Can we have a why Bottlecaps could never work as a currency thread?

Why not use gold instead?

brotherhood blew up all the gold ncr had

People do use gold if they can get it. Check Dead Money.

Gold is heavier, it's not as conducive to trading as caps are.

This has been in my to-watch category for a long time now and I believe it's relevant
youtube.com/watch?v=GFT_aTKRwi4&list=WL&index=13

There are certain criteria which make an item more useful as a currency. Giant stone wheels fell out of favour pretty fast, while precious metals stuck around for a long time. Caps could be used as a last-mile currency to bridge small differences in bartering, but are impractical for primary storage of value.

The NCR was using it on Fallout 2, but

Fallout was never a good game lorewise. FO1 was innovative in its setting, FO2 was "wacky" back when that was still a bonus, but the actually way things work in Fallout has always been a retarded cross between a 50s comic book and an anti-nuke hippy's fever dream

This technically has no value. It isn't backed by gold or silver, it's just paper. It's just that the government forces it to be worth $1.00. However, due to inflation, the real world value of this goes down every year.

It isn't too outrageous to believe that caps are given monetary value.

You're lacking one simple fact: Why would I begin to accept something like gold which I have no use for or worthless bottlecaps in a post apocalyptic dog-eats-dog world where literally everybody is starving and killing each other?

LIKE WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVEN START TO "BELIEVE" IN BOTTLECAPS?!

They did and then the Brotherhood blew it all up
Caps worked as a currency in FO1 because it was shortly after the apocalypse, and the largest water trader in the region figured out that caps are fairly numerous and hard to properly counterfeit, so they started using them backed by their water supply as a means of easier bartering
In FO2 the NCR introduces paper money as caps get quickly phased out
In FO3 and 4
In New Vegas it's used as a standard currency, as it's a neutral frontier region that hasn't adopted paper money yet

The idea of currency value is really an impressively collective placebo effect. The giant stone wheel based currency fell out of favor likely because those involved with the economy (read; everyone) collectively decided it was retarded.
Basically this. But it's a two way street in that it requires the people to agree that yes, it indeed is worth $1.00. If they collectively decided that was a load of shit and stopped valuing it as a dollar, there'd really be nothing the government can do.

>It isn't too outrageous to believe that caps are given monetary value

fuck you. if merica gets fuckt i am the first person to wipe my ass with worthless 100$ bills. it's the society that enables your worthless piece of crap paper to get it's value. It is very very far fetched to assume bottlecaps could start to circulate in a hazardous environment without real society.

People in Diamond City could use bottlecaps for their trade with each other, but not with outsiders. Why would the fucking institute even want to accept bottlecaps or even valut 81?

Money isn't actually worth anything in general, it's only given worth because we as a collective group say it has and assign it worth

what does "backed by their water supply" mean?
Why would the water trader give up his water for worthless piece of bottlecap? can u explain please

No wonder the NCR uses bills and the Legion smelted their own coins.

One thing about New Vegas lore I don't get is why the major casinos on the strip will carry a large amount of legion currency when their consumers are primarily NCR citizens.

Aren't bottlecaps used as an IOU for water? Or is that just the NCR paper notes? I also thought it was pretty cute that in NV bottlecaps had a higher value than the NCR notes.

if we assign it worth, then it's worth something

Why would the gold trader give up his gold for worthless piece of cotton fibre? can u explain please

Government-issued paper currency has value because the issuing government can stuff value into it. Caps are like bitcoin, but without the tracking which gives the data value.

Some tribes used seashells as currency.

>there's still paper money everywhere
>would be impossible to fake because printing it would require unavailable tech and aging it to several hundred years old would be impossible
Plot holes.

>It isn't backed by gold or silver, it's just paper.
And gold and silver are just gold and silver. They don't have any intrinsic value, we just agree that they have value because we like shiny things.

All currency operates via collective agreement that it has value.

simple design
the metal has no value
incredibly abundant

At first I could see it, yes.

200 years later though, the bigger plot hole is that there IS paper money everywhere.

honestly
delete this NOW

I'll trade you X units of water for Y good.
You want to trade that water with other people for other goods, but don't want to lug all that water around with you.
Everyone comes to me for water anyway, so I'll give you Z number of bottlecaps which represent the X units of my water.

It's like how early currencies represented units of grain, a farmer would promise a portion of his upcoming harvest and dump it in a central granary for you to collect at that time

>collective group

You see, in Fallout there is no such thing as a bigger 'collective group' to 'decide' what will be used as a unit of account. It's not plausible. You can't explain how single individuals in a hobbesian world 'agree' on a common unit of account, especially a totally worthless one which is not even an IOU by anybody.

Our money is purely made valueable by decree to pay taxes in that decreed common unit of account. The government by virtue of it's power is forcing you to use Dollars. If there is no such force there is no money. People will not agree on money, they're always forced by some power into it.

See into Radford's Economic Analysis of a P.O.W. Camp: jstor.org/stable/2550133
His paper is always cited in mainstream economics as the proof of how commodity money was used in a enclosed space - like an experiment. But the careful reader will see that Radford explicitly stated that groups of people sharing same language and culture and therefore TRUST didn't use cigarettes at all but rather tabbed debts and credits and balanced the tab out.

We're being put into misknowledge by mainstream economics who tell us a wrong story about what money really is.

Clay tablets with promises to work are the only currency worth anything.

In FO1 the big group is Hub. It's a large merchant town in the middle of the map that sends water caravans all over the map.

>You see, in Fallout there is no such thing as a bigger 'collective group' to 'decide' what will be used as a unit of account
The NCR.

Coins would hold up, they should have just used coins.

Yes I can. Because the gold trader is forced to pay his taxes recurringly in worthlesspiece of cotton fibre with certain special hard to forge attributes. He literally needs to get the money from you in order to pay his taxes else the government mafia will do their justice upon him.

In the Fallout world there is no such thing.

To add to this, it IS an IOU. At least the NCR notes are. I still can't remember if bottlecaps are also a water IOU

The NCR has their own currency

>Youtube communists

is investing in silver merely a meme?

Bottlecaps are still backed by water, and it turns out the HUB adopted bottlecaps in the first place, and then after the NCR reserves went kablooey they switched back to bottlecaps after the NCR note was devalued

What is the deal with goldfags and their hatred of fiat currrency

Some, yes. Others (like pennies) would likely have corroded by now. Shit made of nickel or zinc could potentially still be useable.

>Everyone come to me for water anyway, so I'll give you Z number of bottlecaps which represent the X units of my water

So actually the water dealer forced everybody into accepting his shitty currency he was in power with? Sounds not like an agreement to me, rather like extortion of people by their basic needs. So basically that motherfucker has a big moral hazard to give out more bottlecaps than he could supply water for just to monetize a huge rent on his huge water stock without working nothing at all. That's the real original scam.

Depends on the situation.

In a modern society, forgery and the fact we're a largely digital driven, using debit and credit cards more often than hard currency. It would also be the equivalent of lugging a large sack of one cent coins around.

In post apocalyptic society where people struggle to survive, I'm sure they would rather prefer a barter system in which they can offer goods or services for other goods or services than trust the value of something that is otherwise useless to them.

I dunno, all silver has is that it's shinny. One day gold and silver could be worth a lot for trading, tomorrow they could be worth fuck all we'll all be using lead and aluminium for high value trade.

>there are two fallout threads up right now
>one is on topic about video games, the other has derailed into an economics thread
>the latter is a fuckload more civil

Did you even read the OP? This hasn't derailed anywhere, this has been a discussion on caps since the beginning

I knew I was keeping all these empty soda cans for something

Is it merely caps itself which is considered tender.

Could you use any cap from any bottle, or is Nuka Cola / Sunset Sasperilla caps that are exclusively traded?

/board

Probably merchants that do business in the Legion's territories

until there's an apocalypse (that you'll probably die in anyways) you're just a hoarder

The other one is a new vegas flamewar thread, it's there specifically to stir the pot between people who think obsidian games are playable and everyone else.

psh yeah right would a hoarder also have a ton of old newspapers and empty hotpocket containers? Get real

I never played FO1 to my shame. But according to the wiki the water dealers indeed FORCED the people into paying their tolls in bottlecaps

fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Merchant_Wars

"a band of merchants seized the water tower in the Hub, and demanded that anyone wanting water pay a toll"
The negotiated peace was rather a fixed price on water instead of a refusal of the bottlecap toll. Of course then the NCR would try to forge their own monies by bringing back Gold but they should have tried to get the water instead.

Well I think it's just any bottle caps since, even though they manufacture and paint their own back at the HUB, they also straight up accept fresh nuka cola/sunset caps as well. Which is odd because in one of the crimson caravan quests you have to disable a bottlecap press, and it's like why would you accept caps that were already on a bottle and not a new one, when both of them aren't accounted for with inflation

I'd just like to mention the insane inflation of the economy pre-War led to paper money being worthless and everywhere

There's probably more bills lying around than bottlecaps

>probably
Except gameplay proves otherwise.

>There's probably more bills lying around than bottlecaps
I mean there is, isn't there? the model for 1 pre-war money is still a fuckhuge stack of cash, right?

Fallout 1:
You barter for everything, with Bottlecaps allowing you to accumulate a trade positive

Fallout 3:
You Barter for everything, like Fallout 1. More high end items means even more bartering

Fallout 3, 4 Vegas: Suddenly Cash economy

It's well known that Cred Forums can actually have pretty good discussions on any topics that aren't video games

Bartering seemed like it made the most sense.

I sometimes feel you should be forced to trade various items until the trader feels satified with the deal instead of using currency.

Like, you could fuck them by offering an interesting object that is likely worthless while getting a good gun in trade.

But I imagine thats rather hard to impliment.

>different developers have different design goals

look at you, you cracked the case

Do you really not know how this shot works?

Not flawed. They do explain why, for a brief period, bottlecaps were backed as a currency before being replaced by dollars. And before you say it, Bethesda haven't ever made a Fallout game.

Relative barter value is just a bitch, and there is a reason games avoid it.

Games like Arcanum, where finding merchants for specific gear is a gigantic pain. Like weapons, metal, magic, high end magic, tech, high end tech, mid to high end guns, etc etc etc.
It makes sense, but it isn't implemented in a elegant way, so its a gigantic pain to do anything.
I have seen games do relative Barter before, like items are worth 0.6 to 1.2 times value depending on merchant.

Yeah the only real plothole is the use of caps in the east coast cities

What does "backed" mean?
Again: Why would a water supplier in a hopless irradiated world give up his water for worthless bottlecaps EXCEPT he is in control of the supply of bottlecaps and uses the bottlecaps to squeeze people out like a filthy jew

>Radford explicitly stated that groups of people sharing same language and culture and therefore TRUST didn't use cigarettes at all but rather tabbed debts and credits and balanced the tab out.
And how would any society with more then a hundred members implement something like that?

Metro 2033 did it's economy the best
>pre-metro bullets are money
>can still shoot them
>or you can use bootleg metro-crafted bullets which misfire constantly

The materials the Legion makes with the coins are probably worth something. Also traders from Legion territory probably pass through Vegas and unwind before they head back

>and uses the bottlecaps to squeeze people out like a filthy jew
that's literally what happened though as explained they fucking took over the water supply and made people use their currency

> People being filthy jews charging high price for water to dehydrated desperate people.

Its really nothing new.

Why would a gold digger in a hopeless frontier land give up his gold for worthless paper

wrong poster meant for

wrong board retard

Well according to FO3, they can be pressed with a machine from one of the old Nuka Cola bottling plants, but even then they wouldn't be accepted as legal tender because the age of the caps is what validates them. Newly-produced bottle caps would be seen as counterfeit. The only flaw I see is that it essentially amounts to all of our existing currency being replaced with 1 dollar coins. Imagine trying to carry about thousands of these and having to count them out in every transaction.

>And how would any society with more then a hundred members implement something like that?

>Powerful person breaks into leadership of society and has legitimacy
>Declares that bottlecaps will be used henceforth to pay the toll to him and that anybody who doesn't pay the toll will face punishment (does so in order to monetize on his power aka buy stuff)
>Everybody wants to get bottlecaps in order to pay their toll/taxes to the leader
>Everybody offers their goods in exchange for bottlecaps

In our times you can replace leader with the democratically elected government. The principle hasn't changed at all. The game is the same only the players have changed.

People never "agreed" on bottlecaps neither did any money in the world "evolve" to be used as currency. It was power all along. But, at least in the east, there is no real overarching power to enforce ("back up") bottlecaps thus FO4 is shit.

did it ever occur to you that fallout games take place in the boonies

and trading in such a place is more about forming relationships than amassing a bunch of pieces of aluminum

its sort of assumed that there isn't bankers or investors or interest, or even hoards of 'money'

>Newly-produced bottle caps would be seen as counterfeit
They do make new ones because the old ones get destroyed, so they can keep the value consistent. Granted I got that from NV so I don't know what they do in the east coast. Or why they even have bottlecaps there

Because no one wants to carry around full bottles of water everywhere they go to trade for stuff. So people developed a shorthand. A way to trade water without lugging it around.

"Backed" means you can go up to anyone with water and give them one cap for one bottle of water. Suppose you're in possession of huge quantities of clean water and you want to trade for guns or something to defend yourself with. Rather than carrying 200 bottles of water with you you carry 200 caps. You give them to some guy for his guns and tell him to come back to you at any time and you'll exchange one cap for one bottle of water.

Why would he give up his water? Because he said he would. He said the cap is an IOU for a bottle of water. Now some other guy with a lot of water hears about this and gets the same idea. Pretty soon you have everyone just exchanging caps, knowing they can go to any water supplier in the wasteland and exchange one cap for one bottle of water.

If a water supplier stops accepting caps in exchange for bottles of water you may as well consider him to have defaulted on his debts. You shoot him up and take the water.

>Imagine trying to carry about thousands of these and having to count them out in every transaction.
Even in Fallout 1 you don't generally go over 1-2k. Instead you barter loot for stimpacks.
Or super stimpacks for gear.
And use the bottlecaps tp fill in the gap.

But carrying around or counting thousand isn't so bad, if you can weigh them, because they weight is uniform.

>so I don't know what they do in the east coast. Or why they even have bottlecaps there
"Violence is funny" -Todd Howard on Fallout

The bottle cap system was enforced by a water cartel.
The relationship is "accept my fiat currency or you don't get any water"

Value was still measured in caps
You're just using plasma rifles like Stone of Jordans.

It's not fiat currency, it's backed by water.

I think we are all missing the bigger picture here. The only thing that really holds any value is the word of god.

Shouldn't you be changing your bandages or something

Because its more convenient.
I think i have played games where you Barter, but there is no currency medium, so everything has a value, and trading is a bitch unless you put skillpoints into it.

What do you mean user?

Good explanation but it is still flawed: A weapon dealer would never do the advance payment because he/she has the high power. Why wouldn't the gun dealers just give their empty bullet shells to the water dealers? (Protip: They wouldn't because they wouldn't base their own IOUs on something easily forgable as bullet shells)

I'll explain it too you the best I can. The hub controls the most valuable commodity in the wasteland, water and that's it. You can't survive on water alone you would also need food, shelter, protection and basic supplies. Not to mention skilled personal to extract it from the ground and other staff too keep the operation going. So instead of just continue sharing the water in exchange for the resources listed above they turned a profit with it. Soon they were trading with other towns and settlements. But as mentioned in this thread lugging water around is a pain in the ass so they adopted bottle caps as a representation of their water, think bank notes . Small hard to find, hard to make little metal coins.

if all the good-looking hookers and great cooks and whatever else are using bottlecaps, then the weapon dealer will accept bottle caps

most of you are forgetting that direct bartering is always possible, so anything can be considered currency

and you're also forgetting that prices are not set, and that how much a person likes you affects how much they take and give

It's a fucking satire you illiterate autists...
Go read a fucking book or two instead of criticising the "lore" of a game which isn't meant to be serious at all.

I would argue the water supplier has more power. If he can defend his water for three days the weapons dealer will die of thirst and the water supplier will just take the weapons.

At any rate, the weapons thing was just an example. Take a more mundane example: someone has a nice hat, you have sun in your eyes. You give him one cap for his hat and in exchange any time he's thirsty he can come by and give you the one cap for one bottle of water.

We can argue about what would be the commodity that backs currency in a post-apocalyptic world, I'm only intending to show that water is a reasonable one. In fact the only thing I really care about is OP's claim that bottle caps could not work as currency. They can. They're not the only thing that can, but they can.

uh you can barter in New Vegas all right

had some brush guns in pristine condition I liberated from Legion in my inventory as trading items some time ago

It's not satire.
1 and 2 were earnest, 3 and 4 were written by retards.

>Uses feces as currency
>Everyone is rich

Problem solved

>2 was earnest
lol ok

Because it's Bethesda

>if all the good-looking hookers and great cooks and whatever else are using bottlecaps, then the weapon dealer will accept bottle caps

That's still not plausible because the cook just could have given the water dealer his own IOU ("I give you this olive stone as IOU for my services in exchange for your water").

You're still implying the water trader didn't use force to convice the hookers and cooks into using bottlecaps. Again: The word "backing" is an euphemism for "imposed by authority".

The only plausible way would be if the water dealer doubled down on his bottlecaps telling everybody else to go away if they're providing bottlecaps in exchange for water thus actually profiting by seignoriage and by revenue of the water business.

>Everyone is rich

That's not how currencies work, my obese friend.

West Coast
>The Hub is established in the 2090's
>local Water Merchants eventually set Caps as their currency
>back the currency by the water standard
>Caps are uncommon, have great shelf life, and are hard to reproduce
>effectively Old World Gold for the Apocalypse if properly backed
>the need for water and dealing with water caravans cements it as the local currency
>NCR is fully established 80 years after the events at Shady Sands
>rediscovered the technology of printing money
>backed by NCR's reserve of gold
>becomes the main currency by conquest
>takes a severe blow after gold reserves are destroyed by the Brotherhood
>has to change to printed bills instead of coins and is now backed by water
>caps make a resurgence due to equal value and NCR expansion into areas that still use caps
>Legion Denarius and Aureus coins spread due to Legion conquest and traders
>backed by inherit gold/silver value and the Legion's power
>anyone with enough power to use printing machines builds their own currency and backs it instead of doing so with caps
>counterfeiters fail to successfully print out caps in the Mojave due to lack of machinery
>this makes it the defacto currency for regions with strong centralized trade and local government power that can back them with resources but can't make their own currency

East Coast
>assorted mish mash of communities
>local settlements are only loosely connected through non-centralized traders
>no real connection between region other than occasional travels
>all decide to use caps instead of other alternatives because ???

Fallout 4 would have been kick ass if you could actually start printing your own money after settling most of the Commonwealth.

I agree, although I think bullets are much too common to be used in Fallout, the money being a resource you actually need makes for interesting, maybe have characters have a really strict thirst meter and bottle caps can be redeemed at most bigger cities and towns for water rations

Legion traders are wealthy motherfuckers since the roads have no bandits anywhere.

/internet

The Legian /are/ bandits, they raid any caravan not paying a protection fee.

Mafia. They are just imposing their currency on people not wanting to use it.

Here's a better question

Why are they using MS DOS computers and TV's from the 40's when they clearly have the tech for advanced ai, robots, etc?

joshua pls

Fallout takes place in an alternate reality where the transistor wasn't invented. All the advanced tech is atomic powered and fuckhuge. They don't have the tech to make an 80" LCD HDTV that's also light enough for everyone to set up their own in their own home.

why don't they just use coins

So they can do brain transplants but can't make a computer running on a system not from 1980?

>10 oz.
>weighs 35 lbs.
Fucking cheeky.

Because nobody has the machinery to mint them.

>Fallout 1 has caps
>Fallout 2 has NCR money because caps are retarded
>Fallout 3 has caps again
>Fallout NV has caps, NCR money, and legion money because surely a wasteland would have plenty of types of currency
>Fallout 4 has just caps again
Why are Bethesda the worst fucking developers on the surface of this Earth?

NV mostly only has caps because of engine limitations.

>Fallout 2 has NCR money
Which gets incinerated.

Fallout 4 for has so much going for it with its design and I feel the world itself is really top-notch.

Then somehow the story is pants on head retarded.

Someone bet the Legion was going to win.

>Fallout NV has caps, NCR money, and legion money because surely a wasteland would have plenty of types of currency
NCR brought their paper money, people were already using caps in the west because that's what water traders years ago agreed upon, and Caesar wanted to make a goddamn country so he went out of is way to create a currency.

Even people in game bitch about all the different currencies and how some are worth more than others.

It's not really in the spirit of the general to talk about Fo4, but the world is actually, imo, the very worst part of Fallout 4. Especially when you compare it to Fo1 or New Vegas (Fo2 wasn't quite as good about this).

When you arrive to a new location in Fo1, you are very organically presented with a quest and given the opportunity to get involved however you see fit. The game is full of little hooks to get your character to interact with the wider world in completely natural ways. You get to Junktown and the Killian-Gizmo conflict unfolds around you without ever making you seek it out. It's a cool little part of the world and it's presented as something that's completely optional. You can justify completing it under a variety of pretenses (money, information, idealism, etc.), or you can ignore it entirely and continue your search for the water chip.

You get to the cleverly named Hub (as it's the game's main quest hub) and you have to search the city for information. In the process, you might discover the Water Merchants. That's generally a pretty big deal to whatever character you're playing - they ensure your vault will continue to survive, but at a cost (2000 caps, IIRC; less with Barter/Speech). It's likely you won't have that kind of money unless you're doing a gambling run, so now you're presented with a fairly complex, engaging decision - do you temporarily suspend your search to increase your Vault's chance of survival in the short term (but also alert the wider wasteland to its presence), and if you do, how do you get the money to do so?

And now, you're potentially looking for lucrative quests that might lead your character to doing some very unsavory things for Decker. The world is designed with your character arc in mind, and that's tremendously important in an RPG.

You really don't see this in Fo4 at all... (cont.)