I am standing on Guy Fawkes's soapbox and throwing my 2 cents worth
into the economic debate.  This seems to be one area that Ackanomicans
have alot of fun talking about, so why not...

First of all, hard currency must be anchored by real value, assets,
resources, whatever.  There has been talk about anchoring it with land,
prosthetic foreheads, etc, but none of these things have real value.

I presonally would not pay more than A$1 for a prosthetic forehead
that was created by someone else, as the *value* to me is in its
creation, the current prices received at auction notwithstanding.
Others may value them differenly, but as a value anchor, they are
lacking.  Same with land.  Are we to say that no more than 50 kaa of
land can exist?  How is that different from A$?

Value and wealth are anchored by absolute (or relative ;) measures of
ones standard of living.  People talk of gold and land and other stuff
anchoring currency, but what if there was some diasaster.  I would
rather have a bushel of apples (or the technology to grow them), than
a cubic meter of gold.  I do not think these RL sorts of economic
anchors can even enter the picture in Acka, except the standard of
living metric.  (Niccolo and I have had debates over 'thinker of
algorithms' increasing his standard of living in an absolute way, thus
creating wealth.  I do believe that that applies to acka, but that is a
different debate).

I look at standard of living relative to acka, what does that mean?
As near as I can tell, that is measured in units of fun incurred by
a player, and ties into what snowgod said in one of the many posts,
that what people are willing to bid on an entity is basically its 'fun
value'.  The Pryiac Frobnotzer received a higher bid than the Gravitational
Monopole, presumably because it was more fun, or a tool to greater fun
(inasmuch as it can be used to produce a win, change the rules to ones
advantage, etc).

I believe any attempt to anchor currency, or anything else, to anything
other than fun (standard of living) will not simulate any RL economic
system, and really will not accomplish much.  The fun thing (and thus
it becomes self-referential) in my mind, is to experiment or explore
this idea of anchoring currency with fun, and see what that leads to,
and look at what sort of economic system, if any (and I'm not convinced
there will be any), will evolve.

What things have tangible fun value?  Thats a tough thing, I suppose.
Votes seems to be pretty close, in that you have direct control of the
core of the game with votes; deciding that proposals you consider will
make the game more fun shall receive your vote.  Thus using votes as
a value anchor seemed as good as anything else.

Winning also seems fun.  At least alot of people have tried, and large
debates erupt over paradox win CFJs, winning conditions, points, etc.
I believe many people, in their heart, would like to win, or at least
be part of a winning team, or it would be fun to be in a position to
win, or work to a win.  In other words, winning seems like a reasonable
fun anchor as well.

Thus I have attemtped this with R 850, "Museum", created by P 1551.  An
A$ is now worth 1/5000th of a win.  It is also worth some percentage of
a bonus vote, but this is floating.  I do not know if it will *simulate*
or *solve* an economic problem, but it is an attempt to make FUN the
hard asset that backs our currency.  Always open to amendment.  I do
not even claim that this will "work", because "to work" is undefined
in my mind.

Malenkai