Arbitris conglomerate

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by Major_Eyewater, Dec 27, 2013.

?

Do you believe that this is good for our economy and wish for it to exist

Poll closed Jan 27, 2014.
Yes its good I want to join now! 7 vote(s) 43.8%
No I think this would be a bad idea 9 vote(s) 56.3%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. I recently was looking through a couple different mall and noticed dramatically different prices on leather and other such goods. So i thought to myself why not start a group(a verbal group not in game group) with all the people who have shops over all the EMC servers that would monitor all the equilibrium prices for the economy on the servers. So I offer to any shop keeper or mall manager in this massive economy of trading small and large amounts of goods a network of connected prices and values through the Arbitris conglomerate
    BobTheTomato9798 likes this.
  2. So essentially this would be a Shopowner's Guild of sorts, where all the shop owners would collaborate to come up with average prices? That sounds like a great idea to me, but one that would be very difficult to organize just through a Skype group / forum pm. Maybe if there was a site or program where all the shop owners, who would have to be verified as actually running a reasonably large and stocked shop could enter in their prices and then the system would find the average from everyone's submissions?
  3. Opens up potential to price fixing.
    Basically, a lot of shop owners could get together and set prices higher than they would in the natural capitalistic economy, so that each one would turn a larger profit on said goods.
    One might argue that smaller shop owners could get an edge by providing lower prices, but those same shop owners would be motivated by the new higher average price to raise their own, maybe not to standard level, but still higher than it should be. Also, small producers cannot match the production of large corporations, which indeed malls are, as they utilize a variety of sources to ensure stock.
    mba2012 likes this.
  4. I think this is a great idea.
  5. Im not saying that we have a capitalistic market but only determine the equilibrium price in the various server markets as to move closer to perfect competition and away from the monopolist malls
  6. And if anyones wondering the points of perfect competition are
    1.Free entry and exit(we have already acheived this)
    2.perfect information(Everyone knows every price in there market and this is what we want to acheive)
    3.Many small firms(lots of smaller firms that cannot affect the market price which means they are AKA price takers)
    4.All firms sell identicle goods(Mojangs got us covered on this one aside from enchanted gear which is harder to mass produce)
  7. I tried doing this before :p
    Didn't work out too well, but if most people agree to this one, I'd be happy to help :p
  8. why thank you brickstrike it seems to be going good so far:D
  9. Your idea could easily become price fixing which I believe in real life is illegal to some extant. I don't want to sound rude with that, but as NetherWorld mentioned, it could be abused. A different idea is maybe having a group separated from the shops that set "average" prices that shop owners base their prices off of. They would not be forced to use these averages but it would give players something to compare to which would possibly lower the prices of items.
  10. Thats the idea I was going for a approximation of all the current market prices and over time these would change but nothing stops people from charging higher or lower prices just giving them an average. But the purpose remains the same its all just to make it a more easily accesable economy for new and old players.
  11. I don't think you understand how difficult this would be haha
  12. This is going to be hard but it will be worth it moving closer to PC
  13. if it works it will be amazing but it will be very hard
  14. This was the original purpose but im sorry if i was a little unclear. The project is to set average prices so that newer players could have an idea what to charge in there respective server markets.

    Something like this
    1.iron=5-10r
    2.Diamonds=50-250r
    coal=5-20r
    just to give a simple model
  15. Problem is that everyone is looking for a way to make it profitable.
    Already the economy tends towards this, I don't believe there is any need to accelerate it, no matter how little.
  16. I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say?
  17. Lol, why a you able to check both answers?:p
  18. Hmm... I don't fully understand this.

    If you want to create a group to monitor prices, and perhaps get consumers the best deal by supplying information, this would be a good idea. However, I can say with certainty that you likely lack the resources to do so. Other projects, such as the EMC Shop Database, were attempted in the past, and were left uncurated, meaning unstocked shop listings dominated. What you could do is collect a levy from associates in return for being listed, and use that to pay staff to scour for potential new listings and to keep current listings updated. One key failing of the market system is a lack of information; for example, you could sell a newbie a stack of logs for 1,000r, because they do not have information on the standard price of logs. This newbie incurs an opportunity cost, because that 1,000r could have been used to buy much more than a stack of logs, not unlike those veteran players of EMC among us who spent their 1,000r in the Empire Shop as newbies.

    If you want to create a group to control prices, that is what we call a cartel. In a cartel, a group of firms act as a single firm in the wider market. Ever hear of the Soviet Union? One of the factors contributing to its downfall was a failure to react to consumer demands. A market system could react easily, because speculating firms could take risks and, if they paid off, consumers would be satisfied and they would be amply rewarded. A bureaucratic planned system cannot react as easily. Consumers will be worse off. Additionally, as it has been mentioned, price fixing is also possible. Assuming the system is controlled by shop owners, it will be in their interest to push prices high, leaving consumers worse off. This system will also be extremely susceptible to being outcompeted, because anyone can easily refuse to join the cartel, sell stuff at half your prices, and tank the cartel completely.

    A cartel would only be successful if you were operating in an industry with very few firms active in it. The fewer the firms there are, the easier it is to negotiate. If there were only two people in the entirety of EMC who knew how to harvest wood, they could easily hold a monopoly on it, and all other industries which require wood, including mining, because you need wood for pickaxes, and nether stars, because you need wood for swords. There are few such enterprises on EMC of any true value. For all I know, all the roses on EMC may come from 2 or 3 producers, but what value are roses?

    Cartel-esque ideas have been proposed before. The EMC Militia, for example, proposed to have a cartel element in it. However, because there are around 600 items in Minecraft, and billions in the real world, it is much easier to design failsafes against monopolistic systems forming. Not even Dragon Eggs, the most scarce item on EMC, can have a monopoly on them, because there is a limited supply and they are not consumable (every time your cartel sold a Dragon Egg to someone, you would have to ensure they joined the cartel, otherwise they could become a competition to you).

    tl;dr, don't bother, instead work on innovative ways to produce more goods. develop a new, more efficient form of farming or mining, perhaps.
  19. oh whoops that was a mistake sorry everyone
  20. I see your point with the cartel thing but I believe he is thinking of your first idea where they monitor prices. This would be beneficial to all (except scammers) and involve much less resources.