ecocom

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EcoComics -- The Comical Ecology Of Political Economy - or how the poor fund the war.  [A PSF production]

EcoComics.sf.net >>EcoComics simulates a subset of physics and nature with the primary goal of testing experimental economic models.

Your final goals are health and the perpetuation of your genetics, but those goals require a functional environment to drink water or to raise the organisms

An EcoComedy foremost with highest priority in modeling reality with respect to Physics, Property and Production.

Property: Defining property ownership is an active NON-GOAL of EcoComics.  The EcoComics physics engine must NOT enforce artificial border enforcement or policing.  All notions of property are created and enforced by groups of users, just in our real world.

Base Physics:

Nature and humans apply design to mass to create new things.  This application cannot occur unless the Physical Sources are available and in the right proportion.

The player's virtual "body" faces real and recurring "needs" to which he must find appropriate "solutions".

* Drink: Fresh water is liquid blue gold.
* Eat: Food and medicine from gifting fungi, plants and animals.
* Sleep: Strangely required.  Safely 'Storing' yourself.
* Store: Land and shelter to hold you and your stuff.
* Clean: The water, soap and sewer have many costs.
* Cloth: Sources include Animal Skins, Cotton, Hemp, Wool.
* Heat: SUN, wood,
* Cool: Evaporation early, fridge pumps later.

For the economy to make sense, all production must occur somewhere in the game and be based on "prerequisites" being met.  If the right plants, animals and tools are not available, then the products of those sources will not be available.

If you want nails, you will need a forge and a smeltering pot and iron ore and tools to dig for the ore (unless you are lucky enough to find some near the surface), etc.

The physical costs of hosting an EcoComics server are charged to each user according to the burden their account puts on the system.

Hosting physical sources always has costs, even if just for the exclusion of something else that could occupy that same space.

Some costs are periodic, such as a hosting service's monthly or yearly charge while other costs depend upon usage, such the hosting service's bandwidth limits, CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, electricity.  The various 'loads' a user puts on the game server should weight his price to incent thrifty users and insure heavy users pay for excluding others.

Some of the costs we'll face (including our labor):
* Define the purposes and goals of the game at a high level.
* Organize and orthoganalize meaningful player constraints.
* Write some pseudo-code to discuss flow and logic.
* Remix some Free Software to begin an implementation.
* Find a hosting provider; setup and maintain payments.
* Install the software and keep the server running.

Some users, especially newbies impact these real costs very little because they have such a small " footprint".

As users advance, some would be willing to pay the real costs that their "owning" and "using" in the virtual world put on the server.

Getting this all figured out and getting the money collected is quite a mess, so many owners of Free Software game servers offer the connection for 'free' - in that there is no connection fee.

That is somewhat philanthropic on the surface, but there is a control issue because these hosting administrators (probably the same programmers that are working on this version of the game) have arbitrary dictatorial control over any number of users.  I would call this a "common" problem in these communities, and is central to what I see as the problem with most communities in the physical world as well.

==Book 1: The Dismal Science
Keeping price above cost is called business success
Producers fail if they cannot profit against the society

Owner profit is an inverse measure of consumer development
Real development would be efficient internal production

Wage is a cost of production set between owners and workers
Consumer object price is set between competing source owners

Groups of owners control nation governments
Corporations or commons may host Sources of Production

Tarrifs, taxes and agreements protect owners from production
Consumers in charge keep control and costs internal

==Book 2: A GNU way
Profit is meaningless and competition is perfect when consumers control sources
Control of physical sources is held by property owners

Information requires mass and energy for storage and expression
Mass and energy are rivalrous

Personal privacy is the purpose of property
Public utilities are more efficiently locked open

The GPL as an autarcho-syndicating international trade agreement
Local production ownership is long-term, military grade defense

Consuming producers are controlling conducers
Incorporation was the original purpose of government

Government can be an agreement or treaty between owners
Owners may hire any Worker, Manager, Board, Chair, Committee, Cop, Council, Judge, Representative, Fool

Consumers assess value as the price they pay
Consumers invest as they pay more than costs

Taxes are rent against costs, including opportunity lost
Authors, fathers, founders, originators may not retard growth

Owners draw borders and conditions of entry
Currency is issued at the public shop for local trade

A community currency backed by insuring physical sources
Humans need land, water, food, drugs, cloth, soap, shelter

Meeting needs requires physical Sources of Production
Sources include land, plants, animals, tools and buildings

Owning physical sources insures future objectives
Incorporation does not require the externality of profit

Profit is meaningless when consumers own sources
Abundance is goal and profit meaningless when consumers own sources

New users gain control whenever paying price above cost
Owners loose control if they fail to pay maintenence costs

Product is reward for owners; profit is new user growth
Profit is held by new users as their investment in sources

Unemployment is not a problem, it is the second goal
Work is to be eliminated as a hurdle on our road to riches

Wages are minimized and permanent solutions are sought
Dumping is harmless as the goal is product, never profit

==Game ideas
Coopolis - Policy for shared operation.
clay - in the hands of the potter.
dust - organisms are genetic programs running atop a mineral substrate.
Ecocomics - The Comical Ecology Of Political Economy.
ecOS or BioKern - Consumers as autonomous processes.
Health - Physical salvation and eternal life through nature.
Hlaf Weard - Lords protect profit by hiring vassals to restrict production.
HR - Human Resources as war cogs.
ILand - Resource governance in an island setting.
Source War - Scarcity is value?
Thoth the Atlantean - a study of light cycles.
GNUnix (operational)

==Other Title ideas
BioKern or BiOS (planning)
Communityism (idle)
Free Source Farm (operational)
Free Source Federation (planning)
Permaculture Propagation Project (operational)
Commons Based Beer Production (planning)

==Other ideas
. Candlemaker's Petition (planning) Sunlight has unfair advantage (freedom is bad for the market): FreeAudio.org/fbastiat/candlemakerspetition.html
. Board game similar to original "Landlord's Game" which could be played with various tax rules, and later became Monopoly(R).
. Video game such as a text adventure, MOO, MMORPG, centered around bread production.
. Ancient religious symbology and ceremony was originally aligned with ideals of respecting nature and permanent culture.
. Shipwrecked on a deserted island with 1000 other passengers.
. Awake as 9 year old working for Disney at Shah Makhdum Garments Factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
. Video machinima using 3D modeling software.
. Reality TV gameshow or documentary.
. Comic strip or cartoon.
. Audio book (just record yourself talking about it and share).
. Sketch your ideas on paper and send them by mail.

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Package the game in different ways as though it were many different games.  In each case the player would start with a narrow selection of 'characters' or 'occupations' to could choose from.  In most cases your character (say a Chomping Mouth(TM)) and occupation (harvesting seed pods) would be predetermined as the only way to play.  Some jobs are real-world educational.

Theme: Job
----------------
War: Sniper, Bomb Expert, Medic, Pilot
Heist: Bank Robber, Security Guard
Flight: Pilot, Traffic Controller,
Train: Traffic Controller, Engineer
Race: Driver, Track Scheduler
Agriculture: Compost Expert, Pruner, Seed Saver, Plant and Animal Husbandry
Paint: Artist
Pac-Man/Dig-Dug: Seed Sower, Fruit Picker, Road Builder, Pipe Layer

Users operating in the 'dream' state cannot be full participants in the economic simulation because all other users are too blurry to see(?), but 'awake' users can hire 'dream' users from the EcoComics system itself as somewhat robotic helpers.

All 'dream' user activity occurs somewhere in the EcoComics universe.  This means 'awake' users can see 'dream' users, and kind of corrall some their activities, but cannot communicate with them directly.

You can slowly 'awake' in the game by beginning to pay attention to the needs of your in-game character - especially eating and sleeping.  Some users will figure out how to keep HEALTH points higher by choosing to eat or sleep at the 'correct' times (corresponding to subtle changes in brightness).  They will then realize this is a much larger simulation any of the other games could be played, hopefully staying 'awake' and playing EcoComics directly will be the most popular choice.