Yes, you’d really have to change people. And I’m not naïve to think it would be easy, if at all possible.
The soviet economy was sectioned off from the rest of the world.
Hahahaha. Yes, people think this all the time. But they do it ass backwards. Change the system and people will change. Yet it doesn’t work. We are a product of evolution and as such we are very much like other animals in that we look to ourselves and our offspring first. We might help those in our in-group as it can have positive benefits for us as well. But helping those outside of our group…not so much.
No. I did not write anything such thing. I noted that because we don’t care about strangers all that much socialism does not work. I did not say we should.
You asked from “proof” one thing I can point to is Dunbar’s Number.
Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2] This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.[3] By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships.[4] Dunbar explained it informally as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar”.
Maybe. But my guess is we will have to be so different as to be unrecognizable to “us humans” today. Maybe if we evolve a hive-mind or something like it socialism might work.
And it was a dismal failure. The first attempt at introducing a socialist system was under Lenin. He abolished money and nationalized everything. There were no longer any profits or losses and it was so bad Lenin actually admitted it was a failure and they brought back money, prices, and profits and losses. Ironically, in the attempt Lenin thought the best way to run things was via…the military command-n-control used by Germany during the first world war. And the communists did things like prohibit strikes (ironic), made working obligatory (ironic), everything was run via a centralized bureaucracy (ironic). The effects were that workers in the cities moved to the country side where the probability of being able to feed oneself was higher, industrial output fell dramatically, there was a resurgence of barter which is bad in that it is highly inefficient as a mode of exchange due to the dual coincidence of want, trains were in need of repair but couldn’t get the necessary parts, and then when a drought hit…yup you guessed it millions dead due to famine.
So in late 1921 they switch over to the New Economic Policy. This policy brought back the market and capitalism, but subject to state control. All the bad ■■■■ above? It changed for the better. Food production rose dramatically, industrial output increased dramatically, etc. Of course there were some remaining foolishness such as price setting and such, but things got considerably better for the typical person in the USSR. Then along comes Stalin and his 5 year plans and collectivization, particular with farms…which again lead to an increase in excess mortality which is great way of saying people starved to death under Stalin’s plans. There was a famine in 1932-1933 with estimates of the dead being 5.7-7 million. Then in 1946-1947 with the estimated dead 1-1.5 million.
A screaming success!
In an attempt to bring this back to EVE and the topic of this thread…
PLEX are produced via a decentralized process. It is based on the demand and supply. As the price rises in game there is an incentive for players who use PLEX to obtain ISK to buy more PLEX and sell them on the market, which in turn will put downward pressure on prices. Also, as the price rises in game people who rely on PLEX for game time will buy less which puts additional downward pressure on prices. At the same time, as prices fall, the above process works in reverse. So prices will go up and down. When CCP has a sale, the overall effect should be to reduce the in-game price.
As for the long term price increase? That is most likely due to the way many markets work in practice vs. the economic text books. Determining the price of an asset is often one of discovery, especially a new product. For example, the IPO for Amazon stock was $18 and now the price is over $1,600. So early on participants in the market would engage in these transactions on the forums. A player would buy GTCs and then auction them off on the forums. So a player selling such GTCs might look at what the price typically is and then bump it up a bit to see if he can get more ISK. If the prices were “low” relative to the buyer’s reservation price such an auction process could see rising prices as sellers are testing out new prices. Does this mean prices will go up forever? No, not necessarily.
Consider the standard textbooks supply and demand graph, people often look at that and say, “That is what the price and quantity should be.” But that is actually kind of wrong. That is a limit result. That is, given enough time and no change to any other factors that could move supply or demand around the (price,quantity) pair will likely approach the equilibrium value. But there is a hidden assumption in there, “…and no change to any other factors that could move supply or demand around…” So if players are on average, getting more ISK in their wallet over time–i.e. they are becoming more efficient at acquiring ISK over time, then we might see an increase in the price of PLEX over time as well. And this will be offset to some degree as older players leave and newer players replace them. Look at the Lokta-Voltera predator prey nonlinear differential equations. Those are actually pretty simple when we consider what goes on in a market. You have different players testing out different strategies for acquiring ISK, you have market speculators testing out new strategies to make a profit off of fluctuations in the PLEX market. You might even have groups (e.g. Goonswarm) that work as a group as well in coming up with new strategies for making ISK. All of this is going to lead to a rather complex system. So the idea that, “just set the price at 1 million ISK and it will be awesome” is actually rather dubious. It will be awesome for some, but not so awesome for most.
For the past couple of years, we have seen PLEX prices move around what? 2.6-3.4 million ISK? We have seen crazy ass predictions that soon PLEX will be 8 or 10 miillion ISK, but they always fail to materialize. It is quite likely that 3 million is the current exchange rate for $ for ISK.
Will PLEX prices continue to rise? Maybe, but in looking at enough time series over the last 20 years one thing I have learned is that what seems like a sure thing often is not.
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I’m not sure if that was sarcasm, but I suspect not. You do realise all of those things cost a ■■■■ ton of money, right? none of those things are free or ever could be. But the socialists want someone else to pay for the stuff they get for free… Oh…
I think your country needs to invest more of its wealth into education.
Unless you were home schooled on right wing websites. In which case, I take back what I thought about your schools. They’re probably fine. Well…as fine as you get when steeped in propaganda and exceptionalism.
And we’re down to the clichéd left-wing personal attacks. I love a good stereotype.
And now we’re playing the victim card instead of admitting our ignorance of what Socialism is.
A kind, nice and humane ideology for people completely oblivious of the reality of our specie and our nature, who wonder why things go south every time they try to implement their policies, wich work for a short amount of time but systematically fail on the long run.
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You are wrong on this, IMHO. I needed to sell 3 months of PLEX to buy 1.5 bilion ship when 1 month was about 500 milion. Now I need to sell only one. So 3 times less plex comes to the market. And I seriosly doubt amount of plex sellers raised that much in last few years.
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The law of supply says you are an idiot.
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PLEX trade amount stats “says you are an idiot”. Less PLEX is sold when price gets higher. Simply because there is only that many members of the society, who use PLEX to fund their game.
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You disagreed with him and then hammered home his point with a graph…
What you’re probably looking at is an expectation for prices to rise and a withhold of supply.
Whoever is cornering or working on cornering the PLEX market, could your alt write a write-up? Awhile ago a guy who did that with projectiles rigs in Min space did that, and it was fascinating reading. Only a few hardcore Market nerds read it, of course, so wasn’t much skin off his nose.
The problem with erg_cz’s argument is that he is assuming that there is a constant ISK amount the PLEX seller is trying to raise. Which may very well be true for some people who were selling ISK say 8 years ago and are still selling today. However, the law of supply basically says that as the price rises people who were previously not willing to trade cash for PLEX and then sell them for ISK now see such a set of transactions as worth engaging in.
Further, as Daichi points out you are likely confusing cause and effect here. Is the price high because the number of PLEX being sold is low or is the number of PLEX being sold low because the price is high? Those two things are not at all the same.
Consider the data in your link, April 26th has rather low price and also a low number of PLEX on the market. Price is 2.92 million ISK with 1.29134 million. Then on the 27th we see a price of 3.075 million and the number on the market is over 2.8 million PLEX. Or look at Nov. 25th. Not exactly a low price and a very high number of PLEX on the market.
See the dynamic goes like this…price falls so people who might sell PLEX for ISK leave the market–i.e. they do not buy PLEX and put them on the market. As the number of PLEX on the market declines competition for the remaining PLEx limit that downward trajectory of PLEx and eventually it reverses. As PLEX prices rise more and more PLEX sellers enter the market.
And of course, there are PLEX sales too. Ideally you’d want to note when the number of PLEX on the market is high and when there is a PLEX sale. A PLEX sale means that people who might not have entered the PLEX market as a seller will do so when the $ price is lower. And when would you want to have a PLEX sale if you are CCP…when the price is high. You’ll sell that many more PLEX. And what is the marginal cost of PLEX…very, very, very low.
One must be **** to apply real life rules to player base of Eve Online. It is not about efficiency of trade, it is about life style, or better to say, play style. Who was crabbing will keep crabbing (‘wife will kill me if I use real money for the internet game, that can be played for free’ paradigm), who was using shorter way to ISK (via RL wallet) will keep do so what ever PLEX price will be.
In the year long graph you will see, that PLEX price rise in the second half of the year not only did not lead to additional supply, it even shows somewhat decrease in selling amount of PLEX. Now who is the idiot?
Who cares about PLEX prices as long as you can buy them low in August and sell them high in December?
Why? We have a functioning economy in the game. Why must the tenets of economics cease to hold in a simulation…after all economists use simulations and games all the time.
I said nothing about efficiency, but about mutually beneficial gain which is the underlying element of any transaction both in and out of game. Why do you buy stuff off the market vs. say making it yourself…mining ore, refining it into minerals, setting up a moon mining operation, researching BPOs, maybe making BPCs, etc.? Two reasons: 1. opportunity cost and 2 transactions costs. Buying stuff you need/want off the market saves you on both of those. Totally rational economic decision making.
Not necessarily. Everything has an opportunity cost. This game should have taught you that. In your example, the player might keep on crabbing…up to the point his wife starts bitching about the amount of time he spends playing that dumb game. The idea that opportunity cost is not increasing beyond a certain point is totally ridiculous.
Actually, the volume on the market is about the same…and try not to draw too much of a conclusion form price and quantity alone…you are dealing with a system of two equations.
The PLEX market is probably too big to corner.
I have to wonder if these simulations of RL comprise of an economy with respawning everything as well as unlimited free post grad education for the the few (us capsuleers)?
But you got one thing almost right. There is a “functioning” economy in the game. It even runs for up to months at a time before God has to step in and tweek base prices, bounties, quantity over time, etc.
So why must the tenets of ecomonics cease to hold in a simulation? Because it’s a really unrealistic bad simulation…duh.
Considering these games and simulations often use undergraduates or graduate students…
“God” does not have to. CCP does step in because players respond to changes and over time they take what was in balance and make it unbalanced. That is what you have to do with a complex system like EVE. What looks to be in balance soon becomes unbalanced as players find ways to optimize relative to whatever CCP has done.
I don’t see how that compares with real life.
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