average life expectancy of the gold coin

[ddude987]

copper, silver, gold, platinum or whatever coin you like, they all pop up in fantasy worlds. I'm in macroeconomics and we're discussing Adam Smith and the wealth of nations criticizing gold coin's value. Made me wonder, what would be the average life expectancy of money in a fantasy world. depends on magical vs non magical currency, so let's discuss both! thoughts?

[Beta Centauri]

copper, silver, gold, platinum or whatever coin you like, they all pop up in fantasy worlds. I'm in macroeconomics and we're discussing Adam Smith and the wealth of nations criticizing gold coin's value. Made me wonder, what would be the average life expectancy of money in a fantasy world. depends on magical vs non magical currency, so let's discuss both! thoughts? In a fantasy setting, unless something specifically destroys them, they basically exist forever, only ever being lost or stuck in a dragon's hoard or something like that, and they're always a valuable find.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Probably the same as coins in the real world, that is they'll survive until a new ruler comes along and has all coins remade to carry their image rather than the old rulers (and even then, some will survive, being forgotten about, hoarded, kept or used as a black market currency by anyone that opposes the new ruler etc), or the government remakes their currency to prevent forgeries, reset their exchange rate and so on.

[Gnome Alone]

I'm pretty sure that your garden variety gold coin in RPGs lasts forever, weighs nothing and takes up no space in backpacks or anything.

I think I read somewhere that silver coins were much more common in the time period that D&D ever-so-sort-of models, what with gold being relatively rare.

[Yora]

One great trait of gold, perhaps the only one other than being good at conducting electricity, is that it's almost immune to corriosion. No matter how terrible you store it, unless it falls into lava it will always stay good. Silver is highly corrosion resistant too. Might get dirty, but unless you store it in a really agressive substance it should stay good for thousands of years, I believe.
Now copper reacts pretty strongly with moisture. But the good thing about it is that it only turns green. To get it back to it's shiny red state, you just have to heat it up over a fire until it turns liquid, scrape of the slag from the surface, and pour it into molds. You lose the stamping that tells people that the coin has been minted by a kingdom that guarantees it is of the exact weight and has not been tempered with, but you should still be able to trade your copper bars at full price.

[ddude987]

So other rulers coming in is a large factor, but existing kingdoms that have existed and keep existing... they mint money. if these coins are indestructible and last externally, why bother minting things at all? some coins must get lost, sunk in the ocean, traded to out of the area, horded, et cetra. these actions create a mean life expectancy of the coin, be it gold or silver or copper. I was wondering the time or just general thoughts on the depletion of bullion coins. I was planning on say a nation running out of gold or whatever, and thinking how many years until their economy is nearly devoid of money and their coin is actually worth a ton of money.

[M Placeholder]

Gold coins should last forever, but one thing about gold is that its pretty soft. Over time, gold carried in a pouch for an extended period of time will leave gold dust as gold is rubbed off the surface of the coin. Its not much though, so it would take thousands of years for a gold coin to be worn away like this.

[Zyzzyva]

If you mean actual physical endurance, modern coins have a half life of about 30 years, IIRC, although they're made out of sturdier, nonprecious metals and tend not to be clipped, scrapped or damaged like real period coins would be. My guess is that hoarded/treasure trove'd coins would last basically forever, coins in circulation would be less than a generation and deteriorate a lot more over that time than a modern milled steel coin would.


I think I read somewhere that silver coins were much more common in the time period that D&D ever-so-sort-of models, what with gold being relatively rare.

Much more so (although I don't have a source at hand either). Silver pennies were used quite a lot, gold coins much less (even relative to their face value, although the unit of account "coins" were usually "gold").


Probably the same as coins in the real world, that is they'll survive until a new ruler comes along and has all coins remade to carry their image rather than the old rulers (and even then, some will survive, being forgotten about, hoarded, kept or used as a black market currency by anyone that opposes the new ruler etc), or the government remakes their currency to prevent forgeries, reset their exchange rate and so on.

Medieval currency has a lot of ways to disappear (see: clipping, above), but mass remintings aren't really one of them. You have to have a more modern centralized regime to pull that off. Medieval currency was much more of a mess, because debasements and the farming out of minting meant that the coinage in circulation was all over the place.

ETA:


So other rulers coming in is a large factor, but existing kingdoms that have existed and keep existing... they mint money. if these coins are indestructible and last externally, why bother minting things at all? some coins must get lost, sunk in the ocean, traded to out of the area, horded, et cetra. these actions create a mean life expectancy of the coin, be it gold or silver or copper. I was wondering the time or just general thoughts on the depletion of bullion coins. I was planning on say a nation running out of gold or whatever, and thinking how many years until their economy is nearly devoid of money and their coin is actually worth a ton of money.

They mint silver, move to a coin-of-account system, start using the neighbouring nations' coins, or all three. If you want old coins to be worth a lot, just make them undebased (not cut with nonprecious metals). So a Roman under Valerian, say, would value a genuine Marcus Aurelius sestercus (decently pure silver) a heck of a lot more than the garbage the mints were cranking out in the present (debased down to basically lead with a bit of silver plating).


Gold coins should last forever, but one thing about gold is that its pretty soft. Over time, gold carried in a pouch for an extended period of time will leave gold dust as gold is rubbed off the surface of the coin. Its not much though, so it would take thousands of years for a gold coin to be worn away like this.

More of a problem is people snipping the edges off for free gold.

http://coinproject.com/jan/volume1/issue2/images/volume2-4-1.jpg

[Yora]

Why mint new coins? There is only so big a market among jewelry makers for bars of silver and gold that your mines produces. Make the gold and silver into coins and everyone will take them! Stuff that only takes up storage space magically turns into money.

Make it rain!

Ow! Ow! Stupid idea. My poor head...

[golentan]

Milling bears mentioning (Zyzzyva commented on it well) but one thing most people neglect is if there aren't countermeasures, a common means of making money stretch further for yourself at the expense of others was to take a razor and shave the edges of coins. Milling was introduced to make such currency tampering obvious, but if a kingdom's mint is insufficiently advanced the number of coins may be less important than their total weight, and coins may be destroyed more quickly.

Gnome Alone, actually DnD has rules for coin weight, as do a lot of other RPGs. Plenty of people just ignore them though...

[Darth Ultron]

Well, fantasy offers lots of things that the real world never had..

The first is universal money. In fantasy everyone in the multiverse got together at the CoinCon and ruled that one good piece would be worth that same amount in the whole multiverse.

The second is money pits. In a normal economy money moves around. In fantasy it does not. Dragons are the classic example here. A hoard with 50,000 coins, is 50,000 coins that are no longer really money in a lot od senses of the word.

Closed loops. Fantasy if full of these too. The world is a bunch of good and neutral kingdoms with orc bandits. But where to the orc bandits spend there gold? They do it in some type of underground orc economy that is not directly connected to the world economy.

A kingdom has to make more money all the time, or there simply won't be any for people to use.

[Gnome Alone]

Gnome Alone, actually DnD has rules for coin weight, as do a lot of other RPGs. Plenty of people just ignore them though...

I know… but I think that "plenty of people" is probably closer to "almost everybody," which is what I was getting at. The coins, they last forever in hammerspace.

[Flickerdart]

The biggest influx of gold into the economy isn't minting, but adventurers uncovering ancient and forgotten tombs full of sweet sweet coin and then immediately dumping it all into some poor city's economy in exchange for weapons-grade magic items.

[golentan]

...

Why would you think orcs don't have interaction with the rest of the economy at some point?

I'd expect them to buy slaves and arms and armor and food and all the things that people (especially a warlike people) need when it's convenient to do so. Some of that might be from black markets, some from neighboring lands during times of low hostility, some things they make themselves keeping the economy flowing inside of orcish lands...

Also, money pits are a thing in the real world as well. One of the reasons that stimulus is usually better applied at the bottom of the pyramid rather than the top is because if you've got enough money banked to meet your needs (wealthy businessmen, nobles, mages, whatever else) and you're not already spending from your stockpile growing it does not make you much likelier to spend it. It passes on to someone else when times get hard enough or when they die, but unless the fortune is split in the process it tends to remain in stasis to a certain extent (the entire medieval european period can be viewed as the result of an economic tarpit of this nature, the renaissance was made possible by the increasing value of labor and the removal of large numbers of traditional barriers to the accrual of modest wealth outside the gentry, if your DnD is medieval fantasy, money pits are more realistic than their absence).

Universal money is, of course, an obvious distinction, hence why I said that weight was probably more important than number of coins. If you treat a standard Gold Piece as being a unit of 1/50th as a pound of gold (as specified in the books) it makes more sense: It's not the coinage that matters, it's not the backing of a treasury or mint or other governmental institution, what matters is that it's 0.02 pounds +/- 1% of 14k gold. 1 GP worth of stuff might be three coins of different sizes, as long as they total to the right, magic number/weight. Shopkeepers probably have a merchant's scale to assure themselves of the coin they're accepting, and after they have enough gold on it they don't care about whether it's legal tender, it's gold, they can move it.

[Aedilred]

So other rulers coming in is a large factor, but existing kingdoms that have existed and keep existing... they mint money. if these coins are indestructible and last externally, why bother minting things at all?

Various reasons, both economic and political. For starters, minting your own coins makes a strong statement of stability, power and authority, and, as a ruler, gets your face in front of more people, reinforcing the authority of the crown. You don't want to be over-reliant on old or foreign coinage if you can avoid it, as it suggests your own régime is weak by comparison.

If times are prosperous and the economy is growing, while prices will fluctuate to an extent, you might find you simply need more money, in the absence of credit and true fiat currency, and will mint coins for that reason. At the other end of the scale, if things are going badly and crown revenues are down, you'll want to add base metals to the coinage to try to recoup your losses, so you'll melt down good older coins and re-mint them with a higher base metal content. (And conversely if someone has previously done that but it's no longer necessary, you'll probably want to destroy those older coins and create better ones again to restore faith in the government).

There are also issues to do with deliberate destruction and loss, be that clipping, theft (or piracy), or people melting down undervalued coins because the precious metal is worth more.

[Darth Ultron]

...

Why would you think orcs don't have interaction with the rest of the economy at some point?

I'd expect them to buy slaves and arms and armor and food and all the things that people (especially a warlike people) need when it's convenient to do so. Some of that might be from black markets, some from neighboring lands during times of low hostility, some things they make themselves keeping the economy flowing inside of orcish lands...


This will vary by setting. Some settings might even have orcs as part of the normal economy. But a lot of fantasy settings the orcs live apart from the ''good'' races. Orcs do not trade with the elves and dwarves and humans. They would just kill each other on sight.

So once the orcs get the coins they are mostly gone from circulation......until some adventures kill the orcs and loot the bodies.



Also, money pits are a thing in the real world as well.

True. But nothing short of Scroge McDuck comes close to monsters like dragons. A dragon horde has a huge amount of coins in it. And every monster has treasure, and for the ''beast'' like ones, any coins in the treasure are in the money pit. A hydra might have 1,000 gold coins, but they don't go shopping with it.

[golentan]

This will vary by setting. Some settings might even have orcs as part of the normal economy. But a lot of fantasy settings the orcs live apart from the ''good'' races. Orcs do not trade with the elves and dwarves and humans. They would just kill each other on sight.

So once the orcs get the coins they are mostly gone from circulation......until some adventures kill the orcs and loot the bodies.

Well, we normally see orcs in times of war. And even then, they usually have human allies/hangers on/sycophants in the mix. Take the eastern men in Lord of the Rings, some of whom apparently had trade with the other nations of men, and who in turn had relations with their demihuman neighbors... Elves and Orcs may have the races of Men acting as the intermediary in their ring economy, but they do have exchange if you know the routes to trace.


True. But nothing short of Scroge McDuck comes close to monsters like dragons. A dragon hoard has a huge amount of coins in it. And every monster has treasure, and for the ''beast'' like ones, any coins in the treasure are in the money pit. A hydra might have 1,000 gold coins, but they don't go shopping with it.

Well, let's see. If the average professional in DnD (level 1 expert with 4 ranks in profession, ignoring ability mod) makes 7 gp a week, the middle class average income is around 364 gp per year. A Great Wyrm Red Dragon has triple treasure, so in terms of coinage that's an upper level of 12,000 platinum in 3.5, or 120,000 gp equivalent. Sure, that's a lot, but it's only the equivalent of 330 years salary for a middle class citizen. Most mid sized cities probably have a larger tax base than the dragon has wealth, and obviously it's not that exceptional since a mansion costs 100,000 gp and I'm guessing those nobles haven't bankrupted themselves to get a home just to show up the D'Canries down the street after they purchased that new painting.

In comparison, a typical ceo makes... about 330 times (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2014/04/15/report-ceos-earn-331-times-as-much-as-average-workers-774-times-as-much-as-minimum-wage-earners/) the annual salary of average workers, almost exactly the upper edge of that draconic horde's cash component (yes, I'm leaving off magic items, gems, art, etc. since they don't matter so much for tracking where the coins are vanishing to) but unlike the dragon who spent a millennium taking that cash out of circulation they get that salary every year, resulting in a situation where 1/1000th of the population owns as much as 90% of the bottom earners of the population combined. (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-inequality-top-01-worth-as-much-as-the-bottom-90)

I don't think the dragons are as much of a factor in the scrooge mcducky way as you do...

[Yora]

The first is universal money. In fantasy everyone in the multiverse got together at the CoinCon and ruled that one good piece would be worth that same amount in the whole multiverse.
Or go just by weight. One British Pound used to be one pound of silver. With all the inflation and price changes, one British Pound is now over 150 pounds of silver.

I think stamping precious metals is probably most important to indicate composition. A coin that is pure gold is much more worth than one that is 90% gold and 10% silver or something else. And there's a lot of possible mixtures of metals that would be quite difficult to tell apart. Having a king vouch that a piece of metal is exactly the composition it's supposed to be can make your money better than someone elses money. Though of course, when each mint has their own prefered composition of coins, you get back to having convert values to get the actual worth of a foreign coin.
Which is why we now have the concept of legal tender. It dictates by law which money is always official and which stores and merchants must accept. Stores in New York can't suddenly demand that customers pay in Euro because they don't trust the stability of the dollar. And customers can't demand that the stores accept their Euros. If they both agree to make the exchange in Euro, it's still a valid transaction. (There were lots of stores around here that would still take DM years after it no longer had legal tender status.)

[hamishspence]

Or go just by weight. One British Pound used to be one pound of silver. With all the inflation and price changes, one British Pound is now over 150 pounds of silver.


Are you sure it's not the other way round? I thought that buying a pound of ordinary silver (maybe for making silver plates or cups or bracelets) would cost more like £150?

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Medieval currency has a lot of ways to disappear (see: clipping, above), but mass remintings aren't really one of them. You have to have a more modern centralized regime to pull that off. Medieval currency was much more of a mess, because debasements and the farming out of minting meant that the coinage in circulation was all over the place.

There still had to be something that said "this is legal tender", and if you're collecting taxes, you do have the ability to pull coins back in so you can remint them. And you'd have to either be pretty egomaniacal, or utterly hate the person whose image is on the coins to want to do it in the first place, which means someone will try and get it done, if only to avoid whatever punishment you dream up if they don't.

And as I said, there would be surviving coins around.

[oxybe]

I would say that since there are spells like make whole, repair object, etc... people who deal with money constantly or in large amounts likely have a mage on call who's job is to repair and maintain older coins, or coins that have seen lots of use/badly stored (hey guys, let's put our gold coins in the same pouch as our adamantine arrows! It'll save space!). This way even older coins, like say in an elven or dwarven community, don't get worn out and can stay in circulation longer.

[Zyzzyva]

There still had to be something that said "this is legal tender", and if you're collecting taxes, you do have the ability to pull coins back in so you can remint them. And you'd have to either be pretty egomaniacal, or utterly hate the person whose image is on the coins to want to do it in the first place, which means someone will try and get it done, if only to avoid whatever punishment you dream up if they don't.

And as I said, there would be surviving coins around.

I think you're misjudging medieval currency and economic thought based on modern money, which is really a different animal entirely. As Yora mentioned, "Legal Tender" is a relatively recent idea, fairly tightly tied to fiat and metal-standard (as opposed to metal-composed) currencies. In the premodern era, coins are there for propaganda purposes and provided a guarantee of quality of the underlying metals, rather than as the sole means of exchange backed by faith in the state.

Re taxes: of course you can remint coins taken in tax and I'm sure metals from that source did make up a proportion of the next round of issues, especially in states without native sources of silver and gold. But again, a modern state takes vastly more in tax than any medieval state would have dreamed of, most of that was not in coin to begin with, and, of course, if Henry Tudor wants to get Richard III's coins out of circulation through taxation he has to be willing to treat the coins as legitimate payment for taxes, which is very close to the only place a medieval state can decide what coins are real or not anyways. (Some quick clicking around leads me to believe that there was no particular effort under the Tudors to get rid of the Yorkist issues IRL, but I'd be very grateful to anyone with more information in this field.)

~

Re the rest of the thread: I'm sure a D&D economy would have far more weirdnesses in it than just Orc-human trade and Dragon hoards. "Since their discovery in 1572, the silver mines of Cerro de Potosí in the Elemental Plane of Earth have provided approximately 100% of the 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of silver put into the economy each year..."

...Well, maybe that's more an OOTS-like universe problem than a D&D one generically. :smallbiggrin:

[golentan]

Step one: Move to a fiat currency. Proof it against counterfeiting.
Step two: Use infinite money shenanigans as found elsewhere on the board to crash the value of gold, silver, and copper.
Step three: Your economy is the only semi-functional one. Have fun.

[Satinavian]

So other rulers coming in is a large factor, but existing kingdoms that have existed and keep existing... they mint money. if these coins are indestructible and last externally, why bother minting things at all? some coins must get lost, sunk in the ocean, traded to out of the area, horded, et cetra. these actions create a mean life expectancy of the coin, be it gold or silver or copper. I was wondering the time or just general thoughts on the depletion of bullion coins. I was planning on say a nation running out of gold or whatever, and thinking how many years until their economy is nearly devoid of money and their coin is actually worth a ton of money.
As for nations running out of gold

That was more or less the case for medieval (and later) Europe. Europe has not a lot of natural gold ressources. Not nearly enough to mint enough money for the ever growing economy and the rising markets north of the alps. The Roman empire had far better access to gold and kind of left a gold standard for later.

What happened, was that more and more silver coins were minted (Europe has a lot of silver). Some of them ridiculous huge and nominally the same worth as the common gold coin. Of course with the big silver supply and the small gold supply the prices shifted gradually and there were several rounds of devaluation of silver coins in economies using both.

While the gold of the new world shook things up a bit, some northern countries eventually settled for siver currency alone.



But gold doesn't degarde so easily. The problem was not gold "vanishing", it was economical (and population) growth, which neads a corresponding growth in circulating money to avoid deflation.

[Donnadogsoth]

Step one: Move to a fiat currency. Proof it against counterfeiting.
Step two: Use infinite money shenanigans as found elsewhere on the board to crash the value of gold, silver, and copper.
Step three: Your economy is the only semi-functional one. Have fun.

I've read that gold is very stable in value no matter what the fiat currency-mongers do. An ounce of gold buys a nice suit today just as an ounce of gold bought a nice toga two thousand years ago. Could you recommend somewhere more specific than "on the board" as to how one "crashes the value" of gold, etc.?

[BootStrapTommy]

Many Roman coins have survived to this day. Even bronze and copper ones. That puts some over 2000 years. Menawhile gold, silver, and platinum are noble metals making them extremely resistant to corrosion (especially compared to copper and iron), so they would be more than capable of surviving for a long time.

[golentan]

I've read that gold is very stable in value no matter what the fiat currency-mongers do. An ounce of gold buys a nice suit today just as an ounce of gold bought a nice toga two thousand years ago. Could you recommend somewhere more specific than "on the board" as to how one "crashes the value" of gold, etc.?

When gold is literally as common as dirt (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2072), it's just as worthless. You use infinite money-shenanigans magic to make tons of gold, then you spend it like it's going out of style (because it does) until it becomes worthless, buying up goods that actually matter for your internal, floating money economy until people catch on and stop accepting precious metals as payment for anything. At that point, the people who are on your fiat money have a good amount of wealth and your anti-counterfeiting keeps people from crashing your own currency the same way, meaning you have a functional economy, while everyone who was on the gold standard is stuck trying to figure out what to do with their worthless yellow rocks. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorthlessYellowRocks)

Gold, like anything else, has no value save by that imparted by supply and demand. It's economics 101. Gold historically has had value because of a relatively stable demand and low supply. Other historical harbingers of wealth, like diamonds, have had to artificially restrict their supplies through monopolies (http://www.cracked.com/article_19367_6-companies-that-rigged-game-and-changed-world.html) in order to keep their products from becoming worthless overnight because they succeeded in finding too many of them. If new gold deposits stop being found, the price of gold will spike unless demand falls to match. It has in fact seen something of a spike from increased demand from people using it to hedge against economic problems that they don't understand, if their fears come to pass the price will likely drop and they'll find that they've invested more than their gold is now worth (why do you think that so many companies are so willing to sell it as an "investment?" Rather than hold what they think will be a more stable long term resource, anyways?). If I pay you in 2 tons of gold for a plowshare, you may think you've gotten a good deal, until you find out that everyone else in town was similarly "overpaid" for goods. Nobody wants more gold now, because even the town beggar has more than he can carry, so now you're all out goods and services, and I've shifted less portable resources for a tremendous amount of actual wealth from all of you.

As an example, look what happened to Spain's economy following american contact.

[BootStrapTommy]

When gold is literally as common as dirt (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2072), it's just as worthless. You use infinite money-shenanigans magic to make tons of gold, then you spend it like it's going out of style (because it does) until it becomes worthless, buying up goods that actually matter for your internal, floating money economy until people catch on and stop accepting precious metals as payment for anything. At that point, the people who are on your fiat money have a good amount of wealth and your anti-counterfeiting keeps people from crashing your own currency the same way, meaning you have a functional economy, while everyone who was on the gold standard is stuck trying to figure out what to do with their worthless yellow rocks. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorthlessYellowRocks) Until the "full faith and credit" of the system which provides the fiat currency is called into question. Because that would have the same effect. Because "faith and credit" aren't real.

That being said, in a world where you can "use infinite money-shenanigans magic to make tons of gold", you're like to do the same with just about everything. In such a world the concept of scarcity does not exist, thus supply and demand become paltry, near-useless measures of value. So in a world where magic can flood the market for gold, any market could like be similarly flooded. At that point, supply and demand economics are meaningless. And so does fiat currency.

In such a world, magic would be the only thing of value.


Gold, like anything else, has no value save by that imparted by supply and demand. It's economics 101. Gold historically has had value because of a relatively stable demand and low supply. Other historical harbingers of wealth, like diamonds, have had to artificially restrict their supplies through monopolies (http://www.cracked.com/article_19367_6-companies-that-rigged-game-and-changed-world.html) in order to keep their products from becoming worthless overnight because they succeeded in finding too many of them. If new gold deposits stop being found, the price of gold will spike unless demand falls to match. It has in fact seen something of a spike from increased demand from people using it to hedge against economic problems that they don't understand, if their fears come to pass the price will likely drop and they'll find that they've invested more than their gold is now worth (why do you think that so many companies are so willing to sell it as an "investment?" Rather than hold what they think will be a more stable long term resource, anyways?). If I pay you in 2 tons of gold for a plowshare, you may think you've gotten a good deal, until you find out that everyone else in town was similarly "overpaid" for goods. Nobody wants more gold now, because even the town beggar has more than he can carry, so now you're all out goods and services, and I've shifted less portable resources for a tremendous amount of actual wealth from all of you.

As an example, look what happened to Spain's economy following american contact.
Strangely enough, the same argument applies to fiat currency with inflation. If I pay you in 2000$ for a plowshare, you may think you've gotten a good deal, until you find out that everyone else in town was similarly "overpaid" for goods, because 1$ is effectively worthless like the government which issued it. Nobody wants dollars now, because even the town beggar has more than he can carry. So now you're all out goods and services, and everyone is searching for tangible, real goods that they had hold in their hands to replace the useless paper not worth the ink it was printed with. Like gold.

Gold is one of the rarest elements in the universe. Unlike carbon. The chance of any major shock to its scarcity occurring is a fraction the chance that the fallible persons behind a fiat currency will mismanage its value. Add magic which could shock the supply, and all economics principles, including fiat currency, dissolve with gold.

[Deophaun]

That being said, in a world where you can "use infinite money-shenanigans magic to make tons of gold", you're like to do the same with just about everything.
Actually, this is where my favorite spell of all time comes into play: dragoneye rune, which because it is impossible to counterfeit ("the mark inscribed is unique to your casting of this spell; no two casters create the same mark" coupled with a DC 22 spellcraft check) means that you just have to make a wizard your treasury secretary and you will have a secure fiat currency.

Edit: A real hedgers invest in whiskey anyway :smallwink:

[golentan]

I know that's also true of fiat currency, that's why I specified anti-counterfeiting as essential to the plan, you need a means of limiting production to the treasury, and you can't get greedy or stingy and risk a bubble or deflationary spiral. If you research a homebrew spell that provides verification of the value of your currency, and keep other people from utilizing it (preferably, it notifies you whenever cast and has an effect that can't be duplicated by illusions of low level), you've got a good floating money, you've concentrated material wealth in your hands, and your currency is good as long as you can keep it stable, and you're still the wealthiest nation around at least until someone else gets a functional alternate currency going and/or crashes your economy.

[BootStrapTommy]

Actually, this is where my favorite spell of all time comes into play: dragoneye rune, which because it is impossible to counterfeit ("the mark inscribed is unique to your casting of this spell; no two casters create the same mark" coupled with a DC 22 spellcraft check) means that you just have to make a wizard your treasury secretary and you will have a secure fiat currency. But if you can create everything with magic, you don't need a currency. Because you can just make what you need with magic. Such a world no longer has anything like an "economy". There's no scarcity, therefore no need to trade.

You'd just end up with some weird, utopian, hippy commune, but with magic and stuff.


Edit: A real hedgers invest in whiskey anyway :smallwink: But I'd drink it all!

[Flickerdart]

Because you can just make what you need with magic.
There's a long way to go from "I can make what I need with magic" to "I will make what you need with magic."

[BootStrapTommy]

There's a long way to go from "I can make what I need with magic" to "I will make what you need with magic." It is not a long way from "I can create enough gold to flood the economy and render it valueless." and "I can make all the buffalo wings you can eat."

[Deophaun]

It is not a long way from "I can create enough gold to flood the economy and render it valueless." and "I can make all the buffalo wings you can eat."
What is the shelf life of buffalo wings compared to gold coins?

What are you left with when a buffalo wing is used versus a gold coin?

[BootStrapTommy]

What is the shelf life of buffalo wings compared to gold coins? The time it takes you to eat them.


What are you left with when a buffalo wing is used versus a gold coin? Not hunger.

[Knaight]

It is not a long way from "I can create enough gold to flood the economy and render it valueless." and "I can make all the buffalo wings you can eat."

On production of food as opposed to devaluation of precious metal currency - there are some major differences that contribute to a large jump. One is the incentives involved; flooding the market with gold is a viable get rich quick scheme (at least for a while) that could easily draw a lot of people to it; mass production of food could be used to make money or could be used as a gift of some sort, but is substantially more difficult. The other big one relates to the rates involved.

Basically, think of this in terms of accumulation of stuff. You've got an input (the mage making the stuff), an output (the gold wearing away, getting lost, etc. or the food getting eaten or rotting), and some amount that has accumulated. All it really takes to devalue the currency is to get the input up over the output, to get it past minor inflation it has to be significantly higher. The output rate is likely comparatively low (as money mostly cycles through the economy), and in a lot of games it's not all that much harder to mass produce precious metals than food. To reach a post-scarcity post-economy utopia, the input of food needs to get over the output while retaining enough accumulated to handle fluctuations at all time, while also maintaining a complex logistic network. To add insult to injury, accumulating food increases the output rate because of rotting.

So, just producing enough food isn't enough to get everyone fed. The actual human population of Earth already produces enough food to feed everyone in it, people still starve to death because of distribution problems. Scarcity also needs to be completely eliminated at a local level everywhere to remove economic pressures, otherwise the places which do have food (or people, in the case of mages) can just sell it to everyone else. A market can get pretty flooded just from supply and demand forces while still leaving scarcity elsewhere, concerted efforts to provide food for everyone outside of just selling it would be needed to remove the economics. That's a tall order.


The first is universal money. In fantasy everyone in the multiverse got together at the CoinCon and ruled that one good piece would be worth that same amount in the whole multiverse.

Precious metal coins and similar pretty much were this, though only within connected economies (1200 CE Central America and 1200 CE Europe had two completely unconnected economies, two dramatically different rates of gold rarity, and thus two dramatically different points of value for gold). A lot of the time what mattered was just the mass of the coins.

[BootStrapTommy]

On production of food as opposed to devaluation of precious metal currency - there are some major differences that contribute to a large jump. One is the incentives involved; flooding the market with gold is a viable get rich quick scheme (at least for a while) that could easily draw a lot of people to it; mass production of food could be used to make money or could be used as a gift of some sort, but is substantially more difficult. The other big one relates to the rates involved.

Basically, think of this in terms of accumulation of stuff. You've got an input (the mage making the stuff), an output (the gold wearing away, getting lost, etc. or the food getting eaten or rotting), and some amount that has accumulated. All it really takes to devalue the currency is to get the input up over the output, to get it past minor inflation it has to be significantly higher. The output rate is likely comparatively low (as money mostly cycles through the economy), and in a lot of games it's not all that much harder to mass produce precious metals than food. To reach a post-scarcity post-economy utopia, the input of food needs to get over the output while retaining enough accumulated to handle fluctuations at all time, while also maintaining a complex logistic network. To add insult to injury, accumulating food increases the output rate because of rotting.

So, just producing enough food isn't enough to get everyone fed. The actual human population of Earth already produces enough food to feed everyone in it, people still starve to death because of distribution problems. Scarcity also needs to be completely eliminated at a local level everywhere to remove economic pressures, otherwise the places which do have food (or people, in the case of mages) can just sell it to everyone else. A market can get pretty flooded just from supply and demand forces while still leaving scarcity elsewhere, concerted efforts to provide food for everyone outside of just selling it would be needed to remove the economics. That's a tall order. Because mages who can create food out of thin air can't make it not rot? Or easily create ways to store it or transport it?

You're argument is "But it would be hard." My argument was "It's possible." The whole crux of this was that if mages can create gold from air and flood the market, than they could could do the same with anything else. In a world where some do the former, it would not be surprising (however unlikely) if others do the latter. And in such a world, the laws of supply and demand become poor indicators of value.

[golentan]

Because mages who can create food out of thin air can't make it not rot? Or easily create ways to store it or transport it?

You're argument is "But it would be hard." My argument was "It's possible." The whole crux of this was that if mages can create gold from air and flood the market, than they could could do the same with anything else. In a world where some do the former, it would not be surprising (however unlikely) if others do the latter. And in such a world, the laws of supply and demand become poor indicators of value.

Yeah, but the twisted thing is that it's easier to flood the market with gold than it is to supply the food needs of everyone in DnD, since most of the latter require you to be PRESENT in the place where there are hungry people or the expenditure of XP to make a permanent item or effect to create it for you/transport it before it goes bad/keep it from going bad, or so many casters that it's not a one man/one nation project. Many means of just conjuring gold from thin air (basically)? No XP, and often they're effective enough that one caster can churn out an economy breaking volume of goods at a cost of a spell slot or two per day.

Now, you could set up a Pain Loop for infinite XP, but... that raises further issues.

Though not impossible. Self Resetting Create Food and Water traps could conceivably be financed with the production of gold to break the economy as you get going in a standard DnD verse, allowing you to feed thousands of people a day, and they're not too expensive in terms of any resource.

But in general, yeah. Post-scarcity exists in DnD, but only for the wealthy and magically talented.

Other systems have their own idiosyncracies.

[BootStrapTommy]

Yeah, but the twisted thing is that it's easier to flood the market with gold than it is to supply the food needs of everyone in DnD, since most of the latter require you to be PRESENT in the place where there are hungry people or the expenditure of XP to make a permanent item or effect to create it for you/transport it before it goes bad/keep it from going bad, or so many casters that it's not a one man/one nation project. Many means of just conjuring gold from thin air (basically)? No XP, and often they're effective enough that one caster can churn out an economy breaking volume of goods at a cost of a spell slot or two per day.

Now, you could set up a Pain Loop for infinite XP, but... that raises further issues.

Though not impossible. Self Resetting Create Food and Water traps could conceivably be financed with the production of gold to break the economy as you get going in a standard DnD verse, allowing you to feed thousands of people a day, and they're not too expensive in terms of any resource.

But in general, yeah. Post-scarcity exists in DnD, but only for the wealthy and magically talented.

Other systems have their own idiosyncracies. Since this discussion included the idea of fiat or alternate currencies as a response, you could easily spawn unspoilible food and spend it wildly just like you'd do gold, as if it were money.

Or make some pretty cheap magic items which infi-spawn food (your Self Resetting Creat Food and Water traps) and just roll around like a highballer using them as currency.

"You make me a sword, and your family will never have to worry about food again... Sorry that came out wrong. I was not implying I'd kill them. This wand makes food."

[golentan]

Again, XP makes it harder. Rather than using planar binding to get 75,000 gold a day per casting at no real cost, you're spending 600 XP for each city you bring towards post scarcity: XP you could have been saving for leveling up (and thus ever better ways to manipulate reality) other magic items with more direct benefit to you personally, or spells with an XP component that again would have more direct benefit to you personally, and if you're not a divine magician (a lot of the get rich quick schemes are Arcane focused), you can't build it at all.

It's a Good thing to do, I'm not arguing. But how many people do you know who've gone Tippyverse in their quest to aide humanity, vs. number of people who like spamming Wall of Salt for the cash?

[Knaight]

You're argument is "But it would be hard." My argument was "It's possible." The whole crux of this was that if mages can create gold from air and flood the market, than they could could do the same with anything else. In a world where some do the former, it would not be surprising (however unlikely) if others do the latter. And in such a world, the laws of supply and demand become poor indicators of value.

The only way the ability to do the former implies the ability to do the latter (let alone it being a small jump, as you originally stated) is if the requirements for the latter aren't meaningfully more difficult than the requirements of the former. They very much are.

[Satinavian]

I know that's also true of fiat currency, that's why I specified anti-counterfeiting as essential to the plan, you need a means of limiting production to the treasury, and you can't get greedy or stingy and risk a bubble or deflationary spiral. If you research a homebrew spell that provides verification of the value of your currency, and keep other people from utilizing it (preferably, it notifies you whenever cast and has an effect that can't be duplicated by illusions of low level), you've got a good floating money, you've concentrated material wealth in your hands, and your currency is good as long as you can keep it stable, and you're still the wealthiest nation around at least until someone else gets a functional alternate currency going and/or crashes your economy.
Counterfeiting is not the issue.

Getting people to use your fiat money is the issue. Fiat money is only worth something if it can buy things. To establish it as currency, you must make sure, there are things it can buy.
There are basically two ways. Either you are a nation and can make laws to force at least a part of your economy to use it (e.g. "taxes have to be paid in...") or you have to sell stuff yourself. Enough stuff to have meaningfull impact on economies.

Otherwise everyone else would start making their own currency as soon as gold is out of the picture, some fiat, some material based (with things that seem harder to make with magic). And quite a couple of them will be more eddicient than your fiat currency.

[Flickerdart]

It is not a long way from "I can create enough gold to flood the economy and render it valueless." and "I can make all the buffalo wings you can eat."
No, no, you're missing the key words.

I will make gold for myself because it benefits me. Why should I make buffalo wings for you? Out of the goodness of my heart? Screw that, make your own buffalo wings. What's that, you're a peasant who can't cast spells? Well then you better offer me something in exchange for my help.

There is no reason to assume that just because one person can do this, everyone can.

[ddude987]

But a world that just has mages making infinite money, food, et cetra but not supplying it to other people, because let's face it, other people are just plebs, will just result in most people dying and some sort of apocalyptic scenario where the only people left are people the wizards make because they're bored. So... if people are made because they are entertaining and all the regular people are dead, shouldn't we just use people as currency? ... which then turns into slavery, but not slaves doing work, slaves stuck in your wallet until you need to buy something.

[Flickerdart]

But a world that just has mages making infinite money, food, et cetra but not supplying it to other people, because let's face it, other people are just plebs, will just result in most people dying and some sort of apocalyptic scenario where the only people left are people the wizards make because they're bored. So... if people are made because they are entertaining and all the regular people are dead, shouldn't we just use people as currency? ... which then turns into slavery, but not slaves doing work, slaves stuck in your wallet until you need to buy something.
I mean, that's basically how fiends work, except souls are a lot more compact than bodies.

[ddude987]

but if I could be so bold as to un-derail the thread, assuming not infinite money and non magic, would anyone agree the half-life of a coin in circulation is something like 15-20 years?

[Zyzzyva]

but if I could be so bold as to un-derail the thread, assuming not infinite money and non magic, would anyone agree the half-life of a coin in circulation is something like 15-20 years?

I would be willing to back that.

[Mr.Moron]

It is not a long way from "I can create enough gold to flood the economy and render it valueless." and "I can make all the buffalo wings you can eat."

Except it's apparent this doesn't happen. People on internet forums aren't uniquely clever, magic exists and yet the settings all still have scarcity and currency.

Therefore we can assume that any reading of the rules that would seem to make these aspects of the universe nonsensical is simply the artifact of an abstraction mean to facilitate the typical adventure play style. That there are limitations or caveats to magic that simply aren't mentioned or bothered with because they aren't directly relevant or fitting enough for the kinds of stories the game is trying to tell.

In other words you can't really cast arbitrarily large numbers of Create Food spells to feed the world, because if you could someone would have already. It's just whatever the reason you can't really isn't game relevant and so is left out of the engine.

[BootStrapTommy]

There is no reason to assume that just because one person can do this, everyone can.
On a long enough timeline if there's ample reason to believe that some one can do it, some one will do.

Everyone's argument against me basically boils down to "People have more incentive to flood the market with gold than with other goods." Once again, that does not ignores that not everyones preferences are purely selfish. And it seems to gone over everyone heads that food was just an example. The argument is applicable to any good.

In other words you can't really cast arbitrarily large numbers of Create Food spells to feed the world, because if you could someone would have already. It's just whatever the reason you can't really isn't game relevant and so is left out of the engine. And spamming "Wall of Salt" for the money is somehow different?

[ddude987]

while I would have no problem with a wizard making unlimited buffalo wings for everyone, it does make sense that it wouldn't happen. I will say saying everyone is automatically selfish is a very Hobbes point of view.

[Mr.Moron]

On a long enough timeline if there's ample reason to believe that some one can do it, some one will do.

Everyone's argument against me basically boils down to "People have more incentive to flood the market with gold than with other goods." Once again, that does not ignores that not everyones preferences are purely selfish. And it seems to gone over everyone heads that food was just an example. The argument is applicable to any good.
And spamming "Wall of Salt" for the money is somehow different?

Yes. Since salt still has value, and the world isn't overflowing with salt we can assume the abstraction that is the rules for the "Wall of Salt" spell ignores something about the nature of magic in generally or the spell specifically that prevents such spells from destroying the value on salt.

The game and the various playing pieces are written with the assumption they'll be used for adventuring. Concerns that might not come up until you start spamming it don't need to be included, considered, mentioned or otherwise exist in the game engine.

If this was "Salt Traders & Spice Barons" instead of "Dungeons and Dragons" the details of why spamming "Wall of Salt" doesn't work that way would be relevant to include. As-is, it's not worth putting ink on page about. It's game, not a simulation.

[Deophaun]

while I would have no problem with a wizard making unlimited buffalo wings for everyone, it does make sense that it wouldn't happen. I will say saying everyone is automatically selfish is a very Hobbes point of view.

It's not the everyone's selfish. It's that the wizards who aren't were killed by the wizards who were. Nastily. Brutishly. While they were short, even.

[BootStrapTommy]

Yes. Since salt still has value, and the world isn't overflowing with salt we can assume the abstraction that is the rules for the "Wall of Salt" spell ignores something about the nature of magic in generally or the spell specifically that prevents such spells from destroying the value on salt.

The game and the various playing pieces are written with the assumption they'll be used for adventuring. Concerns that might not come up until you start spamming it don't need to be included, considered, mentioned or otherwise exist in the game engine.

If this was "Salt Traders & Spice Barons" instead of "Dungeons and Dragons" the details of why spamming "Wall of Salt" doesn't work that way would be relevant to include. As-is, it's not worth putting ink on page about. It's game, not a simulation. I'm kinda of confused about how the fact that mages can crash gold markets and feed the world population with just force of will would not be relevant to gameplay. If I'm not mistaken, the 3.5 DMG even makes passing reference to this.

I appreciate the argument you're making here. But I think you fail to see how it aligns with mine.

Everyone was saying gold's value could be economically manipulated in a society where magic can simply produce it. Its scarcity could be destroyed, making it useless as a base for currency. So why gold, why not fiat? My point was that in a world where that can be done, it can likely be done for everything (food, clothes, gems, fiat, etc.). The law of supply and demand begins to become a poor indicator of value when supply can be so easily manipulated by the whim of powerful mages.

But as you astutely pointed out, the system doesn't make those assumptions have relevency. Implying some safe guards may already exist. Commerce deities do exist in many settings, don't they?

Or maybe game designers are just economically apathetic.

[golentan]

The assumption is that ease is a matter of concern (a spell slot, once you've learned that level, being a small investment compared to XP or material components that can't be "counterfeited"). This is why I have been specifying counterfeiting prevention all along for maintaining a pre-scarcity economy with regards for things you're not deliberately breaking scarcity for for fun and profit.

You're right that the laws of supply and demand break down when magic is applied, but they don't always break down with regards to the application of that magic. Accumulation of XP is often a hard limit. Demand for XP to break scarcity may be high, but supply is limited to certain channels and investment of time. The time and available spell slots of casters are another limit, again tying back to XP (since you need to acquire enough XP to be able to provide spells for your people).

[BootStrapTommy]

The assumption is that ease is a matter of concern (a spell slot, once you've learned that level, being a small investment compared to XP or material components that can't be "counterfeited"). This is why I have been specifying counterfeiting prevention all along for maintaining a pre-scarcity economy with regards for things you're not deliberately breaking scarcity for for fun and profit.

You're right that the laws of supply and demand break down when magic is applied, but they don't always break down with regards to the application of that magic. Accumulation of XP is often a hard limit. Demand for XP to break scarcity may be high, but supply is limited to certain channels and investment of time. The time and available spell slots of casters are another limit, again tying back to XP (since you need to acquire enough XP to be able to provide spells for your people). Magic could just as easily fix the scarcity of time, and through it the scarcity of XP.

Fiat money still requires central banking. Central banking puts a fallible " human" element in charge, which creates the intangible backing of "faith and credit". Alls good. Until the mages who make the money screw up. That opens a new can of economic worms. Even without counterfeiting.

Make your central bank the commerce deity, however, and you could probably get away with a divine central bank.

[golentan]

All currency systems are fallible and prone to manipulation. Why do you keep holding this up as a flaw of one system over another, or a reason to not attempt certain systems? The reason this whole thing got started is because gold is fallible in DnD, because it can be counterfeited rather than being able to rely on natural scarcity to keep the value elevated. Even so, gold has been subject to currency manipulation right here on earth, and collapses.

Fiat systems are also fallible, but unlike natural substances can be rendered harder to counterfeit if you design them well. This makes them preferable to gold in a world where mages engage in currency manipulation, especially if you yourself are a mage and realize the advantages you can reap by some manipulation, but want to safeguard your home economy. Sure, humans are fallible, but so's the "invisible hand" of the market with regards to non-floating, non-fiat currencies.

Post scarcity economies may be fallible, depending on the nature of what can be rendered post scarcity and how. What happens if a nutrition production item breaks without a ready means to contact someone who can repair or replace it, for example: without an incentive to farm as a backup, how many people may starve in the interim? Are we making mages responsible for every good, and if not, how do we pay people to produce them without a common currency that gives them continuous incentive and need to acquire it by continuing to produce? What are mages getting from providing goods that incentivizes them to keep things post-scarcity?

The god of Commerce is also fallible. Ask any Ur-Priest. Or wait until a godly feud turns lose a holy war on your monetary system. Do you want to entrust your future economy to what (depending on setting) may as well be a bunch of squabbling toddlers with cosmic powers?

Why do you keep insisting that Fiat Money is WORSE than alternatives? All money is Fiat Money. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2013/01/08/all-money-is-fiat-money/)

[Knaight]

Fiat money still requires central banking. Central banking puts a fallible " human" element in charge, which creates the intangible backing of "faith and credit". Alls good. Until the mages who make the money screw up. That opens a new can of economic worms. Even without counterfeiting.

Fiat money has failure conditions, yes. So does a precious metal currency. For instance, it drastically reduces the amount individual nations are able to manage it. The modern Eurozone crisis is the sort of thing that covered entire economic networks automatically with a precious metal currency. A sudden influx of precious metals can cause immediate drastic spikes (consider the Spanish economy in the mid 1500's, once gold was being shipped in in huge quantities from the Americas). Basically, there are a bunch of ways it can go wrong.

[BootStrapTommy]

Why do you keep insisting that Fiat Money is WORSE than alternatives? All money is Fiat Money. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2013/01/08/all-money-is-fiat-money/) Because our world is rife with illustrations of why fiat currency sucks. And it sucks for many the same reasons you claim gold sucks in a world of magic. My point is FIAT doesn't actually fix the problem. I understand that the removal of counterfeiting makes the concept seem more reliable, but in a world where magic can manipulate reality, it's only a matter of time before the counterfeiter catch up to your anti-counterfeiting measures. Just because one spell says it can't be conterfeited, doesn't mean another doesn't say it can counterfeit that other spell. Specific beats general.

My suggestion of a deity was grounded under the assumption that a deity could overcome, something mages aren't likely to.

And just because you can more precisely manipulate the supply of money, doesn't mean you can control demand. Or change the fact that currency is directly effected by the scarcity of other goods, and scarce currency in a world without scarce goods is next to meaningless! When scarcity dissolves, or becomes the whim of powerful wizards, you get economic nonsense.

[Deophaun]

Just because one spell says it can't be conterfeited, doesn't mean another doesn't say it can counterfeit that other spell. Specific beats general.
Because the effects are, by their nature, visible, any attempt to counterfeit a dragonmark rune is vulnerable to spellcraft.

[BootStrapTommy]

Because the effects are, by their nature, visible, any attempt to counterfeit a dragonmark rune is vulnerable to spellcraft.

Unless that attempt to counterfeit dragonmark rune otherwise specifies that it isn't. Because specific beats general.

[golentan]

Central bank credit system: specially designed golem keeps track of the current balances of all account holders and when notified of a transfer moves the appropriate number of units from account A to account B. Finance Golem, being a golem, is immune to mind effecting magic and pretty much immune to other forms of magical tampering. It prints a daily ledger of all account holders, and an hourly one of all transactions recorded in the past hour, against the event of failure you can track what the latest values in the system were with little loss, and operates alongside other golems who perform redundant operations and check each other's work to prevent single point of failure by any means (tampering, destruction, etc), and they are all guarded as are the ledgers of record.

Potential problem: Identity theft. But that's a micro problem, not a macro problem that will crash the system, and it's one with many assorted possible solutions.

There are no incomprehensible systems, only alien ones. There are no illogical functional systems, only counterintuitive ones. There are nonfunctional systems, but this isn't one.

And as you're the only one seeming to be arguing this, I'm going to stop now. You've repeated a lot of misconceptions I'm tired of hearing, let alone debunking, and doing so might edge into real world stuff. But I will say, you need to read more original scholarship from the field before I'm ready to continue this discussion.

[Deophaun]

Unless that attempt to counterfeit dragonmark rune otherwise specifies that it isn't. Because specific beats general.
Very well.

Show me the spell you're talking about.

[BootStrapTommy]

And as you're the only one seeming to be arguing this, I'm going to stop now. You've repeated a lot of misconceptions I'm tired of hearing, let alone debunking, and doing so might edge into real world stuff. But I will say, you need to read more original scholarship from the field before I'm ready to continue this discussion. I have a degree in economics. Do you?


Potential problem: Identity theft. But that's a micro problem, not a macro problem that will crash the system, and it's one with many assorted possible solutions. How is identity theft a micro problem is a world where entire races possess the ability to shapeshift?


Very well.

Show me the spell you're talking about. You do realize the listed spells are not the entirety of magic which exists, yes? And that there is an entire system for crafting your own? Unless you can argue what is is about that spell that makes it immutable, why couldn't a mage (or deity) bypass it?

[Flickerdart]

And that there is an entire system for crafting your own?
Calling it a system is overselling it just a bit.

[Deophaun]

You do realize the listed spells are not the entirety of magic which exists, yes? And that there is an entire system for crafting your own?
All spells that exist beyond what you find listed is entirely within the mind of the DM and players, just as this is:

Feat: Counterfeit Proof [Metamagic]
Benefit: Any spell you cast bears your unique mark that may not be copied. Anyone attempting to, either in person or via proxy, such as by even attempting to research that spell, you know, the one to find a way around this, is destroyed wholly in mind, body, and soul, and cannot be brought back via wish or true resurrection. In fact, the very idea that they tried to copy the spell is so offensive to everything that all deities, demons, devils, ancient evils, and omnipotent forces conspire to eradicate all evidence of the creature ever having existed.

A counterfeit proof spell uses a spell slot two levels higher.


Or, why should wizards have all the fun?

Feat: Scion of Farpoint
Benefit: You have attracted the attention of a giant psionic space jellyfish. Whatever physical object anyone who resides on the same planet as you wants instantly materializes.
Special: May attract the additional unwanted attention of omnipotent beings that send unsuspecting starship captains your way.


All of the above require exactly the same level of DM intervention to include in a game as does your theoretical spell.

[lsfreak]

I have a degree in economics. Do you?

Since you brought it up, do you have any links to scientific evidence (that is, studies or experiments with data to support them) that a monetary system based on artificial scarcity of something with no intrinsic value (fiat money) actually acts differently, in practice, than a monetary system based on natural scarcity of something with no intrinsic value (precious metals)?

EDIT: And I forgot to post what I was originally going to say. Earlier someone brought up weight of coins, it's worth saying that by my understanding, while D&D coins are obstinately 50/pound, in reality trade gold coins were more like 120/pound, and everyday coins (silver) were more like 400-700 to the pounds. Compare quarters at 80/pound and dimes at 200/pound. More than likely, the very small everyday silver coins - especially those running in the 800+/pound range - will wear rather quickly.

[BootStrapTommy]

All spells that exist beyond what you find listed is entirely within the mind of the DM and players, just as this is:

Feat: Counterfeit Proof [Metamagic]
Benefit: Any spell you cast bears your unique mark that may not be copied. Anyone attempting to, either in person or via proxy, such as by even attempting to research that spell, you know, the one to find a way around this, is destroyed wholly in mind, body, and soul, and cannot be brought back via wish or true resurrection. In fact, the very idea that they tried to copy the spell is so offensive to everything that all deities, demons, devils, ancient evils, and omnipotent forces conspire to eradicate all evidence of the creature ever having existed.

A counterfeit proof spell uses a spell slot two levels higher.

Or, why should wizards have all the fun?

Feat: Scion of Farpoint
Benefit: You have attracted the attention of a giant psionic space jellyfish. Whatever physical object anyone who resides on the same planet as you wants instantly materializes.
Special: May attract the additional unwanted attention of omnipotent beings that send unsuspecting starship captains your way.

All of the above require exactly the same level of DM intervention to include in a game as does your theoretical spell. Validate point. Though, I feel like you'd have to cast that at well over two spell levels over.


Since you brought it up, do you have any links to scientific evidence (that is, studies or experiments with data to support them) that a monetary system based on artificial scarcity of something with no intrinsic value (fiat money) actually acts differently, in practice, than a monetary system based on natural scarcity of something with no intrinsic value (precious metals)? If I must, I'd suggest any economic text book, where you might discover that a system run off artificial scarcity runs differently due to the people who run it, who respond to economic factors by manipulating supply (raising the supply to curb interest rates and stimulate borrowing or lowering supply to promot saving). When based off natural scarcity, supply is determined not by economists working for a central bank, but by the finite number of the actual good. It is subject to change only as the supply of goods changes.

Add magic however, and the ability of mages to change natural scarcities at whim, and the two would become similar. A point I made.

To be clear, I wasn't attempting the authority card there. I was simply pointing out to that I was educated in the field. I had no need for golentan to belittle me like that, which was ad hominem.

Nor should you view my critiques as a wholly negative view of central banking. Merely an attempt to have its limitation voiced, compared to gold in a magic world. Lest removed completely from all political pressures, currency manipulation could happen, for better or worse.

[golentan]

I apologize if I hurt your feelings, but people kept making the same assertion over and over without citation with regards to fiat, an assertion which directly contradicts literally every formal course I've taken and the overwhelming consensus of the scholarly articles and plain old editorials by people with more advanced study in the field than me that I've seen on the matter, even before magic showed up and turned the hazards of different currency models on their heads.

Assertions I have mostly heard from people without so much as a single collegiate level course in the matter, and who are fond of referencing Adam Smith without ever having read anything he wrote.

So, if you know what you're talking about, please show your work. Give me a link to an article, wow me with a model. I'm open to being convinced. All you've done is point out that fiat is fallible, not that it's more fallible, and I'm not disputing the first point (all economies are dependent on countless factors in an unstable equilibrium) and given that gold can be literally conjured into being alongside many other similarly enduring commodities in DnD that could operate as alternate standards for currency I remain unconvinced that Fiat isn't by far the best option since with proper controls you can tailor the supply to the needs of the nation in a way you can't control the supply of gold, or silver, or salt, or iron in a world with mages and gods. And I'd feel more comfortable trusting that currency supply to someone who literally has the power to predict the future through divination spells in any case.

At the same time I remain unconvinced that the world is post scarcity as well, as those mages do have limits to the amount they can accomplish in terms of the production of goods, mostly imposed by a limited number of spell slots and experience (which as they are consumed when used and are dependent on the existence of certain avenues of acquisition which remain at least somewhat finite will remain scarce even if mages extend their life to infinity). Incidentally, a similar problem exists with the "pay in eternal buffalo wings" model: currency that's consumed or sequestered when used does not stimulate further growth. There's an incentive to game the system which will mean that at least some will play with goods manipulation, but becoming truly post scarcity seems highly unlikely.

There have been requests for citations. Otherwise, I'm going to go back to avoiding this conversation.

[SirKazum]

No, no... don't you guys get it? Feeding everyone in the world and creating an utopian paradise where everyone's remotest desires are met is trivial. Anyone can do that. Distribution? Overcoming the fact that the means to do so are in the hands of few, who are likely to control that supply to meet their own ends? XP problems? Pshaw. That's baby stuff. Inventing a new spell or whatever other means to surpass whatever anti-counterfeiting measures you can dream up, no matter how carefully constructed or what resources go into them? Easy-peasy. Any Joe Schmoe can do that in 15 minutes. Using magic or whatever to rework the very fundamental laws of reality and reshape the whole world according to your whims so that you get to make fiat money useless? Yaaaawn. Wake me up when you ask for something difficult.

But conceiving of any scenario at all, no matter which completely fictious world it plays out in, or which rules this world operates under, where fiat money happens to be more valuable and/or trustworthy than gold? Whoa, hold on there, bucko. Now you're getting ridiculous.

[Flickerdart]

The best part about a magical fiat currency is that you can enchant the coins/bills/squaky rubber duckies to mind rape anyone holding them into believing that they are the one true currency and everything else is worthless yellow rocks.

[theMycon]

Re: the OP
Pick one.
"A great & terrible dragon comes around & ransacks the largest kingdom on this continent every 100 years or so. Coins just vanish then. A few pop up, but in general most people who don't recognize the king on the coin don't trust it."

"The great trading culture of the Qeng Ho lasted 10,000 years, spanned 3 planes, and made uniform 1/50 lb coins with milled edges and a really distinct stamp. Their coins are valuable everywhere forever; whether a shop keeper hands you one or you pick it up from a dragon's hoard. Every shop keeper has seen a million and will recognize any fake not of the right size, weight, and metal composition. If you DO put that much effort into faking it, it's essentially the real thing anyway."

Or anything in between. It's your setting. You can remove/destroy coins how you wish as you wish, because you control the actions of gods, dragons, and kings.


Re: The Debate
Gold in D&D remains valuable the same reason why dollars remain valuable in the real world (and, really, gold too)- people don't question it often, and when they do a whole lot of heavily armed men insist they're wrong.

"Experience" is the basis of the economy, with a side of "force". All tradable resources are just fiat money- proxies to help adventurers gain XP, since transferring XP is nontrivial. Remember, the adventurers are, by default, the center of the universe, so the economy is there to facilitate them growing more powerful.* With XP, mages can satisfy all the needs of the population and all their personal wants. Outside D&D 3.5, it allows other folk to become dangerous- both by becoming stronger and as a necessary material in the creation of a Food Button and magic weaponry.

In the real world, the dollar has the world's largest army behind it saying "You'll take our money because we say it has value."
Adventurers who can make gold can also topple countries and ruin armies. Metal stays "valuable" because if a shop keeper tells rich murderous hobos they're not rich anymore, the adventurers have no reason to use them. At the very best, they won't be saved from that rampaging demon while the adventurers find a city that still thinks gold is valuable. At the very worst, the adventurers will slaughter their entire town and take every magic item there. One way or another, helping the center of the universe grow more powerful, in a way that doesn't violate the unwritten social contract of adventuring, helps that person as well.

*I'm not sure whether I'm serious here. It's true, but that doesn't make it less insane.

[Flickerdart]

"Experience" is the basis of the economy, with a side of "force".
It's more like force is the basis of the economy. Experience is just one way to get force, but a merchant can pay off thugs to attack adventurers without having any EXP himself.

A useful bit of reading in regards to how an adventurer-focused economy would function is the murderhobo investment bubble (http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2015/02/16/the-murder-hobo-investment-bubble/).

[ddude987]

In a world where there is no scarcity due to magic, why would it not be that the population inctrases proportionally to the influx of resources and thereby creates scarcity. (let's just ignore infinite loop shenanigans and say there is technically a limit of resources by spells per day)

After all, other animals do the same. They increase in population until their resources are unsustainable and then die off until a soft pop cap is met.

Alternatively, if there is no scarcity, and real money is not valuable anf fiat money can be duped, why would the population revert to pure barter system?