... I will revisit this later.

[MDFification]

Ops Fox: If you ever let your dwarves get their hands on coins they'd divide them up, shuffle them around, and it'd generally clog things up. Instead people would just never mint coins and it'd all be handled as if they were using debit cards.

I saw that on the wiki that's why I suggested the dwarfs only use credit for inter fortress goods like rent and food. The only time a dwarf should use coins is when they need to purchase something from the caravan, in which case the caravans will take the loose change off the map with them.

I like this suggestion because it mirrors how most societies dealt with their economies before the 14th century cutoff date.

A lot of the time, monetary economies were only for people conducting large-scale trade, construction or military projects. Your average citizen would, de-facto, do business in barter, and pay their taxes in material goods rather than coinage. In fact, several nations were brought to financial ruin trying to force their citizens to pay tax in coins - China for example completely ran out of bronze and silver because all of it was tied up in coins.

Currency can be useful for trade because it's relatively cheap to transport for its value. It also serves as a good way for important institutions to measure their debts to one another - after all, those metals have no practical purpose to be put to, don't degrade over time and aren't as subject to fluctuations in market value as most other goods unless something extreme happens. But the vast, vast majority of the population might never handle more than a few coins in their life.

EDIT: Also, barter is not necessary. In many cases (for example in nearly all observed societies without money) a pure barter economy did not emerge. Instead, local communities kept track of individual debts without the use of a medium; thus running your economy but without coins like we did in previous versions is an entirely realistic way of doing it.

For the majority of the world for most of human history, credit has been the most common form of economic transaction; barter was reserved for dealing with strangers. And though we fail to recognize this in the public consciousness, this includes medieval europe.

[GoblinCookie]

I respect your opinion.  However, I am curious as to what game you have played that involves internal commerce.  On what do you base your opinion?  And of course none of the behaviors of dwarves, regardless of what we want, require money be involved at all.  Keep in mind that nothing I have suggested requires money even exist.  And value and price doesn't have to have anything to do with money. 

Sorry, I am losing track of who is saying what about what. 

Also, no dwarf behaviors, planned or existing, require money.  But a lot, if not all, require some method of ascribing value to things in order to make believable, non-arbitrary judgements that have some degree of predictability and (more importantly) use.  And right now, commodity value is not handled well at all.  And hopefully by the end of this post I will make it somewhat clear as to why this will need to be addressed and why internal commerce (as opposed to just taking things as needed from communal stockpiles) is something that is often needed for effective resource management that maximizes happiness, productivity, etc. (in other words, avoids tantrum-spiral death). 

Actually that is not true.  Demands are inherantly seperate from eachother as opposed to being one huge bundle, it is only once you add personal wealth (not necceserily money) being traded away that the value of your demands actually has any real function in the system. 

Really there are only two issues, abundance or scarcity.  In the latter case a system of rationing would work far better than pricing because it does not introduce inequalities of wealth into the system nor require the player constantly to keep an eye on how expensive the item actually is relative to the total amount of value they have to sell. 

Basically while prices do work as rudimentery form of rationing, actual rationing works better and is far simpler for the player to implement. 

What a sad and ignorant thing to say, especially without any meaningful evidence presented.    Being dismissive of ideas without critical thinking helps nothing. 

It helps to save time and avoid derailment; thus meaning more time for more productive activity than debating complex economic theories. 

First off, for the following, I am only talking about stuff going on in the fort, and am not talking about anything relating to the outside of the fort, including visiting merchants, etc.

Indeed we do need a way for individual dwarves to make demands.  And, guess what?  We DO!    Just take a look at the nobility in the game.  However, these demands are really really basic, and the way these demands are communicated to the player leave something to be desired.  As things are right now, other than subsistence demands universal to all dwarves and entities, the demands of the nobility are quite arbitrary.  And the demands of all entities in so far as basic survival needs are not directly communicated to the player, though one could determine the consumption of this or that commodity by dwarves in a fort sort of easily (though it would could be time consuming) by looking at stockpiles and doing simple math.  From there you can determine how much of this or that you need to make (well... have your dwarves make) for a given population and scale up as more people come to avoid tantrum spirals.  Fine.  This is pretty much how gameplay is right now (though we often do nicely without the math).  From the demand you observe, you determine value (in a manner of speaking) and affect supply of whatever it is that is demanded.

So, from what I understand, all that you are suggesting is a way to make exactly what I just mention not an aspect of gameplay the player really needs to actively participate in.  That is fine.  And it would be fairly straightforward to have the computer do this to an extent (provided enough workshops and infrastructure and resources are available to assign appropriate jobs).  And this works just dandy with dwarves and entities in the game as they currently are (other than nobles), since they have little to no personal goals, and little if any way to make value-based judgements on their own about what they are willing to give for something else to satisfy their goals (with the exception of pathing).  They will pretty much work and do whatever you tell them to (with few exceptions) so long as they are not in a tantrum.

Yes, the basic idea is to have all the dwarves actually go through a labour of travelling to the offices you have given the nobles and then adding their own unmet demands to the list, which can then be met by the player manually.  Some types of demands can be set to automatic, meaning the manager is automatically set to put an order in for that item as soon as it is reported by a dwarf.  Therefore dwarves can now autonomously produce things to meet their own desires without player intervention without any commerce being needed at all. 

I intend to one day lay out the whole idea in detail but I am busy working hard on modding at present.

However,  this system might not be robust if behavior of dwarves ever become more complex and realistic, particularly if they ever come to have any sort of personal goals.  And, actually, in a way, the kind of stuff I mean is already really loosely present in nobles...  Anyway, if all dwarves (and entities in general) become able to exercise a bit more autonomy, come to have a way of ascribing value to things (as in... I am willing to give this much of my time towards carpentry to receive X plump helmets) and have individual goals in mind (as in... I want to have a big domicile in a reputable fortress in which to raise my family), then I wonder what will happen...  As things are now, if a (non-noble) dwarf meets all their hard-coded needs, they just sit around doing nothing.  Otherwise, they either die or throw a tantrum.  Now, don't get me wrong, DF does a pretty damned good simulation of individual behaviors, definitely qualitatively MUCH better than a vast majority of games and simulations out there.  BUT you do not have you average dwarves acting as anything except mindless ants (that could blow up at any moment). 

Basically all we need to do to move beyond the mindless survivalist ants stage is simply to universalize the fixed system nobles use now and make it dynamic.  Dwarves develop specific demands based upon personality and biological needs, look at the hardcoded value of these demands, look at how valuable they personally are, look at how much of the item is in stock, etc.  It then creates itself a set of demands and new demands are gradually added asall existing demands are met. 

If the items are available the dwarf helps himself, if they are not available the dwarf logs in the demand as described above.  All this will work perfectly at allowing dwarves to become more than ants and works based upon the present system without needing internal commerce at all. 

Nobles are another matter.  They make demands that, if not met, lead them to become unhappy.  This in principle is pretty realistic of not just nobles IRL.  If I don't get to do or fail at what I want to do in life, I get depressed and/or angry.  I'm sure the same goes for all of us forum-goers and any human being ever.  Anyway, though the demands and mandates of nobles are arbitrary, even if they weren't...  How many times would it take for you to wish that damned noble could just go do things by them self instead of you having to make it work (and ultimately interrupting your own goals for your awesome fort)?  Now imagine if every dwarf in the fortress, as they would in real life, also had their own demands beyond immediate survival?  This would be a rather tricky thing to manage centrally (possible, but tricky... just look at any centralized economy).  If this happened right now, then individuals in your fort would have no way to meet their needs/wants other than waiting on you, the player, to micromanage their asses even more than now to make it all work (which, admittedly, might be a fun game for some in its own right).  THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE INTERNAL COMMERCE WOULD BE A GOOD (not to mention, realistic) THING.  It would give the tools for dwarves (and any entity in the game) to exercise their autonomy towards meeting their individual wants and needs instead of exclusively relying on a hive-mind or greater power (you) to do so and/or just taking things from communal stockpiles willy-nilly.  How free this commerce is (or whether or not it exists legally in the first place) would be completely up to the player (so, you could easily do things the GoblinCookie way if you wanted to, and it would work beautifully in some circumstances!).  And the role of the player in ensuring the success of whatever system of economy will lie not necessarily within micromanagement of individuals, but in management of the fortress as a whole, including infrastructure, economic policies, etc.

It sure as hell isn't an issue now, but look at the development pages with regard to the behaviors of individuals and groups in fortress mode.     

I hope I am making sense... I will revisit this later.

Internal commerce as an idea has a deceptive appeal because of the wearyness from having to centrally micromanage everything; however as mentioned the appeal is deceptive.

The reality however is that the system will still need managing and the hard part, which is the need to gather reliable information will be more difficult to arrange.  In the present we only need to look at two sets of numbers (demand vs resources), internal commerce adds a whole set of additional numbers, such as the available amount of tradable valuables that a given dwarf would be willing to trade for said item and how much money each dwarf has in his pocket, how much credit is available.   

I am not actually against internal commerce as a concept however, despite popular belief.  The best way to introduce it is when we look at the other side of things from demands, that is we require dwarves to be motivated to do (certain) work under (certain) conditions.  It should be added an alternative form of labour motivation to the whip and the need to regulate the commercial economy is actually a price you pay.  We need to put things up for sale so that the money that we pay our workers to do jobs whether they want to or not actually motivates them to do anything. 

This would be done by setting certain item types as for sale and other item types for use as currency.  If a dwarf demands items that are for sale then he demands whatever it is that we are using as currency but this is not automatically available either.  He instead looks for work that we have set a per unit ration of payment first, does that work, then collects the currency items that he is owed as payment before going off to buy the item he really want.  Alternatively we could rely on legal means of coercion (forced labour), ideological manipulation or simply allow dwarves to do things as they want. 

[athenalras]

Ops Fox: If you ever let your dwarves get their hands on coins they'd divide them up, shuffle them around, and it'd generally clog things up. Instead people would just never mint coins and it'd all be handled as if they were using debit cards.

Is it possible to have a piece of clothing that acts as a coin container? That way, dwarves would always carry their money with them.

[Ops Fox]

Ops Fox: If you ever let your dwarves get their hands on coins they'd divide them up, shuffle them around, and it'd generally clog things up. Instead people would just never mint coins and it'd all be handled as if they were using debit cards.

Is it possible to have a piece of clothing that acts as a coin container? That way, dwarves would always carry their money with them.

That should be possible coffers and such act as containers now, but as I mentioned before it might be better to have a banker dwarf hold everyone's "money" and give the player an easy way to check up on the finances of their dwarf. The only time a dwarf should deal with money directly is if they are buying something from the caravan.

[athenalras]

A banker dwarf....

Sounds like it would be a task for the bookkeeper.

The thing with coffers and cabinets is that they aren't "worn" and so dwarves would have to travel back and forth in order to retrieve money. However, if dwarves carried their net worth around with them at all times, that wouldn't be a problem.

Book keepers already keep note of stocks, animals (and health?). It shouldn't be too much of a hassle to add another page for dwarf financial situations to keep a tab on each dwarf.

I'm against "credit" money in DF because it kills the atmosphere.
Second, if I retire my fort and create an adventurer, I should be able to kill all the dwarves in my former fortress and take their money. You know what's a letdown? To kill the Baron dwarf of my fortress only to discover that he has no money because it's all credit. Or to just slaughter the whole fortress only to discover the whole settlement ran on credit.

A proper banking system (if Toady is thinking about doing it) would be too far down the road. In the real world, the economy worked without banking for a very very long time.

Back to clothing that act as containers. First off, there are backpacks and waterskins. Both are containers but are only equipped for military.
I'd advocate using backpacks as containers for money but having every civilized entity walking around with a backpack makes DF sound like a large school campus. "I got my lunch and my money in my backpack, hurr hurr".
Personally I prefer something wearable like wallets but trousers in DF don't have pockets.

Basically what I'm asking for, to be specific, is a fanny pack(?). The only trouble I have is figuring out which slot of the body it could fit that would work for both military and civilian units.

Coins take up space yeah? But if a coin purse acted the same way as a backpack where only a certain item was allowed, a coin purse can act as a void where an entity stores all its coins. Unrealistic, but simple enough that it could work.

If you aim for realism, the coin purse can have a limit but the limit should be high enough that the dwarf should only refill his coin purse when he heads back to his room for sleeping, relaxation.

[Ops Fox]

When I said coffers store money I was not saying our dwarfs should keep their money in the coffers. I was responding to you question of whether or not it was possible.

Banking traces back to Italy in the 14th century, so it does fall within toady timeline.

[Bumber]

There's an item called a pouch. People store coins in them in adventure mode.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Container#Quick_Reference

[HartLord]

An interesting form of currency I've seen mentioned a few times in other threads are the Rai Stones.

While the monetary system of Yap appears to use these giant stones as tokens, in fact it relies on an oral history of ownership. Being too large to move, buying an item with these stones is as easy as saying it no longer belongs to you. As long as the transaction is recorded in the oral history, it will now be owned by the person you passed it on to—no physical movement of the stone is required.

The stones are a physical currency, but their value is traded orally, so I would say they are an ancient example of formalized credit. It's not unreasonable to think that dwarves might use a similar system for local trade.


While I understand why some people feel the word "credit" doesn't fit Dwarf Fortress (the pervasive use of it in sci-fi and modern economics is to blame), the word credit [creditum], meaning "a loan, thing entrusted to another", dates back to Latin. The concept has been around for a long, long time.

[athenalras]

Banking existed for the longest time but the form of banking where the banker holds the money and credit is used is not. And if we were to stick to the timeline, banking would be a lot different than modern banking you see today that deals in currency only.

Banking around the 14th century was based off of more ancient banking practices that involved grain. Lots and lots of grain. This would not work in DF for obvious reasons. DF, as it is now, would only present micro-banking that would have little impact on world generation as populations are too small to make grain movements significant.
Second, small populations in DF make the amount of grain small. Making the loans the banks make also small unless the bank were to charge exorbitant interest rates.
Third, DF is communist. All land is shared. Nobody owns any piece of land except a room. Farming is also communal. Economy can work in a communist state but is essentially retarded economy. Grain-based trading and interest would fail.

Banking in DF seems a bit arbitrary and it requires an extensive working economy in order for banking to work. So if banking does happen, I don't see it occurring in the first (second) economy release.

First, the way I see it, early basic economy was driven by the need to survive. What do we need to survive? Food.
However, food is never a problem in DF. If each civilization was self sustaining as it is now, there would be no need for trade and in essence, economy doesn't need to exist. Communal farming, communal workplaces and communal cafeterias essentially disrupt the the whole process. Entities need to own items, not just the clothing on their back.

As mentioned earlier, but rejected for complexity reasons, someone suggested a greater degree of entity autonomy. Which would be necessary for a working "capitalist" economy.

[Ops Fox]

Banking existed for the longest time but the form of banking where the banker holds the money and credit is used is not. And if we were to stick to the timeline, banking would be a lot different than modern banking you see today that deals in currency only.

Banking around the 14th century was based off of more ancient banking practices that involved grain. Lots and lots of grain. This would not work in DF for obvious reasons. DF, as it is now, would only present micro-banking that would have little impact on world generation as populations are too small to make grain movements significant.
Second, small populations in DF make the amount of grain small. Making the loans the banks make also small unless the bank were to charge exorbitant interest rates.
Third, DF is communist. All land is shared. Nobody owns any piece of land except a room. Farming is also communal. Economy can work in a communist state but is essentially retarded economy. Grain-based trading and interest would fail.

Banking in DF seems a bit arbitrary and it requires an extensive working economy in order for banking to work. So if banking does happen, I don't see it occurring in the first (second) economy release.

First, the way I see it, early basic economy was driven by the need to survive. What do we need to survive? Food.
However, food is never a problem in DF. If each civilization was self sustaining as it is now, there would be no need for trade and in essence, economy doesn't need to exist. Communal farming, communal workplaces and communal cafeterias essentially disrupt the the whole process. Entities need to own items, not just the clothing on their back.

As mentioned earlier, but rejected for complexity reasons, someone suggested a greater degree of entity autonomy. Which would be necessary for a working "capitalist" economy.

This is quite an enjoyable discussion.

Banking in 14th century Florence was based off of gold smiths offering as an additional service to their customers to hold their heavy gold in his vault and give them notes that he would redeem for the appropriate amount of gold. In its early evolution it was an additional feature of the gold smith to attract customers rather than a money making scheme, it really took off in 14th century when someone realized you could charge interest and hand out loans with that system.

Looking at the bases for our modern banking system though is primarily where I see its value, not in a modern interest/loan generating business venture. That additional service of holding the money and redeeming it whenever asked for would be exactly what our dwarfs need in all their zanny ways. So dont look at my suggestion for a Dwarven banker from the modern standpoint of someone whom holds money, gives interest and hands out loans, look at it as a service of the state to keep your gold safe from rampaging adventures and Kobolds.

In all honesty I like my little communist dwarfs and like managing them as is, but I see the value in a simple monetary system to easily divvy up what you produce and hand high quality items to important dwarfs. The system I outlined is specifically meant to maintain player control over our dwarfs while easing the micromanagement involved.
 
I'd rather not loose my control over my dwarfs because of some overly complex economical mush, what I suggest earlier is specifically meant to maintain player control but decrease the micromanagement through the most basic principles of economics. I'd rather aoid banker dwarfs charging interest and handing out loans, I'd rather avoid dwarfs suddenly deciding to waste my jet or mica/gabbro because of some arbitrary want of theirs. Loosing control over my dwarfs is the last thing I want in the game and would break the entire experience for me, if dwarfs suddenly started doing things I did not approve or started carving out what their little algorithmic brains decided was a nice room I would not be Able to play dwarf fortress.

My suggestion earlier is specifically meant to maintain player control over the entire fort, while decreasing micromanagement and increasing dwarven autonomy/personality.

[BoredVirulence]

There is a pretty distinct divide over what different players want. Some want to maintain a communist state-run approach but allow dwarves to more vocal about desires. Others want automation.

I think any solution needs to offer the player the ability to control where the line between state-run and private sectors is. Zoning is an example. Ideally we would have a system where a player could make their fort nearly autonomous, with all of the perks and imminent failures that will bring, and where players can continue their communist regime unchallenged by capitalistic pressures. We don't need a system that draws a line to try and make everyone as happy as possible, we need a system that allows the player to do it themselves. And I have no idea what that system will look like, but I suspect the solution lies not in bickering over control vs simulation, or producing gamey compromises, but by thinking about what tools can we give the player to allocate resources for private sectors, keeping things state controlled by default.

Also, I'm all for the banking system. I agree in a fortress of only a few hundred dwarves there is no need for simulating the actual currency for day-to-day transactions. Let a bankers ledger do that job. Zoning, as a completely optional thing, could be a good system. And we need a system to allow the state to provide resources to the private sector for use in their businesses (if they're allowed to exist). Maybe commercial zoning, allowing dwarves with the money to purchase land zoned properly, and state-run markets (explicitly managed by the player, maybe some autonomy here for "junk" materials, etc.) sell materials for use by dwarves, allowing the player to control the supply of precious metals, while maybe allowing copper mining in a commercial zone. Lastly we need a labor that allows a dwarf to pursue private interests.

The complicated details, such as pricing, can largely be overlooked.

I suppose in the system I describe, the player has the option to set up a zone or workshop that can offer state owned resources as for sale to private entities. In addition there would be zoning to allow commercial exploit, and residential exploit (Any others applicable?). Dwarves with a labor allowing private work could purchase a small room, establish a workshop and produce goods (probably based on preferences of who sets up the workshop, although thats an awful way to run a business, maybe the "central demand authority" can provide dwarves with ideas?). The goods could be sold in a public marketplace, or maybe the workshop is also a store front. Other commercial enterprises could be started, such as mines, farms, etc, based on commercial zones. Sales would be done through credit to a central bank if available, otherwise dwarves would carry their coins.

I think that, with some more refinement, could work. It would have problems sure, but its primary advantage is that its up to the players. The players allow a central bank, they allow the "central demand authority," set up commercial or residential zoning, and allow resources to be sold to the public. We could easily just have the state-run market sell the player-queued crafts and maintain as much control as possible, or ignore it all together.

[Andeerz]

Also, no dwarf behaviors, planned or existing, require money.  But a lot, if not all, require some method of ascribing value to things in order to make believable, non-arbitrary judgements that have some degree of predictability and (more importantly) use.

Actually that is not true.  Demands are inherantly seperate from eachother as opposed to being one huge bundle, it is only once you add personal wealth (not necceserily money) being traded away that the value of your demands actually has any real function in the system. 

I am not sure I understand what you are saying.  Allow me to clarify my previous statement with an example.  If a dwarf decides to do X instead of Y, it has made a value judgement.  X has priority over Y, which translates to X has a greater value than Y with respect to that individual dwarf.  And it has made a trade of sorts.  It trades the opportunity for doing Y for the opportunity to do X.  No personal wealth, whatever that means, is required.  If X and Y had no relative value ascribed to them, then either there would be no decision or if there was a decision, what is done next (X or Y) would essentially be a coin flip.

Really there are only two issues, abundance or scarcity.  In the latter case a system of rationing would work far better than pricing because it does not introduce inequalities of wealth into the system nor require the player constantly to keep an eye on how expensive the item actually is relative to the total amount of value they have to sell. 

These are the only two issues in situations of subsistence or where there is no real choice on the individual (dwarf) level.  And I agree with you if we are talking about how the game is now.

Perhaps I have not been clear... and it seems I haven't, but I am not trying to argue that one economic system in a fortress is better than any other or what is ideal for what circumstance.
 

What a sad and ignorant thing to say, especially without any meaningful evidence presented.    Being dismissive of ideas without critical thinking helps nothing. 

It helps to save time and avoid derailment; thus meaning more time for more productive activity than debating complex economic theories. 

It is really ironic that you say this when we are, in fact, debating complex economic stuff and that counting's suggestions actually relate very nicely to what you suggest... not to mention much about HOW it could be implemented.  It most certainly allows for a system as you suggest to be possible and, not only possible, but the best possible solution (or one of multiple good solutions) in (likely) many instances.  BUT it also serves as a foundation that allows for other economic strategies to be engineered by the player and, with regard to NPCs, arise emergently.

Internal commerce as an idea has a deceptive appeal because of the wearyness from having to centrally micromanage everything; however as mentioned the appeal is deceptive.

What is deceptive about internal commerce???  What I argue for is a robust system that can allow the player to engineer any economic system they want (including yours!!!) and for economic systems to arise as emergent phenomena in world gen without as few hard-coded structures as possible.  Your system is fine, and I agree that it would work splendidly.  BUT, what if in the future of the game there are situations where a centralized planned economy as you describe is not sustainable by the player?  Should there not be mechanisms in place to allow different strategies to be tried?   

The reality however is that the system will still need managing and the hard part, which is the need to gather reliable information will be more difficult to arrange.  In the present we only need to look at two sets of numbers (demand vs resources), internal commerce adds a whole set of additional numbers, such as the available amount of tradable valuables that a given dwarf would be willing to trade for said item and how much money each dwarf has in his pocket, how much credit is available.   

And there exist many models (including those in suggestions that I linked to earlier) that can be borrowed from to serve as a starting point for representing this and interacting with this information in the game.  And the management the player would have to do and what "sets of numbers" the player would interact with would depend on how these models are implemented and if there are mechanisms in place to allow the player to delegate certain tasks to individual entities.  And it isn't internal commerce per se that would be introducing a whole set of additional numbers, but it is the mechanisms in the simulation that would need to be in place to allow for internal commerce to happen in the first place that would introduce these numbers.  And these numbers and mechanisms could be useful for much more than just internal commerce, even if internal commerce were prohibited within the fortress, and in fact could allow for any variety of systems. 

I am not actually against internal commerce as a concept however, despite popular belief.  The best way to introduce it is when we look at the other side of things from demands, that is we require dwarves to be motivated to do (certain) work under (certain) conditions.  It should be added an alternative form of labour motivation to the whip and the need to regulate the commercial economy is actually a price you pay.  We need to put things up for sale so that the money that we pay our workers to do jobs whether they want to or not actually motivates them to do anything. 

This would be done by setting certain item types as for sale and other item types for use as currency.  If a dwarf demands items that are for sale then he demands whatever it is that we are using as currency but this is not automatically available either.  He instead looks for work that we have set a per unit ration of payment first, does that work, then collects the currency items that he is owed as payment before going off to buy the item he really want.  Alternatively we could rely on legal means of coercion (forced labour), ideological manipulation or simply allow dwarves to do things as they want.

In fact, the suggestions I linked to offer a LOT of relevant information about how to approach this and do so in a way that allows for not only what you suggest in the quote above, but a lot of other things one can think of to address the same problem.

Yes, the basic idea is to have all the dwarves actually go through a labour of travelling to the offices you have given the nobles and then adding their own unmet demands to the list, which can then be met by the player manually.  Some types of demands can be set to automatic, meaning the manager is automatically set to put an order in for that item as soon as it is reported by a dwarf.  Therefore dwarves can now autonomously produce things to meet their own desires without player intervention without any commerce being needed at all. 

I intend to one day lay out the whole idea in detail but I am busy working hard on modding at present.

Basically all we need to do to move beyond the mindless survivalist ants stage is simply to universalize the fixed system nobles use now and make it dynamic.  Dwarves develop specific demands based upon personality and biological needs, look at the hardcoded value of these demands, look at how valuable they personally are, look at how much of the item is in stock, etc.  It then creates itself a set of demands and new demands are gradually added asall existing demands are met. 

If the items are available the dwarf helps himself, if they are not available the dwarf logs in the demand as described above.  All this will work perfectly at allowing dwarves to become more than ants and works based upon the present system without needing internal commerce at all. 

That is a fine system.  Though this is simply an extension of the current system.  Dwarves already take things from stockpiles based on their demands and do what they are told.  Right now, they just do not explicitly convey the information that a demand has not been met to you or anyone else, and their demands are extremely simple.  The only fundamental, qualitative difference here between your suggestion and the way things work now is that there is a way to directly communicate to the player as well as NPCs the aggregate demands of dwarves within a fortress.  The "universalization" of demands and ascribing value to individual things is an extension of the current "likes/dislikes" system and whatever governs when a dwarf decides it needs to get something.  This in an of itself is a worthwhile suggestion, though, and I am all for it!  And the "manager" is what is autonomous here more so than the dwarves; the manager just does the same thing the player does, which is tell the dwarves what to do, and the dwarves do it mindlessly as normal.

The dwarves are still rather mindless even with more complex modifiers determining what they want: there are no underlying mechanisms in place that gives the dwarf the ability determine how and if to get what they want... for example, what if the fortress stockpiles never have what the dwarf wants (or not in time), despite making their demands known to you?  What if the dwarf realizes that someone else in the fort or outside of it has what they want?  It would be nice if individuals within the fort could decide things like "oh, I'm starving... perhaps I could steal this rationed plump helmet from the other person..." or "I want a microcline table, but the fortress stores are out and I broke my last one in a tantrum.  That person has a microcline table...  Maybe I could trade for it!".  Even if it was deemed illegal to barter with others individually in the fort by player decree, it would be fantastic to have the ability for dwarves to engage in such activities should it be allowed... plus it could plug into adventure mode quite nicely.

Nor are there really mechanisms in place where the player can plug-in in a believable way to alter the economic system to affect how dwarves get what they want.  What I advocate is for the game to have mechanisms in place that allow not just your proposed strategy of managing resources in the fort (which is essentially not much different from how things are now) but any other strategy possible.  I would suggest the default state of things be that everyone can trade with anyone (decentralized market economy) and that the player (and NPC entities) can set policies that modify this to make it into whatever economy they want.  What would serve as the default model would be very much related what counting suggests in one of his suggestions (essentially this paper with a few added things) which would form the necessary foundation for everything.  With this model in place, it would allow for the player to mold the economy to what they want by using realistic mechanisms to do so, and would give dwarves much richer behavior which has ramifications well beyond the subject matter of this thread, not to mention tools to influence the economy outside of the fortress as well. 

For example, to get to what you suggest (a planned centralized economy), you as the player could say that no shops are allowed other than one that is run by you and a designated dwarf shopkeeper.  Make available a central stockpile available for storage of all goods, decree that all things freshly produced by the fortress or obtained through trade with the outside belong to the fortress, and set a dwarf as the shopkeeper of the Fortress store which would "trade" whatever is in the central stockpile to dwarves coming to acquire goods.  Define everything traded by the Fortress store to have no price (and that this price is not to be changed) so that people can just take what they want (using the shopkeeper as an intermediary).  Also, decree that dwarf-to-dwarf bartering is prohibited, and define how much of what each dwarf can own (which the shopkeeper could help enforce... depending on how good of a bookkeeper she is).  If we are following the model proposed in the linked paper, there would be mechanisms in place for the shopkeeper to record the number of different commodities traded, as well as commodities that people wanted to trade for but couldn't.  The accuracy of this information could be determined by bookkeeping skill and other things.  Anyway, also decree that this information be available to you as well as a designated manager dwarf (or some intangible mechanism in the game).  The manager dwarf (or whatever) would manage assigning dwarves to appropriate jobs to keep supply meeting demand the way you suggest.  And you can do as you please in response to the information.  There you have it.

[GoblinCookie]

I am not sure I understand what you are saying.  Allow me to clarify my previous statement with an example.  If a dwarf decides to do X instead of Y, it has made a value judgement.  X has priority over Y, which translates to X has a greater value than Y with respect to that individual dwarf.  And it has made a trade of sorts.  It trades the opportunity for doing Y for the opportunity to do X.  No personal wealth, whatever that means, is required.  If X and Y had no relative value ascribed to them, then either there would be no decision or if there was a decision, what is done next (X or Y) would essentially be a coin flip.

At the moment there is no choice as to whether to X or Y in your example.  A dwarf does not have to decide whether it wants to eat goat meat or get itself a new *pig tail cloak*.  Provided that both items are in stock it can have both since both items are freely available and not commercialised, there is no need to evaluate whether it would rather have one or the other. 

If both items are for sale then the dwarf has to make the kind of decision you mention, because it cannot afford to have both items.  Unless both items are very cheap or it is very rich, in which case things essentially work as they do at the moment, the dwarf can have everything without having to care about the relative value of particular item. 

These are the only two issues in situations of subsistence or where there is no real choice on the individual (dwarf) level.  And I agree with you if we are talking about how the game is now.

Perhaps I have not been clear... and it seems I haven't, but I am not trying to argue that one economic system in a fortress is better than any other or what is ideal for what circumstance.

I cannot think of a situation where pricing will work better than direct rationing.
 

It is really ironic that you say this when we are, in fact, debating complex economic stuff and that counting's suggestions actually relate very nicely to what you suggest... not to mention much about HOW it could be implemented.  It most certainly allows for a system as you suggest to be possible and, not only possible, but the best possible solution (or one of multiple good solutions) in (likely) many instances.  BUT it also serves as a foundation that allows for other economic strategies to be engineered by the player and, with regard to NPCs, arise emergently. 

Yes, we are in a roundabout way talking about economic theories.  This is what makes derailing the thread from a discussion about specific suggestions as to how the game should be developed to a discussion of my economist is better than your economist so much of a threat. 

Ultimately there is a whole legion of factors that apply in a real-life economy that do not apply in Dwarf Fortress and unless Toady One turns into an elf and lives for centuries this will always be the case.  For one the population of a player settlement is capped by default at 200 people and the largest AI settlements only ever have 10,000 people. 

Real world cities however can have millions of people. 

What is deceptive about internal commerce???  What I argue for is a robust system that can allow the player to engineer any economic system they want (including yours!!!) and for economic systems to arise as emergent phenomena in world gen without as few hard-coded structures as possible.  Your system is fine, and I agree that it would work splendidly.  BUT, what if in the future of the game there are situations where a centralized planned economy as you describe is not sustainable by the player?  Should there not be mechanisms in place to allow different strategies to be tried? 

The deceptive part is the assumption that it will make the game easier to manage.  The truth is that it merely adds a whole legion of additional values to keep track of.

And there exist many models (including those in suggestions that I linked to earlier) that can be borrowed from to serve as a starting point for representing this and interacting with this information in the game.  And the management the player would have to do and what "sets of numbers" the player would interact with would depend on how these models are implemented and if there are mechanisms in place to allow the player to delegate certain tasks to individual entities.  And it isn't internal commerce per se that would be introducing a whole set of additional numbers, but it is the mechanisms in the simulation that would need to be in place to allow for internal commerce to happen in the first place that would introduce these numbers.  And these numbers and mechanisms could be useful for much more than just internal commerce, even if internal commerce were prohibited within the fortress, and in fact could allow for any variety of systems.   

It is certainly possible to have the computer track down all the values for the player I admit.  But that comes to a question of realism, the game could tell you how much money is in every dwarf's pocket.  But how on earth do we actually know that information, magic? 

In my system I have at least modelled the labour required in running the system and transmitting the information.  The player is only informed as to the current unmet demands as a result of the labour of the dwarf reporting the demand at an office and (perhaps) the labour of the noble collecting the information. 

Internal commerce requires us to keep track of all the existing values (supply+demand) AND a whole set of existing values, in order to make far more complicated maths about prices basically.  All of this however adds no additional functionality into the game at present.

That is a fine system.  Though this is simply an extension of the current system.  Dwarves already take things from stockpiles based on their demands and do what they are told.  Right now, they just do not explicitly convey the information that a demand has not been met to you or anyone else, and their demands are extremely simple.  The only fundamental, qualitative difference here between your suggestion and the way things work now is that there is a way to directly communicate to the player as well as NPCs the aggregate demands of dwarves within a fortress.  The "universalization" of demands and ascribing value to individual things is an extension of the current "likes/dislikes" system and whatever governs when a dwarf decides it needs to get something.  This in an of itself is a worthwhile suggestion, though, and I am all for it!  And the "manager" is what is autonomous here more so than the dwarves; the manager just does the same thing the player does, which is tell the dwarves what to do, and the dwarves do it mindlessly as normal.

The manager is more than just the player.  The manager represents the fact that things do not run themselves and that there is labour involved in administrating a centrally planned system.  However the 'Player's Labour' is too much of a factor at present, I would like to make it for instance so that in order for the player to do anything it must be 'done' by a suitable noble, so essentially the only thing the player does is control nobles. 

The dwarves are still rather mindless even with more complex modifiers determining what they want: there are no underlying mechanisms in place that gives the dwarf the ability determine how and if to get what they want... for example, what if the fortress stockpiles never have what the dwarf wants (or not in time), despite making their demands known to you?  What if the dwarf realizes that someone else in the fort or outside of it has what they want?  It would be nice if individuals within the fort could decide things like "oh, I'm starving... perhaps I could steal this rationed plump helmet from the other person..." or "I want a microcline table, but the fortress stores are out and I broke my last one in a tantrum.  That person has a microcline table...  Maybe I could trade for it!".  Even if it was deemed illegal to barter with others individually in the fort by player decree, it would be fantastic to have the ability for dwarves to engage in such activities should it be allowed... plus it could plug into adventure mode quite nicely.

Stealing works nicely, if one dwarf owns an item that another dwarf demands and that dwarf has not been able to acquire that item then the first dwarf should, if cruel or selfish enough simply take the item.  The same applies to disobeying fortress rationing and taking from forbidden stockpiles, though in case it is more a case of being direspectful of authority in more general sense.  In all gives the law enforcement dwarf something to do (at the moment I do not even bother to even appoint a captain of the guard). 

Trade however is unlikely to happen.  This is because the other dwarf has nothing to give the dwarf in return for the microline table, since everything he has was taken from the stockpile for free.  If the dwarf comes along with something that he does not want but he knows the microline table dwarf wants then the microline table dwarf will refuse the trade because he can simply take the item from the stockpile once the other dwarf gives up and stockpiles the item. 

The only kind of trade that is actually possible is where one dwarf only wants a table in general and the second dwarf wants specifically a microline one; agreeing to share items that are sharable also makes sense (items having multiple owners).

Nor are there really mechanisms in place where the player can plug-in in a believable way to alter the economic system to affect how dwarves get what they want.  What I advocate is for the game to have mechanisms in place that allow not just your proposed strategy of managing resources in the fort (which is essentially not much different from how things are now) but any other strategy possible.  I would suggest the default state of things be that everyone can trade with anyone (decentralized market economy) and that the player (and NPC entities) can set policies that modify this to make it into whatever economy they want.  What would serve as the default model would be very much related what counting suggests in one of his suggestions (essentially this paper with a few added things) which would form the necessary foundation for everything.  With this model in place, it would allow for the player to mold the economy to what they want by using realistic mechanisms to do so, and would give dwarves much richer behavior which has ramifications well beyond the subject matter of this thread, not to mention tools to influence the economy outside of the fortress as well. 

No, most of the things that you and presumably the overpriced paper you are linked too take for granted as somehow natural are anything but. 

People's very thinking is determined by the basic social order they live in and this determines their economic behavior+logics.  The basic social order is POLITICAL act not an economic one, so to use an analogy economics is simply the smoke rising from the political fire. 

It is an foundational political decision that things are for sale and that people have only limited wealth to use to buy things.  This is enforced by a state with laws backed up with police and armies.  As a result we end up with a particular psychological setup by which we have to rank all our desires and this leads to all the supposadly spontaneous economic behaviours described by economists.

For example, to get to what you suggest (a planned centralized economy), you as the player could say that no shops are allowed other than one that is run by you and a designated dwarf shopkeeper.  Make available a central stockpile available for storage of all goods, decree that all things freshly produced by the fortress or obtained through trade with the outside belong to the fortress, and set a dwarf as the shopkeeper of the Fortress store which would "trade" whatever is in the central stockpile to dwarves coming to acquire goods.  Define everything traded by the Fortress store to have no price (and that this price is not to be changed) so that people can just take what they want (using the shopkeeper as an intermediary).  Also, decree that dwarf-to-dwarf bartering is prohibited, and define how much of what each dwarf can own (which the shopkeeper could help enforce... depending on how good of a bookkeeper she is).  If we are following the model proposed in the linked paper, there would be mechanisms in place for the shopkeeper to record the number of different commodities traded, as well as commodities that people wanted to trade for but couldn't.  The accuracy of this information could be determined by bookkeeping skill and other things.  Anyway, also decree that this information be available to you as well as a designated manager dwarf (or some intangible mechanism in the game).  The manager dwarf (or whatever) would manage assigning dwarves to appropriate jobs to keep supply meeting demand the way you suggest.  And you can do as you please in response to the information.  There you have it.

There is no need to prohibit most of those behaviors because they do not make sense for individual dwarves to engage in to start off with.  In order to have a market economy emerge items must first be coercively restricted from general availability, which is their natural state when you think about it.