the threat to economy of small country

So I was thinking. If you have a lot of money and a lot of time you can totally kill the economy of small countries like ourselves. Just buy all the offers of grain or iron and sell it at a higher price. In bigger countries this is something that is impossible to do but in Belgium an unfriendly nation can easily do this and so destroying our economy completely. I was wondering, does the government have some procedures in place for when this should happen. Open up a blackmarket circuit organised by the government or so?

I know this is a what if scenario but someone with a couple of 1000 BEF to spare could easily pull this of and even make money with it.

If grain prices are high, foreign citizens will notice it and take a licence in our country to sell their grain... And the price of grain will go down with competition, thanks to the invisible hand of the market ?

If you have a lot of money you will also buy this and taking the country hostage for a couple of days. In time indeed foreigners will come but an export licence costs 20 gold and you have to earn it back. I was just looking at the grain market and I myself could almost pull this off (not for a couple of days but buying all the grain offered). I think this is something that a PTO group could easily pull off and damage our economy seriously for a couple of days.

Many citizens have free licences to pick... And of course if a big pto group with a lot of money, i mean a lot, want to do this, there is nothing much we can do (theneka will say we can set up grain communes)... But it's the same case for everyone and every situation.

Okido. So let's just hope it never happens. Although I hope Luxemburg will be added one day so we can test whether this tactic as a battle strategy could work.

I see a lot of countries setting the import tax to 99% for almost everything.
I am far from a economic expert but could we do the same at least with things we are pretty self sufficient in as Grain, food, Iron. That would mean if somebody would do this they would have to pay a lot of taxes (more income for us). would this work? I have no clue if this would I am far from a expert but it's just a suggestion.

Nevermind I see we already have

Not if it's a treath from someone with belgian citizenship that's why the control on new citizenships is so important.

if someone buys all grain he will not be able to sell it

And btw, if someone buys it all, he has to stay online all day
There is a lot of grain created every day, so it's nearly impossible to buy it all up

Agreeing with Glenn - production now is very high now, so it will be very very difficult to buy everything. There are a lot of company owners who put their company on non-active, but if the prices will go up suddenly, they will reopen their companies again. And ofcourse there is always the possibility to open new companies - every citizen can own several, and it just costs 10 gold. You must be incredibly rich to empty the whole market and keep it empty for several days, and even then there is no guarantee that you won't just lose the money and end up with a huge stock (which you'll have to sell at a dumping price).

So theoretically someone could disturb the market, but only for a very short period of time and with significant financial loss.

why do you think hes going to make a loss if he sell it at the same price he doesnt make a loss

Then why would he buy the stuff in the first place?

Bert_en_Ernie wrote:So I was thinking. If you have a lot of money and a lot of time you can totally kill the economy of small countries like ourselves. Just buy all the offers of grain or iron and sell it at a higher price. In bigger countries this is something that is impossible to do but in Belgium an unfriendly nation can easily do this and so destroying our economy completely. I was wondering, does the government have some procedures in place for when this should happen. Open up a blackmarket circuit organised by the government or so?

I know this is a what if scenario but someone with a couple of 1000 BEF to spare could easily pull this of and even make money with it.

I have a HUGE stock of grain and food, so I can counter them ^^

Well, there is a lot of grain/iron production, but you have to be aware to the fact that, with equivalent skills, you need 5 Q1 raw to fullfil 1 person working in a Q5 company.

This last update has caused a major change in the distribution of the workers and I'm not sure that this has been absorbed yet. So it might lead to an underproduction of the raw materials.

Actually the same technique can be used by the government to stabilize the economy, I have tested it myself, by buying the extremely cheap offers of some people and reselling it at a higher, more reasonable price. If you have the time to wait, you will stabilize the economy and you can counter people who ruin our economy.
Might be an idea in the future maybe

And the country would earn something from it as well

Maybe you and the Netherlands could do a union, except they are the ones to disappear not you guys. You maybe make a deal with Germany?

Yeah, I've thought about that. But I see 2 major problems:

1: It is a risk that we take, if we miscalculate we might end with worthless stocks.
2: Think about the company owners, the few ones that are still regularly working. Rising the price of the raws will cause their profits to go down and so they'll be forced to rise their prices, that'll affect the consumers.

So it's just the same as if we were rising the VAT.

If you would start doing this you would have to do this for everything. Fixing a price for raws and other goods. Prices lower then the fixed price will be bought by the governement. Like this everyone knows for which prices goods will be sold.

But at the moment I think this is not an option because the economy is working quite well at the moment.

Economy isn't.

By the way, the only solution to do this efficiently for every material is also known as communism^^.

Yeah I know that it's called communism but when the economy is totally screwed you can start doing this. At the moment everything I put on the market is still selling and I'm making profit even with workers. That's why I said the economy is working. I'm not referring to the value of BEF or anything just that goods are being sold on the market.

I'm thinking that the admins bot is back.

I mean, all these BEF on the market? Just insane.

Yeah bot is back. He buys products of the market as well. Saw him buy from everyone on the market a certain percentage.

Bert_en_Ernie wrote:Yeah bot is back. He buys products of the market as well. Saw him buy from everyone on the market a certain percentage.

Also when they are selling for 9999.99BEF? That would be cool

lol, this would explain why the currency is screwed anyway^^.

And I just removed my Q5 tanks from the market to fight, damn

Actually a market like that is not called communism but a protected economy. Our government protects our honest companies also with the profit that might be made we could make sure the prices don't get to high.
So that our ebabies can buy products. The last one is off course only for finished products and not raws.