Rumfish Government & Economy

These are fine ideas but they ignore one simple fact. It is the policy of Rumfish.net that admins shall serve only to protect and maintain the server, not the game world. As such, admin staff shall endeavor not to affect the game world in any significant way. Parliament may claim authority over the game world but will never govern the server. The same applies in reverse. The admins have authority of the server but do not interfere with the game world. As such, admins will also never construct a bank or perform any other such favors. If there is to be a government or economy, it will be the responsibility of the players to maintain it. I think it will help you to refer to the "world" rather than the "server"

On those grounds, it may be ambitious for a Parliament to claim jurisdiction of the entire world. A government will only thrive by support of the players, not enforcement of administrators. As such, the Parliament must offer a beneficial service as an incentive for buy in. Now in the case of a town government, the people can receive a very direct benefit. Laws passed at this level affects people on a personal day to day level. A Parliamentary government, on the other hand, must have buy in from local organizations as it will not be able to benefit the individual directly. Where a town government may ensure there is food on the table, a national Parliament will provide things that are less tangible such as public transit infrastructure. This may be analogous to the difference between state roads and interstate highways.

I do like the idea of local and national governments. The trick will be to determine the role that they each would play.

As a note on MC Government in general, I feel like every time we have this discussion, we get locked into the same cycle. So I just want to summarize some previous sentiments regarding the institution of government. The government should only exist to provide an essential service that benefits people in some way which cannot be as easily achieved without such organization. A government for the sake of government may be fun to some of us (Me included) but for it to be legitimate, it must serve a purpose. That being said, in order for the government to provide beneficial services, it must have authority and resources. We have several opponents of government in our community.

Many of them believe that we are just as well without government and that it would just add complexity and confusion to things that already occur naturally. For these people, the government must have undeniable purpose to exist. Others would support a government with a good purpose but then shy away at the thought of that government having authority over people or collecting / maintaining resources in any way. These people are also essentially against government as well. The government must have these things in order to succeed. If you are supporting a government, you are supporting its authority. If you are anti authority, then you are anti government.

Let me tell you two stories to illustrate what I mean because I don't think you are necessarily understanding what I'm saying concerning player organization and admin involvement.

We've hosted many different game servers in the past. One of the popular ones was Freelancer. As we have all played Freelancer extensively, as administrators, we wanted to change up the game to make it interesting. So we added mods and made up some roleplaying rules. These rules divided people into imaginary factions of Pirates, Traders, and the like. We created server rules enforced by the admins which affected how the game was played. Just as there are many games one can play with a ball. It just depends on the rules everyone decides on in the beginning. With a ball, we could add the rules kick ball or foursquare but without these, we just have the laws of physics which govern how a ball works. In much the same way, we used Freelancer as a physical mechanism through which we played an entirely different game. This is a game that everyone understood when they came to play with us and if they didn't follow the rules of our game, then we didn't let them play with us. This is an example of admins altering the gameplay as a server rule and administering server level punishments such as account suspension as a penalty

In the other scenario, we were hosting a Ragnarok Online server. In this game, we wanted to play RO, not our own made up game so we didn't change how the server worked in any essential way. In game however, the some of us recognized the need for an economy of items. As an administrator, I could have scripted vendors on the streets to sell items, but that would change the game and everyone was there to play RO, not the economy game I just made up. So we as players, not admins, decided to make this happen within the confines of the game world. We saved our money and started a merchant guild. We took to the streets as players to peddle our wares for a profit. Later we wanted to host a combat tournament with millions of Zeny in prizes. By the same premise, we could have used our admin powers to organize the event and give money to the winners. Instead, our merchant guild payed for the entire tournament out of pocket. To us, it was a promotional opportunity and that was within our marketing budget. The moral is, players wanted to do this so players made it happen.

Fast forward to today. We want to play Minecraft, not Economic / Government simulator. As such, the admins define server rules to facilitate playing of the game, Minecraft. Such rules include no griefing, no hacking, and no harassment. These rules ensure that everyone can enjoy the game of Minecraft in a multiplayer environment. It is neither the responsibility or the place of players to enforce such rules. These are duties of admins and shall be enforced with admin powers. That being said, Minecraft is an open ended game by nature. The whole point is you can do pretty much anything you want. Therefore, if the players want to organize into a government or have an economic system, there is absolutely nothing preventing them from doing so and absolutely no reason for admins to intervene so long as they stay within the confines of the game rules.

My ultimate point is for us to stop looking at a government as an addition of server rules because that is not what it is. The proposition of government is nothing more than players suggesting how we should spend our in game time together. An administrator shall never perform any in game action which would support or hinder the development of player government and economies.

On the subject of economy, "Currency" is not a necessary element. An economy only needs thing people want or "Commodities" to exist and Minecraft offers plenty of those. In essence, currency is merely a commodity without intrinsic value but rather a virtual one which is backed by an organization with credit or a reserve of some kind which defines the worth of the otherwise worthless item. We don't need such an arbitrary item, however, to define the worth of commodities. If a currency's worth can be defined in terms of how much of a commodity it will buy, then you can just as easily cut out the middle man and define the value of other commodities based on another stable commodity.

This is effectively a barter system but if a particular resource is common and stable enough, it will naturally be used like a currency. Which commodity gets used in this way can be influenced by the government based on how they insure and utilize it. In this system, the idea of people digging up their own gold and inflating the economy is a flawed one. Gold is a rare resource with intrinsic value which is made all the more precious by the investment of time to uncover it. Because it has intrinsic value, its addition to circulation does not equal inflation. The fact that there is an average time investment associated with each bar of gold gives the gold a fairly stable value.

Gold is still likely not the best resource as its value would be fairly large compared to other resources and would likely fluctuate with the prominence of public transit projects. A better resource would be iron since, like gold, it is stable from a time investment perspective, and it is a common staple to life in Minecraft. Everyone uses iron and everyone needs a steady supply of it, therefore more of it is excavated and used up every day. A commodity with a constant flow will hold a stable value. The size of the economy can be measured by the amount of iron in circulation. If I ran a shop, I would most likely define my prices in terms of iron and would demand payment in it.

If we really want to jump start the economy, however, we should appeal to entrepreneurs rather than bureaucrats. Capitalism is more or less a natural law so encourage it and sit back and let it happen. I wholly encourage people to set up shops and likewise patronize them. Only through this process will the true value of a commodity be teased out. You can argue semantics all day and pass laws to socialize the economy and lock the value of commodities but, in the end, a thing is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it.