Re: New Xconq Features

["Michael M. Tiller" <mtiller@ford.com>]

Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 15:35:48 -0700
From:  Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>
Subject:  Re: New Xconq Features

> For instance, while other materials might have prices, money
> itself does not.

Sure it does.  $5 costs exactly $5.  In other words, its exchange rate
is 1:1.

Its seems to me what you need to be concerned about here are the
exchange rates between materials.  So, oil might be $40 a gallon
(i.e. single unit for oil) while gold is $320 an ounce (i.e. single
unit of gold).  So, an ounce of gold can buy 8 gallons of oil.  If you
don't want to keep a table comparing the price of everything to
everything else you simple maintain the value of each
in...*tada*...money.  So the thing that distinquishes money from
everything else is the fact that is a "reference" for the value of
everything else.  Of course, if you have a "gold standard" then the
price of gold would be fixed (assuming I understand the "gold
standard" principle which was abandoned when I was what...4 years
old).

> It's possible that "money-ness" is a property of a material,

Perhaps a better word to use would be the word currency instead of
money and commodity instead of material (just a thought).  To keep
things simple you may want to confine yourself to one kind of currency
(unless of course you are willing to model the economies of separate
autonomous nations and the fluxuations between exchange rates of one
currency for another).  Now, in a given economy (i.e. one currency)
everything has a value in that currency.  So yes, "money-ness" is a
property of a material.

> (Note this is different from having "gold" and "silver"
> materials, each of which would have a monetary value distinct from
> the abstract concept of money.)

As I said, gold's value might be tied directly to the value of money.


--Trade--

> although multiple material types each considered "money" is pretty
> weird.

If you model other economies then you can model trade which is the
exchange of goods between economies.  Each economy would have its own
currency.  Commodities may have different relative values in different
economies (e.g. a gallon of oil might be worth 3 ounces of gold in one
economy where oil is scarce and three gallons of oil might be worth 1
ounce of gold in an economy where oil is plentiful?).  With this
notion you could have situations where, for example, side "A" controls
a bunch of oil.  At the same time, side "B" is fighting with side "C"
but not with side "A".  Do they attack side "A", taking over oil
fields for their war with side "C" or do they simply pay side "C" in
something side "A" they really need like technology (do any of the
games model technology as a commodity) to get the oil.


Whew!

Take all this with a grain of salt, I'm an engineer not an economist.

Comments?

--
Mike