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-- RF Williams

Hello again. Continuing today with a cleaned-up version of the "Introduction to Capital-in-eRepublik, Part III - Ricky Ricardo" by Phoenix Quinn (a/k/a Silas Soule), originally published in the before-time.

Since we have not received any where near enough bribes to stop, your dedicated curators here at Radio Free Dixie are certain to publish additional excerpts from this epic work.





In Part II, we met one of the original inventors of the "science" of economics, Tomball Mushtooth. The next whizzard of monay was a bit more musical than dour ol' Mushtooth. Say hello to...


II. RICKY RICARDO


Ricky Ricardo was a Cuban big band leader-turned-economist. A contemporary of Tomball Mushtooth, and like Tom, Ricky had virtually no actual facts at his disposal. Nonetheless, being from a family doing business in La Habana, he had an intimate practical knowledge of all aspects of nascent and growing capitalism.

His background made Ricardo less of a prejudiced asshole than Mushtooth, who was, after all, a nervy uptight WASP. Nevertheless, Ricardo was equally as willing to claim superlative economic super-prescience. Despite the fact that his only real claim to fame was marrying a highly-opinionated red... err, I mean redhead.




Ricardo was obsessed with the idea that land rents -- you know, where e-countries farm out some of their regions to other e-countries for resource exploitation or training wars -- would increase unendingly and astronomically. He pushed the Mushtoothian hypothesis to its logical conclusion. He reasoned that an ever-growing population of players would tend to make land increasingly scarce relative to other e-goods.

This meant, in the Ricardoan Dogma, that The Law of Supply and Demand (TM) implies that the price of land rents will rise continuously. Thus, landlord-countries -- those with lots of regions in other words -- will claim an ever-increasing share of the (limited supply of) international wealth, thereby impoverishing all others and causing massive disequilibrium in the New World.



In the pre-historic pre-Beta days, the famous economist lobbied eRep Labs to forbid autonomous small-group mutual stewardship of land (that is, actual communes) in eRepublik. Convinced that only ever-increasing taxes could prevent radical disequilibrium, he encouraged the Founders to assume that all lands in all countries must be owned by the State.

As we know now, Ricardo was completely wrong about almost everything. He failed to consider the industrial and technological revolutions, which made his entire theory about the alimentary imperative being tied primarily to the land pretty much a moot point.

(Parenthetically, for more about enabling and disabling sensation as part of an alimentary imperative in carnal phenomenology, there is not better starting point than Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, which laid much of the foundation, in my humble opinion, for Zizek's masterful deconstruction of transcendental idealism and presentation of a coherent dialectical articulation of a materialist understanding of perception in his Less Than Nothing that places the body, the self, being, consciousness within rather than outside of "objective" reality. But I digress.)



Subsequent econo-magicians have argued it was Supply and Demand (TM) that actually ameliorated the "scarcity principle" inherent in Ricardo's econo-riffs. It is, after all, a simple and convincing theory. If the supply of any good is insufficient, and its price is too high, then demand for that good should decrease, which should lead to a decline in its price.

For example, as we all know from real life, if the price of both real estate and oil prices rise and rise and rise, then logically people will just naturally move in droves the countryside, where land is cheap, and enthusiastically take to traveling about by bicycle and clever wind- or solar-powered conveyances, abandoning the gas-guzzling automobile.




Hmm... well...wut?






In fact, like Mushtooth before him, Ricardo was on to something. He missed all the particular details. But like Mushtooth he was right that large-scale disruptions could and would occur. Supply and demand in no way rule out the possibility of large divergences in the distribution of wealth linked to extreme changes in certain relative prices. It can happen, it does happen, and we are living and playing the consequences of such extreme disequilibrium.

The real question we mere mortal players need to ask with respect to Ricardo and Mushtooth is: Are we really required to "roll the dice"? Is all this shit, these Mustoothian / Ricardoian catastrophes... permanently inevitable and unavoidable?




AND WITH THAT CLIFF-HANGER....
See you next time!!






OK. Happy New Year. Be well and keep swimming, turtle-friends.

Remember -- The Pond is large enough for everyone!



Thanks for checking out this edition of "Radio Free Dixie"!

All you home-grown economists, please share your notes in the convenient comment section below. Except for any whacked-out trolls with nothing to say except to piss and moan. Y'all can just shut it, plox, ya filming? 😉