So, uh... How would this economy work? http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064 Itzika I found the title "A Penny for your Thoughts" in the Adopt a Title thread and ended up with a world that looks a lot like where ours is headed... if we used thoughts as currency. Mostly straight information, though pricier things can be paid for with things like literary analysis if the person will take it. Once you've traded the thought, it's gone. The device in your brain wipes it from your head forever (or until you relearn it, if you can). The world looks a lot like a near future America (which makes sense, as it takes place in a near future alternate America): shrinking middle class, not enough jobs for everyone, corporations buying up politics, etc. So far I've got some stuff about "tradable thoughts" and "untradable thoughts"--obviously, you can only trade with a thought if people want it, which means it has to be both relevant and new to them. Here's where I'm running into a problem. I've figured out that in a climate like this, the biggest enterprise is going to be the news (which incidentally is a giant scam getting people to pay for untradable thoughts). The most valuable thing around will be books, since you can relearn the information in them indefinitely. (I don't think they have the internet. Not sure yet.) And since the middle class is dying, presumably luxuries like entertainment will be dying too. I have no idea what's going on beyond that, or even really how much more I need to know. I kind of have absolutely no background in economics, and am not sure what possessed me to try to write this. Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:33:02 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049109 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049109 Dennis Dunjinman This is so alien I wouldn't begin to understand it empathically unless it were real. Thoughts aren't always coherent or complete, and they can be fleeting. For all we know, someone could spend years unconsciously thinking "I want to blow up my place of work" and never go through with it; it's fantasy after all. And for what I know, humans spend most of their time thinking about sex, or new stories for their favorite TV shows. Indulgent fantasy and daydreaming of this kind is common but I don't know how much it's worth. Could be worth more if people make TV shows out of it. How much would it be worth to perform arithmetic computations in your head? Is it worth anything if it's not correct? Is it worth more with the number of operations and variables you include? What if you come up with infinite crackpot schemes for taking over the world that never work? Are you allowed to spend good memories of your family or experience, or is that not allowed? Personally, I think there would be a huge black market in underground thoughts much like piracy and file-sharing. They'd make multiple copies of things like memories and skills and encode them into minds for free. And somehow I find that more productive than using thoughts as coinage. Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:22:00 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049669 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049669 Itzika Well, mostly when they say "thoughts," they mean "information." I might have to just change it to make it less confusing. Tradable thoughts/information are anything from mathematical operations to the president's name--not a lot of people know that, because it's relatively worthless tradable information. My MMC knows a lot of useless facts, because he learned them as a child and the device that lets you trade information also keeps you from forgetting it otherwise, and because no one will trade for them. He knows things my FMC, who's among the richest people in the world, doesn't know, because she gets all her information through trade and doesn't actually bother to learn it herself. There is a black market. It will sell you anything you need, and it will take anything you have, including personal information and even procedural memory; but it will take a lot of it. I'm not sure how a black market that sells thoughts would work--it would kind of be like it was handing out counterfeit money. Which could be interesting to add in. Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:36:18 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049698 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049698 The_Halla You know what you need? Thought hackers. Both good and bad: heroic types who believe in "open source" thought (try wrapping your brain around that--social telepathy?) and villainous types who steal thoughts and leave people with brain viruses. OK, you just gave me a big, fat plot bunny... Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:39:32 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049804 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049804 The_Halla OK, a nuts-and-bolts thing, too--you need some kind of "standard measure" or relatively stable store of value, or alternatively a central thought reserve bank; a purely commodity-based economy like that is bound to be extremely unstable, prone to inflation and severe boom-and-bust cycles. Essentially, there needs to be some universally agreed-upon system for determining the value of a given thought on the open market, and of controlling the thought supply, either by tying it to some relatively stable commodity like gold, or better yet through the use of some equivalent of monetary policy, like the Fed does--setting interest rates on thought? Otherwise, you get a free-for-all on thought and it will be too unstable to be worth bothering with as a currency. Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:48:54 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049825 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049825 Itzika That's something I'm having trouble with. At the moment everything is done through haggling, which is a very inefficient way of doing things, besides all the problems you mentioned that I didn't know about because I really don't know how economics work. The thing is the whole world seems to use thought as currency, so I'm not sure how useful tying it to gold would be. Monetary policy seems more promising, though again, I have no idea how that works. I could maybe give thoughts a "monetary" value based on our currency and each thought is worth a certain amount, though I'm not sure how people would determine the value of new thoughts. This is a lot more complicated than I thought. (Haha. Unintentional pun.) Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:55:59 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049837 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1049837 Dav1d I don't know. The Internet in a way kind of proves that data has little or no value. There is so much data already on the internet for free. Look at all the wealth of stored thoughts/data on the Internet. What sells is not thoughts, but rather emotions. Isn't that what porn is about? Look at how many places one can find news for free. That is the equivalent of your data. And porn, is the equivalent of feelings. I want to experience the thrill of the first time you jumped out of a plane, without the risk, or taking the time to learn how to jump! I want the memories of watching the sun rise on K2! Or perhaps I want the trill of surviving being hit by a train going 60 mph! The more unique the experience, the more expensive it is to possess. Facts, data, 4 plus 4 equal eight can easily be duplicated and thus become devalued. It's the exotic, the rare that have worth. How much would one pay, to know, really know what it feels like to die? How about the rush of walking into a bank and robbing it? Yet by the tenth time you rob a bank, it no longer gives one that sense of adventure that sense of rush. It would be a society that pushes people to take risk, do the unexpected! It could be very addictive, living your life through someone else's life. For the right price you could experience anything you wanted, without ever risking your own body. You could know the pleasure of eating deep fried twinkies, without the risk of a heart attack! You could have all the pleasure of stuffing yourself on Big Macs, and yet never gain so much as an ounce! Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:42:18 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1063503 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1063503 Itzika That's kind of why I think they don't have the internet. The people that benefit the most from this economy have kept its currency difficult to obtain for everyone else. And once you "spend" a thought, it's not in your head anymore. So data retains its value because people keep trading it away as fast as they get it. Though I like the idea of people trading experiences as well as information. Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:43:03 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1067319 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/science-fiction/threads/49064?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1067319