Laissez-faire and Capitalist AI

[Revshawn]

This is a completely natural game mechanic. Subsidizing factories for the most part is bad. If a factory cannot buy it's own material on it's own, then it is not profitable for you or the world market, and thus needs to go out of business.

But if you try to prop up your economy through subsidizing your factories just for the sake of keeping your status as a world power, what do you expect is going to happen when the factories are exposed to the harsh reality that is the world market?

It's like having a skinny dog among a pack of wolves, and then you remove the steel cage around it. At least that's what it seems to me. Don't worry, once they patch the game and fix the whole issues with the capitalists and the clerks, making profitable factories will be a whole lot easier.

Cheers.

 

[OndGud]

Avoid laissez faire like the plague, it's a nation destroyer.

 

[artemis667]

How do you handle it if your capitalists have no money at all and you have no functioning factories, and you're stuck in a laissez faire economy? Because that's the situation I'm in with USCA. They built a canned food factory and it seemed to be going alright at first - then they suddenly closed it - built a luxury clothes factory instead, which closed within days - then that was it. A couple of thousand capitalists lazing around, no money, not building anything, complaining that they don't any of their needs met :rofl:

I'd shift away from laissez faire but can't work out a way of getting to the one out of my three parties that doesn't have it (Both reactionary and liberal parties in USCA are LF)

 

[Pope Thrax]

I dont know if this is true but someone mentioned in another thread that the reason cappies make poor building choices is b/c they misinterpret the demand for goods. What they see is the absolute demand for the good if everyone had money to afford it. However, since not everyone can actually afford to purchase every need the industries aren't nearly as profitable as you might expect.

The adjustments to capitalist and craftsmen needs listed in the mods forum also help a lot and I'm betting that if demand ajustments are made to a few pops/units that things like canned goods won't be as big of a money sink as they are now.

Now if only I could get clerks and clergy to promote as well:/

 

[unmerged(8351)]

Bad example, Stalin was about as ready for Hitler as France in WW1 was ready for the British to stab them in the back.



The iPod? DOS? The automobile?




To be honest, China basically WAS run by warlords when Japan attacked. The Japanese were not defeated by a large, centralized Chinese super state, they were defeated by large numbers of decentralized resistance groups.

Soviet industry was far far ahead what it would have been had the "whites" won in 1919. And the USSR made a lot of hard choices that just wouldn't have happened under another plausible government.

Yes it would have been better off with an American or British or German system, but that simply is fantasy land. The country was too backward.

Yes that is my point about China, it was going nowhere fast doing what the west wanted. The country was able to keep social cohesion and avoid western pillaging throughout the 60s and 70s (despite some really poor decisions at times). And now it is in a position to enact market reforms on its own terms.

For developing a poor nation markets alone are not generally going to work.

As for you list of techs...
That was nice, I'll raise you, the internet, most modern medicine, most of the chemical industry, basically all physics since about 1915 etc.

The government has been just as good at sponsoring technological innovation as individuals have been. Markets are great when you need a better widget. They are not great when you need a solution people can't or won't pay for (due to collective action, agent/principle issues, or other issues).

 

[truth is life]

So does the AI effectively have a built-in exploit? There really should be no lending if there are no more banks in the world willing to lend.

The intent is to prevent a massive credit crunch that destroys the world economy, I believe, not helping the AI out (though, eh, I'm not sure whether destroying the world's economy is necessarily implausible...). As the previous poster noted, the same shadowy cabal can step in for the player country, as well (we just tend not to go bankrupt).

 

[unmerged(205556)]

The factories may not be profitable but at least they keep people working.

 

[Londinium]

Avoid laissez faire like the plague, it's a nation destroyer.

Seems to work just fine with the UK. I more than doubled my lead over France industrially via a combination of LF and using NF to encourage Capitalists in South East and Midland England.

 

[Panchito]

The intent is to prevent a massive credit crunch that destroys the world economy, I believe, not helping the AI out (though, eh, I'm not sure whether destroying the world's economy is necessarily implausible...). As the previous poster noted, the same shadowy cabal can step in for the player country, as well (we just tend not to go bankrupt).

Quite, makes sense. I suppose a credit crisis would be inevitable for the AI nations since capitalists cannot do basic math.

 

[naggy]

For developing a poor nation markets alone are not generally going to work.

In fact, free markets tend to screw developing nations that don't have a native large economic advantage (oil in the Middle East, manpower in China and India).

The iPod? DOS? The automobile?

iPod and DOS are for computers...almost all of the underpinnings of which were state sponsored. It took a lot of government money to get the computer hardware and software industries to a self-sustaining point. Same with the internet - the first modern HTML browser was written by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Government R&D was a huge part of 20th century advancement - since they can fund research that has no immediate practical (or profitable) application.

 

[Nitrousoxide]

I thought money was only supposed to enter the system through gold? If phantom investors can create money out of thin air and lend it to a nation than there is clearly another avenue for money to enter the system.

It also seems like a lazy solution to the real problem, the AI not attempting (or refusing) to balance their budgets. Seems like a better solution would be an AI that would actually balanced their budget and the odd ball out there that was going crazy with their debts to end up without the ability to borrow so their government just shut down while giving everyone they owe money to a CB on them.

 

[Nitrousoxide]

In fact, free markets tend to screw developing nations that don't have a native large economic advantage (oil in the Middle East, manpower in China and India).

Care to give any examples of free markets "screwing over" developing nations?

iPod and DOS are for computers...almost all of the underpinnings of which were state sponsored. It took a lot of government money to get the computer hardware and software industries to a self-sustaining point. Same with the internet - the first modern HTML browser was written by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Electronic computers were an evolution on mechanical computers which was largely privately researched and improved.

It's an accident that a world war was going on when the time was ripe for those mechanical computers to give rise to the Turing machines we have today, so of course the government had a large part to play in the funding of that research. There was a need for code cracking after all. There's nothing about computers, or any technology, that requires government investment.

Calculating machines also have many immediate private applications outside of code cracking for a war. Accounting being the one that springs to mind first, but I'm sure other smart entrepreneurs could think of valuable uses in the early 40's for computers.

Government R&D was a huge part of 20th century advancement - since they can fund research that has no immediate practical (or profitable) application.

Government sponsored R&D certainly churned out some useful inventions, but they were by no means the only source ultimately valuable inventions. However, the most obvious mistake you're making is assuming that private entities won't engage in research on projects that aren't immediately profitable. Drug companies are most known for this as they investigate the interactions of various drugs with our bodies, despite the expectation that the vast majority of these discoveries will be of no immediate value. They count on this general better understanding to result in new innovations they can make at some future date.

Another obvious mistake is assuming that these inventions would not have been discovered when a practical application would have been present.

Yet one more mistake you make is forgetting that by doing R&D on stuff that is no practical use at the time, you are spending money on stuff of no practical use (yet) which could have been spent on stuff with some practical use.

 

[unmerged(183166)]

Some really good things came about in this topic, like that common/issues.txt edits. I will be checking them out.


Also, on another point, is anyone else having "Superpower" China problems?

Basically once China westernises in around 1870's-80's, in a space of a few years, it ends up with like 1600 industry. This was really weird as I was a very advanced Russia (and I only had 400 industry I done since the start) when Super-China rose to Great power status and overtook me.

I tagged over to China, who were very behind techwise compared to me, but they have a massive population which just churned out raw materials. (Then my game dies, as China eats all the resources and world economy runs out of supplies)

Happened in a couple of games now, I haven't past this point as I simply stopped playing those saves.

 

[Panchito]

I thought money was only supposed to enter the system through gold? If phantom investors can create money out of thin air and lend it to a nation than there is clearly another avenue for money to enter the system.

It also seems like a lazy solution to the real problem, the AI not attempting (or refusing) to balance their budgets. Seems like a better solution would be an AI that would actually balanced their budget and the odd ball out there that was going crazy with their debts to end up without the ability to borrow so their government just shut down while giving everyone they owe money to a CB on them.

I believe gold was the original idea, but as it stands now the game would just not run at all. Like you've noted, the AI needs to be able to calculate profit margins (in capitalists) and balance its budget, until it cannot do that it would be like condemning the AI to death for such a thing to be implemented.

 

[Comrade Chaos]

The Liberal Faction (as Persians call it) has absolutely improved my industrial base and I never have under 7 factories under construction and a fabric factory making $500+

 

[unmerged(183166)]

There should be a "Bankrupt" event.

Once you hit a certain debt level (even after killing your stockpile, banks and other nations banks, etc) the event should kick in, which sets all taxes at 100%, all subs/policy sliders/etc to zero.

This should generate a signifcant amount of money, which is used to pay off the debts to a respectable level (also some profits to the lenders), then the event is removed. At which point, you can rebuild what is left of the economy.

 

[unmerged(208265)]

Free Market turned Singapore and Hong Kong into what they are, even though Singapore had like 30% literacy as late as the 1960s.

 

[Grosshaus]

iPODs weren't really that popular yet in the Victorian age. If you want to discuss them, or economical merits of free commerce, please use the Off-Topic Forum. In this forum there is only one allowed topic: Victoria 2

Grosshaus
Moderator

 

[Grosshaus]

How many aristocrats became capitalists during the period?

If anything, capitalists should slowly turn into aristocrats.

I know best Finnish economic history. Still many of our biggest companies are owned by the noble families who founded them 150 years ago. In many cases the starting point was a noble estate holding a lot of forests, which was then used either for lumber, paper or fuel to refine iron or create glass. Certainly in countries like Russia proper were aristocrats had remained more of their privileges there was less incentive to create new forms of income.

 

[cdg0219]

I am pretty surprised at all of these. I'm in 1902, playing as Oranje (the little Presidential Dictatorship in South Africa) and I'm the 11th industrial power. I've been Laissez Faire since the 1840s. Its been a hard battle against Communist rebels (even with my own mods...), but I thought it was really enjoyable. I was really impressed with the Capitalist AI. I only saw one failed factory (canned food).