hyperinflation

Criticizing someone for an alleged ad hominem, and calling him a mental patient in the process. Irony, thy name is Another_Fan.

Your entire premise is based on the conclusion that yours is the one true definition of hyperinflation. Hence your cutesy quips about the definition of rain -- implying that hyperinflation is not only present in CoH; it's actually self-evident. In your mind, apparently, the debate was over before it began. (And your most recent reply is explicit on that point: "Given that this entire thread has been about people trying to redefine the term so it doesn't apply" -- you assume you're right based on the unproven theory that everyone else is wrong.)

I've shown that there are other definitions of hyperinflation, and that thus the presence of hyperinflation here is still legitimately in question, despite all of your posturing. In fact, the very link you use as evidence contradicts your one-true-definition assumption in the first paragraph.

You have no substantive response, because you're smart enough to realize that we don't have 50% inflation per month, here (which would, over three years, amount to a cumulative inflation rate of 1.5^36, or about a 218 million percent increase in prices, if I'm not misplacing a decimal, -- and heck, even if I am misplacing a decimal, we're a long freaking way from 21 or even 2.1 million percent inflation). So instead, you accuse me of committing your sin with a smarmy one-liner, and then proceed to bury the headline in a mass of distracting irrelevancies.

This isn't the place to disabuse you of your questionable character-build theories; suffice to say that the math is not on your side. Have a nice life, dude.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I think the reason it sends some people into a tizzy is that it has a definition that is clear and possibly applicable to those peoples' professions. And a lot of other people don't really know what the word means, or if they do they suffer from Vizzini Syndrome, where that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. So I think there is an attempt at education aspect to it as well.

I got in a huge battle with a well known and respected forum authority years ago because I refused to accept the term "temporal arbitrage" that she used for buying salvage when it was cheap and selling it when it was more expensive. Why? Because there was no arbitrage about it and the trading method was hardly temporal. It was educated risk-taking, buying when demand was low, and selling when demand was high. But there was nothing riskless about it. Was I correct in opposing the definition? Absolutely. Did anyone care? Absolutely not. Did it change the way the game was played? Nope. Did we all move on with our lives? I think so, I can only speak for me...

Semantics may not make a difference here, in a game, but it makes all the difference in real world economies and markets.

Well I agree with you about "temporal arbitrage", there can't in principle be arbitrage as long as there is only one market you can trade on. It is just a case of a dialect (CoH speak) borrowing words. The problem for the people using "temporal arbitrage" is that there is no need for a new word, "Speculation" is a very precise term for the process of buying anything with an eye to profiting from expected changes in price.

The problem for the people reacting badly to the words, is "Speculation", like "Hyperinflation", carries negative connotations. Now if you are more engaged in spin control than analysis that is a problem. Hence "Temporal Arbitrage" replaces "Speculation", and "Large inflation" replace "Hyper inflation". If "Hyper inflation" were replaced with "Run Away Inflation", I have no doubt there would be a moment of headscratching while the implications were worked out and then the same people would wrack their brains on how to spin that.

Old Americanism: If the shoe fits kick yourself with it, or in this case your groupthink is showing.

But we could also discuss
"You only deserve the purples that you get as drops. If you want MORE than that, you have to convince other players to give them to you. Other players can be very unreasonable."

Since that was written, it became much easier to get purples as drops. You can even pick them!

I wonder how people are going to react if or when desirable purples become off market items, and the only way to get them is by trading like items for them ?

Illicit major.

http://atheism.about.com/library/glo...llictmajor.htm

In a closed system, where money flows in to (and away from) players at some some aggregate rate, that money supply rate will work with the demand pull and cost push to set what players will pay for goods. People pay based on how badly they want something and how much they can afford to spend, and rate at which money becomes available to them affects the latter.

If you suddenly double that money flow without changing anything else, you will increase those player-set prices, because players will find themselves with more money to spend.

We know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the money supply rate has increased. In just one example it explicitly doubled, with no other changes, for level 50 characters - those already supplying most of the money in the system. That was a direct increase in per foe reward. That doesn't include any indirect increases in how fast level 50 characters can defeat foes.

This is really trivial stuff. How can you claim it doesn't work that way?

Edit: By the way.

Perhaps you should consider that the failing is one of your reading comprehension, and not one of my presumption. Let me highlight the exact quote to which the above is your response.

Big, bold emphasis is mine. I dictated nothing. I offered a suggestion. I offered a suggestion trying to make clear that you're asking questions and discussing topics that are tangential to what has been said and discussed by almost everyone else in the thread. Does it make sense to you that you're going to get a clear, straightforward response to your new topic in a thread that's not about it? Especially when, in the contest of a thread in which people are discussing the term "(hyper)inflation" that you start trying to redefine it in a completely new way, different from those preceding it?

I can't make you do anything. I can try to convince you that doing something besides what you are doing is more useful. I could have dismissed your statements. I could have said you were wrong about prices, or why they were high, or whether things cost to much. I did none of those things. I only told you that discussing them here and attaching the term "inflation" to them was off topic and confusing, and suggested you avoid that by starting a separate thread to discuss them.

Given all that, I find it amusing that you accuse me of being defensive.

This is a potential existential fallacy - All dragons are winged reptiles.
Therefore, some some winged reptiles are dragons. In this instance "People pay based on how badly they want something and how much they can afford to spend, therefore how much they have to spend will affect its cost." As I stated earlier, this line of thought is derived from the quantitative theory of money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money

Which is rivaled in this view that changes to the amount of currency in a given economy will affect prices by (once again as earlier stated)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

These are competing theories. Theories aren't facts.


You forgot to add, "according to the quantity theory of money which is a theory that may have absolutely no bearing whatsoever in this game's economy."

You seem to be completely forgetting that demand has doubled with the advent of two builds, that the amount of money in the economy as a whole could only matter in your imaginary little world and that demand alone could be the driving force. You make unknowable claims, consistently fail to see points when they are repeatedly brought up, invent positions for me then assign them arbitrarily all on your own and I could go on but even without being blatantly rude this is impolite already. I apologize but grow weary with attempts to communicate with you.

Very little of the Keynesian economic model applies in this game. We do not have business, and cannot have unemployment. We do not have banks that lend to businesses or individuals. Our money supply is not expanded by fractional lending. We do not have speculation or interest rates, meaning we cannot have booms or busts in the classic sense. We have no government that can stimulate our in-game economy by creating employment, and since there are no banks and no interest rate, fiscal policy cannot affect inflation.

In this game, players produce the money themselves, with no reliance on others. The only place players obtain money they do not create themselves is on the market, where other people who create money spend it to obtain goods they want from other players. Everything spent on the market is discretionary. The only things affecting how much you are willing to spend on something are how much money you have, your own competing desire for other goods, and how fast you think you can make the money you spend back.

If you contend that there are other factors affecting what people are willing to spend, can you offer them, rather than simply asserting that the model above, which fits with the Quantity Theory of Money, does not apply?

Can you provide any evidence of this fact, other than that the capability for multiple builds actually exist? In my experience, multiple builds are excruciatingly rare, even among extremely hardcore players. (Hardcore in this sense referring to time spent playing, "min/max" proclivities, or both.) Edit: I should point out that I do believe there are reasons to think demand for IOs has increased. I suspect that Incarnate features have more people playing 50s, and seems to have raised general interest in at least a touch of investigation into what IOs can do for these characters they are already investing more time in. That would be compounded with your claim about dual/triple builds, however.

"My imaginary little world" is shared by a lot of other posters on this forum, and it has some pretty fair mileage behind it at explaining things that happened in the past and predicting things that had not yet happened. Of course, that doesn't mean it's without flaws. Can you lay out what your competing theory is, and how it explains past or present market behaviors, or what predictions you think it will give us that that are contrary to "mine"?

I'm very patient in discussions that don't turn into the other party attacking me, as opposed to my position .I'm not offended that someone disagrees with me.

We have people who craft or otherwise acquire then sit on stores of hundreds of not thousands of io's and other raw goods. This segment of the playerbase can serve as a crude private sector and is capable of making decisions which bring about unforeseen, unbeneficial macroeconomic issues.


People go inactive or teamless all the time.

But what do the banks do? They provide businesses or individuals with money in exchange for that amount plus interest. They take money that wasn't actively circulating in the economy in large amounts and place it into circulation - sometimes mass producing it. What could fill this role in an Mmo? Any of the institutions which have in the past spammed us with "Buy x influence for x amount of real money!" They're farming the money (producing hundreds of billions of influence) and then making it available to whoever is willing to pay the price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation
"Speculation typically involves the lending of money or the purchase of assets, equity or debt but in a manner that has not been given thorough analysis or is deemed to have low margin of safety or a significant risk of the loss of the principal investment. The term, "speculation," which is formally defined as above in Graham and Dodd's 1934 text, Security Analysis, contrasts with the term "investment," which is a financial operation that, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return"

The mechanisms for speculation are present. Shortly after sets were introduced I opened a business that provided whole lvl 50 builds, but cut my losses after realizing that nobody at even that point could actually pay me back in full for what I'd provided them. The mechanisms for speculation might not work profitably and reliably, but they're there.

But as you've pointed out, money is taken out of circulation through the market fees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate
"An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by a borrower for the use of money that they borrow from a lender."
In this sense the game would be the lender and the borrower would effectively be sellers who constitute our "private sector." They make money by selling on the market but sacrifice portions of profit in doing so, thus simulating certain (but not all) effects of lending.

Our "government" as you've pointed out has increased drop rates for purples and influence. They also routinely host reactivation weekends and double xp weekends, which the playerbase has noticed does stimulate our in-game economy. They've also added the WST's, which (depending on how many 50's you have) could be looked at as another job.

Unless buying their influence.

Yes, there are other factors. In addition to the second slot every one gets for unlocking whatever level it is (I forget), there's:

1.) The constant return of old players since GR/incarnate stuff went live
2.) We just had dblxpwknd and
3.) The most recent AE exploit (spiders/rikti monkies).

The amount of level 50's in need of a build has exploded in recent months. On top of all that there was the MM AE exploit not long ago. I know some people who made whole servers full of level 50 masterminds while that was going on. I was gone for it though, and couldn't observe its impacts on the market in the short term.



Yeah, but I'm not positive it wouldn't get me banned.

I apologize for getting a little condescending. You have to admit, this perspective really does open up the possibility that the Keynesian model is a better representation and that demand/supply could be the primary driving forces behind our inflation as opposed to monetary supply. The long and short of my take on the market is that things are worth somewhere between the lowest amount they're posted for and the largest amount anyone is willing to pay for them. Supply/demand alone doesn't carry the day. Sometimes even a great abundance in a certain item in our market doesn't guarantee a lower price. Sometimes even a great scarcity doesn't result in an impressive price tag. Our market is precisely what we make it every day.

That statement only seems to address the "supply" half and ignore the "demand" half.

I really don't see this at all. They do not provide jobs. They do not employ other players, providing them with money which they spend on oter goods and services, which then keeps other players employed making those goods and providing those services. No one needs to do any of that - they just need to fight mobs and complete missions. The only consistent employer in this economy is the game itself. Logging in and fighting (or at least completing missions) are all one needs to do to earn income. You can earn extra income by getting other players to give you money for goods or services you produce, but it's critical to note that you don't need anyone to give you money in order to start that "business". You can get everything you need (inf, salvage and recipes) from playing the game.

At which point they cease to become active participants in the economy. In the real world, if you do this, you might starve, end up evicted from your residence, and (if you are fortunate) end up being cared for by the state. In this game, you might be logged out.

That is not at all like what a real world bank does. The RMT suppliers are actual players. Those that produce their own inf to sell make that using the same tools everyone else has - they defeat mobs. Banks do not print money unless they are the sovereign bank of a nation. Banks act as a multiplier on the available money supply through fractional reserve banking. This is subject to economic and governmental forces that RMT (or any farmers) in our game are not, because farmers print their own money. For example, no one can ever have a "run" on RMT services that could shutter them. Even if a farmer is shut down, the inf they already created and injected into the rest of the game (either on the market or via sale) is a real increase in the money supply, not the effective increase created by fractional reserve banking. There is no reserve ratio for the devs to change, and shutting down a RMT service does not contract the actual amount of money in circulation the way closing a bank collapses lending.

The bolded part is key. If they do not work profitably and reliably, then they will not play a functional role in the economy, because people will not trust in them and invest in them on a large scale.

No player in the game can earn interest by handing over their inf to an institution in this game. This is the point I was trying to make. Efforts have been made to create interest earning systems by players here in this forum, where money was entrusted to them by other players and they invested that money in the in-game market. However, there is no framework of accountability, and ultimately, little compelling reason to use this approach. Perhaps most importantly, it's a huge amount of work for the player(s) running the investment scheme. Given how easy it is for a market-savvy player to make a profit while going it alone on the market, what's the reason to put in that work?

Take a look at the missing roles for "government" that I mentioned. Key component of Keynesian economic policy is control of interest rates and deficit spending during economic downturns. There are no centrally managed interest rates, because there is no institutional lending. There cannot be a government deficit, because our "government" here does not collect taxes. Sure, the game consumes some of our money, such as market and tailor fees. Consumption of our money is not what taxes are - they provide the income to a real government. Keynes advocated that during economic downturns, governments spend more money than they were earning in tax income in order to stimulate job growth.

It's true that the "government" here gets people involved in the game, and possibly therefore the economy. (All players are not active market participants, and the market is the dominant economic channel by which money and goods change hands.) However, it does not do this through fiscal policy, because the government does not control either the real money supply, does not dictate a fractional reserve ratio (and there's no one doing it even if it did), and does not control a prime interest rate for lending via a sovereign bank.

A player or players still created that money. A player using RMT services does not create that inf whole cloth. RMT farmers, which are other players did.

Other than being against the rules for involving a trade that extends outside the game, getting a bunch of money from an RMT is little different than selling an IO on the market. Someone produced that inf.

Those increase supply of goods as well as demand for goods, unless they spend all their time in the AE and use their tickets poorly (or let them cap all the time).

These were both massive increases in the money supply, with little corresponding increase in supply of goods. Double XP may increase supply of goods by bringing in more players, but every player, new or old, earns double inf while generating the same rate of good supply.

Prices of purples went to levels they still have not seen since. Apocalypse pieces hit 800M. You could cap your inf in a couple of hours with that explot. Money flowed into the market like water from a burst dam. In line with the quantity theory of money, prices rose.

For all the reasons above, I disagree.

When viewed as a "market" in the economic sense, our market is very inefficient, and it lacks many of the driving forces that underpin a real world economy. Most fundamentally, our characters do not need to use the in-game market to play the game, whereas most people in the modern real world have to participate in the real world economy in order to survive. (Even if they act as a pure welfare drain, they are "participating" in the economy.) This makes classic supply and demand analysis more about understanding broad trends than trying to calculate exact equilibrium prices. More on-topic, though, supply and demand interact with availability of money to set actual prices.

Your post points out a lot of things that you think at least sort of look like institutions that I see as fundamental to a Keynesian approach to economics being employed. Keynes' theory of what happens in an economy was pretty complex, and that complexity was an outgrowth of the real complexity of real economies. I don't claim that understanding our economy here is trivial in absolute terms (or that I or anyone else has a comprehensive grasp of it), but I do think this economy is trivially simple when compared to a real world economy of the sort that Keynes was trying to model. Too many of the actors and institutions that Keynes was accounting for have no economically meaningful analog here. Just being able to point to something and say "hey, this sort of looks like one of those" doesn't mean it plays the same role in the game's economy. I believe you are putting forth the Keynesian model specifically to rebut the quantity theory, but for me to find that convincing, I think you'd have to do far more than just describe analogs for real world economic actors the way you did above. You'd have to show how they act in concert, and how a Keynesian activist policy would work to correct that economy when it's doing "bad" things.

Edit2: Re-reading your post, maybe you do realize it. I'm not sure which position, if any, you were taking.

it proves more than the drivel you're spouting, and entertains to boot.

Its stuff like this why I stick around.

$15.00/mo sub
$ 5.00/mo for maalox need from seeing insanity in game changes and idiocy on the boards

Nethergoat accusing people of spouting drivel, PRICELESS

If you find yourself needing Maalox due to what you read in patch notes or on the boards, I would suggest you find a new hobby and reexamine your priorities.

Though I'm sure Nethergoat is flattered by how important his posts are to you

Wow.

Uhm...

No.

I'm sure he is cheered knowing he has brought a bright spot to my day

The original is probably not right. The problem is flat out denying it isn't correct either.

The problem with the statement is that it is worded in such a way that is implies that dual builds are the cause of doubled demand. That is almost certainly not true.

Even if demand has doubled since that time (which has not been shown to be true, but for the sake of argument), that does not by itself prove that dual builds are in any way responsible for that increase in demand, and it says absolutely nothing about whether there has been a corresponding increase in supply.

Common sense and logic would seem to indicate that dual builds would have nothing to do with any such doubling in demand, because it's easy enough to find players who don't use dual builds at all. Myself, for instance. I am part of demand, and my demand didn't double because of dual builds, therefore someone else's demand would have to double and then also increase enough to make up for the lack of mine doubling. And that would have to happen for every player whose demand has not increased because of dual builds. And how does that happen? how does a second build cause your demand to more than double?

Furthermore, what does "doubled" demand even mean when one is talking about dual builds? Even if I have two builds on every character, I'm not using the same pieces in both builds. So how has demand doubled if it's not for the same things? Obviously demand has increased, because I want more stuff, but how do you show that it's actually doubled?

So it's a worthless statement, because we don't know if it's even true or if (assuming it were true) it's relevant to anything being discussed in this thread.

If the assertion being made is that dual builds caused a doubling in demand, I say that's very unlikely given my points above.

If the assertion is that demand has doubled since the time dual builds were introduced but not necessarily that they are the cause, then I say "how much has supply increased since then?"

In either case, I say "show me the data." Until then, it's a baseless assertion that is being presented as fact and therefore cannot be used as a building block in one's argument, if one wants that argument to have any validity.

Ding.