The Merchant Exchange

[GeneralTacticus]

It was their Totalitarian form of government that was causing the inefficiency, not the planned economy. darn those firaxians :doitnow:

-Mellian

No, it was the fact that the Gosplan didn't know squat about running an economy. It's impossible for any government to control a modern economy.

[Maniac]

It was their too centralist goverment that caused the inefficiency, because they didn't have the communication and transportation technology to control such an empire in such a centralist way. It's not their totalitarian government or their planned economy that did it. A centralist system of whatever sort could work in small political units, a village or at most a few cities, like our faction is right now, but not in a huge empire covering half of the world. I could dig up that "Political Compass" thread where I give my view on how SE should have been done.

[Mellian]

that would be cool

and general, nothing is impossible unless one choose it to be.

-Mellian

[Archaic]

Originally posted by Mellian
one thing i don't get is why a planned economy is inefficient in compirison to a Free Market? shouldn't be vice versa? I consider Free Market inefficient from what i see in the real world.

-Mellian

Go take a basic economics unit at University (Hell, even High School Economics if they teach it in your country), and you'll see why a Planned Model is inheriently more inefficient when applied to a massive economy. The main factor is that there's simply no way to get all the data required for that sort of planning....well...there is technically, but you'd all scream repression of freedom, so I won't bring it up.

[Mr. President]

Free Market economics is infinitely more efficient because the government isn't running the economy centrally.

On top of that, it's the only way to go if you want anything even approaching an acceptable standard of living.

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Mr. President
Free Market economics is infinitely more efficient because the government isn't running the economy centrally.

On top of that, it's the only way to go if you want anything even approaching an acceptable standard of living.

The United States, bastion of free-market economics, has the highest rate of infant mortality on the industrialized world, not to mention hunger. There are no laws requiring the minimum wage to be a living wage here and it is not uncommon to find people who are not at all lazy forced to live on 9000 dollars a year with no heat in northern states. More of this misery here than in planned and semi-planned European economies. We've got a way bigger classism problem as well, because property ownership has legal and moral priority over culture or community.

[Schinkenjoe]

i thought it´s inefficient because so much waste is produced, for example all these little tourist thingies , which get in binyard in every case .

[lucky22]

Originally posted by Schinkenjoe
i thought it´s inefficient because so much waste is produced, for example all these little tourist thingies , which get in binyard in every case .

"Efficiency" is a term meaning different things in different realms. Your interpretation is very correct as far as our physical world goes. Economic systems defined to maintain and develop capital define efficiency very differently.

I have made the point before that under the current free market hegemony the man who created Ronald McDonald has far greater status than any university maths or physics professor- even a thinker responsible for a complex new proof or astronomical breakthrough. Having my retirement invested in auto insurance spam advertising and happy meal toys remains upsetting. Especially watching it flush down the toilet lately.

[Gnool]

I'm sorry to bring up a new subject, but can we get back to the game ? It looks like Planetary Networks might be researched next, and that means a Planned economy will become available. Planned has +2 Growth +2 (or +1, I'm not sure) Industry and -2 Effeciency. My question is, should we switch to a planned economy as soon as it becomes available? I think we should. The +2 growth is very handy early on in the game, as it allows our bases to grow much qucker than they normally would, allowing us to build more colony pods and expand quicker. The industry bonus allows us to build things quicker, such as colony pods, scout rovers, terraformers etc. The -2 efficiency doesn't make much of a difference at the beginning of a game for whatever reason, so our cash flow and research won't suffer, as long as we don't leave it on Planned forever. Regardless of your real-life ideology, please take my request seriously. Think about it before you reject it!!

[GeneralTacticus]

I'm sorry to bring up a new subject, but can we get back to the game ? It looks like Planetary Networks might be researched next, and that means a Planned economy will become available. Planned has +2 Growth +2 (or +1, I'm not sure) Industry and -2 Effeciency. My question is, should we switch to a planned economy as soon as it becomes available? I think we should. The +2 growth is very handy early on in the game, as it allows our bases to grow much qucker than they normally would, allowing us to build more colony pods and expand quicker. The industry bonus allows us to build things quicker, such as colony pods, scout rovers, terraformers etc. The -2 efficiency doesn't make much of a difference at the beginning of a game for whatever reason, so our cash flow and research won't suffer, as long as we don't leave it on Planned forever. Regardless of your real-life ideology, please take my request seriously. Think about it before you reject it!!

-3 EFFIC will have a HUGE detrimental impact on our cash flow. Any base which is 7 or more tiles away from our HQ will lose all of it's energy output, while even within that distance will lose quite a lot. It's not as if our HQ is an economic powerhouse either.

[Gnool]

oh yeah :| what do you think of switching to planned and democracy at the same time?

[Pandemoniak]

oh yeah :| what do you think of switching to planned and democracy at the same time?

Its too expensive : first we switch to democracy, next year we switch to planned. Planned with frontier will cause -3efficiency, but that might worth the thing. We need to calculate the amount of production wasted by this efficiency before we can know if it is a wise choice.

[lucky22]

How many turns into the future do we want to consider these decisions and consequences? Once we have Children's Creches built, our efficiency worries are less severe. Meanwhile, at this juncture I'm sure planned will get the vote of the majority- it will be a harder sell down the road a piece.

[GeneralTacticus]

Its too expensive : first we switch to democracy, next year we switch to planned. Planned with frontier will cause -3efficiency, but that might worth the thing. We need to calculate the amount of production wasted by this efficiency before we can know if it is a wise choice.

I already did, above. 1/7th of a bases energy production will be lost for every square it is away from NA.

[Maniac]

Seeing there is no general Industry & Energy discussion thread, I'll post my comments here.

Dmm, my bureau for terraformation has finished several large terraformation works. Perhaps you might consider switching around some worker teams, such as:

New Tassagrad worker to forest.
Terminal Dogma worker to nutrient forest.
TBIBTU worker from a normal forest to the forest on the river.
Two Mysidia workers to the nutrient forest and a normal forest.

There are also several acres of our territory free for convoying resources, besides those in the foresty south. More precisely, the rocky minerals outside New Suez are unused. In our central territory there are also severel free forests outside the base radii. Perhaps these could be used too?

I also have several discussion points to throw in the group:

Soon several condensers will come on line, exponentially increasing our agriculture output. We of the bureau of terraformation are of opinion these squares could be most efficiently harvested by automated supply crawlers. My question is: should we give priority to crawling these squares or still put all our new crawlers on forest?

We have also noticed our industrial development is focused almost exclusively on New Apolyton. Several members of the CCCP have told me this causes growing unrest with our drone population. They believe the "elite in New Apolyton is creating extra comfort for themselves while ignoring the outer bases". So to prevent factionwide unrest I'd like to propose a more homogeneous development of our faction. To be more concrete, I'd suggest topping the mineral production of our bases at about 12 to 16 minerals. When a base has reached that production levels, the crawlers would proceed to improve the production of a next base. Also please don't send a crawler eg produced in Pandemonium all the way to the south to convoy!

My third discussion point is a more personal one. I closely follow the development of my home town Concordia and I believe it would be in the town's best interest to send a crawler to convoy the minerals there. The square produces 1-5-0, thus almost exclusively minerals. This would help the reconstruction program after the terrible earthquake that struck the region some years ago.

So what do you think? Crawlers to forest or condensers? Crawl only up to +- 15 minerals or crawl all for one base? And last but not least: a crawler for Concordia??