Chapters * Title * Contents * Introduction * Place * System * Design * Using * Future * Bibliography
Sections
* Using * Composite_Story * Behavior * Supply_and_Demand * Trade * Central * Externalities * Chicken * Monopolies * Geography * Money
Trade
What is trade good for? Traditional accounts explain trade as allowing different countries to produce items upon their local
advantages. However, as Krugman points out (Krugman, 1994), most trade is between ostensibly similar nations. One explanation
is that nations develop specialties over time that become locked in, such as the United States' commercial airplane industry.
MarketPlace's players similarly start out with identical resources. Soon they specialize in one commodity or another and cannot
change all of their factories in one turn. (Spreading a change to another commodity over two turns means losing the large part
of the production bonuses for those turns.) They are similarly locked into their specializations.
You can only take advantage of the opportunities offered by economies of scale if you have a working system of trade. Games in
which the auctions function poorly (for whatever reason), often show a decline in specialization as players try to become
somewhat self-sufficient.
Players sometimes complain that the auction system is too impersonal. While you can specify who you wish to sell to, you
specify it in a negative fashion by saying who you will not buy or sell from. Players want to be able to make player to player
deals in a less impersonal fashion. Markets, however, are distinguished by their ability to foster trades between total
strangers. The semi-anonymity of the MarketPlace system is a pale version of the level of disconnection present in most real
markets. When you buy a manufactured product you are blocked from seeing a most of the history of its creation--who built it,
who marketed it, who trucked it to you. That's the cost of the efficiency that allows the wide array of modern products.
MarketPlace should support the more time-consuming person-to-person trades to make the contrast between the two ways
visible.
Greg Kimberly/gregkimb@gak.com