Tax in Kind, the Common Stores and the State Bank

Comrades, my first lecture was about deciding together what we need. This one is about the goods themselves: how they come into the common stores, how they are counted, and how they go out again to the comrades who need them.

The common stores

The common stores hold what the working people have delivered: ingots, bread, timber, stone. The goods themselves are in the game; the State Bank keeps their books. Its ledger records every delivery in, every allotment out and every correction, with its reason. A balance is the sum of the ledger for one kind of goods, and never goes below zero.

The Stores page on the website shows what the stores hold and the ledger. Citizens see names in the ledger and each other's quota fulfilment; visitors see only the goods.

Delivering

Hold the goods in your main hand and type /cw deliver. The whole stack leaves your inventory and goes to the common stores. Within a few seconds the State Bank answers with a receipt: what you delivered, what it is worth, and where your tax account stands. A stamp sounds.

The State Bank Teller at the stores explains this too, and /cw status shows your account, your merit and the state of the stores at any time.

Contribution units

Goods are counted in contribution units, so that a diamond and a loaf can be added together. Some values, as the State Bank sets them by default:

• an iron ingot 4, a gold ingot 8, a diamond 32;
• a loaf of bread 1.5, a log 1, planks 0.25;
• a storage block (iron block and the like) nine times what it stores;
• the plentiful earth and stone of the world 0.02 to 0.1;
• crafted derivatives (slabs, stairs, buttons, nuggets, sticks, seeds and the like) 0.01, so that crafting cannot multiply value;
• anything not listed 0.1.

The game master may set other values for particular goods; the receipt for each delivery tells you what it was worth.

Tax in kind

Each citizen owes a quota of contribution units in every plan period: by default 100 units. You pay it by delivering goods. Deliveries made while no period runs go into the stores but count towards no tax.

Allotments count against the account. Your tax paid is the units you delivered, less the units of goods allotted to you from the stores in the same period. What the stores give was first given by the working people, and is owed back.

When a period ends, every account is settled once. A fulfilled quota earns 10 merit and a word of thanks; an unfulfilled one brings only a notice. There is no automatic punishment: the Commonwealth trusts its citizens, and the People's Court can be approached if someone refuses their share.

The quota is the council's. Any citizen may propose a new quota on the Stores page. Like a plan change, it becomes a council motion; if the council adopts it, it waits for the game master, and it applies from its period on.

Merit for deliveries

Deliveries earn merit on your running total for the period: one point for every 10 units of net contribution (delivered less allotted), never rounded up per delivery. Goods that a plan target names also earn plan merit (see /cw lecture economy 1). With 100 merit from deliveries comes the medal Honoured Deliverer.

The Distribution Office

Goods leave the stores through the Distribution Office, an institution of the Commonwealth. Ask it for goods on its page on the website: say what you need, how much, and what for. It weighs your request:

1. The plan comes first. Goods a running target depends on go only to work on that target, unless the stores clearly hold more than the plan needs.
2. Need. A request that names its purpose weighs more. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need: a comrade in need is not refused because they delivered little.
3. What the stores hold. It can allot only what is there, and keeps a reserve.

It may advise, decline, or allot: up to 64 items at once, in force at once and open to appeal; more, or goods worth over 256 units, wait for the game master. An allotment in force is handed to you in the game, and the Office tries again if you were offline. If the council overturns an allotment you never received, the goods go back into the stores.

Why tax in kind

Money can be hoarded and speculated with; goods delivered to the common stores can only be used. Tax in kind keeps the economy visible: everyone can see what the Commonwealth holds, what it needs and who has carried their share.

Questions: /cw ask professor-economy <question>. Your own figures: /cw status in the game, or the Stores page on the website.