Bottle Cap-onomics

[shadowravyn]

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

Comments

[londo]

Did you not read the "History" paragraph in that article?

I mean, the real reason for this is that someone at Interplay thought it was funny, but...

[ddrpolaris]

what article?

[londo]

The one she linked to.

[ddrpolaris]

ah, did not see the link the first time through. thanks.

[shadowravyn]

Do you mean the part where it says explicity "There is no explanation whatsoever given for the use of bottlecaps in DC," or the part I referenced about Fallout 2 in my own post?

The explanation, "There is a large Nuka-Cola factory in the Wastelands" isn't an explanation. There are large numbers of rocks, burned books, and various pieces of trash around the Wasteland, too, but no one is accepting those.

[zombie_dog]

Roving traders with really useful stuff strikes me as the most reasonable explanation for that. If traders managed to go all the way from the Hub to the Capitol Waste, it HA HA HA HA HA HA I CAN'T FINISH THAT SENTENCE.

[londo]

No, the part where someone somewhere figured that they were hard to counterfeit in a postapocalyptic world.

[shadowravyn]

Not convinced that in the early days of setting up a new economy, 'difficult to counterfeit' would weigh heavily on their decision. Especially since it's not like there's a great, deliberating body in charge of it.

[londo]

I feel like any currency has to either be hard to counterfeit and backed by some major commercial power through exchange, or be inherently valuable. So if there's some dudes sitting around I can sorta kinda see that without too much stretching. On the other hand, who the hell knows how many of them there are or where they're distributed?

I'm with you on bullets as currency, though. I mean, in previous Fallouts I always considered .223 good as cash.

[dirkcjelli]

"Inherently valuable" is superfluous to that definition.

Air is inherently valuable, but isn't likely to be a currency this side of space. (Even then: commodity.)

[dirkcjelli]

Also, there needn't be a commercial/legal backer. Money is that which is accepted as money, though things which are easy to counterfeit seldom become money.

Money is anything which a government will accept as taxation.

[londo]

Money is that which is accepted as money, but in the absence of some universally valued and sought-after thing... no, scratch that.

You can't bootstrap a fiat currency. In a game theory kind of way, maybe - but in a real world (or even in a world as "real" as Fallout) where people starve if they go broke, money needs to have, at least at the beginning, some place of guaranteed exchange.

[dirkcjelli]

In fallout you can starve even if your pockets are full of gold. The food e onomy is likely to be predominantly barter and debt based. To trade dlfor surplus food in a time of scarcity rather than a few luxury food items, you need to have wide-ranging trade between areas with significantly different climates. Surplus and salvage will begin as debt and barter, then (swiftly ) a token for debt will be sought. The money supply needs to be sufficiently widespread, but not easy to fake. It need not have any inherent value.

[neuromancerzss]

But wouldn't actual coin money fill that role just as well?