makeshiftmind

This is like, every night at my house.

There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century — the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history. One cause is psychological, the other existential — or: one pertains to man’s consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence. The first is reason, the second is freedom. And when I say “freedom,” I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as “freedom from want” or “freedom from fear” or “freedom from the necessity of earning a living.” I mean “freedom from compulsion — freedom from rule by physical force.” Which means: political freedom.

These two — reason and freedom — are corollaries, and their relationship is reciprocal: when men are rational, freedom wins; when men are free, reason wins.

Their antagonists are: faith and force. These, also, are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny. Look at the Middle Ages — and look at the political systems of today.

– “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World”, Ayn Rand

EVE Online is an MMORPG that has the most most robust and intricate market systems of any game I’ve ever played. This article from the developers’ blog explains one of the changes introduced recently to make the market more “free” because of the economic impact to the game. What is interesting is that they basically show how price regulations in a market system are bad for that system, and what the side effects of removing market price caps will be.

In a nutshell, EVE developer’s had placed price caps on certain small ships in the game called shuttles. A player could buy a shuttle for the fixed price of 9,000 ISK (EVE currency) from any NPC (non-player character). There were two side-effects to the price control: 1) cheap transportation was available to all, and 2) the price of tritanium (a mineral used to manufacture ships and items) would never sell above a certain threshold because one could simply buy shuttles and “recycle” them for their minerals cheaper than mining the minerals themselves.

The developers decided to remove the shuttle price cap and offered this explanation:

“The benefit from removing this price cap is that the price of tritanium will be more in line with the underlying demand for tritanium at any given time. This makes the mining industry more profitable in the long run and will balance the benefits between mining and other professions in EVE.”

“I also have full faith in that EVE industrialists and traders will supply shuttles where there is a demand, but of course at a reasonable price for convenience. There is no reason why NPCs should be subsidizing cheap travel in EVE at the cost of the mining profession. Another benefit is a new opportunity for industrialists to produce and sell shuttles of course.”

“This change is also along the lines of our general philosophy of the design of markets in EVE, that all items should be player produced and based on the incentive to make a profit from providing the item to other players.”

“Speculators will try to cash in on the short term shortage of shuttles by buying up the current stock and reselling it at a very high price (this happened within hours of patch deployment), that will in turn make it more profitable to industrialists to start producing shuttles and selling them at a good profit. At the same time competition among industrialists will drive prices down, the market should therefore stabilize within a relatively short period of time.”

“Tritanium is the building block of everything in EVE and hence we expect that in the short run this will create some turmoil on all markets, especially the mineral market and the market for Tech I items. Again, speculators will affect the market for tritanium, most likely by hording trit in the hope that now that the price cap has been lifted the price of tritanium will increase (note: just lifted, not completely removed). This has already happened, prices for tritanium started to increase almost immediately, but have since declined a little from the highs last night… But again, the beautiful workings of the invisible hand will help us (thank you Adam Smith) due to the greed we have for ISK. With higher tritanium prices, mining of veldspar will become very profitable, and since it is readily available in safe areas, needing only low cost equipment to mine, we should see the veldspar flowing very soon and tritanium prices stabilize, but at what level? At this point your guess is just as good as mine.”

I find the short- and long-term economic analysis fascinating. In the short-term, people will horde shuttles and sell them for ridiculous prices, because shuttles are no longer freebies. This will no doubt upset people with little ISK who count on low shuttle prices. However, in the long-term, industrialists will begin manufacturing more shuttles because of the economic incentive, which will not only reduce the price of each shuttle, but will also equalize the price of tritanium as well.

So basically, these game developers understand more about free markets than our politicians. Go figure.

“Thanks to Laissez-Faire Books, we are able to bring you a free audiobook, ‘The Market for Liberty’. This brilliant book explains why government is an unnecessary evil and how the Free Market is superior in every possible way. You may download it in five ways…” 

The “punch mug” is one of those glorious devices that is necessary for two early morning activities: 1) drinking your preferred blend of delectable coffee; and 2) punching your boss in the FACE and yelling “ADJUST!” when he walks up to your desk at 8:05 AM and drops a shitload of work on you.

This really only makes sense if you’re a sci-fi gaming nerd.

I’ve added my resume to the navigation section on the left. It’s not very impressive right now, but I’m still young so it’s all good.

I have two great friends, Justin Trice and Abagail Lambert, who will be sharing the same last name in a few short months. Their wedding will be on July 9, and I’m very excited for them. We’ve finally got the wedding website up and running, so spend some time browsing it at www.tricewedding.com.

Yeah, so iTunes has significantly changed my music listening habits. I just love the free market — now I don’t have to buy entire CDs when I might only want a single song. I will gladly pay $0.99 for a 3-5 minute piece of music that I can enjoy many times over. At any rate, here is some current purchases that are revolving in my shuffle list. They are in no particular order.

1. “So Cold” — Breaking Benjamin
2. “So Far Away” — Crossfade
3. “Prayer” — Disturbed (thanks J, I dig it)
4. “Sweet Dreams” — Euythmics (retro baby)
5. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — Green Day
6. “How Can I Live” — Ill Nino (Latin metal?)
7. “Hurt” — Johnny Cash
8. “Burning Bright” — Shinedown
9. “45″ — Shinedown
10. “Vermillion, Pt. 2″ — Slipknot
11. “So Far Away” — Staind
12. “It’s Been a While” — Staind
13. “Zoe Jane” — Staind
14. “Outside” — Staind
15. “Fall to Pieces” — Velvet Revolver
16. “Bittersweet Symphony” — The Verve
17. “Behind Blue Eyes” — Limp Bizkit
18. “Clocks” — Coldplay
19. “Colorblind” — Counting Crows (thanks Chris)
20. “Run” — Collective Soul
21. “Lightning Crashes” — Live

There are many more, but these are noteworthy. If there are any songs you’d recommend, well, use the comment box to proselytize.