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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #11 - Employment and Qualifications

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Happy Thursday and welcome to another deep-dive into the guts of Victoria 3’s economic machinery. This week we will be talking about Pop Professions, specifically how and why Pops change Profession. While this is an automatic process, the mechanics of it is still crucial knowledge to keep in the back of your head when building your society. Perhaps you want to ensure the population in one of your states are able to take on Machinist jobs before embarking on a rapid industrialization project there, or perhaps you want to ensure you don’t accidentally enable too much social mobility in a country already prone to uprisings against their true and lawful King.

First, a quick recap. In the Pops dev diary we learned that all Pops have a Profession, which determines their social strata and influences a number of things like wages, political strength, and Interest Group affiliations. In the Buildings dev diary we learned that buildings need Pops of specific Professions to work there in order for them to produce their intended effects on the economy and society. Finally, in the Production Methods dev diary we learned that different Production Methods change the number of Profession positions available in a building. So how do Pops get assigned to these spots?

Our approach here differs a bit from previous games. Victoria 1 and 2 has the concept of a “Pop Type”, a fundamental property of Pops in those games that defines most aspects of their existence - what function they perform in society, what goods they need to survive vs. what goods they desire, what ideologies they espouse, etcetera. Pops in Victoria 2 autonomously change into other types over time depending on their finances and the various needs and aspects of the country. Providing access to luxury goods in your country permits Pops to promote more easily. Generally speaking, higher-tier Pops will provide better bonuses for your country as different Pop Types perform different functions. By manufacturing or importing special goods and educating your population you would turn your simple, backwards Pops into advanced, progressive types in ideal ratios, which maximizes these bonuses to increase your competitive advantage.

Pop Types from Victoria 2: Aristocrats, Artisans, Bureaucrats, Capitalists, Clergymen, Clerks, Craftsmen, Farmers, Laborers, Officers, Slaves, and Soldiers.
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Victoria 3 Pops instead have Professions. These are in some ways similar to “Pop Type”, but the ideal ratios and economic functions of those Professions differ based on the building they’re employed in and the Production Methods activated. The fundamental difference between these two approaches become clear when considering the Bureaucrat Pop Type/Profession in Victoria 2 and 3. In both games, Bureaucrats increase a country’s administrative ability. But in Victoria 2 Pops promote into Bureaucrats independently in relation to the amount of administrative spending the player sets, while in Victoria 3 Pops will only become Bureaucrats if there are available Bureaucrat jobs in Government buildings, usually as a result of the player actively expanding Government Administrations.

Professions in Victoria 3: Academics, Aristocrats, Bureaucrats, Capitalists, Clergymen (temporary icon; will be changed to be more universally applicable), Clerks, Engineers, Farmers, Laborers, Machinists, Officers, Peasants, Servicemen, Shopkeepers, and Slaves.
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The latter approach gives the player more control over where these job opportunities are created, and combined with Production Methods cause demographic shifts to have stronger, more localized effects that are easier to predict and understand. It’s also more flexible, permitting the same Profession to cause different effects in different Buildings given different Production Methods. So in Victoria 3 higher-paid Pops don’t by their very nature perform a more valuable societal function than lower-paid Pops - rather, each acts as a crucial part of a Production Method’s ‘recipe’. Each of these roles require the others to be effective - without enough Laborers to shovel coal the engines the Machinists maintain stay dormant, and without seamstresses to work the sewing machines the Shopkeepers don’t have any clothes to sell.

Buildings adjust their wages over time in order to achieve full employment with minimal wage costs. As employment increases, so does the Throughput - the degree by which the building consumes input goods and produces output goods. By the laws of supply and demand, this makes a building less profitable per capita the closer to full employment it gets, so at first blush it might appear irrational for a building to pay more wages just to reduce their margins. But since a “building” does not represent a single factory but rather a whole industrial sector across a large area, and we assume the individual businesses in that sector compete with each other rather than engage in cartel behavior to extort consumers, this adjustment of wages to maximize employment makes sense. However, buildings won’t increase wages due to labor competition if this would cause them to go into deficit, so there’s little point to expanding industries beyond the point where they’re profitable.

Employees are hired into available jobs from the pool of Pops that already exist in the state, but unless they’re unemployed these Pops will already have a job somewhere doing something else. Pops can be hired under two conditions: first, they must be offered a measurably higher wage than the wage they’re currently getting from their current employment. Second, unless they already work as the required Profession in another building, they must also meet the Qualifications of that Profession to change into it.

These Steel Mills don’t pay as well as the Arms Industries, but they do seem to offer better terms than the Textile Mills and resource industries in the same state - with the notable exception of Fishing Wharves, who also need Machinists to service their trawlers.
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Wages are set by individual buildings in response to market conditions. A building that is losing money will decrease wages until it’s back in the black. A building that has open jobs it can’t seem to fill will raise wages until it either fills the necessary positions or runs out of excess profits. As a result, different buildings in the same state will compete for the available workforce. What this means in practice is that a large population with the necessary Qualifications to perform all the jobs being created in the state will keep wages depressed and profits high. Only when industries are large or advanced enough that they need to compete with each other for a limited pool of qualified workers are wages forced to rise. This rise in wages also comes with increased consumption, which increases demand for goods and services that some of the same buildings may profit from in the end.

A Pop’s Qualifications measure how many of its workforce qualify for certain Professions, and updates monthly depending on how well their current properties match up to the expectations of the Profession in question. For example, at least a basic education level is required to become a Machinist while a much higher one is required to become an Engineer. Conversely, the ability to become an Aristocrat is less about education and more about social class and wealth. Buildings won’t hire Pops who don’t meet the Qualifications for the Profession in question.

These 981 Machinists qualify to become Engineers at a rate of 4.08 per month. Their Literacy is nothing to write home about but they at least meet the cut-off of 20%, aren’t starving to death, and benefit substantially from already working in an adjacent field. All factors and numbers are work-in-progress.
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If some Paper Mills required more Engineers and this Pop was being considered, only the amount of qualified Engineers they’ve accumulated so far could be hired. Currently that is only 85 (not shown). If those 85 were all hired, this Pop would then end up with only 896 members left in the workforce of which 0 now qualify to become Engineers. Since all recently hired Engineers used to be Machinists, all 85 retain their Machinist Qualifications. Furthermore, if 512 members of this Pop qualified to be Farmers before the hire (52%), of the 85 of them who were newly promoted to Engineers, 44 of these new Engineers are also qualified to become Farmers.

To be considered for a “job” as Aristocrat a Pop must have at least moderate Wealth, and the more Wealth they have the faster they will develop this potential. Unlike many other jobs Literacy is not a requirement for being accepted into the aristocracy, but an education does make it easier. Bureaucrats and Officers have an easier time becoming Aristocrats than other members of society, while Pops who suffer discrimination on account of their culture have a much harder time. Finally, if a Pop does not meet the minimum Wealth requirement, they actually devolve any prior potential for becoming Aristocrats. This means that down-and-out former nobles robbed of their land and forced to go unemployed or (perish the thought) become a wage laborer will - over time - lose their ability to return to their former social class. All factors and numbers are work-in-progress.
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Like all Pop attributes, Qualifications follow the Pops as they split, merge, move between buildings, migrate, and die. If you had previously developed a lot of potential Bureaucrats in your country but ran into budgetary problems and had to shut down your schools, over time those Pops who have already developed the Qualifications to become Bureaucrats will die off and not be replaced by newly educated ones. If your Capitalists in a given state had been underpaying their local discriminated employees to the degree that nobody gained the Qualifications to take over for them, and then some of those Capitalists move away to operate a newly opened Iron Mine in the next state over, rather than promoting some of the local discriminated Laborers to the newly opened jobs they will simply leave the spots open (and the mines underproducing) until some qualified Capitalists move in from elsewhere to take over.

Qualifications are entirely moddable by simply providing the computational factors that should go into determining how the value develops each month. If you want to make a mod to split up the Clergymen Profession into individual variants for each Religion in the game, you could make the Imam Profession dependent on the Pop being Sunni or Shi’ite. If you wanted Aristocrat Qualification development to be highly dependent on the amount of unproductive Arable Land in the state the Pop lives in, you could do that. An event option or Decision that makes it faster and easier to educate Engineers but harder to educate Officers for the next 10 years? Absolutely.

A breakdown of all Pops in Lower Egypt that qualify to become Engineers. Of course, any openings will be offered to existing Engineers first, and not all of the remaining qualified Pops would actually be interested in the job - though if it was lucrative enough, perhaps some Aristocrats on a failing Subsistence Farm would consider a career change.
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The intent of Qualifications is to signal to a player what capacity for employment they have available among any subset of their population. They cannot, for example, conquer a state filled with under-educated people they also legally discriminate against and expect to immediately build up a cutting-edge manufacturing- and trade center there. These efforts will be throttled by their inability to employ the locals into highly qualified positions, meaning they have to wait for members of their already qualified workforce to migrate there from the old country to take on any high-status positions created for them. But by building out their education system, paying Bureaucracy to extend their administrative reach to the new state through incorporation, and changing their Laws to extend citizenship to these new residents, they can start to build this capacity also in the locals.

In summary, Qualifications is the mechanism by which access to education and your stance on discrimination - in addition to many other factors - impact your ability to expand different parts of your society. It is also the mechanism that sorts Pops logically into the economic (and thereby political) niches you carve out as you expand, ensuring your laws and economic conditions inform the social mobility of Pops based on who they are. It’s quite subtle, and you might not even notice it’s there - until you run into the challenges caused by rapid industrialization, mass migration, conquests, colonization, and other drastic population shifts.

That is all for this week! Next Thursday we will finally get into how all this economic activity translates into revenue streams for you, when Martin presents the mechanics governing the Treasury and national debt.
 
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I think the part you're overlooking is that a doubled Throughput resulting from a doubling of total employees will also require double the wages? As an example, let's say I employ 5000 employees and make 2000 in profit, due to my wages costing me 1000, input goods cost being 4000, and sale of output goods yielding 7000. Under these conditions, if I doubled my employment and thereby my Throughput and we assumed zero or negligible change in goods prices due to supply and demand (no loss of marginal profit) then my now 10,000 employees will generate 4000 in profit due to wage expenses of 2000, input goods expenses of 8000, and sale of output goods yielding 14,000. Yes, this is a higher absolute profit but since the number of shareholders (owner) have also doubled, wages + dividends paid out per employee will remain the same.

This means that any decrease in marginal profit, whether 1% or 50%, as a result of proportionally increasing employment will always result in less net profits generated per employee. This would be different if a building had fixed costs no matter its size (they do not) and is to some degree counteracted by a small Economy of Scale bonus that some buildings have, where Throughput gains a small boost in larger buildings independent of workforce size, but the core principle remains.
If it's a throughput bonus it's not really an EoS bonus though as there are fixed costs per unit produced ( I mean in reality ) and those are split between more units hence either a small input or output bonus would make sense as well.
 
But by building out their education system, paying Bureaucracy to extend their administrative reach to the new state through incorporation, and changing their Laws to extend citizenship to these new residents, they can start to build this capacity also in the locals.
That's a yikes from me breh. I play this game to commit crimes against humanity not be a philanthrope. :cool:
 
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I think the part you're overlooking is that a doubled Throughput resulting from a doubling of total employees will also require double the wages? As an example, let's say I employ 5000 employees and make 2000 in profit, due to my wages costing me 1000, input goods cost being 4000, and sale of output goods yielding 7000. Under these conditions, if I doubled my employment and thereby my Throughput and we assumed zero or negligible change in goods prices due to supply and demand (no loss of marginal profit) then my now 10,000 employees will generate 4000 in profit due to wage expenses of 2000, input goods expenses of 8000, and sale of output goods yielding 14,000. Yes, this is a higher absolute profit but since the number of shareholders (owner) have also doubled, wages + dividends paid out per employee will remain the same.

This means that any decrease in marginal profit, whether 1% or 50%, as a result of proportionally increasing employment will always result in less net profits generated per employee. This would be different if a building had fixed costs no matter its size (they do not) and is to some degree counteracted by a small Economy of Scale bonus that some buildings have, where Throughput gains a small boost in larger buildings independent of workforce size, but the core principle remains.
Thanks for the explanation. I guess understanding this will be crucial for decision making.

That the owners also increase for higher industries is interesting. I guess done this way to create more rich Pops and create a progression for the society in terms of requested goods? Or to model that any owner can "oversee" (extort) only a limited amount of people?
But does this mean that from an individual point of view, the owners have no incentive to increase the size of their businesses? They don't get richer doing so, they just allow other Pops to become as rich as they are (if workers and demand are abundant - less if they aren't)?

... Would it break something if the amount of owners would not increase proportionally but slower in larger businesses?
 
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Sorry if this has already been asked.

If slavery is outlawed, what do slaves become? Subsistence farmers?
I'm guessing jobs would open up as you lose jobs that were previously slave jobs. ie: Plantation goes from having 2,000 slave jobs to 2,000 farmer jobs.
Also, is that change on a 1 for 1 basis or are say, where 3,000 slaves were needed only 2,000 farmers are now needed instead?

I'm thinking that maybe if you have a lot of slaves, but also have high unemployment in your pops that outlawing slavery could free up say laborer jobs or farming jobs for those unemployed people, where freed slaves would now be marginalized pops and so non-marginalized pops would get preference for jobs over them. Basically resulting in your previously unemployed non-marginalized pops getting jobs and your slaves who are now freed slaves being unemployed and marginalized.
Is that an accurate depiction?

Historically, former slaves were stuck in the same jobs as previously. They generally worked the same job for less money than those who were previously already free, even if their per person production was smaller the difference was smaller than the difference in wages. Likewise, the non-slave population that didn't work those jobs previously rarely were interested in working those jobs now. They were often exhausting jobs under crushing performance pressure even after slavery was abolished, and for terrible pay.

It's why you got slaves to do the work in the first place, after all.

I would expect that marginalized pops would be more likely to get pressed into subsistence industries, with non-marginalized pops having substantially greater chances of getting better professions.
 
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Regarding slavery, will there be means to import slave populations, enslave natives of colonies, or any means to increase slave population beyond natural growth?
 
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Historically, former slaves were stuck in the same jobs as previously. They generally worked the same job for less money than those who were previously already free, even if their per person production was smaller the difference was smaller than the difference in wages. Likewise, the non-slave population that didn't work those jobs previously rarely were interested in working those jobs now. They were often exhausting jobs under crushing performance pressure even after slavery was abolished, and for terrible pay.

It's why you got slaves to do the work in the first place, after all.

I would expect that marginalized pops would be more likely to get pressed into subsistence industries, with non-marginalized pops having substantially greater chances of getting better professions.
Plantations were market-oriented, so they would not qualify as subsistence farming. I guess slaves will need to become farmers or laborers to reflect this mechanic. I wonder if there can be temporary modifiers to income distribution in buildings, to reflect owners getting a greater share of income vs. former slaves than they would under normal labor market conditions.
 
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Would be great to know how large a share of qualified pops can get in the absence of employment opportunities. So if 50% of a given machinist pops can be engineers, but the engineer pops are not available or too low-paying, would they still be getting new qualifications, or would the share of qualified pops stagnate or fall over time?
 
Good catch! Factors and values are very work-in-progress, and the impact from current Profession is indeed inflated at the moment compared to where it should be.
Having said that, it's not necessarily the case that having Wealth 20 means that every point of Wealth provides 0.1 to the algorithm. In the case of Aristocrats, the algorithm currently looks like this:
- requires Wealth > 10 to be positive at all, otherwise reduce by -2
- add ( Wealth - 10 ) / 5
- add literacy rate
- if Officers or Bureaucrats, multiply the current tally by 5 (this is the part that will be nerfed, likely to 2 or 3)
- if not culturally accepted, reduce by 90%

So a well-to-do, culturally accepted Clerk with Wealth 40 and Literacy 80% would gain a base factor of +6.8 to their Aristocrat Qualifications, which is a very respectable figure without already being one of the two preferred types.

And yeah, this algorithm is really hard to parse and we don't really expect players to keep these figures in their head - this breakdown is more for auditing purposes than gameplay purposes. If the player wants to ensure they gain more Qualifications for Aristocrats in their population, they should look at the Aristocrat description which will explain the factors in more comprehensible terms, like "Potential rises with Wealth and to a lesser degree by Literacy".
Would be great if the UI tool tips differentiated between additive and multiplicative factors. In this case being an officer is the latter, but from the tooltip it reads as if it was an independent factor
 
Regarding slavery, will there be means to import slave populations, enslave natives of colonies, or any means to increase slave population beyond natural growth?

This is a sensitive topic but there must be. Slave trade was still alive and well in the first half of the XIX century and the slave trade ban enforced by the British Navy had major diplomatic implications. This might be simulated with forced POP migrations, state level modifiers, and some type of casus belli against slave trader nations, but that still leaves a lot of questions.
 
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Plantations were market-oriented, so they would not qualify as subsistence farming. I guess slaves will need to become farmers or laborers to reflect this mechanic. I wonder if there can be temporary modifiers to income distribution in buildings, to reflect owners getting a greater share of income vs. former slaves than they would under normal labor market conditions.

It would also be interesting to see if marginalized pops get a smaller share of the wages. Historically that happened, and it's one of the major factors in making sure that a population stays marginalized.

Would be great to know how large a share of qualified pops can get in the absence of employment opportunities. So if 50% of a given machinist pops can be engineers, but the engineer pops are not available or too low-paying, would they still be getting new qualifications, or would the share of qualified pops stagnate or fall over time?

Looking at it, it seems like the calculation is entirely wealth and literacy based, and I would presume that farmers have such substantially lower requirements for both that aristocrats, academics and capitalists all end up qualifying rapidly, although not instantly given the system only provides a rate at which qualification is gained/lost.

This is admittedly fairly unrealistic. Farming, even subsistence farming, is actually a job requiring substantial skills. The uneducated peasant may be lacking in book smarts, but if he wants to survive and thrive as a farmer he's going to need to know a whole lot of things. Stuff the rich and well educated might have heard of, but not necessarily know how to do.

Perfectly simulating that would be near enough impossible however.
 
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"By [...] importing special goods and educating your population you would turn your simple, backwards Pops into advanced, progressive types"

Wealth level of pops impact qualifications. Wealth level is not how much people earn but how much stuff they can buy (of course higher wages alowws them to buy more stuff). Getting access to more/new goods cheaper will increas wealth levels and increase qualifications. At least thats my take.
 
The intent of Qualifications is to signal to a player what capacity for employment they have available among any subset of their population. They cannot, for example, conquer a state filled with under-educated people they also legally discriminate against and expect to immediately build up a cutting-edge manufacturing- and trade center there.
I see that discrimination is an arbitrary thing that can only bring harm to your nation.
 
Yes, this is a higher absolute profit but since the number of shareholders (owner) have also doubled,
I am afraid you are implying ownership is not present in the game and it is only a title without any effect. If "owners" double every time the employees double, this means "owners" are only employees. Ownership should come from selling shares of companies to investors. But you do not require to sell or issue more shares if you have enough capital to double your production. In this case, no new owners will be created. This is a way to achieve accumulation of capital, and one of the main reasons for capitalism to thrive.

When production is halved, your sentence implies that those 'owners' are forced to sell their shares. Where is the stock market? I am curious how are you going to simulate ownership of land and capital. I really hope that in your next DD about taxes you talk about Georgism.

I think the part you're overlooking is that a doubled Throughput resulting from a doubling of total employees will also require double the wages?

Is there going to be a method of production that allows buildings to extract more production from employees without increasing employment?

If there is unemployment in the state, owners will try to get as much production from their workers before they hire any new worker by increasing hours/worker. This is the most efficient method as fixed cost per worker are already paid and you only have variable costs.

The fight for working hours explains the evolution of the Industrial Revolution from the XIX to the XX century, and I do believe it should be in the game.
 
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I am afraid you are implying ownership is not present in the game and it is only a title without any effect. If "owners" double every time the employees double, this means "owners" are only employees. Ownership should come from selling shares of companies to investors. But you do not require to sell or issue more shares if you have enough capital to double your production. In this case, no new owners will be created. This is a way to achieve accumulation of capital, and one of the main reasons for capitalism to thrive.

When production is halved, your sentence implies that those 'owners' are forced to sell their shares. Where is the stock market? I am curious how are you going to simulate ownership of land and capital. I really hope that in your next DD about taxes you talk about Georgism.



Is there going to be a method of production that allows buildings to extract more production from employees without increasing employment? If there is unemployment in the state, owners will try to get as much production from their workers before they hire any new worker by increasing hours/worker. This is the most efficient method as fixed cost per worker are already paid and you only have variable costs. The fight for working hours explains the evolution of the Industrial Revolution from the XIX to the XX century, and I do believe it should be in the game.
Ownership is present. It is one of the production methods.

1629655162232.png

One thing to remember is that the 'building' isn't one factory or over one company; it is the complete industrial sector for that state.
So when the player doubles production it isn't a company increasing production it is various companies being added/started. Yes, I know it is an abstraction.
 
Ownership is present. It is one of the production methods.
It looks more like a subterfuge for wealth distribution than ownership. Who ‘owns’ the industry gets the dividends.

An abstraction that dilutes the value of owning the means of production.

So when the player doubles production it isn't a company increasing production it is various companies being added/started.

Various companies added/started or one or two companies increasing their operations. Why should be the former and not the later?
 
I am afraid you are implying ownership is not present in the game and it is only a title without any effect. If "owners" double every time the employees double, this means "owners" are only employees. Ownership should come from selling shares of companies to investors. [..]This is a way to achieve accumulation of capital, and one of the main reasons for capitalism to thrive.
Rather than "owners" we speak of Shareholders in Victoria 3. Any Pops in a building can also be Shareholders in that building, the amount per Pop typically determined by its Ownership Production Method. Dividends are split between Pops in relation to the number of Shares they hold and the building's Cash Reserve is also considered to be owned - albeit in an illiquid manner - by the Shareholders in proportion to their shares. This lets us represent many different forms of ownership types, investments, etc.

What is does not let us do is represent unlimited, snowballing accumulation of capital in individuals, as you point out, particularly across several industrial sectors. In its current form, shares in a building can only be owned by Pops in the building's workforce, including Capitalists, Aristocrats, etcetera. This implies that e.g. Capitalists actually do some meaningful work in running the day-to-day operations of a business and therefore cannot simply let their workforce balloon without also creating more opportunities for Capitalists to manage the growing operation in the process. This is not completely representative of reality and is a bit of an idealized take on how market economies operate in practice, but there are several gameplay benefits to using this model and its representation as the default behavior. Snowballing accumulation of capital can still be modelled by reducing the number of available Capitalists job opportunities in a building under certain conditions, and it's not out of the question that something like that will make it in. But I can't say I'm feeling the lack of this in-game right now, Capitalists tend to get plenty powerful in industrializing nations even without the ability to snowball their capital.
 
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I am afraid you are implying ownership is not present in the game and it is only a title without any effect. If "owners" double every time the employees double, this means "owners" are only employees. Ownership should come from selling shares of companies to investors. But you do not require to sell or issue more shares if you have enough capital to double your production. In this case, no new owners will be created. This is a way to achieve accumulation of capital, and one of the main reasons for capitalism to thrive.

When production is halved, your sentence implies that those 'owners' are forced to sell their shares. Where is the stock market? I am curious how are you going to simulate ownership of land and capital. I really hope that in your next DD about taxes you talk about Georgism.
Buildings represent whole sectors as businesses are abstracted away ( which is probably a not too bad choice, as sectors are relatively efficient compared to businesses as long as enough regulations are in place to ensure it ).

I didn't see land taxes in the tax screen, might remember it wrong though.


Is there going to be a method of production that allows buildings to extract more production from employees without increasing employment?

If there is unemployment in the state, owners will try to get as much production from their workers before they hire any new worker by increasing hours/worker. This is the most efficient method as fixed cost per worker are already paid and you only have variable costs.

The fight for working hours explains the evolution of the Industrial Revolution from the XIX to the XX century, and I do believe it should be in the game.
Since it's a whole sector it could be argued that a different skill-set is necessary to expand production, I do agree fully though.
 
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Rather than "owners" we speak of Shareholders in Victoria 3. Any Pops in a building can also be Shareholders in that building, the amount per Pop typically determined by its Ownership Production Method. Dividends are split between Pops in relation to the number of Shares they hold and the building's Cash Reserve is also considered to be owned - albeit in an illiquid manner - by the Shareholders in proportion to their shares. This lets us represent many different forms of ownership types, investments, etc.

What is does not let us do is represent unlimited, snowballing accumulation of capital in individuals, as you point out, particularly across several industrial sectors. In its current form, shares in a building can only be owned by Pops in the building's workforce, including Capitalists, Aristocrats, etcetera. This implies that e.g. Capitalists actually do some meaningful work in running the day-to-day operations of a business and therefore cannot simply let their workforce balloon without also creating more opportunities for Capitalists to manage the growing operation in the process. This is not completely representative of reality and is a bit of an idealized take on how market economies operate in practice, but there are several gameplay benefits to using this model and its representation as the default behavior. Snowballing accumulation of capital can still be modelled by reducing the number of available Capitalists job opportunities in a building under certain conditions, and it's not out of the question that something like that will make it in. But I can't say I'm feeling the lack of this in-game right now, Capitalists tend to get plenty powerful in industrializing nations even without the ability to snowball their capital.
I know that this will probably be the focus of a future Dev Diary, but what about the Publicly Traded ownership PM? In the screenshot @Ogleby just posted, it shows that Capitalists are the Shareholders, but then what differentiates it from Privately Owned? I would have assumed it split profits out across Capitalist POPs across your nation, but based on what you're saying here it doesn't sound like it does. Or am I misunderstanding?
 
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