HQ economics ramblage

Subject: HQ economics ramblage
Author: Tomash
Posted on: 2019-05-30 08:05:00 UTC

Part of my headcanon, once I started thinking about it, is that attempting to establish a single standard for currency value (let alone an HQ dollar) is a great way to earn a one-way trip to FicPsych.

One rather reasonable possibility is that there're actually multiple currency exchange standards depending on what you're buying: Rudi's and the like likely run on the Booze Standard, the Cafeteria, DoSAT, and similar places run on the "just take some, but don't ask too many questions, and bring us relevant things when you get them" standard, less usual goods (official or not) probably run on barter, negotiation, and some best-guess conversions, and so on.

Finance clearly (per hS) spends a lot of time trying to keep all this stuff straight, and it hasn't been too successful. The closest they've got is a big database of prices, which is inevitably extremely tricky to query.

To make everything worse, time travel is the sort of thing that makes accountants tear their hair out because you have to somehow deal with when money came from or open up some nasty exploitable gaps in your system. The Time Gentry are, sadly, not sharing their methods for fixing this. The problem gets nastier if anyone starts doing fun things like repeatedly looping money and goods back and forward in time to take advantage of inflation.

Sources of free wealth are probably sitting around in a few places if you go looking for them, but a lot of them might be tricky to exploit. For a hypothetical example, "Finance memo 458: Don't go taking entire planets off of the Culture. This is how we get caught. The occasional asteroid is fine though." I figure the broad summary of Finance policy is "don't get greedy and don't get caught", since they'd rather not crash an economy or expose the PPC.

On the other hand, things like video games and magic are probably why HQ fundamentally doesn't have problems with food, clothes, ammo, or anything else important.

And I didn't know about the Thieves' Guild being something that could help there.

- Tomash, who's writing this late at night and will be happy to expand further

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Did anyone miss the PPC Manual? by Neshomeh on 2019-05-25 23:46:00 UTC Reply

Because I fixed it.

As much as it could be fixed, anyway. It was never finished, it's super old and out of date, and some of the content makes me cringe a little bit now, and it's not really much good as a reference in-universe or out... but heck, hS and I and a bunch of other people put a lot of work into it back in 2006-2008 or so, and even though the wiki is bigger and better, that doesn't mean the Manual should die an ignominious death because Webs is all stupid.

~Neshomeh

I wrote something for the BRD by Neo Skater on 2019-06-12 03:37:00 UTC Reply

The Department of Bad Role-Play is one of the more niche departments of the PPC. Its mission statement is to deal with fics constructed by bad roleplay. Yes, there are authors that construct serious attempts at writing from something they improvised with their friends.

While roleplay is only as bad as the authors writing it, agents in this department must be prepared for worse than usual. Most Suethors simply copy and paste the events of their roleplay into a word-processing document with no proofreading whatsoever, making roleplay fics more susceptible to uncaught writing mistakes.

Roleplay fics commonly include an overabundance of Suvian original characters and many continua being crossed over because the story is at the mercy of the roleplayers, who make decisions based on their whims rather than what would make sense and as a result drag whatever original characters and continua they desire.
OT: Just discovered HTML accesskeys, v. excited. by Neshomeh on 2019-05-31 17:30:00 UTC Reply

So you can use HTML to set a hotkey for any link, e.g. <a href="next.html" accesskey="n"> for a Next button. This makes navigation of chapters super-easy! I'm going to implement this everywhere!

... This may take some time. I'm not sure how many files I can open in Notepad++ at once without crashing it or my laptop. >.>

~Neshomeh

If you want the magic incantations for a mass search-replace by Tomash on 2019-05-31 17:55:00 UTC Reply

I can put them together, or take your files and do it for you.

(Email clickable if we want to get this off the Board)

Oh! Yes! by Huinesoron on 2019-05-26 10:20:00 UTC Reply

I remember that. ^_^ At one point I had printed-out 'book' versions of the completed volumes. :D

It's amazing how proto-Wiki parts of it really are - Chapter 3, for instance, is just an early version of several Wiki lists.

Thank you for saving it!

hS

I'm tempted to finish it. by Neshomeh on 2019-05-26 22:32:00 UTC Reply

I mean, update it and finish it, so basically make a third edition. But no. That is not the most productive use of my time. I reckon the wiki can be considered the third edition, for all intents and purposes.

~~What we could use is a modern Handbook, though, by the agents for the agents...~~

~Neshomeh

Are you pondering what I'm pondering? by Huinesoron on 2019-05-26 22:56:00 UTC Reply

("I think so, Brain, but where would we find that many mangoes?")

One of the recurring occasional questions is 'what makes this department different?'. A book where an agent from each department describes what it's like to work in that department would neatly answer that, while also being fun to read.

To delve into theorycrafting for a minute, I'd think it would go best if someone(s) with recent experience with a department wrote for it, to ensure that the way it was presented was up to date. I believe Scape has written for WhatThe more recently than me, for instance, so I would yield to her. (Departments with no active writers are beyond the scope of this musing.)

That would still land me with a lot of minor departments for which I'm the only writer on record, but them is, as they say, the breaks.

hS

Inspired by r/TheBackrooms, here's something for DES: by Mattman The Comet on 2019-06-01 18:24:00 UTC Reply

The Department of External Security’s holding cells were located in a secured section of the subconscious reality known as “The Backrooms”. We’ve all visited this space at some point: Walled by a maddening cream lit by fluorescent bulbs and carpeting that gave a soft ‘squelch’ when stepped on. One would likely find that it held the same off-kiltered, alt-dimensional feeling as a four in the morning KMart parking lot or a library with access to the L-Space. DES’ stake in the area was last measured to be about .0000000042% of the approximately six hundred million square miles of endless, samey rooms, and was connected to HQ via plothole at about 5 different points. The semi-fortunate souls that occasionally noclip themselves into this department make up about .000015% of PPC recruits. It was slightly easier to navigate than HQ, owing to the loss of the spatial dimension of probability.
Department of Finance by Tomash on 2019-05-29 17:46:00 UTC Reply

My ever-expanding (I'm working on solving this) writing project folder includes a one-off story that tries to expand on/add to the Department of Finance.

Specifically, I'm putting together a piece about a new Finance field agent (whose job is to try and quietly make some money or get some needed goods off of stuff that the agents have brought in that somehow made its way into official channels) in a way that doesn't break anyone's economy or that is too noticeable (there were new ethics rules after the Reorganization), who's just getting introduced to the department (and HQ at large, if I end up going that way).

Since you're the other person who's written in Finance who's still around, we should compare notes?

- Tomash

My primary notes... by Huinesoron on 2019-05-29 20:15:00 UTC Reply

... are this mission, which is actually moderately similar to what you're describing. Other than that, I think the only source material is Reorg/Crashing Down, which basically says 'they have archives'.

hS

I hadn't seen that anywhere by Tomash on 2019-05-29 22:18:00 UTC Reply

I enjoyed reading it. (The interplay between Sambar's loot-focused approach to badfic and Huinesoron actually trying to do a typical mission made for a good source of character interactions. The opening to the mission was also an interesting variation on the [BEEEEP]ing a console thing, and I liked it).

Now that I've checked, it's not linked from Sambar's page of the Department of Finance page, which explains why I never ran into it.

Having Acquisitions going into badfics to get stuff that shouln't've been there is similar to but distinct from what I had in mind. My picture of the economy is that a lot of things come in to HQ from Action agents looting them from badfic (even if they don't want it personally, having infrastructure people owing you a favor can help), and therefore one thing Finance has is the (name tbd) Exchanges Division, which does things like setting up a shop somewhere in Skyrim to sell off a bunch of weaponry and then skim a bunch of the food they'd gotten in return out into HQ.

You mean, HQ would have an official currency exchange? by Neshomeh on 2019-05-30 02:49:00 UTC Reply

Balderdash! Back in MY day, we had to haggle over the value of black market goods every single time we wanted to make a transaction, and we liked it that way!

I kid, of course. {= )

Actually, my headcanon is the Booze Standard we came up with a few(?) years ago, because that was fun, and it does seem pretty reliable. I'm sure Rudi's and other establishments would appreciate it if the DoF kept track of all that for them, though. ^_^

For your idea, Tomash, I think video game minigames could be a rich source of near-free wealth. Just send someone to do the rounds once a month or however often the game mechanics/economy allows, and you're rolling in dough!

Or, if it's Skyrim (or something similar), you can hire the Thieves' Guild to cook the books if things get a little skewed once in a while, and it's part of the normal course of life. No eyebrows raised. Might be best to reserve that strategy for iterations in which the Dragonborn is a thief, though, or the guild's luck might not be good enough to pull it off.

Transnormal Accountancy sure isn't a walk in the park, is it?

~Neshomeh

The Booze Standard! by Huinesoron on 2019-05-30 09:15:00 UTC Reply

As seen on the Rudi's Specials menu, and derived ultimately from this spreadsheet.

I feel sure there's more distinctive currencies that could be added to the list. The magnificent Shire Post Mint produces coins for Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Kingkiller Chronicles, Mistborn, and others; while I know they can be prone to embellishing on their source material (see: the entire Middle-earth catalogue), I suspect it's based on something.

hS
HQ economics ramblage by Tomash on 2019-05-30 08:05:00 UTC Reply

Part of my headcanon, once I started thinking about it, is that attempting to establish a single standard for currency value (let alone an HQ dollar) is a great way to earn a one-way trip to FicPsych.

One rather reasonable possibility is that there're actually multiple currency exchange standards depending on what you're buying: Rudi's and the like likely run on the Booze Standard, the Cafeteria, DoSAT, and similar places run on the "just take some, but don't ask too many questions, and bring us relevant things when you get them" standard, less usual goods (official or not) probably run on barter, negotiation, and some best-guess conversions, and so on.

Finance clearly (per hS) spends a lot of time trying to keep all this stuff straight, and it hasn't been too successful. The closest they've got is a big database of prices, which is inevitably extremely tricky to query.

To make everything worse, time travel is the sort of thing that makes accountants tear their hair out because you have to somehow deal with when money came from or open up some nasty exploitable gaps in your system. The Time Gentry are, sadly, not sharing their methods for fixing this. The problem gets nastier if anyone starts doing fun things like repeatedly looping money and goods back and forward in time to take advantage of inflation.

Sources of free wealth are probably sitting around in a few places if you go looking for them, but a lot of them might be tricky to exploit. For a hypothetical example, "Finance memo 458: Don't go taking entire planets off of the Culture. This is how we get caught. The occasional asteroid is fine though." I figure the broad summary of Finance policy is "don't get greedy and don't get caught", since they'd rather not crash an economy or expose the PPC.

On the other hand, things like video games and magic are probably why HQ fundamentally doesn't have problems with food, clothes, ammo, or anything else important.

And I didn't know about the Thieves' Guild being something that could help there.

- Tomash, who's writing this late at night and will be happy to expand further

Time travel and accountancy. by Huinesoron on 2019-05-30 10:47:00 UTC Reply

I've always had the impression that time travel per se is strongly discouraged in the PPC. Actual travel within HQ's timeline has occurred on occasion, but not in an approved manner (and often by accident or in extremis).

Certainly, agents travel to all sorts of different times on missions - but even there, they're not supposed to hop back on themselves. You can skip forwards in a badfic, but I don't know that I've seen anyone rewind. (I guess this would let you use a time-jump to make money, but then you'd be sporking the badfic anyway, so it wouldn't make any problems over there.) And poking around in non-badfic canon worlds is discouraged, again.

My point is, I don't think there's too many options for currency looping, at least not within the rules; and HQ has enough of a surveillance culture going on that a suddenly-rich agent would probably be caught if they'd been monkeying about with time.

That does nothing for inflation, though. If you find a fic featuring hyperinflation, yeah, you could skim a few hundred thousand and take them into another fic with non-broken economics. But if you do that in a badfic, which then gets stabbed through the heart... so what?

Jumping tracks: Crashing Down Chapter 3 features Finance doing exactly the kind of conversions you're talking about. I like to imagine that their reference files look a lot like the Booze Standard spreadsheet: horrifyingly incomplete. You can't just convert from 'Remote Activator ($US)' to 'custom siege tower ($AM)' - you have to go through six different canons and a dozen items to get there, and if you take a different route, you get a different answer. It's more of an art than a science, and more of a jigsaw puzzle than either.

Now try explaining that to the Morning Glory, who doesn't even believe she's in charge of the department at all...

hS

Yep by Tomash on 2019-05-31 17:53:00 UTC Reply

We don't see much time travel because looping back around in time in a way that has serious effects is the sort of thing Legal (and the Flowers in general) really don't like people pulling. (and this is why currency lopping is against the rules)

The Time Gentry, obviously, can jump around in time however they'd like, but they know what they're doing and don't usually do anything that messes up HQ.

And agreed on the inflation thing not being useful, because you're either running around a badfic (in which case you might as well just start looting) or you're in a goodfic or canon, in which case you don't break the the economy with a flood of badfic cash because we don't do that either.

I agree with your concept of the Big Finance Spreadsheet too.

Also, I don't think the wiki was updated to say the Morning Glory is temporarily in charge.

Slight side tangent, butÂ— by Iximaz on 2019-05-30 08:34:00 UTC Reply

Your mention of video games being the reason why HQ doesn’t run out of stuff, combined with Skyrim, gave me the rather amusing mental image of Medical treating injuries by stuffing the patients full of cheese wheels.

Recently, at Medical by Tomash on 2019-05-30 20:51:00 UTC Reply

"So what happened?"

"My - argh - arm almost got - ow - cut off, doc!"

"Where?"

"Skyrim!"

"Elder Scrolls healing to 24C, large dose," the doctor said into her pager.

Amount a minute later, a nurse pushed in a cart full of cheese wheels.

"Here, eat these," the doctor said to the agent.

"The hell?" replied the agent. "What's that going to," he winced, "do? Put my SHPXING arm back."

"They're healing items. Just eat them, it'll fix it."

The agent grumbled, but started eating the cheese. After a few wheels, he sighed in relief. "Well it's not hurting as much anymore," he said.

"Good," the doctor said. "I'll have someone wait around while you finish those. It should patch that big slice right up."

{X D by Neshomeh on 2019-05-31 16:16:00 UTC Reply

This should not work. This really should not work.

But... this is exactly how the PPC should work.

Thank you. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Oh, and re. pondering... by Neshomeh on 2019-05-27 21:47:00 UTC Reply

Postmodern Jukebox did the Pinky and the Brain theme song, and it's glorious. ^_^

~Neshomeh
Wellllll... by Neshomeh on 2019-05-27 21:41:00 UTC Reply

Maybe. >.>

Actually, the notion tickling my brain is something to the effect of "what the PPC is really like," and/or practical stuff like where to get the best food and how to find the laundry room ("yes, such a thing exists!"). What you said fits in, I think. You wouldn't have to go into all the departments, necessarily, but certainly the confusing or obscure ones. DAVD springs to mind. Maybe a bit of a heavier slant toward Infrastructure, them communicating what they actually do and what they want the field agents to know about them.

Intel: Look, we're doing the best we can, and it's ultimately your boss that decides what ends up on your console. Please stop sending hate mail.

FicPsych: We're really not coming to take you away, ha-ha. We're nice*, regular people**, just like you***!

* After we've had our caffeine.
** Plus a hooloovoo and Nurse Immac.
*** Okay, probably not.

And so forth.

~Neshomeh

Going with this theme... by Thoth on 2019-05-27 23:57:00 UTC Reply

Tom's Tips for PPC Agents:
-Don't irritate DoSAT. I think they hacked my teeth once. I don't know how. Thar's not a thing.

-Don't mess up your partner's bookshelves. Sure, they could fix it psychically, but they'll make you fix it. And laugh.

-Never believe any statements a flower makes regarding a paycheck.

-Given the above, be sure to verify goods when bartering on the black market. A genuine RX-78 that had been miniaturized and fitted with remote controls is amazing. A Gunpla masquerading as such is considerably less so.

-Don't lend your belongings to DoGA. They'll be singed.

-If you lend your belongings to WhatThe, don't ask where they've been with them. Said items may be in mint condition, but they will never feel clean again.

-Don't try to self-medicate depression with caffeine, alcohol, bleeprin, or extended sessions of Doom. Go to FicPsych. Go to Medical. Get some help.

I am resentink your assertions und protest zem stronkly! by Doktor Trollenfisch, DWT on 2019-05-29 12:37:00 UTC Reply

\ ^ /
< : ( >
/ v <br>
((ooc: it took me longer than i am willing to admit to work out how to do a doktor trollenface))

Oh nooooo. by Iximaz on 2019-05-27 09:32:00 UTC Reply

We’d have to read more writing by hS? Oh, the horror, the horror! :P

I’d volunteer my services for this hypothetical manual, but I think other people would be better suited to write for my usual departments.