How Can I Stop Private Investment?

[yeknod]

Private investment is placing industries in the wrong locations. PI is also spamming more industries than the population can provide workers. I have lost control of my economy. Can not implement a rational development plan. Thank you.

[Castiel]

It's something you chose to use before you started. I don't think you can change that during the game.

[yeknod]

One would think a government could direct private investment through laws, e.g. zoning approvals, bans, incentives. It appears in this game capitalism/entrepreneurialism is out of control.

[🌹KomradeKarl🌹]

To disable private investment, you either have to do it before starting a game in the game rules panel or you have to go command economy

[Nahui Ollin]

Originally posted by yeknod:

One would think a government could direct private investment through laws, e.g. zoning approvals, bans, incentives. It appears in this game capitalism/entrepreneurialism is out of control.

This was how it worked at launch. You built building of type X, laws favor type X, so private investment steps in and pays for construction for you.

LF Capitalism was the meta, and it made building free. You could snowball out of control on capitalism and a good player could minmax an economy better than any other law.

People whined this was "communism", wanted AI controlled building, and now we have 50% construction given to a useless AI just like in Victoria 2 where the meta was to abandon free market capitalism as fast as you could.

[yeknod]

Game rules. Oh. I never thought I could change them. Must look there and restart.

Nahui. Thanks for the context. If there is a free market you would expect new buildings to appear that have high productivity versus alternative constructions and placed in locations favorable to that industry. I don't mind a free market that behaves rationally. But as it stands the capitalists / entrepreneurs are not making profit optimising decisions. Fix that and I think a 50% PI proportion of investment would work for the good of the nation.

[SAJ1573]

Originally posted by yeknod:

Game rules. Oh. I never thought I could change them. Must look there and restart.

Nahui. Thanks for the context. If there is a free market you would expect new buildings to appear that have high productivity versus alternative constructions and placed in locations favorable to that industry. I don't mind a free market that behaves rationally. But as it stands the capitalists / entrepreneurs are not making profit optimising decisions. Fix that and I think a 50% PI proportion of investment would work for the good of the nation.

well i think you also have to allow for incorrect investments just like in real life not *ever* capitalist makes a sound investment in building an industry here or there so i think, for me, i just keep an extra eye on things and make sure im able to idk, stick and move with it lol

[Wilhelm]

Originally posted by SAJ1573:

Originally posted by yeknod:

Game rules. Oh. I never thought I could change them. Must look there and restart.

Nahui. Thanks for the context. If there is a free market you would expect new buildings to appear that have high productivity versus alternative constructions and placed in locations favorable to that industry. I don't mind a free market that behaves rationally. But as it stands the capitalists / entrepreneurs are not making profit optimising decisions. Fix that and I think a 50% PI proportion of investment would work for the good of the nation.

well i think you also have to allow for incorrect investments just like in real life not *ever* capitalist makes a sound investment in building an industry here or there so i think, for me, i just keep an extra eye on things and make sure im able to idk, stick and move with it lol

this 100% and if it really isn´t profitable... it goes bankrupt, doesn´t it? market regulates itself.
without that realistic semi optimal investments you can skyrocket your gdp in no time. if thats what you want then go ahead change the game rule OR change ingame law.

thats really only a problem for small countries anyways.

[yeknod]

To say it is 'realistic' for capitalists/entrepreneurs not to make profit optimising decisions goes against the fundamental assumption of economics which is the adult world is made up of rational decision makers. If a private individual is in a region where Coffee or Tobacco is favoured and they build a solitary iron mine when such a business is not favoured that is simply irrational.

Some individuals are more rational, some decision makers are less rational. But when we start dealing with populations of thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals the level of rationality will tend to the norm, which is rational not irrational.

Education is not the driving factor here. But the game already takes qualification into consideration. An industry might be started in a region but will only grow if there are qualified workers available to move to it.

Any sensible entrepreneur / capitalist will take all these things into consideration: productivity, regional buffs or de-buffs, labour availability, proximity to markets, etc.

Again, an individual might make a poor investment decision, but thousands of individuals will make on average sensible investment decisions. To say that isn't true is saying the adult world is made of irrational decision makers.

Economics, markets, businesses, production are not new things. They have been in existence for thousands of years. So no one can argue economic development had to be invented so mistakes were made.

Are some cultures naturally better entrepreneurs / capitalists? Yes. The Chinese have to be right up there with the best. Alongside Europeans. Animistic tribals are likely to be the worst. The game could make adjustments which reflect cultural affinity to enterprise. But on the main, people can be counted to act in their own best interest and make, on average, rational decisions.

[Urk_da_WAAAGH!]

interventionism will leave only 25% of the factories for them to use and command economy will give you control over all of it (if I remember correctly).

You can also disable the auto building from the private investment funds on the rules before the game starts

[yeknod]

Restarted. Changed the game rules. All is working well. Now we'll see how fast the new production populates with workers. I experienced enormous delays on the other game rules, partially because with overactive PI there were too many new production centers opening all over the place.

[MegaDeth]

Originally posted by Nahui Ollin:

Originally posted by yeknod:

One would think a government could direct private investment through laws, e.g. zoning approvals, bans, incentives. It appears in this game capitalism/entrepreneurialism is out of control.

This was how it worked at launch. You built building of type X, laws favor type X, so private investment steps in and pays for construction for you.

LF Capitalism was the meta, and it made building free. You could snowball out of control on capitalism and a good player could minmax an economy better than any other law.

People whined this was "communism", wanted AI controlled building, and now we have 50% construction given to a useless AI just like in Victoria 2 where the meta was to abandon free market capitalism as fast as you could.

But see, that original approach was retarded.

The new approach is retarded too, but for a different reason.

Private construction should be free, not tied to the governments own construction businesses. It's private. That is the whole point of a free economy: "it sustains itself" at the expense of everyone else.

How much private construction you get should be the lever you pull through gameplay like enacting laws and changing taxation.

[schnappkatze]

Is there any insight how the AI chooses which buildings to build? I had several times the issue that I had a complete overproduction of e.g. tea in my market (no outside trade), prices for tea were pretty low while food was expensive, and the AI chooses to build more tea farms.

I found it pretty unimmersive - it felt less like decisions by investors to make money and more like a random choice of available options.

[Terminus]

I am not an expert at this but I think it is a game design decision that there are some things you cannot directly control but there are ways you can influence what gets built by managing the prices in your economy. If you don't want something built make sure it is not profitable for the private sector to do so by keeping prices on that commodity down through imports and other means.

[MegaDeth]

Originally posted by Terminus:

I am not an expert at this but I think it is a game design decision that there are some things you cannot directly control but there are ways you can influence what gets built by managing the prices in your economy. If you don't want something built make sure it is not profitable for the private sector to do so by keeping prices on that commodity down through imports and other means.

But see, that's the thing.

There is no problem with having an economic element which you can not control, like private investments, doing their own thing... if you use an economic model that allows this.

The concept is fine!

But the construction progress should flow from private construction companies, not state ones.

If you have 100 construction capacity, you should get 100 government directed construction.
Private construction should be extra.

But we don't have this. Right now, Private construction diverts government resources, the output of government built and government owned construction centers, for private gain. It's retarded.

[Terminus]

I see your point. Yeah, that makes sense. There should be a separate private construction industry for making private buildings.