Re:

Currency (Money):

Suppose you divide your population into two groups: A is the bamboo workers and B are the fruit gatherers. In the middle of the day, John, who is from A, go to the kitchen to get food. He said, "I have been doing most of the work. I am hungry. I need to be fed, and I need a portional more than normal."

You are Tom. You are at the kitchen. How do you know whether John is speaking the truth? Does he deserve the share he demands?

One thing the kitchen could do, is to record the number of apples that John took. The information could be public so that everyone could see whether anyone had been dishonest or taking a disproportionate amount. There could be a log book for each resource. (But for bamboo, if it gets built into houses then it is obvious where the bamboo went, so that might not be needed. Food, on the other hand, disappears once they are taken.)

The need of currency comes from accountability.

Mary wakes up one day and decides that she wants to make herself a bamboo bed. She goes to the stockpile of bamboo, should she be able to just take the bamboo? Should there be no stockpile, such that whoever wants to make stuff must go get bamboo themselves? If there is money, then Mary could show that she had made previous contribution, which entitle her to spend some of that to get some bamboo.


Perfect information:

If everyone knows what everyone has done, then the currency is hidden. The values of each member are in the head of the members. For example, if John were to go get apples at the kitchen, Tom would have said, "Yes, take the apples, we all know that you work very hard!" And the moment John gets the apples, everyone knows that John had gotten fed.


Command System:

In a command system, a subordinate could request stuff but it is the leader that decides whether they could get what they request. Subordinates cannot trade freely. They can only distribute what they are allowed to distribute. Each member talks only to their immediate leader and immediate subordinate.
As you can tell, this can get pretty corrupted if no one could properly audit the chain of requests. For instance, if the gathers got 100 apples, their leader could report that they gathered 50, and keep 50 apples for himself and the auditor. This problem does not go away with currency, it is just more pronounced in a system with restricted information.


Barter System:

A barter system would work if there is some notion that the fish that the member got belongs to that member instead of the community at large.


Collectivistic Society:

This is cultural thing. Say there are 100 people on the island. You are John, and last week, you lied to Tom to get extra apples. How many times could you actually do that to take advantage of before someone finds out? "John doesn't do his share of work and always walk away at noon." This was why you don't need currency at this size. If people live relatively close and interact with one another on a regular basis, everyone knows one another, and most of the time people aren't doing stuff so that they could have better lives as individuals, but that the everyone could be better. The dynamic is very different from, "I don't care who you are. But if you give me money I will make you a bed." It is more like, "Mary's bed is getting worn, let's make a new bed for her." You don't need to ask why you are helping Mary. It is just a basic interaction to be happy by doing meaningful things.


When to Introducing Currency:

I think the key is just information. Even for a small population, if you have people that do not share information regularly, then it would start to make sense to have currency. For instance, if you have a society where there is no single leader that tells people what to do, and no one to keep track of what people are doing, then people would just go fish, cut bamboo, craft, build, on their own based on supply and demand. In that case it would make a lot of sense to have currency. Say you got a lot of apples. You could trade them for fish, but you can't eat all the fish you get in return. So you need to trade and get something that doesn't perish, so that you can spend those later to get fish when you want it.

I think that it will follow this order
Perfect Information -> Collective Society -> Barter System -> Command System -> Currency (When Corruption is found out).

Perfect information is the beginning. When there are feel people, you know everyone else, and so there is no way to lie. When the population is larger collective society starts. People still trust one another but lying begins, and sooner or later, the population is large enough to the point where there will be a social hierarchy, so the command system comes in. Then when members of the society finds out that corruption occurs, the need to introduce of currency comes.

A comment on John who eats lots of apples - a more naturalistic way a leader might solve this problem is to reassign John to the apple-gathering group. People in that group are expected to eat the apples, and, assuming there is not a shortage of apples, it doesn't really matter how many they eat as long as they bring their quota to the kitchen. Also, if John eats extra apples he will probably be eating less of whatever other food there is, so it will even out. If the other people feel John is harming them by his actions, they will react by being rude to him or otherwise treating him poorly, which will signal John that he needs to either eat fewer apples or make up for the apples with some other kind of contribution to the community.

Overall, a community is happier when there is no rationing of food or annoyance of keeping records.

It is true about the apples. But if there is no record, no one would know that there was any abnormality. John gets 8 apples from Tom, then when Tom left, John gets another 8 from Mike. It is like you made brownies for everyone but when you take it out of the refrigerator, half of it are already gone.

The purpose of the simulation

We don't really know the purpose. In the original post, it was specified that the race need not be human. So I suppose the purpose was not about modeling human survival situation. Only Punk Designer would know the real purpose of the simulation at the moment.

According to his comment about currency, it seems that he wanted to simulate a situation where the individuals are necessarily greedy if they have the opportunity to be greedy. Perhaps the original question could be phrased like this:

Imagine a society with individuals that are always greedy and selfish about something, and that they would always exploit the others until the environment or the society breaks apart. What kind of economical structure would keep such a society functioning? You can assume that this is a worst case simulation, with the purpose of testing the best economical structure.

Restrictions:
o The individuals are always greedy and selfish.
o The individuals have needs -- food, water, shelter
o The needs are satisfied by three resources: a staple food source, a precious metal, and a building resource.
o Currency must exist
o There is no natural threats on the island

Originally, it was stated that:

Quote:Then you have to list a few jobs and assign workers to them, remember we have to keep it as realistic as possible. A currency and an economic system must be created.

But I suppose what you meant was that since the purpose of this simulation is to simulate an economy with currency, you allow other needs to be simplified, but currency must be kept. We would make the necessary assumptions so that the existence of currency makes sense in this society.

The question was, what resources would you use for this simulation, and how would you define the functions of the society so that the society does not break apart given that everyone is inherently selfish but fears punishment.

You might want to shiftthe 'theme' to being a 'colony' where an outside source is provided where the production is used to buy things that cannot be supplied by the island itself. Tools and other items other than very basic crude ones require craftsmanship and materials that just arent usually available in a 10x10 mile local and things wear out.

That would provide a justification for mining of one type (gold sent back home where it has a value).

An excuse of transportation making most food and ordinary construction materials having to be supplied locally (cost too much to send for except when suvival itself is at stake). Thus the player would have to balance labor applied to the colony's money-making industry and the work needed to keep the population alive/provided for.

What goods to send for would become a puzzle with the player deciding priorities and there could be a ramp of different (more costly) technologies to expand into once the basic operation is working. With more prosperit come more institutions catering to the extra profits (and with yet more stuff to send for).


External events such as weather, mining success fluxuations (veins running out/being found), sickness, stockholders back home getting more greedy, etc.... could fluxuate the game environment difficulty.

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Another problem, if they are actual humans, is that 100 people is not a large enough genetic pool to be healthy indefinitely if they form monogamous pairs.

Last I checked, pre-judean societies didn't tend to be that enthralled by monogamy [wink]

Besides, it may not be enough individuals to have a perfect gene pool, but it is certainly survivable - island populations (of many species) endure even smaller genetic bottlenecks.

Sorry for the late reply, Thank you for all your insights they have helped me assimilate some knowledge of how things would need to work.

I applaud your level of detail.

Thanks.