Americanization of Fallout by Bethesda

[Gizmojunk]

Why would anything have to be issued or manufactured? Any metropolis has pre-war bus tokens, arcade tokens, all kinds of coins in storage. Krugerrands are (essentially) solid gold. They would exist in currency exchanges, coin shops, and safety deposits.

Cities also have bottling companies; far too many bottle caps.

Do you understand the difference between real money and prewar artifacts?

Doesn't matter at all. If the region had a button factory with a container of 50,000 ornate glass buttons, the population could adopt them as a means of trade, and use them. They don't need to be backed; no one backed sand-dollars, they are just sufficiently rare.

 

[laclongquan]

Money are backed. horribly in some case, perhaps, but it is backed, or it's waste paper. Even USD with the last decade's free-money strategy, is still backed, if nothing else, by the accumulated wealth of USA . You bring a truckload of USD to America and you can trade for something and bring it back home. Mideast money are backed by oil, like, if you bring a truckload of Ryal to Arab Saudi you can bring some oil back home.

In Fallout 1, bottlecaps in Cali are backed by towns in and around NCR. If nothing else, it's backed by water merchants. Bring a bag of 2000 caps to a Hub water caravan company in Fallout 1 time and you can commission them to run a water caravan to your town/vault the distance of 1/3 of total map size.

In Fallout 2, NCR money are backed by NCR towns and surroundings. You can bring money to vault city for autodoc treatment, or buy weapons and ammo from NCR merchants in Shady Sands' bazaar.

In FNV, NCR money are backed, partly in case of some merchant who accept it at part value, and 100% by NCR merchants (like grubngulp, and 188tradepost). Bottlecaps are backed by Vegas faction as well as NCR.

But in Fallout3, no one print money and back it. They just use bottlecaps, which are backed by megaton/tenpenny tower/Underworld/Rivet City etc... merchants. The devs can use other type of prewar artifacts instead of caps, but why bother reinventing the wheel?

 

[Gizmojunk]

Money are backed. horribly in some case, perhaps, but it is backed, or it's waste paper.

Not in the situation of just a few hundreds of people. If the supply is reasonably finite the —money— so called, can be whatever they agree to accept. (The backing is that they know its trade value with others looking to trade goods.)

In the case of bottle caps, IIRC one cap == one litre from the water merchants; that's backed. However nobody backs gold, or gemstones. People will trade for those same as coins and green slips of paper if it feeds & clothes them. What you are describing is large scale (City, State, and Federal) commerce, not a thousand vagrants at a swap meet. They could adopt cotton candy as money if sugar was scarce.

A person would sell a pair of boots for cotton candy if they knew that they could trade it for bullets to load their gun; or to buy a gun with it. Yes it's commodity, not the technical definition of money, but on the small scale it has no meaningful difference. Franklin dollars disappeared once the value of silver eclipsed the value of spending the coin as a dollar. Bus tokens would work as regional money for a remnant population in a burnt out city. Mainly because they are scarcer than quarters, or other US currency. You don't find them in gumball machines and novelty rides.

Bitcoin works because there are a finite number of them; just 21 million.

By The Way... Bottlecaps in Fallout were not money, they were intended to balance uneven trades; they could have been peppermints. A machete traded for a flare, fruits, and a few caps to make it equal. Hauling caps around was like hauling a sack of half-cents.

Spoiler

There is no point when you can carry the same value in booze & tech; carry Deagles and grenades—equally trade-worthy items worth hundreds of caps each.

It is ironic that they choose to use sharpened metal to pad their deals.

 

[laclongquan]

I will remind you of American history, when they can use Spaniard piece of eight, French coins, Federal money, as well as some local company scripts... back in last centuries when they gobbled up Spanish territories and Indian lands.
Spanish dollar worked back then because people can go to Spanish territories to trade for stuffs with them. Also, its silver and gold content.
Think of bottlecaps: Outside of merchants in Cali ready to trade them for stuffs, bottlecaps do have its own quality, both as a prewar artifact, and a thing to cap back the nuka cola bottles, considering they had drunk THAT for centuries without running out.
Think of Prewar Money item: since they are not backed by merchants, and not used in anything valueable, a stack of Prewar Money worth 10 caps, horribly low value and should be ideal to show the value of a prewar artifact.