Alleyverse Monetary system

[MacThorstenson]

Would you guys in the RP be supportive of establishing a monetary system in the RP? 

If so, what do you think it should look like? 

[Life&Death]

If it is an RP currency, then it should resemble some form of money in the Cosmere. If we used all the different forms of it then we would have to set up a transfer system which would probably be too complicated. So something similar to all of them, yet unique and modified to fit the Shard itself.

[Kidpen]

I believe someone mentioned a system where each guild leader can give out their money as much as they want, but couldn’t buy anything with their own money. There are some problems, and I’ll write more when I get home.

[Leyrann]

First thought I had was aluminium, but there are two problems with it:

1. It can be soulcast. This will probably be a problem for almost every currency, however.
2. Scadrial is on the brink of discovering how to extract it from bauxite, which will devalue it like crazy.

Thinking more about the soulcasting concern, I don't think we can use a metal or gemstone or something like that. Paper money might work, as it will likely contain too much intricate stuff for a Soulcaster to properly imitate. Other than that, I cannot really think of anything except stormlight, which would give a big advantage to those who live on Roshar.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Leyrann

[The Forgetful Archivist]

I have done a bit of preliminary research into different monetary systems and I have found 3 basic types: commodity money, commodity-based money, and fiat money. The first one is where the monetary systom is something with innate value such as food, or gold, the obvious way to shard-ify this is to say upvotes = money. However, this would likely bring down the wrath of the moderators and adminstrators if we start messing with the reputation system. A commodity-based system shares many of the same problems, we say a “alley dollar” = 4 upvotes (think the gold standered), this would also likely bring down the wrath of the mods and admins down on us.

The last system, fiat money, shows the most promise, this is where the goverment declares that pices of paper (or some other token) are worth something. I think we should go this route, and further more I think we should create our money free of any existing cosmere ties, we have an opportunity to do something original and awsome let not constrain ourselves to existing cosmere money. After about 10 minutes of consideration I desided that a UBI might hold promise, i.e. every member of the alleyverse gets 10 “alley dollars” a week to do with what we may. We could also impose diferent rates of positive and negative interest to encorage economic growth and other fun stuff.

To reiterate, I think a fiat based system is our best bet, and I would tentatively put forth the idea of a UBI to ether completely comprise the income part of the system or to supplement it.

Disclamer: I think alley dollar is a stupid name for our currency, its just a place holder until someone else comes up with something cool.

[Leyrann]

Or we just use cookies as currency. (unspiked)

Edited May 7, 2018 by Leyrann

[MacThorstenson]

I would say that we use crysts. A crystal coin with engravings on it. That way they can’t be used by allomancers. 

I think the biggest question I have is, do we trust everyone to not say they have more money then they actually do?

[Merrickz]

In both Mistborn and Stormlight the money is used by their respective power systems in order to aid them, therefore I think that if a cosmere wide monetary system were to develop then it would have Allomantically useful metal inset with a cut gemstone allowing for both mistborn/steelpushers and radiants to use them.  

[MacThorstenson]

But in the three other shard worlds the money has no impact on the magic, so i think that to avoid biasing the system towards any one power, we should make it not useful to any system. 

[Voidus]

Hemalurgic spikes are useful to all magic systems.

[Merrickz]

@MacThorstenson Would it be possible to include a hint to each system, e.g. metal for Scadrial, gem for Roshar, Bright colour for Nalthis, Silver for Threnodite and an imprinted Aon for Sel?

[Tineye Navigator]

2 hours ago, MacThorstenson said:

I would say that we use crysts. A crystal coin with engravings on it. That way they can’t be used by allomancers. 

I think the biggest question I have is, do we trust everyone to not say they have more money then they actually do?

Chrysts sounds good to me.

We could create a bankers guild, similar to moderators, with a representative from each guild to verify the integrity of the bank. They can keep an excel sheet, where each week, on Monday lets say, 10% is added to their bank accounts.(interest) Everyone who requests will start out with 50 upon opening up their account. The only problem with that is trying to moniter dozens of people requesting and transferring funds and purchasing objects from each other. But if we had one person in charge of monitering all transactions within their own guild, then we could moniter more easily. Or have an impartial banker be placed into each guild's Transactions PM. that's another idea.

[Kidpen]

We are definitely not going to be able to get impartial people. That didn't work. Since we are already the scribes anyways, we would like to volunteer to keep the records on money.

[Tineye Navigator]

Of course the monetary system idea wasn't mine so I can't dictate how it's created, but I have some questions. Would each guild have to create a PM that includes a scribe or banker from the Liebrary? Or would each guild have a designated member that must report all internal transfers to the Bank of Liebrarians? Would money transfers be kept secret, except for in the official ledgers?

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by Tineye Navigator

[MacThorstenson]

I'm going back and forth on whether or not the currency should be a commodity.

The thing is, having something like those won't promote economic mobility. Steelpushers would have to keep track of their coins during fights so that they know how much they have to spend, and whether or not colors are bright, or gemstones filled, could affect the value. I think it would be better to have something of no value to each magic system. 

As to who should do this, I'm not to sure about the liebrary. They are motivated by other guild things. Who ever is chosen should be solely motivated by the Money. That was the issue with having unbiased. they had nothing to do, and they had no motivation to be unbiased.

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

While it would be cool to have a monetery system. I feel like it would be too difficult to maintain. Unless We had someone, or a group of someones who wer Always online, and could keep track of everyone's money. so, an impartial guild devoted to banking. (I think that any members of it would need to have no other affiliations ever). It could even be called House Tekiel or something  

[Kidpen]

Just now, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

Always online

This is clearly me.

Also, it is definitely not chryst. It is very clearly spelled cryst.

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

1 minute ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

any members of it would need to have no other affiliations ever

 

[Tineye Navigator]

12 minutes ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

While it would be cool to have a monetery system. I feel like it would be too difficult to maintain. Unless We had someone, or a group of someones who wer Always online, and could keep track of everyone's money. so, an impartial guild devoted to banking. (I think that any members of it would need to have no other affiliations ever). It could even be called House Tekiel or something  

What if we had a group of people who were always online, who all publicly professed which guild(s) they belong to, and there was an audit system set up, where any guild could request an audit, where all money would be able to be accounted for, and checked for fraud, without revealing too much about exactly where it is, but that it is all correct and accurate.

If at any point, an banker is found to be lying, or deceitful, then that banker would lose all of their funds, as well as the clan that they are associated with would lose a quarter of their funds, which would then be equally distributed among the remaining guilds.

[MacThorstenson]

Actually, its leader would only need to never have any allegiances ever. they could have help, but they would need to just double check the work done. that could easily fit with the system tineye just made up.

I think that the bank should be controled by guilds that have a primarily economic motivation, because they have the most motivation to keep the system going.

Edited May 7, 2018 by MacThorstenson

[Tineye Navigator]

Or what if guilds were the ones to set up bank accounts, and then within the guild, They were able to distribute the funds as they choose.

[MacThorstenson]

I think that it should be individuals who set up the account, and guilds also set up a second account. Guilds can't pay members. That way we remove the issue of people who belong to multiple guilds.

[Blazenella]

I like the idea of a little checks and balances. People make sure that everyone is following the rules and being honest.  I feel like each guild would need to have a good starting amount. If we had it where they had a sort of income it would take a lot of time to be able to buy things. We need to establish what the value of the Cryst is, and the credit behind it. If we have an income of 10 a week, but something costs 500 Crysts then it will take literal years to obtain that item.

[MacThorstenson]

I think that there will be an initial starting amount of crysts per person. The bank will give interest on money that is kept in it. Everyone will start with an initial amount of crysts, maybe 100 or something. Their guild will start out with nothing, but the guilds can collect dues from their members. Pricing's will be determined by the amount of crysts people have. If nobody can buy things, then shops will either have to lower prices, or cater to a more expensive crowd.

I think that there will be a problem in terms of money laundering, but that won't be the banks problem.

 

[kenod]

I'm not sure if this is practical, but I personally think the best system would be a software based solution, probably just a simple bookkeeping program for updating the bank accounts (monthly salary, transfers), perhaps linked to a person's shard account to prevent people from creating a lot of different accounts, with the ability for mediators to reset someones account in case of character death or making people pay fines (might require multiple mediators agreeing to prevent people from pulling weird stuff). The main issues with this would be hosting the system (could be done on the servers the shard currently uses maybe), and building it though. I'm also not sure if linking to shard accounts can be done, as I don't know the protocols used.
I should be able to build the server side part, but I don't have any real experience with web development, so I'm not sure about the client part. It might also be a bit too complex for just the alleyverse rp, but with the benefit that it could theoretically be extended to cover other random rps on the shard too.