Interview with Gaia's Economist

[Harakeke]

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/13844597.html

Old news, I realize -- but I thought it was an interesting article.  

[Chibigreen Tejinashi]

Yeah, it is interesting, but sometimes I think the Gaia staff is looking at the economy as more complicated than it is. Do they really need a big-name economist to figure things out even just a little bit? That graduate student (Sagger-AT3) seems to understand things well enough, though there was that Bag of Win debacle.

And oh my, I'm actually back posting in this guild. *waves to anyone who actually sees this*  

[Chibigreen Tejinashi]

*pokes back* :3

It could have been a good idea, if it had been more limited. I think they underestimated everything about the BoW: how many bags would be bought, how much people would win, and how many people would expect inflation to happen and thus induce inflation to happen.

But, see? Over-complicated. The average user with a bit of experience in Gaia's economy would probably have been able to tell the staff that the economy would explode.  

[Phoenix Goliathane]

Just skimming over it: The guy talks about user-run banks. I was under the influence that having a user-run bank was against the rules.

Other than that: I kind of agree with Chibigreen that even the village idiot can see that having a nearly unlimited potential for Bags of Win* ran the risk of turning Gaia into Zimbabwe. That they did it again (though in a more limited fashion) just shows that they DID NOT REALLY LEARN.

And Gaia's hiring professional economists to help control its market? Who, possibly, could have thought that running the risk of ruining the market because someone had access to Daddy's credit card was prudent?

That and old dude just doesn't seem TO. GET. IT.

*With 2.5 mil visitors...Gaia can, in theory, receive a maximum of $500 mil per month (if not more, if that estimate is unique visitors and not 2.5 million active accounts - that cap, I believe, is per account and not per buyer). This translates to a maximum of 505 million (because the BoW was 99 Cash, IIRC, having 20,000 Cash ($200 worth) allowed you to buy 202 bags) bags. Since I think the average profit given per bag was something like 7k for the BoW2 and higher for the first BoW...yeah. I believe off of coins alone (and coins were only a portion of the rewards), the amount of gold created could zoom into the trillions.

...which is fine and all, but that's an event that, in 3 days, could have exceeded the amount of gold that would cross the marketplace in a year or two.