ehh I disagree the option itself even notes how it will help it will also make some stuff worse in some respects. There still a shitton of other problems that need fixing too as it notes in there too it does help but def not in a super dramatic way, quoting it "it is one step towards a more functional economy." It gonna be meaningful but not a dramatic improvement
I disagree with your assessment. The banking reforms will not address the problem of access to capital goods. The promise we made to the FMP to send 5 Capital Goods out into the civilian economy, however,
will, and that's already been done.
Neither action addresses the problem of talented labor, I freely admit, but that's a problem for the Department of Education and other branches of the government, which coincidentally are about to receive massive budget increases.
The banking reforms are the one piece of the puzzle left for us to make a move on. If we leave that out until such time as we feel comfortable setting aside 100 R and not spending it again (that is, probably some time in 2063), I am pretty sure people will be starting to needle us.
While yes aquaponics may not be bland we do have trouble brewing with the milk and honey initiative not just because people can't have milk, beef and pork (which will take years to start appearing in numbers) but also because they can't get eggs, chicken or spices and we need to make visible progress to solving that relatively quickly so while it may not be a large amount of food 2-3 rounds of vertical farming will go a long way towards sorting that before it actually becomes a problem.
Honestly I just personally think it would be better for narrative reasons to roll out a couple of phases of vertical farming before more phases of aquaponics but that's just me and I'm an easily ignored idiot in the corner who thinks that the introduction of milk and honey where a way of subtly telling us to build food production stuff other then aquaponics.
Okay, here's how the numbers play out, bearing in mind that
Vertical Farming Phase 2 is already covered under my current plan.
Blue Zone Aquaponics Phase 5 (122 Progress, ~2 dice)
Dairy Ranches Phase 2+3 (400 Progress, ~5.5 dice)
7 dice, 130 R, +12 Consumer Goods, -3 Labor, -2 Energy, -1 Logistics
Vertical Farming Phases 3+4 (480 Progress, ~6.5 dice)
~6.5 dice, ~97.5 R, +8 Consumer Goods, +8 Food, -4 Energy
My view is that it is desirable for us to take the former approach in the first half of 2062 (when funds are scarce) and then push on with the dairy ranches as soon as possible. I don't think we'll experience a major onslaught of problems from the Milk and Honey protestors within that time frame when we have explicitly already done
Ranching Domes and will cover
Vertical Farming Phase 2 to roughly double the output of all things that come out of the vertical farms.
Now, we can revisit that discussion later. I have my reasons, especially since we're probably coming out of this committed to doing two phases of dairy ranches anyway. But I do acknowledge that there are arguments for the vertical farms. The problem is that if we're doing the banking reforms (which may result in civilian production of luxury foods taking some of the stress off us, among many other things)... Well, if we're doing that, money's likely to be pretty tight in 2062Q1 unless we cast off a lot of line items (at considerable -Political Support cost), take the 30% GDP option (likewise), or both. Doing a cheap project that lays the groundwork for future expensive projects seems like a good balance to me in that situation.
Also, aquaponics food isn't crap. It's not trash, it isn't necessarily bad-tasting, and it can potentially include things like spices and fruits and fish. People aren't going to complain that production of those foodstuffs is expanding
in and of itself.j And, again, it lays groundwork for other things that they will like more in the future.
To clarify: for the purposes of those calculations, I was assuming we don't. I'm pretty sure we can, at least a bit.
I'm sorry, you're right; I worded that poorly.
As for the Banking Reforms, I'm mostly assuming that the extra money we are directly pumping into the economy via the FMP promise will mostly make up for it, especially as that's an ongoing RpT injection.
I don't agree, because there's a difference between fractional reserve banking and a continuous outflow of grants. The ongoing RpT injection
helps, but if it were an adequate substitute for the banking reforms, I strongly suspect we'd see the banking reform option either removed or radically rewritten after taking it.
There's a big difference between the Treasury putting 80 billion credits a year into grant programs (where the grant money is immediately spent on things) and the Treasury putting 100 billion credits into a central reserve bank to insure deposits and provide money that can be leveraged into a larger system of loans that expands the money supply as a whole.
Expanding the money supply seems likely to be good for the economy at the moment.
And I expect we'll be able to do the Banking Reforms by Q4 2062, most likely.
Three consecutive "tiberium mining meme plans" will put us at a point where we
can spare the money for the banking reforms. I do not think that people will be likely to support the the reforms in that quarter, but it's at least possible, especially if we make optimistic assumptions about the productivity of the super glacier mines.
Yeah, the Banking Reforms is a flat 100 R, while the FMP promise is 20 RpT, which will go up to 100 R's worth and continue growing in Q3 2062. This in addition to the 5 Capital Goods per turn.
Again, I don't think it works that way. The banking reforms are also
the act of expanding the banking system. That's different from just writing checks to half a million co-ops. The grant proposals result in cash trickles to the people who can successfully write a grant proposal; the banking reforms mean that you can take out a loan against future income. They'll fill somewhat different economic roles and I strongly suspect that the FMP promise did
NOT make the banking reforms redundant.
After all, we've already been spending 35 RpT on grants for something like 5-7 years now, and apparently the civilian economy is still stagnant and the economists are telling us we need to change the way the banks work.
I think Seo would get some funny looks around the office if he replied to said economists by saying "no no, we just need to make the grant program 57% larger, that will quickly fix the problem that the previous several years of grants have not addressed!"
I'm not saying the grant expansions won't matter. They will. But just pouring significantly more money down the same pipe isn't necessarily going to have the same impact as
building a new pipe.
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