by tirioll » Thu Feb 16, 2017 7:00 pm
The kingdom setting up a monetary system indeed gets a lot of economic power that it can easily abuse. And it is fair in a sense that they put certain effort to set up and maintain the market. But it's also the way our real world ended up working, and there are a lot of benefits of fiat currencies for all participants of the economy, not just the governments and central banks.
And to keep the parallel with the real world, a natural course of development is competition. We have several big factions, that are centered in different parts of the world. Each could make they own market and issue their own currency. And let the plebs choose what fits them better. If there is a local market where I can trade everything I want, I would not bother to travel half of the world, even if deals are slightly better there. Or if one region is known for murderers that KoS every white dot, I would choose a different place to carry my wares to.
Now these incentives mostly apply to a world without teleportation. Since we do have it, the whole system can be even more interesting. Every major currency will be exchangeable for every other currency, directly or via goods. There will be people who would be monitoring markets and make money by arbitrage (buy low, sell high), so prices will be very similar in all the markets.
And now we come to an interesting, although theoretical, point. A textbook argument against "printing money" is inflation. If LadyGoo and friends rely too much on minting coins to buy our pearls, pearls will be in high demand and their price will start going up. They will need to mint even more coins, and the spiral keeps going. Pearls - and all other goods - will have higher and higher prices. In a world with a single dominant currency, plebs have to just suck it up. But if there is at least one other alternative, it might be a different story. If prices in crowns are constantly rising, and prices in rings are stable, I will prefer rings to store my savings. After all, if I am a merchant or investor in Norway, and I want to save money or buy some peppers from Mexico, I will most likely use euros or dollars, and not Uzbekistani som (official currency of Samarkand).
Again, this is mostly theory, but I think that this game is doing a pretty good job replicating real world when it comes to cities and warfare. Maybe it could also make an interesting monetary economy.
TL;DR: If you think that Dis money is bad, come and make your own - and let us choose the winner.
Hello, AD/Hedgehugs/F&I/Ni/... Do you accept the challenge?
