View source for Libertarianism is basically video game economics 101

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[[Category:LRonPaul2012 (pseudonym)]]
[[Category:Common Fallacies Of Economics]]
[[Category:Economics 101]]
[[Category:Libertarians understand economics better than people with other political positions. Especially liberals.]]
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{{DES | des = "Most people know that libertarians tend to have a very naive understanding of real world economics, but I lately I've started to wonder how much of that understanding comes from playing video games and assuming that those video game economies are real." | show=}}
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Most people know that libertarians tend to have a very naive understanding of real world economics, but I lately I've started to wonder how much of that understanding comes from playing video games and assuming that those video game economies are real. And I'm not even talking about complicated MMO economies where you trade with actual players, but simply 1 player adventure games.

The Gold Standard
Libertarians frequently insist that people naturally relied on gold currency for thousands of years, but that makes absolutely no sense when you really think about it. After all, gold is scarce and dense, and the technology didn't exist to accurately measure weight and purity, which makes it incredibly impractical. They seem to think that gold works the way it does in video games, where it is plentiful and extremely easy to quantify and measure.
Another feature of gold in video games is that you can accumulate it indefinitely, implying that the supply is not scarce, but price of goods within a town remain constant, and unaffected from the ever increasing supply of gold. This is similar to how libertarians assume the gold standard will leave everyone better off: Gold is scarce so that prices keep going down, but somehow not scarce in a way that would affect people's paychecks.

Competitive Equilibrium
When libertarian's talk about market equilibrium, they're referring to older model of competitive equilibrium, which "relies crucially on the assumption of a competitive environment where each trader decides upon a quantity that is so small compared to the total quantity traded in the market that their individual transactions have no influence on the prices". The above money supply issue is one example of this. Ironically, this model predates modern game theory.
Video game worlds often stay stagnant regardless of what the player does, to make things easier to program. Libertarians approach the market the same way. For instance, when discussing the minimum wage, they frequently says "If all other things are equal, I can higher more people if wages are lower." Of course, the purpose of the minimum wage is to change those other things: Morale, turnover, consumer spending, etc.

No Externalities
Similar to the previous section. Despite using phrases like "the law of unintended consequences," libertarians really have no understanding of how their transactions can have unintended consequences, such as climate change.

Transactions are automatic
Libertarians seem to have no concept of logistics. For instance, when you ask them "Who will build the road?", they assume you're asking, "Who will have the science of road making?", rather than "How do we deal with funding for this road and resolve the conflicting property claims that the road will intersect with?"
Libertarians assume that if you need a product, then you can buy that product instantly. For instance, a recent argument is that the free market would solve for the current pandemic by allowing people to purchase as many tests as they need. The problem is that current production is bottle-necked by manufacturing capacity and the supply of raw materials. The main bottleneck right now is the lack of chemical reagents. They're easy to produce, but demand is usually low, and you cannot scale it up overnight. South Korea was able to perform lots of tests because the government paid for a massive stockpile in advance for this specific scenario, but a private company has no incentive to invest in a stockpile for an emergency that might never happen. But libertarians seem to think that the free market works like a video game, where if you want 9,999 instances of an item, then you simply click a button, and those items instantly appear.
Likewise, libertarians assume that if you have a product, then you can sell that product instantly. Which is why they don't understand the great depression. They assume that if you have 9,999 instances of an object, then you should simply be able to sell that product instantly, without having to worry about things like the cost of shipping and handling (Everything is presumably carried in a giant bag of holding).

Goods are inherently secure
In early video games, you usually don't have to worry about items expiring or wearing down, or about being robbed, because the program doesn't allow for those things to happen. Libertarians believe that if you own something, then that thing should maintain that value for all of time. Hence, their belief in the gold standard. They also don't acknowledge the idea that property isn't secure if there's no state to protect it and deter criminals.
One main example of this is the so-called "broken window fallacy," where libertarians insist that it's wrong to break things on purpose just so you can hire someone for repairs. Which no one actually advocates for. Whenever you insist that we need money to repair infrastructure, they will accuse you of breaking windows on purpose. They can't seem to fathom the idea of things breaking down on their own.

There's always someone hiring
Libertarians assume that unemployment only happens to lazy people. They can't grasp the idea that there might be more workers than jobs.

Product quality is absolute
If you're wondering if a game item is useful, you can so a search online for its exact stats to tell you exactly how good it is. These stats will stay the same from item to item. You don't have to worry about variations in product quality throughout the production run. You don't have to worry about subjective ratings.

The entire world revolves around you
Pretty self-explanatory. Libertarians tend to believe in "got mine, fuck you," where the entire economy should revolve around their needs and their needs alone. They can't grasp the needs of other people as valid. Hence, they assume that corporations will do everything in their power to win over the libertarian's favor, even if it means undercutting one another and reducing their profit margins.
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