Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => Player Driven Content => Topic started by: Elmund Egivand on 24 Feb 2016, 21:50
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((Tactlessly interrupting. The fact about workers being paid in ISK bothers me. ISK, as I understand it, emerges out of the need for a common currency more suited for space-based industry and trade. Without ISK, 1 unit of Tritanium would be paid for with some absurd digits in local government/planetary/regional currency. The conversion rate of ISK to planetside currency is thus very high.
Armed with this knowledge, I must ask. How much does a bucket of chicken cost in Rennaissance? What about a pack of cigarettes?))
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((Tactlessly interrupting. The fact about workers being paid in ISK bothers me. ISK, as I understand it, emerges out of the need for a common currency more suited for space-based industry and trade. Without ISK, 1 unit of Tritanium would be paid for with some absurd digits in local government/planetary/regional currency. The conversion rate of ISK to planetside currency is thus very high.
Armed with this knowledge, I must ask. How much does a bucket of chicken cost in Rennaissance? What about a pack of cigarettes?))
(( Aha! nice catch! As a result of this, cost inflation is rampant. A pack of cigarettes might cost 5 ISK. That's also about the price of a meal in most decent restaurants. The minimum wage in Origin is 20 ISK per hour. Most of the small startup restaurants and seemingly small scale family chains were handed huge sums of ISK by the government. Most everything is driven by this, and the economy is, to a large degree, capsuleer subsidized. ))
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((Tactlessly interrupting. The fact about workers being paid in ISK bothers me. ISK, as I understand it, emerges out of the need for a common currency more suited for space-based industry and trade. Without ISK, 1 unit of Tritanium would be paid for with some absurd digits in local government/planetary/regional currency. The conversion rate of ISK to planetside currency is thus very high.
Armed with this knowledge, I must ask. How much does a bucket of chicken cost in Rennaissance? What about a pack of cigarettes?))
(( Aha! nice catch! As a result of this, cost inflation is rampant. A pack of cigarettes might cost 5 ISK. That's also about the price of a meal in most decent restaurants. The minimum wage in Origin is 20 ISK per hour. Most of the small startup restaurants and seemingly small scale family chains were handed huge sums of ISK by the government. Most everything is driven by this, and the economy is, to a large degree, capsuleer subsidized. ))
((So, on one hand the prices of necessities are inflated massively compared to rest of New Eden but, on the other hand, a middle-income family can conceivably own a frigate and potentially improve their lot in life?))
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[mod]OOC Discussion thread for IC Thread created. Carry on.[/mod]
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I'm not sure how much said middle income family suddenly owning a frigate would help things. That family wouldn't know the first thing about conducting business at that level any more than most of us would know what to do if we suddenly found ourselves in control of General Motors. I think if John Q. Origin took his incredible sum of ISK back to New Eden, bought a Baseliner-model Incursus and hired a couple of hands to start playing Firefly, he'd be penniless within the month and begging to raise money for a shuttle trip back to Renaissance.
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A heavily strong currency like ISK would usually result in disproportionate purchasing power by individuals compared to others. This normally favours an import heavy economy, and would require huge subsidising by the central authority (capsuleers) to keep injecting money into the system to keep up with money running out of it (from purchase of imports, individuals taking said money and leaving origin to spend it elsewhere etc)
Technically, it can completely work, but it'd expose the colony to the high inflation isk is currently seeing, and without being able to set their own interest rates/quantitive easing options, injecting more isk from reserves is about all the options the Origin economy has to keep things in check. That's the risk of being dependant on a 'foreign' currency for day to day purchases rather then it being a simple 'exchange' currency.
That said, capsuleer crews (or atleast the families) are likely to be making fat stacks as well, so that might be an in character explanation towards inflation since capsuleers do actually use isk for the most part as a day to day currency. ISK has evolved from simply being an economical tool for knocking zeros off of transations and putting value on 'space' inside trade ships (something that was the original intent according to Falcon on Slack)
Anyways, that's the only imput I'll make here as I'm trying to avoid having any input to the direction Saede and Co want to take in this tour. For the record, my broadband is down so I can't get on eve for a few days, but I do have my phone for posting here, so hopefully this explosion business can get sorted.
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From a strictly local perspective, it works well. Yes everything is inflated with respect to New Eden, but everyone makes more money as well, so it balances out with ISK seeming to behave like a planetary currency. The abundance of resources, combined with the import bottleneck that Juno represents, means there's a strong artisan community. This runs against the import drain that would slowly leech ISK from the system.
But as for John. Q. Origin, he could easily do that. Just like an American today could go to Somalia with all their money and try to become the greatest pirate of the age. That doesn't mean he won't regret it.
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I'd just like to note how interesting this collaboration is for me, and to see the crafting of such a world-build. The cadence of the contributions is very well thought out - you guys must have a very good sense of each other's timing, expectations and likely narrative direction - and the sense of trust is mightily impressive.
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As a side note, 1 ISK seems to widely be regarded, Eden-side, as a LOT of money.
Are you sure that cigarette pack might not be more like .05 ISK? That's still gignormous by K-space standards.
A note on Aria and the local data net:
Aria's personal system is a slightly less polite guest than she is, herself. Specifically, it's a nasty high-end professional hacker's tool kit (greatly mitigated by the lack of an Anathema or similar hacking frigate). In game terms, she's got a head full of hacking implants. This is the closest thing Aria normally carries to a weapon.
While the expert systems she's got running are likely to stage an automatic and disproportionate retaliation against, for example, advertising systems trying to circumvent her content preferences (+10 virus coherence bonus ftw!), their main function planetside is to seek and sift through tidbits of local data for patterns that might interest their owner. The focus is on stuff that you're not likely to find in a tourist brochure: socioeconomic and political trends, what's "hot" on the local black market (if any), topics or persons of special concern to local authorities and population, and so on.
They don't hack anything they can't basically just lift the lid on and look inside (unless provoked or given orders to do so), but they cast a broad net and they're avid fisher-- uh, programs. Aria will be idly reviewing things they come up with as she explores (a bit like listening to the radio as you walk).
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Urgh CCPlease. Now even forums are down for me vOv
Anyways. I guess it'll be handy to post this here: fair warning Saede and Co. Utari is going to be pumping for dry information and facts. Be prepared for this, since it's stuff I actually enjoy (facts, figures, systems) and stuff he's after knowing. I pushed the whole splitting up thing specifically so we all get breathers (especially the authors of the colony) and a chance to explore other things and themes as we go along.
Utari's implants aren't gonna be all that active save for private feeds and the like. He'll switch things on as and when someone points out any AR details and the like he might want to see, but mostly he tries to keep the 'noise' to a minimum. He'll be keeping half an eye on the drone feed though.
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As a side note, 1 ISK seems to widely be regarded, Eden-side, as a LOT of money.
Are you sure that cigarette pack might not be more like .05 ISK? That's still gignormous by K-space standards.
I've been skimming a bit as I work on the Canon pages, and when I saw this in Khadrea (http://wiki.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?title=Khadrea), it made me think of this topic:
“I know the tribe’s agent was going to pay you, but I’ll throw in six million Amamake credits to make it worth your while. How does that sound?”
“At current exchange rates, that’s about 3,600 ISK,” the capsuleer responded dryly. “Besides, Amarr customs will not allow me through with contraband.”
That's one particular planet's exchange rate sitting at approximately 1,666.66 Local Currency = 1 ISK. Interesting that I hadn't really paid attention to it before, and that's one of my favorite stories. I know I saw another mention of an ISK-to-local comparison but I forget what article it was in.
Makes me look at just about everything in Eve and the Market in a fresh, new light.
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ISK smooths the value curves so everything falls closer to 1 ISK then it would in another currency.
Examples: a two liter of quafe is 2 ISK. A candybar is 1 ISK. A really posh fancy dinner might be 5 ISK. A hotel stay for a weekend might be 25 ISK.
Everything gravitates towards that 1 ISK value. Expensive things get cheaper, cheap things get more expensive.
Also, sorry I haven't posted ICly in a few days, I've been really busy with work.
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ISK smooths the value curves so everything falls closer to 1 ISK then it would in another currency.
Examples: a two liter of quafe is 2 ISK. A candybar is 1 ISK. A really posh fancy dinner might be 5 ISK. A hotel stay for a weekend might be 25 ISK.
Everything gravitates towards that 1 ISK value. Expensive things get cheaper, cheap things get more expensive.
Also, sorry I haven't posted ICly in a few days, I've been really busy with work.
But why? It's divisible down to hundredths of the unit of currency, much like the dollar.
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ISK smooths the value curves so everything falls closer to 1 ISK then it would in another currency.
Examples: a two liter of quafe is 2 ISK. A candybar is 1 ISK. A really posh fancy dinner might be 5 ISK. A hotel stay for a weekend might be 25 ISK.
Everything gravitates towards that 1 ISK value. Expensive things get cheaper, cheap things get more expensive.
Also, sorry I haven't posted ICly in a few days, I've been really busy with work.
But why? It's divisible down to hundredths of the unit of currency, much like the dollar.
I think in Origin, the ISK is treated similarly to how the Yen is treated in real life: no usage of the decimal number.
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That's certainly what Saede is indicating, but it makes no sense to me. Especially since it's clear canon that it is divisible.
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From an OOC standpoint, I started off with the basic statement that 1 ISK in Origin has about the same buying power as 1 american dollar irl. I did this not for any lore reasons, and just because it simplified things when I was roleplaying in Origin in the past.
However, this cannot make sense entirely, because there's just no way that everything is that inflated, and the fact that it isn't a 1:1 ratio becomes more and more apparent as you get larger quantities of ISK. A new car in the real world might cost 35,000 dollars, but there's no way its going to cost 35,000 ISK, even in Origin the inflation doesn't get that bad. It would be more like 3,500 ISK, so somewhere between those two values, the ratio becomes skewed by an order of magnitude.
This sort of makes sense to me anyway, because of the import and shipping bottleneck that Juno represents.
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From an OOC standpoint, I started off with the basic statement that 1 ISK in Origin has about the same buying power as 1 american dollar irl. I did this not for any lore reasons, and just because it simplified things when I was roleplaying in Origin in the past.
However, this cannot make sense entirely, because there's just no way that everything is that inflated, and the fact that it isn't a 1:1 ratio becomes more and more apparent as you get larger quantities of ISK. A new car in the real world might cost 35,000 dollars, but there's no way its going to cost 35,000 ISK, even in Origin the inflation doesn't get that bad. It would be more like 3,500 ISK, so somewhere between those two values, the ratio becomes skewed by an order of magnitude.
This sort of makes sense to me anyway, because of the import and shipping bottleneck that Juno represents.
Isn't the bottleneck just going to result in someone setting up a local agricultural or hydroponic facility for coffee, sugar, chocolate, etc., producing a high-quality product at a fraction of the cost of import, and charging a fraction of an ISK for a candy bar? Unless there's something about Origin's system that actually forbids splitting the ISK?
(And if there is, that would seem to create a race to produce the lowest cost-per-item 1 ISK purchasable that's desirable enough to sustain that cost....)
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The only answer I can give as to why local wares haven't pushed out all the imported goods like quafe, is just brand recognition. Everyone knows about Quafe and Starsi and when they go to a store those are the things they look for (like coke or pepsi). The local stuff is cheaper, but it lacks that brand recognition. So yeah, for .05 ISK you could get a two liter of off brand quafe. Or you can pay 1 ISK and get a two liter of actual quafe.
Combine that with the high minimum wage and standard of living, and most people would rather have the more expensive brand name item. In time local wares will probably become more and more predominant, but even with most of the food being grown in-system, there's still a ton of import for things like name brand food, clothing, cosmetics, consumer electronics, ground vehicles, and the like.
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Only the real Quafe is actually made of people, though.
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Just my .02 ISK...(for what it's worth ;) :P):
I never read anything that indicates that ISK is worth a huge amount, and I think it is not unlikely that in systems like Luminaire, for example, and ISK is worth about a dollar. I'm sure there are huge areas of space where an ISK is worth much more, but remember that a loooot of people on earth live on one dollar a day.
So, there this bit about an avarage human being in New Eden working a lifetime to earn X ISK? That just indicates a lot of poverty to me, and perhaps slaves were also taken into account in that average.
And capsuleers being insanely rich? Well, they still are, even if 1 ISK is worth about a dollar.
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Just popping in to see if we're still rolling with this? I know we can all have busy lives.
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sorry, sorry, I finally posted. My bad for letting it go as long as it did.
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I just wanted to comment that I find this RP very interesting. Saede and the rest of the Origin crew have done some great work world-building.