Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #72 - Economic Law Changes in 1.2

[Splorghley]

I think laissez-faire needs to entail buildings being downsized by the capitalists (automatically) when they're not profitable - this should be an inherent efficiency of the free market, in that workers are retrenched to where they're most productive (and in case the last viable employer is shut down, the lower wage cost should attract new factories - though there's room for fun social strife in the interim!).

However, I appreciate this can make it very difficult to build a new industry - where the profitability of building A depends on the profitability of building B, and the capitalists build neither since neither is profitable on their own. Since the player can build on their own though, even with laissez-faire, this seems like a non-issue, provided there's a sufficient grace period to build up the dependencies.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

At the moment this is required since Cooperative Ownership is such a radical economic shift that it should require multiple legal changes to implement. I do think there is room for mixing co-ops and government ownership into the regular economic laws but we'd need to do in a way that you can't just eliminate the aristocrats by changing some PMs.

one thought (perhaps for 1.3+ not 1.2) is switching ownership PMs should carry a financial burden unless its in some kind of revolutionary switch between economics laws (arguably, all PM switches should carry such a short term burden, since it requires overhauling the industry).

 

[Tvarog]

Okay, I don't get the Command Economy. How I imagined it working, was dividends going directly into the government, but all government employed bureaucrats being on government wage. Here it says it just takes investment pool money into treasury. So like pops are still owners, still have their normal dividends income, that they would invest a percentage of into new buildings, but instead it goes into treasury?

As i understand Command seizes all money from investment fund when enacted and after that all dividends goes straight to tresury.


BTW is it true that in LF Aristocrats and farmers cannot build farms?

 

[GrounchoVilla]

I think laissez-faire needs to entail buildings being downsized by the capitalists (automatically) when they're not profitable - this should be an inherent efficiency of the free market, in that workers are retrenched to where they're most productive (and in case the last viable employer is shut down, the lower wage cost should attract new factories - though there's room for fun social strife in the interim!).

However, I appreciate this can make it very difficult to build a new industry - where the profitability of building A depends on the profitability of building B, and the capitalists build neither since neither is profitable on their own. Since the player can build on their own though, even with laissez-faire, this seems like a non-issue, provided there's a sufficient grace period to build up the dependencies.

not only new industries, but munitions plants and arms factories which are generally unprofitable during peacetime. it would basically make Lassiez-Faire economies easy targets for everyone else since their arms industries would all be insufficient for war time.

 

[Splorghley]

not only new industries, but munitions plants and arms factories which are generally unprofitable during peacetime. it would basically make Lassiez-Faire economies easy targets for everyone else since their arms industries would all be insufficient for war time.

I agree this is an issue. In real life, we see stockpiling + obsolescence (+ arms exports) driving a steady demand for new weapons, even in peacetime.

I suppose that Vicky 3 could implement a stockpiling mechanic, plus some kind of spoilage modifier that ate away at stockpiles?

 

[Wendigo514]

Okay, I don't get the Command Economy. How I imagined it working, was dividends going directly into the government, but all government employed bureaucrats being on government wage. Here it says it just takes investment pool money into treasury. So like pops are still owners, still have their normal dividends income, that they would invest a percentage of into new buildings, but instead it goes into treasury?

Command Economy now makes use of a new system called Government Shares, which is used by the Government Run ownership production method. Just like how Pop Shares entitle Pops to a portion of a building’s dividends, Government Shares ensure that buildings pay some or all of their profits directly into the treasury​

From what I understand here the Government directly takes dividends money not the Investment pool ones.

And LF seems under-powered. It blocks downsizing buildings, it blocks subsidies, it blocks agrarian investment, and in exchange we get 25% more allocation and 25% more capitalist efficiency. Unless the real problem is, that with 50% allocation the capitalists can't invest all this money they are making, then it seems like a modest and not very useful mode.

Yeah honestly it's weird that we can't have agrarian investments with LF.

 

[Troelsdc]

Will the new cooperative law enable the same type of egalitarian cooperatives that erases wage hierarchies within the building? If so, are there any plans to implement Non-egalitarian cooperatives in the future? That is cooperatives that keep the wage hierarchy of the buildings but gives everyone an equal share of the dividends?

I always saw the current system of cooperatives as a tad too utopian. IRL most worker owned cooperatives still pay a higher wage to their engineers than their janitors. It would also be a nice thing to have both, that is non-egalitarian ownership locked behind a tech like socialism and then egalitarian cooperatives requiring both council republic and the new cooperative economic law.

Can it be modded so with the new "shares" system?

 

[Aozora Kasuga]

A good solution would be to add another Distribution of Power law specifically for Council Republics, which would fill the niche of Landed Voting and Wealth Voting in other governments: something more "authoritharian" than Universal Suffrage and Census Suffrage, but still with elections and political parties. For an example, there's a Marxist-Leninist concept of People's Democracy, which allows multi-party system as long all parties are committed to Socialism

In fact, I am writing a mod where party mechanism is used to present factions in communist party.

 

[auzewasright]

Not sure how controversial this is, but I think it would just be better to return cooperative ownership to no or very little investment pool. After all, while under other economic laws the investors are nominally investing with some sort of ownership/profit in return, while workers would basically just invest in their own competition (in practice, everybody is doing the latter under current ownership mechanics, but workers coops by definition would even in a hypothetical ownership rework not change that).

I think given coops focus on increasing workers’ standard of living, it makes more sense for the pops to focus their money on improving their standard of living over all. Then again, there is also the concept of donations and charity… which also seems difficult to model. So arguments either way, but I think no investment pool for them theoretically makes more sense and probably clearer to understand than any hypothetical compromise with the current mechanics and abstractions.

Or maybe I’m just missing something, Idk.

 

[Notme1]

Will the new cooperative law enable the same type of egalitarian cooperatives that erases wage hierarchies within the building? If so, are there any plans to implement Non-egalitarian cooperatives in the future? That is cooperatives that keep the wage hierarchy of the buildings but gives everyone an equal share of the dividends?

I always saw the current system of cooperatives as a tad too utopian. IRL most worker owned cooperatives still pay a higher wage to their engineers than their janitors. It would also be a nice thing to have both, that is non-egalitarian ownership locked behind a tech like socialism and then egalitarian cooperatives requiring both council republic and the new cooperative economic law.

Can it be modded so with the new "shares" system?

Wage weights can't be changed in game, so enginers always earn more than laborers in same building

What is changed that everyone employed will get shares.

 

[bills_fn]

Have you considered putting power under the same category as railways, where it can be government owned under interventionism and subsidized under laissez-faire? Municipal owned power was a thing in the Victoria timeframe and even the most free market economies tend to heavily regulate the industry.

 

[Mannio5]

For example:
- A series of laws on what you can subsidize
- A series of laws on your taxation capacity
- A series of laws on your investment pool efficiency
- A series of laws on what your investment pool can be used to build

This is the kind of thing mods are good for, the mechanics should be there to implement it.

But that kind of complexity should be kept from the base game, and I'm a sucker for complex stuff if it adds immersion.

 

[Notme1]

Have you considered putting power under the same category as railways, where it can be government owned under interventionism and subsidized under laissez-faire? Municipal owned power was a thing in the Victoria timeframe and even the most free market economies tend to heavily regulate the industry.

Same with all military good producers I guess.

Also worker coops may end up having following situation:
Private healthcare/education being better than public version for everyone....
Expect those poor government workers - assuming wage competition never happened in first place and lowest government/military wages.
Such education and healthcare also would be a worker coop.

 

[agaabrieel]

I'd go further still, and suggest making them into actual sentences:

You can subsidise infrastructure.
You cannot downsize non-governmental buildings.
The investment pool is disabled.

I'd go even further and suggest it to explain to the player why.

You can subsidize infrastructure, as that has been a traditional role attributed to the State even by classical and neoclassical economists, such as John Stuart Mill, who in 1848 published a book [...]

 

[boilesen]

Will the economic laws influence the cost of running the government? For me it makes sense tha command economy would require much more burocratic points than Laissez-fare

 

[Ancillary]

It seems like it's going to be harder with Cooperative Ownership to reinvest profits since Engineers and Machinists are the big winners under that system and they apparently have no interest in contributing to the pool. Oh well, I guess there's always jacking up the dividend taxes if needed.

 

[DominusNovus]

Imagine trying to balance that.

Probably making AI somehow competent would also be nightmare.

Well, lets put it this way: ultimately, my proposal is, in the most minimalist version, just adding 1-2 more categories of economic laws. Is that actually *that* much of a stretch?

For example, the current category of 'economic system' laws could be split into two: 'ownership system' and 'state involvement.' That alone would provide quite a bit more nuance. If you want to add a third, it could be 'developmental focus' to represent which sectors are favored (agriculture, mixed, industry, or market-driven).

 

[SprelleFN]

About autocratic communism, Victoria 3 - political and economic sandbox. And why game limit me, what I can create. If you delete democratic communism, you will must delete anarchism, debuff agrarianism and dictatorship. Thats not to say what democratic commusim may be and really, it is controversial.

 

[Sotek]

Not sure how controversial this is, but I think it would just be better to return cooperative ownership to no or very little investment pool. After all, while under other economic laws the investors are nominally investing with some sort of ownership/profit in return, while workers would basically just invest in their own competition (in practice, everybody is doing the latter under current ownership mechanics, but workers coops by definition would even in a hypothetical ownership rework not change that).

Well, that would still let them upgrade existing buildings, right? That'd represent expanding facilities, hiring more fellow employees, etc.

 

[Lys91]

The changes for 1.2 looks pretty good so far and are going in the right direction (obviously, we need to see the end results). However, I cannot understand why the game was released in the state it was while the problems were obvious to the community (and I cannot believe the dev thought the game was ready to be released). It is going to take at least a year to fix everything that needs fixing, and as a consumer, it doesn't feel great.