Signatures

[Junkfist2]

New skill: Penmanship

Allows a player to sign a piece of parchment with a distinctive signature.

1. Write something on the parchment.
2. Right-click on the used parchment, new option on the pop-up menu: "Sign"
3. Do that, and at the end of the statement there will be a "Signed, (Player Name)" in a different color or, with the case of the name, maybe a cursive font.

Multiple people could sign the same parchment and it would list the names in the order they've signed.

Would be useful for agreements and official notifications.

...only problem right now is there's no name-check during character creation, so you can have five Bobs running around. How to solve that I have no idea. Randomized color for each and every character's signature assigned with creation? Randomized font?

[Jackard]

I like the duplicates - it's nice not having to reserve names for once.

[Laremere]

They said there will be wax seals in the future.

[Junkfist2]

Cool.

How do they have a system whereby authenticity of the seal can be verified though? If it's just a type-in-a-description deal anyone could make a duplicate from scratch.

I'm curious because a system of authenticity could be used in other aspects in the future. (minting village coins with unique emblems so they have a socially-agreed-upon worth as opposed to material worth, perhaps opening up the possibility for bank-notes or bills. Making official badges. Making official signposts. Things like that)

[Potjeh]

Don't mention paper money around Loftar

[jorb]

village coins with unique emblems so they have a socially-agreed-upon worth as opposed to material worth

Market price of goods is a socially-agreed-upon worth, and also the only possible objective standard of value. Everything else is socialism and the destruction of western civilization as we know it. No fuzzy economics on the board.

[jorb]

Don't mention paper money around Loftar

Technically it's fiat money that both loftar and I have problems with. Bank notes are of course excellent inventions as long as they are backed by a meaningful currency standard. Gold, preferably.

[Potjeh]

I think we're well on our way to becoming mortal enemies. Not only do I disagree with the gold standard, but I also prefer herbal teas to the real deal.

Basically, I disagree with the gold standard because then the whole country's economy is held hostage by gold production.

If the gold production can't keep up with the economy growth, you have negative inflation. This means that money actually increases in value if you stuff it into a sock and wait, which results in people taking money out of circulation which further increases it's scarcity and thus value and this leads into a downward spiral towards barter economy.

If on the other hand gold production outpaces the economy, you get rampant inflation which shatters the trust in money and again leads to return to barter economy.

It's naively optimistic to believe that gold production will match the economy growth. Only way is to make gold production into a government monopoly, but then government can easily flood the market with gold when it's strapped for cash, which is the same scenario as the one you say happens with paper money.

[jorb]

Not only do I disagree with the gold standard, but I also prefer herbal teas to the real deal.

How often the two seem to go hand in hand.

Basically, I disagree with the gold standard because then the whole country's economy is held hostage by gold production.

I speak of gold mostly as a personal preference. Within a free bank system you would of course be free to use paper money backed by nothing if you wanted to. No one would stop you. What I advocate is free trade and sound money. I.e. the abolition of the central banking system.

If the gold production can't keep up with the economy growth, you have negative inflation. This means that money actually increases in value if you stuff it into a sock and wait, which results in people taking money out of circulation which further increases it's scarcity and thus value and this leads into a downward spiral towards barter economy.

You are confusing "deflation" with "falling prices", which are two different things entirely. http://www.capitalism.net/articles/Anatomy%20of%20Deflation.html

If on the other hand gold production outpaces the economy, you get rampant inflation which shatters the trust in money and again leads to return to barter economy.

If gold were as easy to produce as paper -- someone found a philosopher's stone or two lying around -- then gold would of course seize to be a good means of exchange. I am not arguing that gold is optimal regardless of context. I am arguing that it has benefits here and now, where it is still worth it's weight in gold. I am not trying to argue that gold is beyond the laws of supply and demand, because it is obviously not.

It's naively optimistic to believe that gold production will match the economy growth.

It doesn't have to.

Only way is to make gold production into a government monopoly, but then government can easily flood the market with gold when it's strapped for cash, which is the same scenario as the one you say happens with paper money.

I agree that government monopolies are bad things.

On a more general note I would argue that the boom-bust-cycle is caused by an impaired predicative ability in the markets, which, in turn, is caused by central bank/government enforcement of the use of fiat money. Since the government holds a monopoly on money, the money market is prone to misjudgment in a way that a free market is not. The case is, essentially, analogous to that of any other government monopoly, historic or present, only that much worse since it affects all industries instead of just one or two.

In any event you are merely arguing against the gold standard, not in favor of fiat money. Any of the above arguments are equally applicable against fiat money (In fact, more so by orders of magnitude), with the difference being that the gold supply is factually less volatile than is the supply of government paper. The difference being, indeed, that the government does not have a philosopher's stone to churn out gold, while it does have a printing press capable of churning out as much colorful paper as it sees fit. Which, I believe, was the reason I argued for gold in the first place.

[Junkfist2]

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH THE SPERGIN.

The theoretical academic debate about what's best for the global marketplace is lovely and all but I'm just trying to talk about how a symbol of authority that can't be easily duplicated can be mechanically implemented in H&H.

Be it with a signature, or an inked stamp, or a wax seal, eventually minting and with currency, something, anything that can help put authorship, decree, or agency onto an object.

The more the population of the game grows the more necessary it is to lay the bedrock for authority with management tools like these. I can't imagine city-states much less empires operating in H&H without them.