Why Gnilraps is wrong! The problem of housing pollution-free
Day 3,152, 19:31
•
Published in USA 
•
by
•
by Goddess Dilvany
I am a housing producer in the state of Washington with my company Hunid Enterprise. I am really annoyed by the pollution in Washington taking away extra production and therefore extra money. A new article out by Gnilraps proposes his solution to the problem which in my opinion is just a bunch of baseless appeals. He disregards mathematics and economics using his popularity to bulster the success of his article.
Pollution does not work that way
If you read the developers notes on pollution from the actual update post. They say pollution is based on the average amount of production. But you don't even need to know what the developers say about pollution to know that Gnilraps is just wrong. All you need is common sense.
From Gnilraps article
Plato has not released his formula for pollution, but based on initial observations, it is likely that pollution is figured as a total percentage of worldwide production divided by 4.
In other words, here’s my guess using a hypothetical:
100 Q5 houses are made worldwide on day 3150
36 of them are made in Washington (36% of 100).
36 divided by 4 = 9.
Washington pollution would be 9% on day 3151.
If we assume his model is correct than the total pollution could not be above 25% globally and anywhere that had a factory would have pollution. This is demonstrably false as Washington and Florida both have 25% pollution. We also know that places have factories and no pollution.
What really is probably the pollution formula is something like:
(Production-Average Production)/(Average Production) this would be in the range of 0.25 to 0. There may be small linear and polynomial modifiers. It may also be based on 30 day averages just like wages.
You may think that I am nitpicking, but this is basic research you should do.
Produce only every other day
Now you may think this is necessarily bad I mean 2*1.93 > 2.18. I originally thought so, but I did the numbers and if we could get pollution down to 0% and work every other day we could make more money on production.
Profit = 0.2*Bonus*( (Price/1.01) - (Wage/(0.2*Bonus)) - (Raw*1000) )
Profit Current = 0.2*1.93*( (600/1.01) - (127/(0.2*1.93)) - (0.25*1000) )
= 5.80
Raw cost would go down
Production Purposed = 0.2*2.18*((600/1.01) - (127/(0.2*2.1
😎) - (0.234*1000))/2
= 14.99
So your daily profits could go up almost 200% if we all switch to Gnilraps plan but lets pull out our old friend game theory to understand why Gnilraps is wrong.
Gnilraps Claim
In fact, anyone who does NOT work together with us in this system will actually be negatively impacting his or her OWN production bonuses.
So lets play a little game you can honor the deal or cheat on the deal and everyone else can do the same. This will be approximately your daily earnings averaged over 2 days.
Honor Cheat
Honor 14.99 2.9
Cheat 17.89 5.8
As you can see you will always do better in terms of earnings if you cheat on the deal. The worse you can actually do is Honor the deal when everyone is cheating.
We may all be better off if we can economically cooperate, but in a cooperation you just create incentive to cheat.
Additional Skepticism
I really doubt we can kill pollution by operating on a rolling schedule. We theoretically can only produce 1 in every 5 days and still gain money, but I highly doubt that we can clear all pollution in 5 days maybe I am wrong. Regardless it makes no sense to Honor the deal when I could make more money always cheating. If I don't cheat and some other people cheat then I will lose.
For this to work to you would probably need to scretch this out to 5 days as that will be your best chance of actually clearing the pollution. You would need to put some sort of penalty or rewards to do the action.
This chart is for the 5 day plan.
Honor Cheat
Honor 5.99 1.16
Cheat 10.63 5.8
As you can see you would need about a $6 credit to not produce every day to make it worth it. The government can't pay for this without raising taxes on houses or houses going up in price. House prices can go up, but are really tied to wages as most people only buy to work twice. The government refund program will never be solvent especially with foreign producers selling on their home markets unless their was a tax on house production.
I believe that it will probably have to be closer to 15 days of production to make our plan of reducing pollution work. With less produced we have a smaller tax base and a higher liability. Plus it also encourages people to come to america and collect our corporate welfare. There is many variables and such a plan is complex to maintain.
Conclusion
Gnilraps plan requires that everyone honor when it is always better to cheat. An attempt to establish a corporate welfare system would likely be insolvent, create perverse incentives, and require coordination of economists, local and nation government. Not to mention the decrease in tax base and increased expenditures.
Facebook
Twitter
Discord
Comments
Shout:
Why Gnilraps is wrong!
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/why-gnilraps-is-wrong-the-problem-with-making-housing-pollution-free-2605035/1/20
check my comment to see your elementary mistake.
Thanks for trying. You've missed the point a little though.
How so...
I addressed all of his points. I used skepticism entertaining the truth of his points then providing a counter to his points. Did I make a mathematical mistake, misunderstand how people behave, or engage in a logical fallacy?
Or should journalism be based around fantasies or feel good narratives that have no basis in reality.
Classic case of game theory !
I still feel are using way too high of a wage when doing this analysis. what if i build a holding company in Canada and hire workers for 85 cc each how do the two methods compare?
do not get a holding company in canada, there is a trade embargo with them currently, its a reason they have not settled companies with us
It does not matter what numbers I am using really. The core of my criticism is that Gnilraps does not understand incentives.I think in his recent rebuttal article he still fails to understand incentives.
Even if we were making more money per unit that does not escape the fact
cheating is a dominant strategy.
Ah but the cool part of gnilraps strategy is that it would price out all the other house producers. if my profit margin is 25% when your is 10%.
then i change the way i operate and suddenly my profit margin is 5% . your profit margin becomes -10% at which point you stop producing houses for a loss. and i get a bigger market share and become ruler of the world!
warning i will not be following gnilraps idea until i can no longer profit from building houses. becasue clicking all my workers and un clicking all my workers each day takes a really long time!
I will try to find time today to refute this analysis. I admittedly have no clue how pollution is figured, but you've misunderstood my proposed model - even though it is likely not the actual model Plato uses.
What I do know is that when I stop producing houses in Washington for just one day, pollution drops significantly (using Q5 as a test case). Others are still making Q5 houses, so it does not drop to zero, however I believe it would.
There are two issues I want you to understand.
First, the goal of my system is to maximize profits, not volume. If you are paying 100 per employee in salary, you want to get the most production out of him as possible. By hiring 2 workers at 200 and working them daily, you end up with 193% return. Fire one of those workers and pay only $100 and get 218% return on him.
That is the most simplified version of the math I can offer, plus I am tapping this out from my phone. But thunk about it.
The second thing is about your claims that the cheater will always profit. Generally I agree with such game theory. But not in this case. The so-called cheater will be producing higher volume, yes, but at less profit margin for himself and everyone. So in this case, cheater loses.
I would point out also that evendors if several producers run their factories daily, as long as their impact is not huge, the system still works.
I greatly appreciate your thoughtful article, though I do not understand your accusations at the start of it. I think more people would be more inclined to read you with an open mind if you did t proceed right out of the gate with viewed insults.
But thanks again for engaging this dialogue.
I have refuted this in other places, but your response does not respond to any of my points. If you want to understand the problems with his article you should try to looking into game theory and understand how incentive structures work. Gnilraps makes a fundamental error in how people behave that appears to most as counter intuitive but the data and the math would agree.
Just search youtube for videos about the prisoners dilemma
this article is daft. pollution is based on the jobs of the ......and for emphasis i will caps this so you understand ....PREVIOUS DAY....If you follow my articles you can see I have been switching Idaho Q5 production for 3 days straight between 2 factors. 1 no production 0% and too little production 0.00% i have worked now 11 times today in that factory. so want to see the results tomorrow.
ok so educate you a bit because i think your article is poorly researched gnilraps 'plan is plausible if you work every 2 days and everyone else pollution would be 0%.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/rolling-production-v-flat-out-production-math-2605080/1/20
I still entertained his proposal and showed why it was wrong even in its own context. Its about incentives. I even defended Gnilraps when it came to the volume argument. You would make more money every other day at full bonus than you would a full pollution every day. I assumed Gnilraps was write many of his assumptions. It is called being a skeptic and using testing Gnilraps hypothesis. He is making an economical claim. I was skeptical I could make more money if I honored his plan than now and also skeptical that it would not create a dominant strategy for cheaters. I did the math to test my hypothesis. I published the objective results which anyone can repeat.
I am not claiming to be a great insightful economist, but I do have some educational background in it at least enough to make a criticism.
I would also like to add that I told him that you could only fix it by modifying incentive structure. That is what is broken.
my point is even of there is cheaters all players is still advantaged in probability if you can shift production between factories you will always have an advantage over a player receiving a bonus in the same region each day. in fact thats why im creating 5 similar regions that will operate independently I could work housing each day in the highest bonus region of the 5. the key concept is guideline as guideline it has merits.
I really don't understand why is so hard for some people to read what the admins sai😛
"Pollution Factor is calculated based on the number of goods of the same type that were produced in the region compared to the overall average production for that type of goods."
And still I see Releasethe Krakken talking about jobs not goods and Gnilraps not reading the average production part. One job doesn't make the same amount of goods even if they are the same type and quality, because of the production bonus variable. This is why they are using the goods produced not the jobs.
Update: If the production of a region is below the overall average production the pollution of that particular region is 0%, and we are talking about goods produced not jobs Releasethe Krakken.
i created the concept of "jobs" as production related but i am putting arguments in a hypothetical manner i need not use the correct terminology . try and keep up.
If you want people to understand you is better to use the correct terminology.
As you can see you and Gnilraps are all about hypothetical theory and a lot of people don't understand you. Just like that big lie about facts in the rolling vs flat out article: "I know this because if I run my entire set of companies, that is what happens on the following day. 25% across the board." It wasn't 25% across the board, still you want to look intelligent but you are crap at details.
If somebody is telling you something bad you always find a excuse. This is all you can?
pollution is lowered for both producers the one that cheat and the one that follow the guideline. its irrelevant who makes the most money as both will make more money when the first one follow the guideline. its like people paying taxes and not paying taxes. sure the one not paying have more money at the end of the month but both are driving to home on the highway that taxes build. if both dont pay taxes there is no highway and both lose more money.
Incredible!!! Again you are talking off the subject.
Did I said something about producers cheating? NO
I said that the pollution was never 25% across the housing industry in Washington. The Q5 House had something like 18% pollution same for Q4 and Q3, making the bonus 100% not 93%. Still for the argument he maxed out the pollution just to prove a point. Like you and your theories.
I did get the point in rolling vs flat out article. You don't need to translate it for me.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/rolling-production-v-flat-out-production-math-2605080/1/20
I hope this helps.
Gnilraps is not wrong.
do you have a script to make it easy to hire and fire workers? in factories? because 300+ clicks each day would not be worth any savings/efficiency for me at least.
You know who is your boy to ask for scripts 🙂
Believe me, I feel your pain.
if you cheat then you will work the day after everyone worked and you will screw the others a little but you will be screwed by the max pollution when working the wrong day.
only max employees will screw and be screwed a lot and if it works than almost everyone will start following the pattern.
it is not about cheating it is about making maximum personal profit and that's something completely different
Wrong you will make more profit if you cheat. I covered this in the article.
if you cheat you will work one day with max pollution and one day with reduced pollution. if the profit is nearly zero then you will get the difference.
do not think that you will have unlimited pool of low wage workers! only if you have such pool you will profit from the cheating.
if wage gets 135 then you might think again if working only when max productivity is better.
Maybe but I doubt if we are killing our production potential to near half that we will have a problem finding employees since you will create more initial unemployment. I highly doubt unless it is artificial being kept down that running my factories would be unprofitable.
nice article