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Day 637

London - First of all, we welcome you to the very first issue of the Austrian Perspective, a newspaper that features information on both local and international economics and politics. Run by British free-marketeer and economics student 5ilence, we aim to provide intuitive insight into the economic modules of e-sim’s Secura server. As a side note, it should be important to say that Austrian Perspective uses the term “Austrian” meaning someone who subscribes to the Austrian School of Economics and not a citizen of Austria.

Day 637, or Saturday 24th of May, is a day away from the Congressional elections around the world. As citizens worldwide take to the polls to decide which handful of players will run the country for the next month, governments should turn their attention to the recent surge of newcomers in the last few days.

Just today, Secura has received a 14.5% increase in new players around the world. The largest of these, Argentina, personally received a 97.7% increase in new players, meaning that the Argentine population almost doubled overnight. Romania came second, with a 49.2% increase, yet the UK lagged behind with a barely noticeable increase of 1.67%. According to recent Administrative News, this is a successful turnout following a recent publicity stunt initiated by e-sim’s administration.

Even if most, or at least a hefty proportion, of new players do not come back after signing up, most large countries have experienced a baby-boom. How are the world governments expected to accommodate this new mass wave of players? Is this creation of a new generation of players, so to speak, destabilising to countries? What is the effect of a baby boom on the economy?

In the last three days, starting Day 634, Austrian Perspective has logged and monitored price changes across the British markets, sensing alterations in the way prices are listed. Although our baby-boom is not as noticeable as in South America or Eastern Europe, it is still reported as occurring by the Administration. This newspaper has found that the en masse transportation of babies from their cradles to the job market has proven beneficial to the economy, with wages increasing up to 10.5% for jobs requiring a base economical skill of 3 (note we only monitored levels 1 through 5). Just from the job market statistics, we can feel the presence of new players gaining experience, as more and more demand is created every few days in job markets requiring higher levels of skill.

But this effect did not stop at the job market: with daily missions provided by the game system to new players, our baby boomers receive food and gifts from painless button-clicking, effectively reducing demand in the respective product markets. Food prices fell by 2.4%, aided by a consecutive undercutting of prices in the grain markets. From a high of 0.50 GBP on Day 634, grain prices fell 20% in just two days. As the boom continues, hopefully with more new British workers, the Austrian Perspective envisages further decreases like this in the grain market. The weapons market, however, did not experience large decreases, bar one occurrence of a 1.8% fall in Q5 weapons prices.

A theory as to why grain prices fell here may not be because of our own baby boom (which may or may not exist), but because of baby booms abroad. As countries get larger, so do their armies: to supply more recruits MUs have to spend money buying grain to produce food for the MU, reducing grain prices in countries like Argentina or Romania. British companies then import this cheap grain, and British grain companies are forced to compete and lower their prices. This created a balance of sorts, which reduced our prices to be more competitive. In turn, food prices fell as well. We aren't experiencing a big baby boom, which means our workforce is more limited, which inflated wages.

House prices, keeping in mind that the British housing market is severely limited to 2 vendors at the moment, respectively fell by 4.9%. Gift prices were hit the hardest, with a 26.3% decrease in prices. This is also an effect of the baby boom, seeing as gifts are freely offered by the Secura administrators to newcomers in daily missions. It should also be noted that the British gift market is highly competitive, so price undercutting should be regarded as a regular event. We expect these sectors to equally continue their price descents, seeing it as “positive deflation” in the economy.

Positive deflation itself is not a negative thing. We shouldn’t fear it, and governments should refrain themselves from attempting to solve this pseudo-problem themselves. Positive deflation is absolutely natural in free markets, and is accelerated during baby booms. Prices will stabilise once the number of new citizens added each day will stabilise. Deflation renders our pockets more valuable, as their purchasing power increases. Where two days ago 10 GBP could buy you 20 grain, today it can buy you 25. We should all feel content with this, especially entrepreneurs. Their profits can buy them more raw materials to produce more goods. Tied with a larger workforce, entrepreneurs compete with one another to offer higher wages for their employees (which they can all afford following the “positive deflation” miracle). This is how and why wages increased so suddenly, and also doubles the increase in our purchasing power. Where one skill 3 job could buy you 20 Q1 weapons, today it can buy you 22 (and almost 23).

While baby booms are beneficial to economies, they may be more disastrous on a political scale. From personal experience back in the United Kingdom at eRepublik, baby booms usually signify an overhaul of the political landscape. A new dominant party emerges, usually following discontent towards a country president. Baby boomers will very rarely join the dominant party in a country, and will stick to whichever party promises so-called “change”, no matter what it is and whether or not it is actually needed. From personal experience, I can recall when I first joined eRepublik and my party, the United Kingdom Reform Party, was dominant. Following a baby boom, a Reform Party offshoot, the UK Progression Party, was founded and quickly became dominant itself in only a matter of months. This kicked a lot of older players out of office, seeing as they were usually Reformers, and put a lot of inexperienced newcomers in Parliament. Not to mention that a new baby boom later occurred, kicking out the UKPP and making way for New Era. Chaos obviously ensued, and especially after the collapse of our alliance, we were left dumbfounded, with the competent members blocked from any position of authority.

So how do we avoid such Cradle Revolution, if you will? Well, an underlying cause of youth rebelliousness was an uncooperative strata of older players when it came to helping younger players. Cooperation is the most paramount element of counter-revolution, and back in the eUK, these revolutions were slowed with the implementation of a more powerful, centralised military (dishing out supplies regularly) as well as the creation of the National Health Service, which dished out supplies to young players as well.

For our current baby boom, I would propose the following policies to worldwide governments (assuming that each of these have not already been implemented):

- the creation of a sustainable national army. Membership should be directly advised to new players, and should be seen as most attractive due to the considerable daily supplies. Although daily supplies are mostly universal nowadays, I must stress the presence of a national army, and not a balkanised system of military units. A national army is favourable as it is easier to coordinate. Although it should all be managed by the state, I would recommend up to three MUs be used for the national army, as to divide damage equally among the three to more flexibly coordinate attacks and defenses. One MU could be for domestic rebellions; one for fighting for allies abroad (or fighting enemies at home); and one extra MU seen as auxiliary. The auxiliary MU will be used as reinforcement in either domestic rebellions or allies’ battles. Supplies could, and should, be offered voluntarily by wealthy and patriotic entrepreneurs.

- the creation of a National Health Service, which follows the same general rules as the above idea, but hands out supplies to new players under a certain level or age. The NHS need not necessarily be state-funded, and must be open to competition by other parties. This reminds me of Bupa in eRepublik, which sought to replace the NHS and offered free supplies to members of a certain party. This cooperative tactic may be used by parties instead of whole nations, and may prove to be more effective in countering a political revolution.

- the creation of a national news station, written by the Prime Minister themselves. It should be a duty as CP to inform the population of (inter)national ongoings, provided by their own newspaper or by a country Org’s. Titles should contain labels such as [CP], [MoFA] or [MoHA] for executive articles from the Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Home Affairs respectively. I should also stress the creation of these offices if they do not already exist.

I will continue to watch market alterations and report any new important events in a future update. I hope you enjoyed the article, and hopefully gained some insight as to what is happening in the economic module around the country, and presumably around the world, and why. You could show your support for more articles like this by upvoting the article above, and even more so by subscribing. It means a lot to me; it really does.

Use your vote wisely tomorrow!


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Austrian Perspective 641 (10 years ago)