Currency

[helbent4]

Originally Posted by Webstral

MilGov is in the same fix. Unless I miss my interpretation badly, the government is calling the shots in terms of economics, food distribution, etc. The Joint Chiefs, who led the fight against Communism, are now running a totalitarian regime. They allow local elections, but the real power is in the hands of folks no one elected. If there weren't already plenty to lose sleep over, this would keep the Joint Chiefs up at night.

"You may do everything with bayonets, except sit on them." - Lord Tallyrand, Foreign Minister to Napoleon.

While withholding food or supplies is one way to compel compliance (not to mention using force), it would also generates serious unrest. While one would think that a starving population would be compliant and unrest would be the last thing on their minds, it's really quite common, perhaps because they feel they have little or nothing to lose and no way to meaningfully redress the situation through peaceful means. Especially for Western Europeans and North Americans, who have a living memory of functioning liberal democracy and faced with a de facto or de jure military or civilian despotic regime. I would imagine that the CIA would have a field day destabilising the US military regime since the coup. It's practically their pre-war bread and butter!

Getting back to a currency, obviously barter is a major source of wealth transfer but it has some obvious problems. If you and the other party have what each other wants in the right amounts then it's simple; if you don't, then unless you walk away it gets complicated. You might be forced to make an unadvantageous trade, be stuck with possibly bulky goods you may or may not be able to unload later which you have to store in the mean time, etc.

While it seems counter-intuitive, I think that luxury goods like tobacco would therefore still be produced and traded due to a consistently high value, general portability and ease of storage (at least for small amounts). As well, because drug laws would be impossible to enforce in most areas, marijuana would be grown and traded.

As a rough estimate, I peg tobacco at something like $200/carton, with loose tobacco going at $140/200 grams in gold or equivalent trade. (This is basically a 20x mark-up from pre-war manufacturing prices before taxes/duties in British Columbia of roughly CAD$10.00/carton and $7.00/200 grams for fine-cut tobacco.) Pricing for pot is a little dicier, but I peg that at 5x-10x pre-war value as it's easier to grow than tobacco, so roughly CAD$50/gram (depending on quality, possible law enforcement, the value could be as high as $250/gram etc.) or $175 for an eighth.

Again, I don't see pot/tobacco as being an "official" currency for any faction but where there is no paper or gold, it would be a very useful adjunct for the barter economy. Plus, now players can actually specify something other than gold for their leftover starting allocation! (For those wussy games that start PCs with more than the clothes on their back and a knife in their teeth.)

Tony