Ownership

Kinrany · 2018-07-04 23:30:18

Shower thought: ownership makes sense even when everyone is 100% altruistic.

(Edit: that is, even in an ideal communist society.)

Wikipedia wrote:

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate or intellectual property.

Ownership makes it possible to divide responsibilities. In practice owning an item means that you're also responsible for managing it.

Suppose you have an axe. Naturally, people will expect you to use it whenever the village runs out of lumber. But you will also have to make sure it won't get lost (or stolen), you will have to replace it with a new one when it breaks, and you will be the one to decide which job gets done first.

(Selfishness doesn't change much: you get paid for using the axe, and you sell it once you don't want to own it. Monetary value merely represents the amount of stuff you are allowed to own at the same time.)

The alternative is to manage every item collectively. Ownership reduces cognitive load: you only need to know that the axe belongs to Tim the Lumberjack. Otherwise you'd have to discuss every issue that involves the axe with everyone else.

Ownership is not restricted to physical objects. Ultimately it's about having exclusive rights to make decisions and being responsible for the outcomes. None of the physical objects stored in the library belong to Tom the Librarian, but he owns the information about the books.

Perhaps the game could somehow make it easier for people to communicate that someone owns something?

Last edited by Kinrany (2018-07-05 13:09:13)

zennyrpg · 2018-07-04 23:43:05

I think this would be valuable. I feel like I usually look around for something to do (spoilers, its always compost, there is never enough dirt) then I have to do all the jobs leading up to that job. It would be cool if someone "owned" the sheep pen as in feed and sheared sheep. Maybe made clothes. Then if I was the compost person I could just collect the dung that's already there. The baker could just collect the mutton.

How could we make it easier to say "my bakery" "my house" "my job"? I'm imaging some sort of sign, but it needs to decay. Tim the Lumberjack could have gotten boar-gored on his last trip, so we need to know that the axe and the responsibilities should pass to someone else. I really don't know if it would be possible to do that in this game. Maybe you could etch your name on certain objects and then the mouse-over would say "Tim's axe"? And if Tim hadn't touched the axe in 10 minutes the etching would go away?

I really don't know the solution... but I think its worth thinking about.

jasonrohrer · 2018-07-05 00:09:18

I was hoping for this to develop naturally in the game. However, there are a bunch of things standing in the way (limited time, limited communication, etc.)

Thus, I have thought about a hard-coded property rights system, and an inheritance system. Like you literally can't touch Tim's ax unless he somehow lends it to you.

But I imagine that this would be fiddly as hell, and probably just as hard to manage given the limitations of the game. We need wood, and there sits an ax, but the owner is still alive and not around, so we're stuck. When he comes back, we have to tell him that we need it, and he has to fiddle to release it to us.

I did give you locks, doors, and walls for this reason.

But it's extra hard when these security systems are trans-generational projects themselves.

Seems like you're suggesting something looser... like maybe automatic labels that aren't enforced? But what would that do, really?

zennyrpg · 2018-07-05 00:24:50

jasonrohrer wrote:

I did give you locks, doors, and walls for this reason.

As it is, people just run around asking who has the key. But chances are the person who has the key died two generations ago and hid it behind a tree for their next life

Having higher tech will probably help with this. I can imagine a society where everyone has a backpack so keys can pass more naturally between gens, but it still doesn't solve the communication problem. If the bakery is empty I have no idea if the baker is getting supplies or if they are 3 gens dead and I should start baking.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Seems like you're suggesting something looser... like maybe automatic labels that aren't enforced? But what would that do, really?

I wouldn't want it to be automatic. Tim should have to claim his axe.

What this would do solve is the communication problem (assuming it decayed so it becomes unclaimed). Oh X claimed the hoe, so someone is farming. Oh no one has claimed the forge, I should forge.

That's the idea anyway. It would only work if people used/ respected it to some degree. I'm not sure if it would really work.

MegaLlama · 2018-07-05 00:36:29

I would say that, if implemented, it should be purely aesthetic, not functional. Sure, it's Tim's axe, but we could just borrow (or steal) it for a few minutes.

Kinrany · 2018-07-05 01:11:37

jasonrohrer wrote:

Seems like you're suggesting something looser... like maybe automatic labels that aren't enforced? But what would that do, really?

For example, Tim might want to leave the axe in the forest, since he's the only one who needs to know the location, and the base is always cramped. Normally the first person with a spare slot in their cart would bring the axe back to base and just leave it somewhere, and Tim would waste a lot of time looking for it. Claiming the axe would show that it was not simply abandoned, though other people could still choose to ignore the claim.

There are at least two kinds of information you'd want to know: "is anyone using this item?" and "is anyone doing this job?".

The first one can be answered with a tooltip. "Last used X seconds ago by Tim Treefeller", or "claimed X seconds ago by Tim Treefeller (dead)".

Not sure what to do about the second one. Claiming stationary objects works for some jobs. For others there could be a billboard with a list of all the claimed objects.

Neo · 2018-07-05 02:13:07

Labels would work of people actually cared, Truth is we'd just take what we want regardless.

Our society is full communist so everything you make belongs to town. The closest to owning something you get as clothing but ultimately your just borrowing it, when you die the rest of the town can grab whatever they.

Forced ownership would be a new way to grief. What if I claimed all the tools and everything else I could as my own just no one else could use it. Think about what happened with locks and keys, they mostly got used for griefing.

Last edited by Neo (2018-07-05 02:30:53)

YAHG · 2018-07-05 03:55:59

Neo wrote:

Our society is full communist so everything you make belongs to town. The closest to owning something you get as clothing but ultimately your just borrowing it, when you die the rest of the town can grab whatever they.

It is just true, even if we don't want it to be.

TrustyWay · 2018-07-05 09:51:36

YAHG wrote:

Neo wrote:
Our society is full communist so everything you make belongs to town. The closest to owning something you get as clothing but ultimately your just borrowing it, when you die the rest of the town can grab whatever they.
It is just true, even if we don't want it to be.

True that.

I am trying to come up with an idea but the time is really too short for being the owner of something except if you put in your backpack. And communication is limited, even if they can write a lot they are used to use only one or two words.

If life was easier, we wouldn't need to use towns ressources at the communist stage we always are on.

It isn't a civilisation game, it became a survival and there are no really owners in survivals. Look at rust. You are only the owner of something if you are strong enough(like now in OHOL, not by claiming ) or you gdt shoot (or stab)

Last edited by TrustyWay (2018-07-05 09:56:39)

Kinrany · 2018-07-05 10:14:50

I specifically pointed out in the post why even a fully communist society would want ownership -_-

tana · 2018-07-05 12:27:17

an alternative would be the implementation of some kind of a worker's strap. It would replace the backpack and would be used to carry a big tool like an axe, a shovel or a hoe on you back, that way some communication will have to be made if someone else needs it.

subria · 2018-07-05 13:40:29

The most important is land ownership. If we own land, you can put item in your land. But how?

Acozi · 2018-07-05 13:59:11

jasonrohrer wrote:

I was hoping for this to develop naturally in the game. However, there are a bunch of things standing in the way (limited time, limited communication, etc.)
Thus, I have thought about a hard-coded property rights system, and an inheritance system. Like you literally can't touch Tim's ax unless he somehow lends it to you.
But I imagine that this would be fiddly as hell, and probably just as hard to manage given the limitations of the game. We need wood, and there sits an ax, but the owner is still alive and not around, so we're stuck. When he comes back, we have to tell him that we need it, and he has to fiddle to release it to us.
I did give you locks, doors, and walls for this reason.
But it's extra hard when these security systems are trans-generational projects themselves.

Seems like you're suggesting something looser... like maybe automatic labels that aren't enforced? But what would that do, really?

What if you can only have ownership of one item at a time, or one a lifetime? Murders would go up, haha

jasonrohrer · 2018-07-05 15:24:25

For the time being, I think I'll be focusing on improving the lock and wall tech to make them more practical to use and pass on to heirs.

Kinrany · 2018-07-05 15:33:41

Locks, walls and inheritance solve a different problem. They help with security, and this post is about communicating responsibilities.

Not arguing that you should change priorities, just pointing out that these two issues are mostly unrelated.

Luniatji · 2018-07-05 15:37:29

Maybe we could do something with locks, but then with 'adding' and 'deleting' someone? So say that person A makes a door and locks it, she is the only one to open/close it.. until she 'adds' something who can open it also. That way we don't need keys anymore, it's just your chest/door/whatever?

Then maybe there could be that the locked thing unlocked after the last added person died; so everybody can access it, until someone locks it again and adds there own people to open it.

jasonrohrer · 2018-07-05 16:05:30

You can duplicate keys if you have the original. Just like real life. Make more than one, keep one locked inside until you need to give it to someone you trust.

Kinrany, we "communicate responsibility" in real life---via ownership---with nothing more than locks, walls, and keys. There aren't magic labels on things that declare ownership. Something is owned if it is locked down.

If you find a hammer on the sidewalk, and it's there for days, it is not owned, and taking it is not theft. You are claiming an abandoned hammer. But if the hammer is locked to a bench with a chain, even on that same sidewalk, cutting the chain and taking it is theft. Unless you document that the hammer has been left there, locked, for a sufficient time that it is reasonably abandoned anyway.

Point is this:

Lumberjack keeps a tool shed with all lumber tools and carts in there, plus loads of lumber that has been cut and processed. You go there and ask/trade with him for lumber when you need it.

Baker keeps a locked bakery.

Farmer puts walls around the field with a locked gate. Stores harvested food in another locked building.

Responsibility is a de facto thing based on the realities of dealing with locked spaces, and the impracticality of cutting open locks every time you want to do something.

This is all possible in theory, but in practice, it is too hard to pull off (or maybe not... maybe people just haven't tried it, or haven't made it a priority). I mean, if some people claim they get through the whole tech tree from scratch in 1.5 hours (to build a monolith back in the apocalypse days), it doesn't seem so hard to build a locked door and keep track of the key.

The interesting thing to me about this game is the mystery of how we got to where we are in real life, from scratch. We have all this infrastructure at our disposal today, built on the back of so much collaboration. It's so easy to lock a door now---we don't even think about it. But every lock involved the ad hoc collaboration of 1000s of people. Every building was built by many people, but we've also figured out which of those people is going to be allowed to lock that building and keep the key (usually someone who had no hand at all in building it, but paid for it to be built).

When you go back to a from-scratch situation, it's impossible to do anything substantial by yourself. You can't raise a barn by yourself. But then you immediately want to claim ownership of the barn as an individual? Your collaborators are rightly going to say, "Whoa, cowboy!"

And a lock is a similar thing. Not that hard to make in one lifetime, if a few people work together. But who is going to help you make a lock? What, so you can lock us all out?

I tried to get people to help me make a lock in the game, but no one was down to help. For a good reason.

So there's a gap between where we are (collective work, and collective ownership) and where we want "civilization" to be (individual ownership), and it's not clear how to bridge that gap. It's also not clear how it was ever bridged in real life, historically. Or if we were doing it again in real life (like, on an island), how it would be bridged again.

But it also might be the case that I've made construction a bit too hard. Maybe there needs to be more room in an individual life for small-scale construction without collaboration, to bootstrap individual ownership. Though I do like forcing you to grapple with this stuff. I think it's way more interesting than yet another solo building game.

Anshin · 2018-07-05 16:16:14

Money.
A system of currency to pay and be paid for work would do wonders towards the concept of ownership.

Potjeh · 2018-07-05 16:20:49

The problem with locking a bakery is that you'd need to build a hall like 20x20 tiles big. Less with baskets, but baskets are virtually nonexistent beyond like 15 generations.

Neo · 2018-07-05 16:32:31

Ownership still seems rather in practical to me, call me a dirty communist if you want.

What would the benefit of a locked bakery be?. You could try and trade your pies but you'll die and lose it all anyway. I doubt people would even be willing to trade for the pies anyway, why not just kill or threaten the baker for pies. Now the whole town benefits from the pies.

Last edited by Neo (2018-07-05 16:44:28)

YAHG · 2018-07-05 16:35:42

We don't have enough surplus time to defend property anyways. Property isn't a natural state,
territory and resources need to be defended to be possessed/owned.

Much of our current system is a form of grand truce that people for the most part honor because
it benefits them.

TrustyWay · 2018-07-05 16:50:34

Name on object, why not but restrictions on object seems to me stupid, as jason said, lock them up. It was frustrating to me when I didn't know how to lock things, I just hidded my things behind trees. Now with a key in my back pack I have a personal chest or room in the middle of the village. This is very tedious but that is way to do.

Last edited by TrustyWay (2018-07-05 16:51:21)

pein · 2018-07-05 17:36:33

Made, modified could be on things. Would know who farming who smithing, and I made half their shit so step back from it.

Kinrany · 2018-07-05 19:41:42

jasonrohrer wrote:

Kinrany, we "communicate responsibility" in real life---via ownership---with nothing more than locks, walls, and keys. There aren't magic labels on things that declare ownership. Something is owned if it is locked down.

I'm not sure I understand. People quite literally label their stuff IRL (with a name and a phone number) when there's a chance it will get lost.
There's also verbal communication and social conventions. You can stay close and shout "ITS MINE" if you leave your stuff on a table and someone grabs it. And everyone knows that the stuff in the shop belongs to the shop owner.
Restricting access physically has a cost, so of course there are situations where that cost is higher than the alternatives. (And sometimes it's cheaper to not own the thing in the first place.)

Ownership is itself a social convention. You don't need the idea of ownership to use locks and keys to protect your stuff. If Trace the Larcener can't get your stuff, it doesn't matter that they understand that it's yours.

And another thing: in all but the most simple cases we don't really own objects. (Objects don't really exist anyway.) We own decisions. The queen doesn't really own the country, she's merely allowed to give orders to her ministers.

Anshin · 2018-07-05 20:04:42

YAHG wrote:

We don't have enough surplus time to defend property anyways. Property isn't a natural state,
territory and resources need to be defended to be possessed/owned.
Much of our current system is a form of grand truce that people for the most part honor because
it benefits them.

This is very true.
EDIT: I think for the tech tree to advance the waiting time in production needs to be greatly reduced or eliminated completely.

Last edited by Anshin (2018-07-05 20:06:21)

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#1 2018-07-04 23:30:18

Ownership

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Re: Ownership

#3 2018-07-05 00:09:18

Re: Ownership

#4 2018-07-05 00:24:50

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