Price Gouging - Fair and balanced, or unfair

[Velociryx]

And quite beautifully illustrated by your earlier example re: Soviet excellence in base-level research, and parade of failures in actually bringing new stuff to market.

Top notch.

-=Vel=-

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Free market over Planned anyday, even for fledgling societies (sans massive worm activity that is)

[Velociryx]

Yes yes! But quite right, those worms, 'specially early game...really knock you for a loop...UGH

(which reminds me, I must get back to my favorite game.... )

-=Vel=-

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

It does make the point illustrative to consider Police State SE choice the equivalent of the desire for the select few to hold onto power using brutal means at the expense of innovative energy and Planned SE choice the equivalent of instituionalized beuractic innefficiency. And as one knows the combination of both normally means complete stagnation.

Simplistic models no doubt but the illustration holds.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Free market over Planned anyday, even for fledgling societies (sans massive worm activity that is)

But Planned combined with democracy and a children's creche for short periods can be a boom to your growth and is highly recommended

[Velociryx]

One of the (numerous) endearing traits of the game you make reference to is its thoughtful construction and attention to detail.

Oh, no doubt, the models are highly abstracted and simplistic compared to the real thing, BUT....they're grounded in reality, and sufficiently so that it serves as a good barometer.

Excellent analogy...

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Well I thouht about it for awhile. I thought about giving incentive or reward for innovation. Then I thought about how that would work out. The problem that I saw is the increase in supply that innovation creates. Planners would have two options. One, they could drop the price of the good, or two, they could displace workers. Of course, they could do a mixture of both. Then I realized that giving incentive for innovation is not as good as originally thought. The more innovation in the economy the more nightmares that are created in planning. Admittedly, even though this problem exists in capitalism, in communism it's worse. In the long run innovation is good for both, but the tendency will always be to keep innovation to a minimum in a planned economy. So, any incentive for innovation will have to be small if any. Communism of course does much better with higher technology, and slow rate of innovation. That is, communism is better as a future economy.

[Flubber]

So will you delay the revolution until technological advance stagnates-- say another thousand years before you bring it up again?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Flubber


But Planned combined with democracy and a children's creche for short periods can be a boom to your growth and is highly recommended

Well if you live in that addon universe, you can simply make everyone exstatically happy and achieve the same result sans planned.

[Velociryx]

Problem there though, is that innovation is still mostly driven by creative individuals and not by government think-tanks.

Even if you don't actively reward innovation, if I make a tool to enhance my personal productivity, I'll keep it a secret from you. I'll use it to do the same work in less time...which will give me "unfair" amounts of free time to think up ways of exploiting you and so forth.

Or, if I think I can get away with it, I'll pass myself off as a REALLY industrious worker and use my tool in secret to make significantly more stuff than my neighbors.

Since we're getting paid on the basis of piece-work, that means an "unfair" amount of salary over and above my neighbor...which gives me the means to exploit him.

Even if you don't compensate me for the invention itself. (cos I'll use it to compensate myself, at least on a certain level)

So what's next?

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I'd love to take credit for that gotcha, but in truth, you just skewered yourself.

Props, Kid....that was awesome.

-=Vel=-

I allowed you to create the context of the debate. Oh well, sometimes it's better to lose.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Flubber
So will you delay the revolution until technological advance stagnates-- say another thousand years before you bring it up again?

Let's take it day by day. I never claimed we were ready today anyway.

[Kidlicious]

btw, I like SMAC too, and I like to pop boom.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Problem there though, is that innovation is still mostly driven by creative individuals and not by government think-tanks.

Even if you don't actively reward innovation, if I make a tool to enhance my personal productivity, I'll keep it a secret from you. I'll use it to do the same work in less time...which will give me "unfair" amounts of free time to think up ways of exploiting you and so forth.

Or, if I think I can get away with it, I'll pass myself off as a REALLY industrious worker and use my tool in secret to make significantly more stuff than my neighbors.

Since we're getting paid on the basis of piece-work, that means an "unfair" amount of salary over and above my neighbor...which gives me the means to exploit him.

Even if you don't compensate me for the invention itself. (cos I'll use it to compensate myself, at least on a certain level)

So what's next?

-=Vel=-

First point is that most work will be done in teams so secrets won't be so easy to keep. Second point is, earning yourself free time isn't so problematic as earning more money. Three, there would have to be a ceiling on salaries. In general rewarding people with free time is much better and easier to plan, because supply will be more constant. Does that address everything.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
The whole innovation topic brings to mind a current dillma I am very much exposed to.

The fact is most companies are looking towards decentalized R&D that emphasizes business unit R&D development. The thought being that any breakthroughs are more aligned towardscustomer needs and also that innovations are geared towards a more entreprenurial approach.

The centralized R&D strengths are that it allows potenitally for cross fertilziation of ideas but suffers greatly in that often times breakthrough in innovation are poorly communicated to the sales/business arms and hence are not directed properly nor implemented.

The same parralels I think apply in grander scale to planned verses entrepenurial soceities. Hence while the Soviet union was magnificinet as basic research as evidenced by any number of chemists physicists etc. the implementation of these technologies into mainstream consumer products was greatly lacking as there was no driving force to do so.

Good point. I've studied this. Very interesting.