Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SirHoneyBadger]

I actually really like the idea of dwarf banking: Who better to protect your money than a bunch of paranoid, militant, engineers, who are already, per capita, the richest folks around? Especially as it's pretty easy to find (if definitely not break into) the "bank".

For one thing, it would give our dwarfs a broader part to play, on the global scale, and give considerably more purpose to all that accumulated wealth we end up with.

For another, it could help counter-balance low dwarf birthrates, and relatively small land-holding (atleast aboveground), in terms of overall military and political power. A dozen dwarf soldiers, however tough and brave, become a lot more significant when they bring with them enough wealth to feed and arm a thousand allies. Allies they got because the king of those allies likes to gamble with the treasury, and really needs a loan.

Plus, it could be fun to finance wars and negotiate loans on the blade of an axe. Or to be the ones responsible for guarding the Demon King's crown jewels.

[Unfrozen Caveman]

Banking should be left to the humans.

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

[Granite26]

Banking should be left to the humans.

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

yeah, for humans and elves too, and they can give out chits saying how much gold you're owed.

of course, different dwarf forts would respect each others chits.

[Unfrozen Caveman]

My dwarves don't take chit from anyone! 

[Neonivek]

Dang it people stop bringing in modern day coin economics into medieval-renaisance coin economics.

No.  Money is valued for it's utility as money, for what it can buy.  Making a distinction between "representing value" and having value is a pointless semantic distraction

Well what I meant was... No matter what you do with a penny it will always be worth a penny which is tied to the economic power of the location it is associated with.

Rather then the medieval coins which is tied to the materials used to make those coins.

If Medieval Europe became extremely poor their coins would still be worth the around the same amount (If not worth more in fact) as the value of the coin is equal to the value of the materials.
If Modern Day Europe became extremely poor their coins would be near worthless.

What Paper money did was seperate the value of the object from the value of what the object represents. As I THINK the first Paper money was more along the lines of "IOUs" so to speak that could be redeemed.

[Granite26]

yeah, Neonivek, that's kinda what I was getting at with the 'Chits' above.  Medici banking and all that.

Although the Chinese floated a paper currency around, ahh (to WIKIPEDIA!) they started specie backed paper money in 960 but by 1455 had hyperinflation from a floated currency.

Basically, ya'll go read wiki on paper money and whatnot and come back.

[SirHoneyBadger]

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

Not to be rude, but what the hell other kind of banking are you promoting???

Some rickety human hut, run by a bum who isn't even out of the iron age?

I'll take a fortified room in a fortified Fortress, in the middle of a dwarf-guarded goddamn mountain to store my golden krugerrands, thank you very much!

[Starver]

What Paper money did was seperate the value of the object from the value of what the object represents. As I THINK the first Paper money was more along the lines of "IOUs" so to speak that could be redeemed.

Taking a bit of modern folding out of my pocket, and it quite definitely says, in fonts I obviously can't be expected to reproduce exactly here:

Bank of England
I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND THE SUM OF
FIVE
Pounds

(Signed)Andrew Bailey
Chief Cashier

London
For the Gov^r and Comp^y of the BANK of ENGLAND

That's just as a reference point.  My knowledge of numismatics does not extend towards whether yonder wayward colonies have the same sort of phrase on their own rebellious scrip.


Regarding, the question at hand, if caravans are going to be more discriminating ("I'm not taking 5,000 crafts from you again, they're fed up of crafts at all our other stops!") then that principle may well be somehow engendered into the Dwarven internal economy, though don't ask me how.  ("Socks again!?!  All there are are socks!  I wouldn't mind, but it isn't even Christmas!!!")

[NW_Kohaku]

Pardon my its-long-past-when-I-should-be-asleep crankiness, but why was this thread created?  It's the exact same argument that has gone into every single economy suggestion thread.  There was even another economy thread on the front page at the time. 

Inflation is just supply and demand for money.

There, now you can step up to argue about supply and demand, and forget that demand is an entirely separate factor from supply and has to be modeled too, so it can rehash that argument again, too.

I'm not even joking, inflation is just an oversupply of money.  All you need to do is apply the same mechanics of supply and demand onto gold and gold coins as you do on everything else, and you've already modeled this.  (Or at least, supply, you don't really need to model demand for money, although in a non-value-backed currency, you'd have to model faith in the currency.)  And Toady has seen dozens of these threads discussing this exact same thing at least a dozen times before.  Considering what's magenta on the devpage, it's probably already coded into the game.  Completely not worth discussing.

And then let me just quote myself on what I put in the other economy thread on the front page:

Well, since nobody else seems to be stepping up to comment on this...

For starters, it's worth pointing out that this game is supposed to be getting a major overhaul to its economic system very soon, which has been removed in preparation for the grand re-opening of the system.  The entire mineral scarcity of 31.19 is just a precursor to setting up global trading networks, and the economy is going to be built up from there.

Toady has talked about putting in supply and demand and such, although it's not perfectly clear what he has planned, exactly.

Beyond that, keep in mind that this is a HEAVILY discussed topic, and has been for years:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=74616.msg1862846#msg1862846
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70964.msg1728706#msg1728706
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69644.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73885.msg1833680#msg1833680
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=71259.msg1736829#msg1736829
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=23965.msg1564560#msg1564560
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=47685.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31736.msg446417#msg446417

This is just what I got off of searching for "economy" for the first few pages of hits before I got bored, and the thing stopped at 1000 hits.

Basically, I think it's worth just waiting and seeing what Toady actually does now that he's actually put his focus on the subject, since there's been plenty of suggestions thrown out there for Toady to chew on over the years.  For all we know, he'll address all your concerns. 

Trust me, the forums will explode with debate whenever the new economics system is thrown in, and everyone will be all-too-happy to throw their ideas for how to improve the system around when it first comes out, the way that the mineral scarcity caused the forums to explode when 31.19 came out.

And I'll point out that I was lightly mocked for even responding in that thread.  By the same people running up to discuss this one, no less.

[Unfrozen Caveman]

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

Not to be rude, but what the hell other kind of banking are you promoting???

Some rickety human hut, run by a bum who isn't even out of the iron age?

I'll take a fortified room in a fortified Fortress, in the middle of a dwarf-guarded goddamn mountain to store my golden krugerrands, thank you very much!

What?  I mean I don't want to see dwarves taking out loans from the bank and worrying about their credit scores.  I don't want to see banking in the game in any modern sense.

[JohnieRWilkins]

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

Not to be rude, but what the hell other kind of banking are you promoting???

Some rickety human hut, run by a bum who isn't even out of the iron age?

I'll take a fortified room in a fortified Fortress, in the middle of a dwarf-guarded goddamn mountain to store my golden krugerrands, thank you very much!

What?  I mean I don't want to see dwarves taking out loans from the bank and worrying about their credit scores.  I don't want to see banking in the game in any modern sense.

But dwarves already do have a credit card system. If you lock up your coins, and mint the bare minimum to keep nobles happy, then dwarves will pay with credit cards and no money will ever really change hands. How is that for modern banking?

[sockless]

Credit has been around for a long time. Read the Merchant of Venice for a good example (also a good example of anti-sematism)

[Granite26]

I don't think it's what you meant, but MoV is about as anti-semetic as Huck Finn is racist.

[idgarad]

Banking should be left to the humans.

The only sort of dwarf bank I'd care to see is a fortified room where coins and valuables are stored.

Pehaps Dwarves are Christians\Muslims and by tradition aren't allowed to charge interest, Armok will not stand for Usury!!

[Neonivek]

Taking a bit of modern folding out of my pocket, and it quite definitely says, in fonts I obviously can't be expected to reproduce exactly here

I am a bit surprised it still says that... Since you can't actually take pounds anymore.