Manfred Rickenbocker
The Elliance
Delta.Green
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Posted - 2008.10.27 15:38:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Manfred Rickenbocker on 27/10/2008 15:39:20
 Quote:
In a real-world economy, shortages and bottlenecks drive R&D teams to find new and better ways of doing things. If oil prices rise, people start looking harder for reliable alternative energy sources, and the higher prices go the harder people look.
Quote:
The four pairings are cadmium/dysprosium, vanadium/thulium, chromium/promethium and platinum/neodymium. The final output of each of the reactions will be ten units per cycle, and the common mineral always replaces the mineral at a 20:1 ratio.
So, effectively, you are pinning the price ratio of the four parings such that they wont vary? Doesn't this defeat the purpose of what Dr. EyjoG was pointing out? The fact that you are locking the price ratios together removes some of the innovation involved in trying to regulate the economy. For example, if the price of Cadmium falls or Dysprosium increases, its likely any excess Cadmium will be converted into Dysprosium (functionally) keeping its price level. "Why should we sell it at a loss when we can make a profit elsewhere?" However, if Cadmium increases, not only will the reactions stop but the price of Dysprosium will increase. "No more competition from Cadmium, lets hike our prices more!" Now we've created a new price equilibrium with still nothing left to bring down cost. Sounds like a form of inflation to me. Since Dysprosium is the lynch pin in this scenario, while it has the potential to fix the issue with its rising cost, it also gives it the ability to bring up the price on another moon material: Cadmium.
Extreme scenario: Dysprosium is no longer produced/sold. Bottleneck now becomes Cadmium. All Cadmium moons become occupied. Maximum potential supply reached. Back to where we started.
Tl;dr: If the intent is to remove the bottleneck, all you are doing is shifting the bottleneck somewhere else.
An alternative suggestion would be to introduce a new material type that can be converted into all moon minerals. This provides a fixed ratio independent of current moon materials but still gives suppliers the advantage if the conversion/production/replacement costs are high enough.
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