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[Alfrodo]

Things like weapons, ammunition, and certain tools such as jugs would be barred from sale to private shops, because those things are "vital" fortress items, restricting private weapons and armor to caravan and between-dorfs purchases or making the gear themselves.

I disagree here.  You should be able to set what can't be sold.  This way, if you have buttloads of crude, gobbosmithed copper whacksticks: You don't need to forbid those, but if there's some masterwork Snicker Snackers you'd rather leave for your military or adventurer, you can designate it as "Permanent Fortress Property" in the same manner as melting, forbidding and dumping.

$$*<<+xaluminum stop signx+>>*$$

But yeah. Barrels, Pots, Jugs. Yes.  Those should be set as P.F.P. as soon as they're made. But can be enabled for consumer use.  In case a dwarf wants to stockpile +Apple Roasts+ in his room.

[StagnantSoul]

Splint basically just explained my entire first post, minus the part about dwarves revolting (basically becoming grow eight year olds) or leaving the fort.

[GoblinCookie]

What a waste of time would that be. As long as you don't introduce complex concepts such as "price gauging" when there's a demand and supply shock, there's no need to add things like controlled pricing. I'm not even going into how incredibly fucking stupid price control (and even wage control, to be honest) is percieved as by economists even in the most basic level and what a historic failure it has been whenever it was attempted. It basically never worked, but that's we discussing real life ideology and economy again and I refuse to do that with you.

Fine, have your socialism, comrad. It wouldn't be completely out of place as a feature (just very confusing and posssibly game breaking if the game has any success in simulating an actual dynamic global economy) as long as you don't start selling it as a reasonable solution that was somehow the standard in classical and medieval societies.

What you are saying is that you can invent a magical flawless system of supply and demand that is never going to go wrong simply by eliminating certain nasty realities that you do not like.

Let's not bring consumer demand, supply, and all that into a discussion about the fort's internal stuff. For certain things, namely necessities, it's one thing, but for stuff like ores and whatnot, that's another.

That's a whole horrific can of worms we don't need reopened, and far more complicated than what would be fun to work with. Something like that is all well and good for a grand scale situation, but not the relatively small scale of Fort mode and a possible extension for the immediate area around it once you have a landholder. Our focus is simply too small for stuff of that nature to matter for us (or, in my opinion, not really a fun inclusion, just needless complication to intra-fortress activity.)

If Shop A has Item B and Dwarf C has money, he'll buy the item and get a happy thought/a stress reduction. If the item happens to be made from something that Dwarf C likes, even better modifier because of material preference. If the item is a necessity (shirt for example,) they'll get a happy boost because they won't have to buy it later/depend on government stock.

So we intend to have a market based upon supply+demand without any actual demand for items.  Or are you and Ribs not in agreement on something?

Dwarves with enough free time may opt to buy a shop if there are any available, and buy it from the fortress (basically buying it from the Mayor/Noble,) and buy a random assortment of goods based on the preferences of dwarves they know + thier own and material preference. Can limit what a given shop can sell by using the Manager to set it: Clothing Store (only sells clothes,) General Store (sells whatever,) Craft Items Store (sells crafting items such as toys, instruments and amulets.)

During break times or sufficient idle time, dwarves will go to the shops and buy items from the shop owners. Likewise, they may use public workshops to make items based on preference (after buying the materials from the Mayor/Noble,) to sell for a small profit later (be it to a fellow citizen, a visitor in the tavern, or a caravan,) or even keep for themselves. Might necessitate a "Private Stocks" screen possibly tabbed to from the "Fortress Stocks," to keep track of any privately owned weapons and armor in addition to other 'private' goods.

Things like weapons, ammunition, and certain tools such as jugs would be barred from sale to private shops, because those things are "vital" fortress items, restricting private weapons and armor to caravan and between-dorfs purchases or making the gear themselves.

I can't really say anything on the matter of food other than prepared meal prices desperately need to be changed. All for "raw" foods like meat and basic crops like plump helmets or squash being either free or dirt cheap so the population doesn't become a bunch of emaciated zombies.

Private shops are basically the most pointless idea ever.

[Ribs]

Things like weapons, ammunition, and certain tools such as jugs would be barred from sale to private shops, because those things are "vital" fortress items, restricting private weapons and armor to caravan and between-dorfs purchases or making the gear themselves.

I disagree here.  You should be able to set what can't be sold.  This way, if you have buttloads of crude, gobbosmithed copper whacksticks: You don't need to forbid those, but if there's some masterwork Snicker Snackers you'd rather leave for your military or adventurer, you can designate it as "Permanent Fortress Property" in the same manner as melting, forbidding and dumping.

$$*<<+xaluminum stop signx+>>*$$

But yeah. Barrels, Pots, Jugs. Yes.  Those should be set as P.F.P. as soon as they're made. But can be enabled for consumer use.  In case a dwarf wants to stockpile +Apple Roasts+ in his room.

Pots are so easy and cheap to make that they should hardly be considered a vital resource. The only reason they are now is because poduction is completely manual, so players often lose track of the ammount they have and end up forgetting to make more of them as the economy grows. Could be easily solved with automation mechanisms.

[Ribs]

What you are saying is that you can invent a magical flawless system of supply and demand that is never going to go wrong simply by eliminating certain nasty realities that you do not like.

Uh? Price control is incredibly stupid and never worked whenever it was attempted. There's no "flawless system", it's just that price control is pretty much retarded. I'm not even being controversial: there's pretty much a consensus amongst economists that price controlling practices never accomplish what they intended to do and should generally be avoided. Is that the nasty reality you're talking about?

[Alfrodo]

What you are saying is that you can invent a magical flawless system of supply and demand that is never going to go wrong simply by eliminating certain nasty realities that you do not like.

Uh? Price control is incredibly stupid and never worked whenever it was attempted. There's no "flawless system", it's just that price control is pretty much retarded. I'm not even being controversial: there's pretty much a consensus amongst economists that price controlling practices never accomplish what they intended to do and should generally be avoided. Is that the nasty reality you're talking about?

He provided a source for himself. You might want to read through it.

Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said "We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Controls blamed for U.S. energy woes", Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1977, Milton Friedman press conference in Los Angeles. For your Citation.

Also, what's wrong with Private shops?

[Ribs]

Also, what's wrong with Private shops?

It triggers his socialism.

[Splint]

Things like weapons, ammunition, and certain tools such as jugs would be barred from sale to private shops, because those things are "vital" fortress items, restricting private weapons and armor to caravan and between-dorfs purchases or making the gear themselves.

I disagree here.  You should be able to set what can't be sold.  This way, if you have buttloads of crude, gobbosmithed copper whacksticks: You don't need to forbid those, but if there's some masterwork Snicker Snackers you'd rather leave for your military or adventurer, you can designate it as "Permanent Fortress Property" in the same manner as melting, forbidding and dumping.

$$*<<+xaluminum stop signx+>>*$$

But yeah. Barrels, Pots, Jugs. Yes.  Those should be set as P.F.P. as soon as they're made. But can be enabled for consumer use.  In case a dwarf wants to stockpile +Apple Roasts+ in his room.

Well you know what I mean. Stuff made on government mandate of that nature would be kept for the fortress as a whole to use - barrels and such are too important to let any doof use them for whatever, and weapons and armor are military property; you want to own a sword? Buy one from a caravan or someone who made one for fun, cause the fort's not selling you one.

Granted yeah, you could lay some out for sale as a concession, but most salvaged gear players seem to mark as destined for the smelters anyway, to be remade into stuff the military needs more of or into a better form.

@ GoblinCookie: I meant that more as I almost always see stuff like that to be far too great a scale for us to care on the Fortress level. I'm more in favor of a simplified version of supply and demand based on preference and shop owners having that thing for sale. If they have a lower laziness trait, if they want something they may just buy the materials from the Mayor or Noble in charge and make the thing they want themselves, while lazier dwarves would prefer to wait until a shop owner or caravan has the item for sale.

As to shops, you have to facilitate buying and selling in some manner, and people usually use stalls or small shops to sell more than a tiny handful of things at a time (I can actually use modern stuff for an example: you average person may use craigslist or eBay to sell a single console or a small number of them, but if they owned a store, they could bulk order the things and potentially sell dozens or hundreds of consoles.)

If anything, it more acts as a place to put all the items a shop owner may have bought to sell for a profit so they don't have to store them in thier room (if they have one with usable storage,) or carry them on thier person. It wouldn't be a perfect system by any stretch, but it may work slightly better than before.

Splint basically just explained my entire first post, minus the part about dwarves revolting (basically becoming grow eight year olds) or leaving the fort.

Well, i kinda covered revolts earlier with it being based on availability of necessities. Idiot leader fails to ensure the population has enough of thing x for y amount of time, and eventually they'll get fed up with the poor leadership/direction of fortress production and go to depose him, whereupon the replacement will begin mandating the production of that necessity. The main culprit would probably be booze or clothing, since food being constantly in short supply would take care of the revolt problem on its own.

Main victim would probably be a between-elections mayor, since they're responsible for the day-to-day operation of any dwarf site.

[GoblinCookie]

Uh? Price control is incredibly stupid and never worked whenever it was attempted. There's no "flawless system", it's just that price control is pretty much retarded. I'm not even being controversial: there's pretty much a consensus amongst economists that price controlling practices never accomplish what they intended to do and should generally be avoided. Is that the nasty reality you're talking about?

Of course there is a consensum among (capitalist) economists that price controls are incredibly stupid!  In real-life of course price controls work very well for most people (hence why they exist), lifting millions out of poverty but are hurtful for the minority of shop owners whose interests being a minority are pretty much never taken into account in setting the prices, they would be better off if they were able to sell at the invariably higher price they would like to sell at.  The problems that exist are a predictable result of resistance to the system by which said owners find criminal means to get around the rules, for instance taking goods off shelves, smuggling them into warehouses, creating a shortage and then selling the goods on the black market.  The economists then take note of their efforts and then ascribe what is the result of deliberate human activity to mystical 'laws of economics'; if all shops obeyed the law there would be no economic problems with price controls. 

A price is set by human beings, not by a magical force.  There is therefore no difference between a government setting the price for something and a private shop owner doing so, in either case a human being is setting the price according to what they know.  What we have here is a power struggle, the government power is overriding the power of the shop's owners in order to serve broader social interests than the shop itself would naturally serve.  The shops do not like this for two reasons, the first is the material reason above mentioned and the second is an ideological reason, it threatens the whole concept of a 'private sector' objectively existing seperately of a 'public sector' and reminds of them of a threatening truth; that they 'own' everything they have solely by writ of government law and it could be given to another at the stroke of a pen.  As I like to say.

"Economics is merely the smoke rising from the political fire".

What having a flawed system and not having a means to manually override it means is that we are basically enforcing a constant stream of dwarf sacrifices for the sake of an economic system.  Think Aztec Pyramids just with an economic system being the god. 

What you are saying is that you can invent a magical flawless system of supply and demand that is never going to go wrong simply by eliminating certain nasty realities that you do not like.

Uh? Price control is incredibly stupid and never worked whenever it was attempted. There's no "flawless system", it's just that price control is pretty much retarded. I'm not even being controversial: there's pretty much a consensus amongst economists that price controlling practices never accomplish what they intended to do and should generally be avoided. Is that the nasty reality you're talking about?

He provided a source for himself. You might want to read through it.

Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman said "We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Controls blamed for U.S. energy woes", Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1977, Milton Friedman press conference in Los Angeles. For your Citation.

Also, what's wrong with Private shops?

I am rather unlikely to take any notice of the word of an extremist Capitalist economist like Milton Friedman.  Maybe we just should rename DF Libertarian Fortress, the game where the player does not play at all but instead passively watches dwarves starve to death for the greater glory of the Free Market. 

What is wrong with Private shops is nobody has a reason in the present DF setup to create them; a single fortress owned shop would serve the whole fortress perfectly fine with no actual complications, it is afterall a group of only 200 people. 

@ GoblinCookie: I meant that more as I almost always see stuff like that to be far too great a scale for us to care on the Fortress level. I'm more in favor of a simplified version of supply and demand based on preference and shop owners having that thing for sale. If they have a lower laziness trait, if they want something they may just buy the materials from the Mayor or Noble in charge and make the thing they want themselves, while lazier dwarves would prefer to wait until a shop owner or caravan has the item for sale.

As to shops, you have to facilitate buying and selling in some manner, and people usually use stalls or small shops to sell more than a tiny handful of things at a time (I can actually use modern stuff for an example: you average person may use craigslist or eBay to sell a single console or a small number of them, but if they owned a store, they could bulk order the things and potentially sell dozens or hundreds of consoles.)

If anything, it more acts as a place to put all the items a shop owner may have bought to sell for a profit so they don't have to store them in thier room (if they have one with usable storage,) or carry them on thier person. It wouldn't be a perfect system by any stretch, but it may work slightly better than before.

If you want individual dwarves to have money and buy things, you have to have a defined set of personal demands that your dwarves have or else they cannot save up surplus money nor can they decide between spending all their money on one hugely high-quality item and buying a whole set of low-quality items that includes a low-grade version of that item.

Shops have a role of course, but I was specifically talking about privately owned shops.  Really all we need is a shop where we sell/buy from our dwarves, a bank where we pay them their wages/they store their money and a marketplace where individual dwarves sell surplus personal items.

[Ribs]

Calm down, marxist friend. No need to start a revolution over this! We're all for making sure that the evils of capitalist stay the hell away from our beloved Dwarf Fortress, don't you worry.

Libertarian conspirators like Friedman should have no authority in anything! We all know that nobel prizes are manipulated by jews to inforce free market propaganda. Right, comrad?

Of course there is a consensum among (capitalist) economists that price controls are incredibly stupid!  In real-life of course price controls work very well for most people (hence why they exist), lifting millions out of poverty but are hurtful for the minority of shop owners whose interests being a minority are pretty much never taken into account in setting the prices, they would be better off if they were able to sell at the invariably higher price they would like to sell at.  The problems that exist are a predictable result of resistance to the system by which said owners find criminal means to get around the rules, for instance taking goods off shelves, smuggling them into warehouses, creating a shortage and then selling the goods on the black market.  The economists then take note of their efforts and then ascribe what is the result of deliberate human activity to mystical 'laws of economics'; if all shops obeyed the law there would be no economic problems with price controls. 

hahahaha. I live right next to Venezuela. Why don't you go there and witness what price control is doing to their economy. It's certainly not lifting anyone out of poverty, but it certainly is creating shortages. This happens all the time: when the government introduces price control, eventually all you end up with are breadlines.

[Splint]

I'll admit I'm not taking things like quality (or quantity) into account, merely preference for the item in question and/or material, and the money from thier usual job to pay for it.

Price for something would probably be a combination of the usual base price (let's say, 10 here,) + quality/half (so a well-crafted item would be worth 15,) + material/half rounded up (tetrahdrite would make the item go from 15 to 23) and a small addition possibly based on how greedy the dwarf is (someone not very greedy may mark it up by only 10% to 25, while a greedy shithead may mark theirs up by 20+% to say, 30.) obviously this a gross oversimplification using slightly flawed math (i'd have to make a tetrahedrite mug to determine it's value,) but it'd be a good base to work from, at least in my opinion, with the game's item value mechanics as they are.

For obvious reasons, no adamantine items would be allowed for sale to private citizens. Ever.

That leaves price to be varied partly determined by unit personality rather than government, at least for between-residents stuff. Demand will always be there at least in part because the choice of items someone wants to sell are based on thier relationships' preferences as well as thier own.

Marketplaces: Just an area with tables designated as an activity area (the tables acting as stalls.) Number of tables disconnected from eachother is the number of people selling there possible at any given time. Once we have hill folks coming to sell excess produce and or crafts, it'd probably be smart to have a large area designated and set up to accommodate both parties or have lots of smaller ones.

Private Shops: Shops is probably inaccurate for what I really meant, probably better to describe them as a private storage shed for storing stuff someone wants to sell, rather than a little chest where the person stores personal effects.

Banks: Similar to the above mentioned, possibly with a dedicated banker who needs a modest office to doll out pay (perhaps as subordinate to the Tax Collector.) need chests to store the coins, and obviously the coins themselves. Pointless fun fact, I often build big ass coin vaults and banks for fun anyway.

[Ribs]

Private Shops: Shops is probably inaccurate for what I really meant, probably better to describe them as a private storage shed for storing stuff someone wants to sell, rather than a little chest where the person stores personal effects.

Banks: Similar to the above mentioned, possibly with a dedicated banker who needs a modest office to doll out pay (perhaps as subordinate to the Tax Collector.) need chests to store the coins, and obviously the coins themselves. Pointless fun fact, I often build big ass coin vaults and banks for fun anyway.

Don't let him bully you with his anti-capitalist rethoric. Shops are fine. They have been a trope in rpgs since forever, and are a fun concept to play around with.

They don't even need to be "private", per se. They could easily work like taverns: a designated building composed by a number of rooms that is run by shopkeepers (like taverns/inns are run by innkeepers). I'm not against the idea of them being "privately" owned, though, because I'm not a communist.

[Splint]

Private Shops: Shops is probably inaccurate for what I really meant, probably better to describe them as a private storage shed for storing stuff someone wants to sell, rather than a little chest where the person stores personal effects.

Banks: Similar to the above mentioned, possibly with a dedicated banker who needs a modest office to doll out pay (perhaps as subordinate to the Tax Collector.) need chests to store the coins, and obviously the coins themselves. Pointless fun fact, I often build big ass coin vaults and banks for fun anyway.

Don't let him bully you with his anti-capitalist rethoric. Shops are fine. They have been a trope in rpgs since forever, and are a fun concept to play around with.

They don't even need to be "private", per se. They could easily work like taverns: a designated building composed by a number of rooms that is run by shopkeepers (like taverns/inns are run by innkeepers). I'm not against the idea of them being "privately" owned, though, because I'm not a communist.

Still, the private storage shed thing is more what I was thinking.

[Alfrodo]

LOTS of questions here:

"Economics is merely the smoke rising from the political fire".

Who said that?

What having a flawed system and not having a means to manually override it means is that we are basically enforcing a constant stream of dwarf sacrifices for the sake of an economic system.  Think Aztec Pyramids just with an economic system being the god. 

Sacrifices? Where are the dwarves dying from supply curves?

Of course there is a consensum among (capitalist) economists that price controls are incredibly stupid!  In real-life of course price controls work very well for most people (hence why they exist), lifting millions out of poverty but are hurtful for the minority of shop owners whose interests being a minority are pretty much never taken into account in setting the prices, they would be better off if they were able to sell at the invariably higher price they would like to sell at.  The problems that exist are a predictable result of resistance to the system by which said owners find criminal means to get around the rules, for instance taking goods off shelves, smuggling them into warehouses, creating a shortage and then selling the goods on the black market.  The economists then take note of their efforts and then ascribe what is the result of deliberate human activity to mystical 'laws of economics'; if all shops obeyed the law there would be no economic problems with price controls. 

It's not just the shop-folk that get hurt.  Let's say the price of corn dropped to $3 a bushel.

The supply of corn would dramatically drop because FARMERS WOULD STOP GROWING IT BECAUSE IT BECOMES MORE DIFFICULT TO MAKE A LIVING OFF OF IT.

Aha! Says GoblinCookie, deflecting my point off of his shiny, handsome chest while flexing his impossibly shiny muscles.

"What if you put price control on ALL THE CROPS?! Neh!?!" He says, as 3 different women rub Brazil nut oil onto his smooth skin.

Then all the farmers go broke, end up selling their land and getting new careers as tailors, tenors, and terrorists.
3 months later, everyone is fighting over bags of cornmeal like nuclear secrets.

I am rather unlikely to take any notice of the word of an extremist Capitalist economist like Milton Friedman.  Maybe we just should rename DF Libertarian Fortress, the game where the player does not play at all but instead passively watches dwarves starve to death for the greater glory of the Free Market. 

Extremist? He was a University Professor. I don't see anything about violent capitalist insurrections here. 

Dammit.  Ninja'd thrice.

[Ribs]

I'm also the guy insisting on introducing fixed, controllable wages by the way. That's basically the least "free market" concept you can come up with, by I think it would fit well with the way DF works.

I'm not for a libertartian fortress or whatever you think I'm trying to sell, I'm just against it becoming a weird socialism simulator with concepts like price control that were historical disasters becoming the standard.