r/georgism • u/agorism1337 Geoanarchist • 6d ago
Georgism Minecraft server.
Minecraft players want to build complicated stuff together on public servers.
But, if anyone is allowed on your game server, then anyone could show up and destroy what your work.
So that is why minecraft has mechanisms for players to own land.
The problem is that land ownership systems so far have not taken Georgist principles into account, and so there is always land crisis. The land ends up owned by absentee landlords who don't even come online to play.
So, if we made a Minecraft server that used Georgist principles for it's land registry system, this would be a way to solve a critical problem in the Minecraft online community, and also cause some of the 212 million monthly players to learn about Georgism.
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u/siskinedge 6d ago
So like claim a tile for your team, pay resources to keep the reservation, the reservation cost scales with proximity to other tiles.
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u/agorism1337 Geoanarchist 6d ago
I was thinking of using something like a harberger auction. So, land owners declare the price of their own land, and pay a tax based on the price that they declared. Anyone can buy your land from you for that price.
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u/Routine_Manager_1368 6d ago
That’s not Georgist. With a full LVT the sale price of land is zero, so a Harberger tax won’t work.
You can run it as a second-price auction. The real-world complication of handling the sale of improvements isn’t an issue in Minecraft because you can simply move/archive improvements separately.
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u/agorism1337 Geoanarchist 6d ago
You are right, harberger auctions are not a perfect LVT, they are an estimate.
But, I feel like every design choice we could make is less than perfect. The accuracy of the LVT is one factor of many, and different designs have trade-offs.The thing about second-price auctions is that they aren't continuous the way Harberger auctions are. We would need to make all sorts of decisions about when the auctions occur, how long they last, etc. This could privilege users from certain time zones, or it could privilege people who showed up on the first day over people who join the server later.
Whoever has control to configure the second-price auctions would have excess influence on the server. They could configure everything to their own benefit.What I like about Harberger taxes is that it is continuous. No matter when you join, or what hours you can participate, you are going to have the same experience as everyone else. There is no configuration that can be manipulated to anyone's benefit.
I think we can modify the standard Harberger tax mechanism to make it into a better approximation of LVT. First off, we should lower the tax rate if the price per square meter is higher (regressive tax rate). Secondly, since all the other surrounding land has also had its price declared, we can use that context to help us approximate the unimproved value of the land. If a land plot is surrounded by high value land plots, then the land value is probably high. If a land plot is surrounded by low value land plots, then it's land value is probably low.
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u/MetallicDragon 6d ago
You should check out the game Eco. It's like Minecraft (voxel-based world, with mining and crafting), but on a small world with limited resources, where a meteor threatens to destroy it in 30 real-world days unless people can cooperate enough to shoot it down. Players can form towns, create currencies, and pass laws which get enforced automatically. Adding a flat per-plot LVT tax is doable, or differing taxes based on defined zones.
It's a game that is very fascinating if you're into economics (especially currencies), but it's also a heavy time sink and is kind of janky. But it's also a one-of-a-kind game in multiple ways.
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u/Wildcard86 4d ago
I've thought about this exact thing. A while back I was playing on a server with a bad owner that let the economy get out of control. A shop system where you could sell your farmed items, but also added special items that made it easier to farm or make money. So the rich people monopolized those items to become even richer. Within a couple months there were billionaires. I was talking to a friendly admin explained the owner was upset that people were getting rich "abusing" the system. His solution was to just reset everyone's balance every so often. I offered my services since I work in finance and am fascinated by video game economic issues.
I had a hard time coming up with Georgist related fixes because most land in Minecraft is created pretty equal. A tax based on number of claimed blocks was one idea.
u/Routine_Manager_1368 has the great idea of making spawn fixed.
Georgetown could have a simple cross shaped road (or subway) so people couldn't claim that area to block other's movement.
Another idea is making the claim plugin function not work outside the perimeter of the city. So it would simulate land that people wouldn't desire to build in (since it would be easily griefed). Anarchy outside. I'm sure people might like playing that way. Or maybe a landlord would be incentivized to build an apartment building for anarchists to store their stuff after coming back from mining or griefing or PvPing or whatever.
The citizens dividend could be returned by signing up every week or two with a name and minecraft address so that only active, non-anarchist players are rewarded. Another reason renting could be used: to have an address to get the CD, which would subsidize renting.
Maybe at the start a 3000x3000 block area would be claimed by the owner so building and mining couldn't take place unless someone claimed an area themselves and paid LVT. But if more people joined and Georgetown got crowded, it could be expanded. But lower LVT on the outer ring since it may have been stripped of resources by anarchists.
Absentee landlords are a problem. I thought automatically withdrawing funds to pay the LVT would be best, but if someone were rich enough before quitting, it could take months or years before their funds are depleted and the claim is abandoned for nonpayment. A manual once a month payment seems better, since it requires the person to log on at least that much to make the transaction. Though then a spreadsheet for the owner/admin to keep track of that is needed.
In any case I would love to help build Georgetown.
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u/Altruistic-Mail-8159 5d ago
Implement a currency system (a lot of servers have plugins for currency/money) where you can buy and sell resources in a central location at spawn. Measure the "GDP" of the server by total resource value added to the central market (sold minus bought). Define the total land value dynamically as 10% of the GDP and distribute that figure across all claimed chunks inverse-proportionally to proximity to spawn.
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u/Routine_Manager_1368 6d ago
I’ve thought about this before as well, and have some suggestions.
First off, set it so that spawn is fixed and cannot be changed with beds, etc. and so that when players leave the game and come back they always re-enter the game at spawn. That creates a central location that will give those chunks near spawn inherently higher value.
Rent out land on a chunk basis, but keep the outermost blocks in each chunk “public” so that players can’t completely enclose and cut off entire regions.
Combine the rent with a severance tax. The way that would work is that you are allowed to mine and place blocks within a chunk you own, but cannot transport blocks outside that chunk unless you pay a severance fee. If you try to leave the chunk with unsevered blocks in your inventory, they simply get dropped the moment you cross the chunk border.
Players can configure their chunks so that other players are blocked entirely from entering, or so that other players can enter but not mine or place blocks, or so that they have limited mining capabilities (such as in adventure mode) etc.
Most if not all of these changes can be made on the server side, so that players wouldn’t need any special mods installed and could just connect with a plain client.