> > Bah. Look, cows may not be sufficient for effective wealth; they
> may
> > not be strictly _necessary_ for wealth. Nevertheless, they, and
> come to
> > that any obviously "materially valuable" quantity you come across in
>
> And what constitutes "materially valuable"? This is easiuly
> challenged by the water-diamond paradox - a material object changes
> its "value" depending on the context in which it is being traded.
> There is no such thing as an abstractly tradable, and hence valuable,
> commodity (and in point of fact, anything you cannot trade does not
> constitute wealth, even if it raises your standard of living).
This is absolutely neither here nor that. I'm talking about 'measuring' wealth in a culturally-specific manner (as a present), merely a better quantified one. There is no tension, never mind contradiction, between these ideas.
> > game play are, in a reasonable set of circumstances, substantially
> > likely to have an effect on your wealth. I'm proposing that it is a
> > useful tool to quantify that "likely median effect", nothing more.
> I'm
> > relatively confident that a hard-line "Stuff that, it only matters
> how
> > many HPs you cough up" approach will simply further alienate the
> many
> > people who are _not_ greatly gripped by the wealth rules as they
> > stand, and will return with great alacrity to the "I have X pennies;
> > I want to buy something that costs Y pennies; I now have X-Y
> > pennies" approach which I, like Julian, think really would be a
> > retrograde step.
>
> But your prposed solution is to take that retrogagrade steop,
> exchanging points of wealth rating instead of pennies. Which is no
> different.
Give me strength. I think I know what it is I'm proposing. I'm mooting _the existing system_, with mechanics to support operations that are "impossible" at the moment (and a less broken cost table).
> > We were talking about wealth _ratings_, I seem to recall.
>
> The point stands - his wealth rating has changed without conveting to
> you any information about the material objects that changed hands.
> You do not know the denomination of the coins or notes he has
> recieved - you merely know how much his wealth rating has changed.
So what? This has nothing whatsoever to do with what's being proposed.
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