Guild Wars 2

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/
Where exactly does a “forced redistribution of wealth” take place for these people? Bill Gates’ wealth is actually bigger than the GDP of three quarters of all countries.

marnick.4305:

communism isn’t a real economic theory but rather fantasy.

#1. Communism isn’t an economic theory, and
#2. Your grasp of the “real” seems somewhat awry.

John Smith.4610:

my goal overall is to create a positive environment here.

See? John can empathise with the masses who will never reach their Legendary goal!

Svarty.8019:

marnick.4305:

communism isn’t a real economic theory but rather fantasy.

#1. Communism isn’t an economic theory, and
#2. Your grasp of the “real” seems somewhat awry.

Dang I must have misinterpreted the propaganda from the belgian communist party explaining how their economic system is superior.

marnick.4305:

Svarty.8019:

marnick.4305:

communism isn’t a real economic theory but rather fantasy.

#1. Communism isn’t an economic theory, and
#2. Your grasp of the “real” seems somewhat awry.

Dang I must have misinterpreted the propaganda from the belgian communist party explaining how their economic system is superior.

Communism is a theory of social organization which has massive, massive economic implications. People talk about the economics a lot because everyone’s interested in wealth, but the fundamentals of communism is a social and moral structure that turns people into interchangeable parts.

marnick.4305:

False. In real life, forced redistribution of wealth never happens.

And here I thought the guillotine was invented for making cole-slaw. No, wait. It wasn’t.

Don’t worry, there’s been rather a lot of effort put into hushing up what the 99% occasionally do when they just get sick of their masters’ litter-box.

And I really don’t see how you can call a good old fashioned mugging anything other than wealth redistribution – including redistributing some to the medical system to clean up the aftermath. This comming from direct experience of the phenomena (I had less money at the end of the experience if you’re for one second thinking of making a joke out of that).

Iruwen.3164:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/
Where exactly does a “forced redistribution of wealth” take place for these people? Bill Gates’ wealth is actually bigger than the GDP of three quarters of all countries.

Heh. They get to live 1.5-2 times longer than the rest of us, but the Grenth always drops by eventually to have a little chat about ultimate equality.

Svarty.8019:

marnick.4305:

communism isn’t a real economic theory but rather fantasy.

#1. Communism isn’t an economic theory, and
#2. Your grasp of the “real” seems somewhat awry.

John Smith.4610:

my goal overall is to create a positive environment here.

See? John can empathise with the masses who will never reach their Legendary goal!

1. is absolutely wrong.

Marx’s Das Capital definitely spells out economics in the communist manner. And for whatever reason there are Marxist economists still floating around in the world.

It is no more fantasy than Ayn Rand’s absurd notions.

Nsain.7531:

John Smith.4610:

Actually about 15% of the population finds making money very fun, irrelevant of the uses of that money. Ever gotten unnecessarily rich in a single player RPG like Skyrim?

Most people seem to enjoy actually playing the game and enjoying content.

Since when is 85% not most? You do understand that the trading post is game content, right?

John Smith.4610:

I changed the title to “Why do the rich continue earning wealth”. I attempt to stay pretty informal on the forums, because when I stayed terse it upset people. Another alternative would be to stop participating on the forums, my goal overall is to create a positive environment here.

Thanks, I hope you continue to participate. I enjoy both your insights and the little gems you sometimes let drop.

Aye.8392:

Nsain.7531:

John Smith.4610:

Actually about 15% of the population finds making money very fun, irrelevant of the uses of that money. Ever gotten unnecessarily rich in a single player RPG like Skyrim?

Most people seem to enjoy actually playing the game and enjoying content.

Since when is 85% not most? You do understand that the trading post is game content, right?

You sir, just struck the heart of this debate.

Is the TP:

a) a means to facilitate the WvW/PvE game content in the best possible way, or
b) game content itself (flipping goods, pushing markets up or down etc)

The people that play b) have an immense influence (or at least that is a very strong and common perception, not arguing either way) over the people that play a). The people that play a) often don’t WANT to play b), and feel kittened when market manipulation messes up their goals, or lengthens the time to get to said goal by X amount of time.

ps. off-topic: while I don’t agree with everything she wrote, Ayn Rand’s legacy is certainly not one of “absurd notions”. Usually, she was the one who debunked them. As someone at the Adam Smith institute said it, she gave a moral foundation to the capitalist system. (http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/philosophy/ayn-rands-birthday). Serves as a nice lil’ link between John Galt and Adam Smith, for those interested in Asuka’s above comment.

I’m not that rich either, I have only 20 g on Yumiko and 50 s on my guardian. I’m not spending any of it as I have no new methods to make gold. I might go dungeon running today.

SteepledHat.1345:

Rouven.7409:

Hehe, I’m starting to like his humour.

I think it makes him look unprofessional. This is a game for us, but it’s his job. There’s a difference.

I definitely understand where you are coming from. Here is where I am coming from:

- I don’t believe in game designers being evil
- there simply are things he can not talk to us about

There is a general issue with the format of communication like this, it is easy to misinterpret the intentions of a post. But, according to his post history and things that happened afterwards he gives us certain cryptic messages, hints to what he is not allowed to say outright – because it is his job as you had stated above.

So, I can chose to be upset and blame him (reading a post of his) for not fixing what I see as a problem, or I can chose to believe that he is working on the problem (if it is one) and try to read his posts in a more neutral, perhaps even positive tone – keeping an open mind.

At least I have the feeling that he is direct when he can be, no sugar coating, no marketing speech. I take that.

For example I see the newly introduced laurels and the jewellery box as a reaction to even out the playing field, without taking anything away from anyone. Whether or not John had something to do with that and if that truly was the intent does not really matter that much to me. It brings me tiny steps closer to that legendary goal (although I don’t see it as an ultimate goal) without having to truly focus on it, ergo I feel less pushed into playing a certain way.

Anyways, sorry this got longer then I was planning on.

P.S. I would still change the TP interface, especially the sell window out of the bag.

Most people with a problem John Smith do not have a firm grasp on mainstream economics.

On these forums there is the same sort of populist rage as there is in the real world when it comes to economic matters. And the argumentation is not based on economic principles but peoples’ personal preferences usually.

I disagree with some of John Smith’s views. But no two economists will ever agree on everything. That’s just how it bees. But I really wonder what it most be likely trying to rationally explain how a relatively free market system works to people who do not understand much about economic principles and laws.

False. In real life, forced redistribution of wealth never happens. The only possible thing is destruction of wealth. CCCP tried, Belgium tried, France tried resulting in an iconic actor becoming Russian. It is almost impossible to steal wealth from rich people without destroying this wealth in the process.

You may ask rich people. Maybe, if you’re a respectable guy, they may give you a good job with a matching salary (I did). You might even get someone to simply give you a million dollars for a youtube video (happened some time ago). But you can’t steal it.

Well, the only problem with it in the real world is that the rich are more mobile than the poor. If you overly tax the poor, they have to take it in the chin, while if you tax the rich, they’ll just move someplace that taxes them less (or at least move their money there). Any plan to “redistribute wealth” needs to take that into account, and either be a global solution that doesn’t care where they, or their money, are, or it needs to be set up in a way that they’d want to participate (which is of course very tricky).

But since this is a game, they can’t pull their money out of Tyria and put it into Elona or whatever, and if every “Richy Rich” GW2 player decided that the game’s economic rules were too onerous and decided to quit the game entirely, then that’d be fine, the game as a whole would be better off without them.

I’d love to see some controls like “high volume trade” taxes, like if you purchase or sell more than a few stacks of goods in a certain period of time, there is an added tax, similar to Diminishing Returns when farming. Also perhaps a progressive tax on the TP, so that anything currently selling for less than a gold wouldn’t be affected at all, and things costing up to 10-20 gold wouldn’t be affected too much, but anything going for 100g or more would have a significant money sink factor to it.

a) a means to facilitate the WvW/PvE game content in the best possible way, or
b) game content itself (flipping goods, pushing markets up or down etc)

The people that play b) have an immense influence (or at least that is a very strong and common perception, not arguing either way) over the people that play a). The people that play a) often don’t WANT to play b), and feel kittened when market manipulation messes up their goals, or lengthens the time to get to said goal by X amount of time.

I would say that If the “b” side is considered by ANet to be a valid part of gameplay, then they should keep it distinct from the “a” experience. Give the market players a new form of currency that can only be spent on itself, let them play their markets all they want without in any way effecting the value of gold or goods that “PvE/WvW” players have to spend on things.

It’s essentially like forced open world PvP in its current state, where some players just want to do PvE content, and other players get off on ganking them from the shadows. ANet saw the wisdom in removing this sort of toxic behavior from their PvE maps, but not from their marketplace.

While I find it mildly irksome that trading on a large enough scale becomes the single most highly rewarded activity (by at least an order of magnitude) in what on the box looks like an adventuring game, I don’t think a progressive tax is really called for…

The game is largely fixing itself in the way ALL games that look like adventure games on the box do – the best stats a character can have simply cannot be bought with coin. The roll-out of Ascended gear is pretty obviously a reaction to the rise of the tradepost uber alles. And it has had the predictable “Oh noes, I don’t want to adventure to haz the bestest (adventuring) gear” response one would expect. And yet the roll out moves forward, expanding into yet another slot last month. Keep in mind that laurels are NOTHING NEW. They are precisely like mystic coins with one singular difference: you can’t buy them off of fools who place next to no value on their own time. If mystic coins had been properly locked down like that, there would probably be about 16 legendaries on all servers combined at this point – belonging to people who actually logged in and earned 230ish coins to make their clovers. What a different world THAT would be…

You can make a Legendary without buying anything on the TP. It just takes longer. I’m creeping forward towards mine just fine – while treating every trip to the TP like the excursion into hostile country that it is. However I don’t know that I’m all that eager to display a legendary – none of them will actually improve the aesthetics of my characters and they’re largely a magnet for contempt as the visible tokens of a utterly failed system of achievements. Nobody thinks having one is a sign that you’ve completed an “epic journey” other than one lap around the world, a couple long nights of jump puzzles, and a lot of back and forth between the bank and trading post. Only reason I’m still working on one is because my completionist urges look at that blank seal on the character select screen and call me to do battle with the omega-grind that is building one without buying your way to completion.

Still hoping legendary armor uses an entirely different acquistion scheme that cannot be short circuited by gobs of money. The hundered icy runestones I get – its nod to getting coin being a part of gameply. Being able to buy your way through the Gift of Fortune was just a disasterous piece of design.

Nike.2631:

Your entire post

I clipped it because I didn’t need to quote it. I just wanted you to know I feel exactly the same way. Legendaries are a long term goal….not a short term one. I’ll get mine too…..eventually.

John Smith.4610:

I think whether or not legendaries represent an achievement is an interesting topic, but I don’t think buying some of the parts really changes it. If we want to have a discussion about that, it should be in a new thread.

If I don’t start that thread myself, I’ll certainly meet you there.

John Smith.4610:

On the topic of forced redistribution of wealth, I was hoping someone would point out that it doesn’t work. France, China and a myriad of other places have revolted due to income/wealth inequality, but this doesn’t really redistribute wealth.

I can’t say that I agree. The systems that come after may come to have virtually the same disparities between its members, but it’s pretty hard to argue that the DEAD have retained their wealth. The wealth changed hands, even if the new hands were simply the most ruthless folks still around to pick up the pieces.

The darker part of my humor calls that getting two redistributions for the price of one .

I should correct then and say, that forced redistribution doesn’t change the disparities of wealth in the society, simply changes those holding the wealth. To be fair though, in almost every occasion it goes rogue in a few years and those people end up poor or dead anyway.

Plans in the real world tend to fail due to cynical self-interest (ie the few people that spearhead the redistribution tend to take more than their fair share of the profits), but that doesn’t mean that it can’t theoretically succeed, in cases where the people managing the change actually do have altruistic intentions. If the top 5% hold 50% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% hold less than 5% of the wealth, then it is at least technically feasible to construct systems in which the majority of that top 50% of the wealth is recollected, such that the top 5% holds only maybe 10-20% of the wealth, and then spread out to the bottom 50%, so that they would now hold between them more like 30-40% of the total wealth.

In a game world this is far easier to achieve, since the rich cannot shelter their money in Southsun Cove, and since the people in charge of making such changes (namely you) have no personal stake in who is rich within the economy, but rather to the community as a whole. It’d be like if a real world economic overhaul were being played out in a completely closed economic system, undertaken by a cadre of economists who had taken an ironclad vow of poverty.

John Smith.4610:

I should correct then and say, that forced redistribution doesn’t change the disparities of wealth in the society, simply changes those holding the wealth. To be fair though, in almost every occasion it goes rogue in a few years and those people end up poor or dead anyway.

o_O

If 10 people make 1,000,000 a year before taxes and 1,000 people make 40,000, and then you ‘force distribution’ through taxes so that 10 people make 500,000 a year after taxes and 1,000 people make 35,000 you DID change the disparty in wealth.

You went from 1,000/40 to 500/35. That’s from 25x to 15x through taxes. How you can say it is not wealth distribution is beyond me.

(Not to mention that the US, with it’s extreem low wealth distribution and catering to rich people, spends 50% more of it’s GDP on healthcare than France, 17.9 vrs 11.9 in 2010 according to the worldbank. One could argue that you got to take the lower cost of things like healthcare into account as ‘income’ which would further change disparity)

Also… saying that ‘those people end up poor or dead anyway’ is a extreme point of view that is very offensive for… oh, I don’t know… 90% of the earth’s population. If any non-Anet person would post something this offensive, we’d probably be banned.

This thread has been derailed several times, resulting in the need to clean it up and remove inappropriate comments. Given the amount of moderation overhead that was required on this thread, we feel it prudent to simply lock it and have you all start over.

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