Bottle Cap-onomics
So I'm still baffled by how Nuka-Cola caps became the currency of choice in Fallout 3. It just doesn't make sense, which means that I've wasted a lot of time thinking (and now typing up this post) trying to figure out how it could have happened.
Warning: I am not an expert in economics nor do I know much more than the basic history of currency. So if I get stuff wrong, feel free to call me on it.
Yes, I am aware that none of you actually needed that permission to call me on being wrong.
Aaaanywho... in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is America in 2277, the paper bill has gone the way of the dodo (and most other species, apparently). This is unsurprising, as without the power of the federal government and the agreement of everyone else behind it, dollars are simply pieces of paper. It's like in using Confederate money in the South during Reconstruction--money isn't money unless everyone agrees it has value. And in 2277, the accepted form of currency is Nuka-Cola bottlecaps.
By the time your character leaves Vault 101 and begins wandering the Wasteland, it (sorta) makes sense to use caps as money--specifically, by the time you leave, it has become so entrenched as a system that there's no point in questioning it. Caps are accepted by everyone, everywhere, with a general idea of how much each cap is worth compared to the goods you're attempting to purchase with them.
My question is, how did caps become the accepted currency? Who started accepting them as payment and why? They're not intrisically useful or valuable. You can't do anything with them or make something from them. In the end, there's not a lot of difference between a bottle cap and a printed dollar bill as to what you can do with either before you have the agreement of the population to say that they have worth.
For centuries, money was gold and silver (and other precious gems and metals) because people understood that it was valuable. Sure, the exchange rate fluctuated and money stamped with this guy's face was more valuable in this country than in that one, but gold was gold. As early as the Middle Ages in the West (and much earlier than that in China), people began depositing cash with reputable goldsmiths in exchange for promissory notes that said, "Jimbob left forty pounds sterling with me. Anyone who shows up with this note made out in their name and with Jimbob's signature can claim it." So Jimbob would leave England with that promissory note, go to France, turn in his promissory note to a reputable goldsmith there, and have forty pounds sterling to play with in France. The French goldsmiths would then send someone to England to get Jimbob's gold or make some kind of other arrangement to get their money.
Eventually (and this is skipping over a lot of time, history, and Medici influence), rather than have Person A draft a promissory note, give it to Person B, have Person B claim the funds, then draft a new note and hand it on to Person C, it got streamlined so that a note could go from Person A to B to C to Q without much of a problem. Sometimes money would spend years with a single goldsmith (actually, around this time, banks had been established), while the note got passed around hither and yon. Since the note was backed by gold, it was worth the gold it promised, just not entirely worth the time and effort it would take to lug the gold around. It was a receipt that could be redeemed at any time for the amount of gold promised.
From there (and skipping over even MORE history), we get our almost-modern currency, which started as notes that could be redeemed for gold. For most of our history, US currency was linked to the gold standard: dollars were worth X amount of gold (or silver, but I'm not EVEN getting into that debacle). For a long time, you could go to a bank with a stack of bills and get gold in exchange. It was owed to you; you were redeeming your paper money for gold. In the 30's, dollars were still linked to amounts of gold, but the government outlawed the circulation of gold coins. In 1971, a law was passed to stop the exchange of US gold for foreign-owned US dollars, because we were losing our gold reserves. And in 1978, we left the gold standard entirely, and our money ceased to be tied to the value of a specific commodity; bills were no longer redeemable for gold (not that they had been for awhile, really, but this made it Very Super Absolutely Official).
Anyway, this shows how something with no intrinsic value (paper) can be accepted as something valuable (teh monies). Again, it's an understanding between enough people that, yes, this worthless thing is either back by worth or well, we all handwave and agree. Yay handwaving!
Bringing the lecture back to the video game, I just have trouble accepting bottle caps would get either on a large enough scale to become the accepted currency. I can't see a modern-day (future day?) Lorenzo Medici pulling himself up out of the irradiated ashes of the Capitol Wasteland and saying, "If we all agree that Nuka-Cola caps have value, we can have a semi-stable and functioning economy! Handwave that noize!" and having everyone else in the Capitol Wasteland agree. Think about it: you're living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, drinking irradiated water and eating radroach meat. Someone comes over and says, "I'd like to buy some bullets and a night's stay in your lean-to for thirteen bottlecaps." Who the hell would agree to that? A barter system would work ("Here are three boxes of Dandy Boy Apples in exchange for that gun"), but not blank-tender.
Bottlecaps don't work as promissory notes, because there's nothing in them that guarantees a deposit of actual value somewhere else. I can't show you a handful of bottlecaps and have you realize that I've got a minigun tucked away as collateral somewhere--not when caps are found in desk drawers, file cabinets, and on every fine bottle of delicious Nuka-Cola.
The only think I can think of as making this work is if caps started out like green stamps. You could bring a certain number of caps somewhere and redeem those caps for something useful: food, clothing, guns, ammo, etc. It could slowly trickle down, too. ddrpolaris knows that I'm going to head to the redemption center and that a two-liter of Diet Pepsi costs 10 caps. He gives me ten caps (or possibly 11 or 12 to recompense me for the trip), I hand over a two-liter of Diet Pepsi that I have lying around. Eventually juldea, bonisagus, and k1ttycat decide that it's easier to buy the items and things from me for an extra cap or two than make the trip themselves. And then I decide that since everyone's buying from me, I'll just buy in bulk when I go on a redemption trip and then open up a store, accepting payments in bottle caps. Later, quish, always an enterprising sort, opens up a similar shop a couple of towns away. She also sells drop-spindles for caps because even though she made them herself, she's not going to pass up extra caps to redeem for SugarBombs for Toti.
And so on. And so forth.
This makes sense, save that there is NO EVIDENCE THAT ANYTHING LIKE THIS HAS HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME. It's like everyone just magically agreed that bottle caps were the way to go. And that's nonsensical. If they wanted to have a scavengable currency that weighed nothing, why not go with bullets? They're actually useful! And it would make for a very interesting game play. This Stimpack costs me 36 bullets. I can afford it (and need it!) but then I'll be out of ammo. Are certain bullets more valuable? .32s are damn common, but so are hunting rifles. Does that make them more valuable (because more people can use them) or less so (because they're found everywhere). Mini-nukes are rare and potentially valuable, yes, but very few people can actually use them. What's makes something more valuable: rarity, utility, or firepower?
I hate to admit it, but this post is pretty much all sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'm never going to know how or why caps got accepted as currency (though I guess there is some reason given for the caps in Fallout 2 and those caps were only accepted in a very specific location, which I can grok) and in the end, it doesn't really matter, as I'm demanding rationale from a game where giant rad scorpions roam the broken plains. Still. I'd like to know.
Warning: I am not an expert in economics nor do I know much more than the basic history of currency. So if I get stuff wrong, feel free to call me on it.
Yes, I am aware that none of you actually needed that permission to call me on being wrong.
Aaaanywho... in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is America in 2277, the paper bill has gone the way of the dodo (and most other species, apparently). This is unsurprising, as without the power of the federal government and the agreement of everyone else behind it, dollars are simply pieces of paper. It's like in using Confederate money in the South during Reconstruction--money isn't money unless everyone agrees it has value. And in 2277, the accepted form of currency is Nuka-Cola bottlecaps.
By the time your character leaves Vault 101 and begins wandering the Wasteland, it (sorta) makes sense to use caps as money--specifically, by the time you leave, it has become so entrenched as a system that there's no point in questioning it. Caps are accepted by everyone, everywhere, with a general idea of how much each cap is worth compared to the goods you're attempting to purchase with them.
My question is, how did caps become the accepted currency? Who started accepting them as payment and why? They're not intrisically useful or valuable. You can't do anything with them or make something from them. In the end, there's not a lot of difference between a bottle cap and a printed dollar bill as to what you can do with either before you have the agreement of the population to say that they have worth.
For centuries, money was gold and silver (and other precious gems and metals) because people understood that it was valuable. Sure, the exchange rate fluctuated and money stamped with this guy's face was more valuable in this country than in that one, but gold was gold. As early as the Middle Ages in the West (and much earlier than that in China), people began depositing cash with reputable goldsmiths in exchange for promissory notes that said, "Jimbob left forty pounds sterling with me. Anyone who shows up with this note made out in their name and with Jimbob's signature can claim it." So Jimbob would leave England with that promissory note, go to France, turn in his promissory note to a reputable goldsmith there, and have forty pounds sterling to play with in France. The French goldsmiths would then send someone to England to get Jimbob's gold or make some kind of other arrangement to get their money.
Eventually (and this is skipping over a lot of time, history, and Medici influence), rather than have Person A draft a promissory note, give it to Person B, have Person B claim the funds, then draft a new note and hand it on to Person C, it got streamlined so that a note could go from Person A to B to C to Q without much of a problem. Sometimes money would spend years with a single goldsmith (actually, around this time, banks had been established), while the note got passed around hither and yon. Since the note was backed by gold, it was worth the gold it promised, just not entirely worth the time and effort it would take to lug the gold around. It was a receipt that could be redeemed at any time for the amount of gold promised.
From there (and skipping over even MORE history), we get our almost-modern currency, which started as notes that could be redeemed for gold. For most of our history, US currency was linked to the gold standard: dollars were worth X amount of gold (or silver, but I'm not EVEN getting into that debacle). For a long time, you could go to a bank with a stack of bills and get gold in exchange. It was owed to you; you were redeeming your paper money for gold. In the 30's, dollars were still linked to amounts of gold, but the government outlawed the circulation of gold coins. In 1971, a law was passed to stop the exchange of US gold for foreign-owned US dollars, because we were losing our gold reserves. And in 1978, we left the gold standard entirely, and our money ceased to be tied to the value of a specific commodity; bills were no longer redeemable for gold (not that they had been for awhile, really, but this made it Very Super Absolutely Official).
Anyway, this shows how something with no intrinsic value (paper) can be accepted as something valuable (teh monies). Again, it's an understanding between enough people that, yes, this worthless thing is either back by worth or well, we all handwave and agree. Yay handwaving!
Bringing the lecture back to the video game, I just have trouble accepting bottle caps would get either on a large enough scale to become the accepted currency. I can't see a modern-day (future day?) Lorenzo Medici pulling himself up out of the irradiated ashes of the Capitol Wasteland and saying, "If we all agree that Nuka-Cola caps have value, we can have a semi-stable and functioning economy! Handwave that noize!" and having everyone else in the Capitol Wasteland agree. Think about it: you're living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, drinking irradiated water and eating radroach meat. Someone comes over and says, "I'd like to buy some bullets and a night's stay in your lean-to for thirteen bottlecaps." Who the hell would agree to that? A barter system would work ("Here are three boxes of Dandy Boy Apples in exchange for that gun"), but not blank-tender.
Bottlecaps don't work as promissory notes, because there's nothing in them that guarantees a deposit of actual value somewhere else. I can't show you a handful of bottlecaps and have you realize that I've got a minigun tucked away as collateral somewhere--not when caps are found in desk drawers, file cabinets, and on every fine bottle of delicious Nuka-Cola.
The only think I can think of as making this work is if caps started out like green stamps. You could bring a certain number of caps somewhere and redeem those caps for something useful: food, clothing, guns, ammo, etc. It could slowly trickle down, too. ddrpolaris knows that I'm going to head to the redemption center and that a two-liter of Diet Pepsi costs 10 caps. He gives me ten caps (or possibly 11 or 12 to recompense me for the trip), I hand over a two-liter of Diet Pepsi that I have lying around. Eventually juldea, bonisagus, and k1ttycat decide that it's easier to buy the items and things from me for an extra cap or two than make the trip themselves. And then I decide that since everyone's buying from me, I'll just buy in bulk when I go on a redemption trip and then open up a store, accepting payments in bottle caps. Later, quish, always an enterprising sort, opens up a similar shop a couple of towns away. She also sells drop-spindles for caps because even though she made them herself, she's not going to pass up extra caps to redeem for SugarBombs for Toti.
And so on. And so forth.
This makes sense, save that there is NO EVIDENCE THAT ANYTHING LIKE THIS HAS HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF THE GAME. It's like everyone just magically agreed that bottle caps were the way to go. And that's nonsensical. If they wanted to have a scavengable currency that weighed nothing, why not go with bullets? They're actually useful! And it would make for a very interesting game play. This Stimpack costs me 36 bullets. I can afford it (and need it!) but then I'll be out of ammo. Are certain bullets more valuable? .32s are damn common, but so are hunting rifles. Does that make them more valuable (because more people can use them) or less so (because they're found everywhere). Mini-nukes are rare and potentially valuable, yes, but very few people can actually use them. What's makes something more valuable: rarity, utility, or firepower?
I hate to admit it, but this post is pretty much all sound and fury, signifying nothing. I'm never going to know how or why caps got accepted as currency (though I guess there is some reason given for the caps in Fallout 2 and those caps were only accepted in a very specific location, which I can grok) and in the end, it doesn't really matter, as I'm demanding rationale from a game where giant rad scorpions roam the broken plains. Still. I'd like to know.