Why are bottlecaps REALLY used as money? - Rethinking Fallout 4
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- čas přidán 17. 03. 2016
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• Money & Debt: Crash Co... - Hry
ShoddyCast: "rare, but not too rare"
Courier Six: *has 34652986 bottlecaps on him at all times*
Literally get free caps every day from pre war science brain vases...
Simon “caps are rare, but not too rare”
The courier after dead money: yeah, sure they are.
@@nevetsnotlrac7624 lol they feel rare, tough selling those bars for their value
I got 92938848447575756656565747474838838 9mm and divide that by 30 and you get all the leather armour he got from it
@@firstnamelastname7124 Chet?
"Drugs never changes." - Fallout 5
"Lady Liberty taught me one thing, Winners, don't use drugs"
Chris Sanderson 😂😂😂😂😂
dat Quote XDXD
Are you suffering from a psycho withdrawal?
Who's not
Dammit, my lifelong dream of creating a society where helium is the only form of currency will never come to pass
One word: Fullerenes.
The inflation of the economy would become extremely unstable...im funny
the inflation will atack your system...
Yes, i know that its a bad joke
But is the most commong thing on the universe, you would need dammn big ammounts of it to worth something if used as currency
I have a solution for you: Guts. You use animal intestines as a representative medium to represent one gut filled with helium worth of helium. Fun fact from history: Sausages were outlawed in germany in WWI becouse the guts were needed for the building of long range bombers (hydrogen zeppelins) instead of sausages.
>Drinks wine
>Nuka bottle cap added
DOSsector um that doesnt happen
DOSsector wine has a cork not a bottle cap
That Dam Wizard Modern Wine bottles have bottlecaps
P0T4T03 SN1P3R Most wine bottles have turn-caps
Nuka-Wine
Who needs caps when you have settlements?
How many caps does it cost for the general to defend a settlement you marked on your map? Also why do all settlements have only 1 house and 0-5 people?
hilarious
+Preston Garvey Can you Please stop calling me when im with my Squad, The other knights keep teasing me saying that i should start changing my own fusion core. btw mama murphy got eaten by a death claw, i laughed
+Preston Garvey another settlement needs your help preston! here, ill mark it on your map.
Because you can't haul a settlement in your pocket can you?
I invested in a charge card, currency of the future.
Have fun with that scam
he ate a crit from my maxed out combat shotgun to the face
+Payton Pocha Not a scam anymore.
+Ben H you can't buy anything with a charge card
Payton Pocha Don't you know in Far Harbor you can use charge cards?
Jet Road.... it sounds an awesome game! Fallout: Jet Road
ooooh yeah!!!!
Give me snow or give me death.
Gustavo Cataroço although it would be a bit too large for any console or have to be on a not worth it PC
You start in vault 420
I think it would be a good DLC...
So a similar map layout to New Vegas. . .Just stay on the road and you'll do all the main quests.
...silver doesn't corrode. Sterling silver does, because it's technically the copper added to make it "Sterling silver" that corrodes. Silver actually shows up as a form of currency nearly as much as gold in history.
More so. Same with copper. Gold was rarely in the hands of common people.
Silver is very anti corrosive, almost as much as gold. Bottlecaps are made of cheap metals, which are very corrosive and can rust away in a matter of years or even months.
The thing is, in Roman Empire(and Republic) silver was the main currency. Same as in China. Two biggest ancient empires had the same metal currency, which made the trade easier between them.
Pure silver is corrosion resistant, but it still oxidizes (tarnish) more easily than gold.
@@vladyslavtsepesh9525 another bug silver group was the Vikings who are known to have used Arabic silver coins, some shiny shells, and other stolen or freely collected objects as currency
This guy reminds me of the radio host guy from Fo4
No
+Mega yes
mod replacer pls
+luckyman212 ... really?
+luckyman212 But is it the awkward Travis or the confident Travis?
Creates signal interceptor that can TELEPORT YOU, constantly modifies various weapons and power armor - cant forge bottle caps...
Looks like painted and enameled aluminum composite...I don't think they know how to strip mine to refine aluminium,chromium,and distrill oil to polygonal chloride plastic then blend it to bottle cap blank sheets before using petro paint and Petro enamel to make bottlecap(its multimillion dollar machinery)
@@FrarmerFrank But somehow your character can modify highly advanced plasma weaponry to be even more technologically advanced with some screws, duct tape, scavenged aluminum and steel.
Daedalus 000 yeah, we do that kind of shit with modern day electronics though. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Yeah, you’re making shit, but one is an intricate process to replicate something and the other is improving shit using available resources.
@@daedalus6433 Hi
@@dareng1459 Nah it's the same thing. What do you do when your wakefield proton accelerator needs a partially insulated shaped reflector? Make a press or hammer it out by hand, melt some poly, dip it. Same as a bottle cap, you just need to be a little more artsy for the logo
48 caps for a stimpak?! I've been paying like 150!
Where can i find this merchant?
Also if you want your caps back just pick the guy's pocket. (Doesn't work in the games)
1=5=0%?
Shit I get em for like 36 caps
cassie c stimpaks are 15 caps a pop with max barter
Fallout 3 stimpaks are cheaper
The technology of creating bottle caps is not lost. In a quest in New Vegas you are tasked to destroy a (money)"printing" machine.
Maybe the knowledge of making these machines is lost, but surely they are still out there
Also: From "in Gold we trust" to "In God we trust" (Pff, yeah right) to "IN CAPS WE TRUST"
TheLastVoodooMan Almost all the machines are in that caravans company's hands
Also in fallout 4 in nuka world you run into gunners attempting to take over the nuka-cola factory because they have an idea about "printing" their own bottle caps.
This post is 100% correct, blows the theory.
Well there are still fake caps. There is a fake gold and platinum aswell that can be recognised when you compare it with actual one.
"The lore of bottlecaps"
I was unaware bottle-caps possessed lore.
Lore- the meaning and or backstory/explanation of an object or storyline.
Redstone Creeper ...Uh. Thanks...
Mr. Tickles how about animal jam? I was told that thing has lore...
Like seriously?
Shoddy: "bottle caps are used because......"
Bethesda: "it's like a coin lol"
+Elias Perez :))))
fun facts: silver was more valuable than gold in scandinavia during viking age before christianisation.
platinum can be forged like steel, just without those hightemperature oxidation particles flying around after every hammerstrike.
Ok
Yeah, but it is more labor intensive to forge platinum than smelt gold. Economies of scale, and all that. I do agree the silver thing was wrong, though.
@@Alex-wi1mx ok
Same in Rome and China. So gold became the most valuable only in Middleages.
>Gold is incredibly rare, same as Bottlecaps|
>Has 30k Caps mid-game
okay
>Can also find ~40 solid gold bars in a single casino in New Vegas
and you can find 3 gold bars in sanctuary hills at the beginning of the game
@@PugnaciousProductions yup by going in to the basment of the house you can also get some by doing the grasshoper quest
the 2 flaws i seem to notice with bottle cap currency:
1. its irregular shape makes it hard to stack/store
2. if raiders, a relatively unintelligent people, have the skill to repair power armor, turrets, complex laser tripwires, terminals, etc. repairing a bottling plant would be plausible which, if done; it would destroy economy via inflation.
Correct Opinion Guy Wouldnt it be deflation? The more of something, the less vauable it becomes, no?
Exactly, which is why prices INFLATE to match the high quantity. English makes no sense some times, which is why those two are switched around. I mean...it kind of makes sense, because inflation is talking about the inflation of prices, not currency.
Your New Robot Overlord Ahhh yeah I get it now, I was thinking solely of overproduction of currency, nothing else. Thanks for the lesson!
Correct Opinion Guy well raiders had already done that in FNV, one of the quests was to destroy a bottling plant that had been reactivated by raiders that were essentially printing new money
Well Raiders do not have any interest in itself with money. Why do they give a shit about caos when they never buy anything anyway. They have interest in goods they steal and can then use. So they'd have no real interest in restoring a bottling plant, rather just raiding a settlement to steal whatever it was they want.
The Institute could forge bottle caps....
D:
They're too busy shitting on the Commonwealth.
If shitting on the commonwealth includes trying to regain trust, then idk what, if anything the BoS are the dicks, fucking blowing things up, I've seen dead settlers everywhere, heck the fucking BoS felt the need to follow a super mutant raid over to my settlement which left 20+ of my settlers dead.
the institute should of made a half a million caps and overload the economy
I don't think that would overload the economy.
Guy on dev team: ''seeing as its a nuclear waste land, what if the people used bottle caps as money?
Rest of team: ''hey pretty cool idea bro''
You can bottle clean water in empty bottles using bottle caps, that makes them very valuble in a land where clean water is so hard to come by.
in new vegas there was like a bottle cap counterfeiting shack
There was also a Quest for Crimson Caravan where you have to discover how someone is making new bottle caps, and in large quantities as they have discovered a Bottle Cap Press.
Alice McCafferty even says that people have been counterfeiting caps for forever, but never to this level
Tell me where you gettin stimpacks for 48 caps. I need 150 for each.
Do you invest in the Cap Collector perk, if you are playing/talking about Fallout 4? It should help, otherwise where the hell are you buying your stimpax at?
Derpy Claus Used to be diamond city (Me and strong killed everybody with supersledge lol), used ti be prydwen (joined institute, so it got shot down)
You can have some of my 1015 stimpacks
WizBiz | Clash Of Clans ikR
Put on a fedora and a suit, brah
Bottle caps don't inflate... until someone finds a nuka cola bottling plant with a functioning bottle cap pressing machine
if they still exist
In FONV, a group of Raiders found a functioning cap press. And you have to destroy it for the Crimson Caravan. I'm pretty sure FONV is canon.
You can't use those fake bottlecaps though, you can't sell them or spend them.
People can tell they are fake.
Tevo77777 but they aren't fake? They'd be legitimately made bottle caps
They are listed as counterfeit and no one will take them, not even the people on drugs.
Austin: "Gold standard was mercifully abandoned for the betterment of everybody"
Me: "fight me"
The reason we can't go back on the gold standard is that there's not enough gold. The amount of gold that has been mined plus the amount remaining underground on Earth is estimated to be 244,000 metric tons. That sounds like a lot but divide that by 8 billion people and if all the world's gold was distributed evenly, you'd only have 0.98 troy ounces or 3.05 grams per person. Unlike fiat currency gold is a zero sum game because it is a finite resource. For one person to have more another person needs to have less. Another way to look at it is that the world economy is worth $100 trillion. If we went back on the gold standard, each US dollar would be worth only 0.00000000244 cents. There's absolutely no way to handle that kind of rapid inflation. Millions or billions would be facing starvation, there'd be mass chaos, and heads would roll. Look at what happened to the Weimar Republic when they had inflation that wasn't nearly as bad.
@@fingerboxes the scarcity argument is a good point. However, I don’t think it would make it impossible. The first point is that gold backed currency is based on the price of gold. So gold could be scarce, but if efficiency is high (which it is) and we have dollars tied to the market price of gold or even a set price of gold exchange, which is what the case was before we went off the gold standard (the gold standard doesn’t generally mean a 1:1 unit of currency to unit of gold), it’s basically creating a market-based singular exchange rate. Because the exchange rate is based on physical goods, it harder to make it widely fluctuate like fiat currency exchange rates because there’s a singular foundation that everyone has to tie back to in reality (as opposed to fiat, which can be hyper inflated easily, since there’s literally nothing but the belief in the currency’s ability to keep paying back on bonds in the future without too much inflation). Even with fiat, the US dollar has effectively replaced gold as the central foundation of the market. It seems as though we may be in the change to oil as the next international monetary anchor. However oil is terrible as an anchor since we use it a lot, it’s more dangerous to transport, harder to divide and count, and it’s heavily concentrated in a few countries, whereas gold is more dispersed and doesn’t have those other issues. The American dollar is based on the US’s economy remaining growth-based and stable and the US military remaining preeminent around the world (both have been true for almost a century, but concerning signs have started to pop up in recent times).
The other issue is that if we went to a complete gold standard now, then obviously the economic fluctuation would be terrible. However if the fiat system were to start to bend it would take the cost of conversion down. And honestly, if we were to have a gold based currency, we may actually see the prices of things drop to stay in line with the efficiency of production relative to the amount of gold. I know that the ruling thought of the day is the deflation is terrible, but in reality deflation is good for savings, and if you look at the worlds debt to income ratio, maybe saving wouldn’t be a bad move for awhile? I do acknowledge that producers would struggle in a deflationary period, but inflationary periods hurt the poor, the elderly, investors, and savers. So I guess you have to take your pick 🤷♂️
@@Uncannysius2023 I have no idea what resource would be a good fit to replace gold as the standard, and no one else seems to have a great idea either which is probably why we've moved to fiat currency. I have a feeling that if any country did try to go back on the gold standard, instead of using the currency like the country's government would want people would just be forced to use a barter economy or a different currency like the US dollar.
I agree with the point about how the US dollar is not currently a very safe replacement for a backed currency. I have asked many Americans how many more elections as fractious as the last few the country could survive without states starting to secede or a fully successful insurrection happening and not a single person has given me a number higher than five. This doesn't bode well. American politics are on a knife's edge and I don't see any way to stop the chaos because there doesn't seem to be anyone the country can unite behind. The last time the country seemed fully united was in the days after 9/11 but now I'm not sure even something of that magnitude could unite the country because of the terrible decisions Bush made after that tragedy.
An oil based currency would be a humanitarian nightmare because it would embolden Saudi Arabia. They're already horrible on the human rights index but like China, the US depends on them so they can't be held accountable for their behavior by anyone. Switching to an oil based currency would only make that worse. An oil based currency would also be threatened by the electric vehicle industry. As more people buy electric cars the demand for oil is decreasing. In fact the purchase of electric cars after switching to an oil based currency would probably spike because not only are electric cars cheaper in the long run and better for the planet, they'd be sending a message to Saudi Arabia that we don't need to support them to survive.
Ultimately I do think switching to a scarcity based currency would make the rich richer and the poor poorer because top 1% of people who already have the majority of the wealth would be able to use their wealth to horde the scarce resource making them richer and decreasing the stability of the economy while making it impossible for the poor to earn any of the horded currency.
@@fingerboxes I’m not talking about arbitrarily making a scarcity based resource. Silver, copper, tin, and gold have served as money historically because they serve all three purposes of money well (can store wealth for long periods without degrading, can be easily exchanged by the common person and large organizations, and holds some value in itself aka it’s naturally desired by large groups of people). That’s why throughout history metal based currencies are the rule, with some exceptions found due to fiat outside of the past century.
I’m also not saying that we SHOULD have oil backed currency. I’m saying that we already are shifting towards that. Look into the system of petro dollars and foreign currency exchange rates.
I’m all for exploring and using alternatives to oil. However if you look at the amount of energy that is needed currently and will be in the future, and how much alternatives like solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc produce, you’ll come to realize that oil/methane/coal aren’t going anywhere, and as developing countries continue to develop and utilize more energy per capita, the more you’ll see fossil fuels become even more in demand and fuel (pun intended) monetary policy on the international market. Also electric cars mean nothing until most electricity doesn’t come from hydrocarbon based fuel. Electricity isn’t a fuel, it’s a state of energy created by utilizing fuel.
All currency must be based on something . The current global system is based on the dollar (and oil price), and the dollar is based on the trade system and American economic stability. If the world becomes centered on the yuan (China) then everyone will be based on their stability and military/trade projection. Fiat currencies don’t exist unless there’s a stable big empire to back it up, which is why periods of decentralization go back to being based on material currency (food/agricultural products, metals, energy/coal/oil, etc).
Didn't Fallout New Vegas mention that the NCR could press bottlecaps? Also the Nuka Cola plant still had a working Capspress. Not sure what the objective was there, i think either salvage the tech for someone to produce more caps, or destroy it to maintain the value.
Also, a juryrigged (spelling?) machine was found in FNV. There are "Counterfit caps" around it that are useless.
Sidenote: Both NCR and Legion had their own currency in form of coins. there was a whole caps-coins exchange rate too.
Counterfeit*
1. The objective was to destroy it to maintain the bottlecap's value. And even though the caps were easy to fake there (Contrary to what the video said) the issue with fake bottle caps was that they too new. The metal was too flat and shiny and flawless that they were obviously fake. It was too easy to identify them. So they're not so easy to fake and also get away with it.
2. You did spell jury rigged right (But I think it's 2 words, not sure though)
And 3. Yes, the NCR and Legion did have their own currency but no one would accept it as currency. The Legion were too secluded, yet infamous, from the rest of the wasteland. They were too far away to have the ability to quickly and easily put it into circulation outside of a small radius around them. And even if they had a more remote location, the only way they could get people to accept it as money is with an iron fist. And although the Legion never hesitated to use hostility and brutality to get what they want, their goals would never be from an economic standpoint. And if they killed, maimed, and crucified their way to become the main power of the wasteland, they don't need their own currency, they would probably do away with an economy altogether and just train everyone to fight their way to taking over possibly the whole country. If they've assimilated the whole wasteland to indoctrinate its residence under their rule, what need would they have for an economy?
But the NCR on the other hand. Their money was never backed by anything. The US dollar was backed by gold but then evolved to be a currency all on its own. Just like the bottlecap was backed by water and eventually did the same thing. But the NCR dollar wasn't backed by anything, so nobody took it seriously. Even some NCR soldiers quickly abandoned it in favor of a more accepted and relatable, and therefore more exchangeable, currency throughout the wasteland.
Japanese Brony um one correction there the NCR back their dollar with (ironically) gold and uranium that's why places like broken hill where around
+DCP Oh, I never knew that, I thought it was backed by nothing
Japanese Brony I read that the NCR money was backed by gold until the Brotherhood of Steel destroyed most of NCRs reserves during the war. NCR switched to backing their currency with water afterwards.
Well bottlecaps can be recreated in Fallout. In Fallout: New Vegas the Crimson Caravan wants you to destroy a bottlecap printing machine someone used to make new bottlecaps. But those bottlecaps could easily be identified as 'fake' because they were in perfect condition.
I guess if they’re smart enough they could put it through a wear and tear randomizer machine. Or they could beat em up themselves in a way that looks natural.
@@rebekahoberson1447 blender
Drugs...drugs are awesome
Drugs...drugs never change
+timbo slice XD
Your comment....your comment was perfect...
Drugs are bad, Mmmkay?
+SYNTHS!! Nope
Ammunition would make much more sense (Metro2033)
Yes but think about it in a game creator sort of way, "Hey why don't we make people use the ammunition that they find to buy stuff?" and a lot of players wouldn't be able to buy items because they use most of the ammunition that they find, Not to mention the different rarities and usefulness of all the different ammo types, End point?...
It would be a shit-show.
Too easy to make
DetailDevil From a game design perspective, Ammo suits Metro more than Fallout because Metro’s going for this horror and tense experience while Fallout is more open and RPG-y. Meaning caps and being able to make trades without caps but still measured in caps has the freedom that suits Fallout
*Fires a mini-gun for 12 seconds* Whoops there goes all my money.
@@MrZog33 Was all the money you fired equivalent to four hundred thousand American Dollars?
I want a fallout game in the midwest
isn't that Red Dead Redemption?
Jayden Nash New Vegas sorta kinda fits that
Nebbers no... just no
danthehappyman78 fuck off
There's Fallout Tactics which is about the BoS in the Chicago region, and they're called the Bos Midwest chapter.
Did someone say shekels?
OY VEY!
+Razor 8 hahaha Jew are funny guy
It was gas
Congratulations sir, you just earned ₪6,000,000.
(Don't worry - I reserved you a spot in Hell.)
a hero u fuckd up bro. its "an hero" not "a hero"
I don't believe abandoning the gold standard was a good thing. fiat money is an overall poor option for a corrupt world like ours.
I remember when I was a kid, me and my friends were exchanging unique bottle caps for small toys. Dad told me that it was an old practice and more common when he was young around 1960's. I guess it fits the nature of the time setting of the fallout series.
@ 3:45 you claim gold was the standard currency for thousands of years. It was not. That would be silver. Gold was almost always wildly impractical for mass use.
Draco B gold was for big transactions, silver/salt/grain for small day to day stuff.
Silver/Salt yes. Grain no, it was used for Large transactions. It will have something that will represent grain, or time of work in (Hours/Days/Years/Slaves) like coins, credits of some type that can be turned in for grain. @@ihateyankees3655
@@robrocksea Barter was the main method of exchange for most people throughout history, and grain has been a staple food for thousands of years, so it makes sense to assume that grain as a form of currency was fairly common. What you're describing later in your comment is essentially a grain standard. Just like bank notes under a gold standard, the commodity being represented is the real currency, the tokens are merely a claim to a certain amount of money.
In europ yes but in africa and Asia not as much
bottle caps are hard to fake? not true there was a mission you could do in new Vegas where you had to find and smash a cap press and theres also a counterfeit shack you could find and there was counterfeit caps you could pick up
petargrad hmmmm maybe
They are not even needed to be faked. There is an abundance of Nuka Cola...and when you drink that class of pure teeth eroding post apocalyptic beverage, you get CAPS.
There isn't enough cola to buy much just sitting around any more though. You'll get like two caps per machine if you're lucky and machines aren't really that prevalent. Even in stores and store rooms you'll find like six bottles. You'd have to look around a whole lot or be producing them to be able to buy anything that isn't vendor trash.
star killer12 the cap press made real caps. The crimson caravan wanted it destroyed because it could be used to flood the market.
It would be a damaged machine and new caps though, so a good eye would be able to see they were fake.
It wouldn't stop it getting into circulation though, which would cause it's own problems.
Charge cards are the future.
48 caps for a stimpack I’ve been getting scammed
*Barter 100*
"When the gold standard was mercifully abandoned for the betterment of everyone..."
Yeah, that's going _so great_ for California, isn't it? Rhetorical question, inflation sucks.
This was a better analysis of bottle caps than Game Theory's video
+BigBertha This Channel will generally be a better analysis than Game Theory. Game Theory is really good at not thinking and telling people what they want to hear and acting like its revolutionary. As long as he doesn't get really mad it tends to be slightly better.
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nice and also shodycast can u check out my CZcams channel and subscribe to me if u liked it.
+ShoddyCast I dont really understand why this had to be a "Rethink" video. I would think most fallout fans would have came to this conclusion, i did, like forever ago.
+ShoddyCast No, no, no, let me stop you right there at 9:38.
jet in fallout 4 had its lore fucked over by bethesdas laziness it is stated in fallout 4 to have been created before the war but thats just fallout 4 fucking everything up i wish obsidian did fallout 4 i really do wish, then i wouldent have too try and separate fallout 4 from the rest of the franchise in my mind with the new tomb raider games..
+ShoddyCast I got an Audible account and I have credits but I don't know what to get next
5:25 "gasses are well, gasses" shows alkalines.
Hydrogen is right above them.
>claims to be an economics nerd
>keynesian economics book on his desk
>not austrian
shig le dig
Obama's Stimulus package worked better than Europe's Austerity measures.
One gets to the Austrian School of Economics on a short bus.
@@ImperatorZor Ah yes, certainly inflating that bubble is safe. It won't pop and... Oh I don't know. Cause widespread disaster world wide.
Fallout 5 in Atlanta. Reason? Coca-Cola is based in the ATL, and there can be some interesting storylines around the city creating an economic empire around all of the soda-infrastructure in the Atlanta area.
L
We have been in need of a Fallout in the South.
+Kevin Patino sit your ass down. Smh handing out L's, your whole life is an L
+Matt Pearl Why not San Antonio, Texas
+Carolus Rex The south doesn't really have many interesting land marks to explore
Nuka Cola caps are also out east because Nuka Cola was so popular, however in New Vegas were introduced to Sunset Sarsaparilla, and drinking one of them nets you a bottle cap all the same as a nuka cola, so bottle caps are shown to be equally valuable regardless of where they come from. Sorta like a one ounce gold coin from Rome and Egypt are still worth the same because they're both one ounce of gold regardless of the face on the coin.
Just a thought. Both the Brotherhood and Enclave made it cross-country to the East Coast regions (D.C, Boston, New Vegas). Both have been to Hub. It's not a stretch that these two groups, and maybe even the roaming traders, carried the tradition and idea of using caps for currency as they moved through different areas of the country. As we learn in New Vegas, Nuka caps aren't the only monetized bottle caps. We see a more local soda bottle cap, the Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle caps, being used along with Nuka caps. Where I live, there's a local soda maker that's specific to the area called Foxon Park. If this were in the Fallout universe, in the New Haven, CT wastes, people would be using Foxon caps along with Nuka-Cola caps for money. No matter where you go in the country, you'll always find bottle caps, so while they're rare, they aren't too rare, and can be somewhat easy to come across while wandering around through ruined areas. Perfect for money.
I remember first playing fallout 3 and I dropped loads of them because I didn't know it was currency
Damn LMFAO
"hard to forge" someone didn't help out Alice Mclafferty...
Fallout New Vegas said that there are bottle cap making machines that are used primarily when bottle caps are destroyed.
Coincidently, these bottle cap machines are apparently owned and operated by the largest of trade groups.
+Tingting Gigapiggatiggasigganiggaliggamigga Mostly because the bottlecaps are backed by those groups. If they were to artificially increase the amount of caps they have it would devalue the water (which is the product that the caps are backed by) and cause inflation. Needless to say, it would not be a good business strategy.
The gun runners?
Poke'mon Trainer Chri$$$ 303 No, the water merchants and the Crimson Caravan.
+Terminator
This guy has it.
But what I was saying was is that he said the technology was lost for producing bottlecaps (which i'm sure it said that in the earlier games) but he didn't talk about New Vegas at all, which had established otherwise, and had a small sidequest about bottlecap machines to reinforce itself.
I don't know why you started talking about inflation and whatnot.
I understand how currency works.
Mints are owned and operated by the highest authority, the government, so it would make sense that in a world without a high standing government (other than the NCR, which uses paper money, and Caesar's Legion, which uses denarii, but they only control a few states, and depending on how Bethesda wants to take things in the next game, one of these governments are going to fall, probably Caesar's Legion. Then you have the Brotherhood of Steel, but they're usually self sufficient, but still use bottlecap currency. It has never been established, however, whether or not that have the capability of mass producing bottlecaps like the trade groups do.) that the largest organizations that actually use bottlecaps as currency would control the creation of new bottlecaps.
Tingting Gigapiggatiggasigganiggaliggamigga I thought that you were saying that the reason why they're the biggest groups is because they artificially give themselves more caps with the machines. I have played roughly 200 or so hours of Fallout 1 & 2 but I don't remember if they said that all the bottlecap machines were broken or not. Also maybe the Water Merchants/CC got the bottlecap machines between the time of Fo2 and F:NV. If it is stated that all the machines are broken in Fo1/2 then that is a pretty big plot hole.
dont you love it when the ad buffers for 30 minutes
Glitch_FACE your internet must suck
Rebel Gaming Its not normally terrible actually! must have been an off day.
@@SorchaSublime Must have been a 2 hour commercial.
These videos are really just awesome and I wish his series keeps going
uploaded 5 min ago, 14 min long and 3 dislikes.
5
+Abd Al-hamid 7
+Draedan Smith 9
+Sadistic Cheese 10
+PuppyMonkeyBaby Could be just ppl updating their youtube profile, to not have it suggest them video's with this topic as much.
CZcams is not social media.
.....So how about that one quest in Fallout New Vegas where you take down a guy who found a cap printing press and was using it to counterfeit caps? Anyone else remember that? I've brought this up on several videos talking about bottle caps in Fallout, and no one ever mentions it.
+MURFGAMING1228 Not to mention the amount of "total" bottlecaps available would change due to stuff like Bottlecap mines...
John Wayne Smith
Plus that. Never thought about that one.
I knew that I wasn't the only one who remembers that quest
Yeah, they say bottle caps are even more easier to counterfit than money, and are even harder to tell if they are counterfit or not
"Hard to fake" my ass
Hey man, you helped me learn something about myself with the end of this video. I'm the exact same way about reading. I love to learn but I can't sit through a book for the life of me. Listening to how to videos or videos like yours help me learn all sorts of things without me even realizing it. Thanks man.
Myron didn't invent jet, he reverse engineered the prewar jet and claimed to invent it 🙃
this was explained a bit in new Vegas. the caravan boss Lady will explain it if asked and explain why it was hard to conterfiet!
Indeed it is.
+Will Nicholson it's sad to know that the most lore complete game on the Fallout franchise is the least commented on those videos...
+Qazmax Fallout 4 is a good stand alone game but its no fallout game.
+Qazmax
Fallout "Nerds" continually like to forget about the better games so they can suck Bethesdas dick and not pay any mind to devs like obsidian who put more effort into FNV in the short time they had than Bethesda did in Fo3 and 4 combined.
I mean... what do they eat in fo3 anyways? (+1 internet for reference catch)
***** even you are too _edgy_ i have to agree with you. And the "shandification of fallout" is my favorite game design related video!
The reasons gold is valued are threefold.
1. Gold remains bright and pure even after many years, it doesn't oxidize or tarnish unlike other metals like silver, iron etc.
2. Gold is a non-radioactive element and is therefore virtually indestructible at the atomic level, unless you use a nuclear reactor or an atom smasher. Gold can be melted down and recast unlimited times, a quality known as "fungibility".
Even if you dissolve gold in aqua regia, the gold atoms are still there, they're just combined with other atoms in the compound, and could be extracted from the compound using a chemical reaction.
3. All the gold ever discovered by humanity is still in existence, sure it might be lost or stashed away but it still exists. Pure gold is valued because it's both beautiful and rare. Rarer than most people think, the effort to find and mine more is extremely hard work. The entire gold supply mined thoughtout all of human history would fit into a 60ft by 60ft cube. That is why it is so highly valued, to claim its value is nothing but a random choice made in antiquity is a little misleading.
Also taking the gold standard off money was far from a good thing, it made our currencies genuinely worthless. It did however provided the partly privately owned central banks free licence to literally print money secured by nothing of intrinsic value. Worthless money which they then lend to governments at base interest rates, that interest is the main reason we the public are paying such ridiculous taxes, taxes that can never repay the stupid debts our governments have accured with their extremely poor economic choices and lack of control over the central and investment banks.
*****
If you say so.
+Loki Jotunn I thought fungibility only applied to goods or commodities that you could substitute for each other?
+Haydyn Runzer www.pureplayholdings.com/index.php/articles/34-gold-is-gold-is-gold-what-does-fungible-mean This may help explain what I was trying to communicate (all be it somewhat poorly)
+Boris Shlotinstong I'm sorry, but your statement without any explanation sounds like trolling. Do you have an explanation?
The other problem with your statement is that it is observably false. Maybe you can disagree with the reasons why Austin and Loki think gold was valuable but disagreeing that it was valuable is hard to back up. It might not make sense that gold was useful to pre-modern societies, but it was useful. We know it was useful because we have untold examples of pre-modern societies using it. Maybe gold doesn't have many uses directly related to survival, but gold didn't start being used as a currency by societies until those societies had reached the point where day to day survival was no longer their primary concern. I am genuinely curious if you have an explanation because your statement makes no sense.
+Loki Jotunn - Gold Star! I actually stopped the video (which I'll return to in a moment) when he commented on it being a good thing when the gold standard was abandoned. I wanted to search the comments for someone like yourself, Loki. THANK YOU for pointing out what a ruinous event that was!
>until the gold standard was abandoned for the betterment of everyone
I fail to see how the inflation resulting from the abandonment of the gold standard was good for anyone.
...what is the good side of dropping the gold standard anyway?
This is my first time stumbling upon this channel and I must say; wow amazing stuff. Real in depth/critical thinking. It’s refreshing to see. You sir, have gained yourself another sub. Can’t wait to binge watch all your videos this weekend lol.
5:25 talks about gases but shows earth metals group. couldve edited that better
So we don't know how alien languages sound, but we know what they probably use as currency. Cool.
Yet what we consider as good and what a alien might consider is good is also entirely situational. They may not even have gold on their planet but may have a similar element that we do not have and so on. The galaxy is a huge place and it can differ greatly from place to place.
Alex V4 Actually, modern technology shows us that all alien planets are like our planet, only slightly recolored.
Vicente Temes I hope you're joking.
If they even use currency. Maybe they aren't selfish, warmongering, hairless apes and just help each other without expecting some shiny metal or colored paper in return.
WhiteAlcatraz Commie aliens? Disgusting.
this is the only way being an alcoholic will pay
In New Vegas, the Crimson Caravan actually helps the NCR with the production of new bottlecaps. In fact it's a quest to secure one of the presses and ensure it's broken so nobody else can get that potential.
um duh. they're small, round, shiny, and both rare and plentiful at the same time. that makes them the perfect universal currency for a society that has devolved into a bunch of savages.
Giddyup Buttercup > caps
Bobo Squiggilywinks too rare and too large for everyone to use as currency.
clericofchaos1 :'(
48 caps for a stimpack, who's your vendor?
+timbo slice in fallout 1 that's how much they cost, depending on barter skill of course.
+OpposingForces those where the easy days, not a stimpack is as much as a stake in today world, even with max barter...at least in fallout new vegas
timbo slice
yeah, that was purposely done i think to increase the usefullness of food outside of hardcore mode.
Good job on the research there and good understanding of historic economics. its one of my favorite things about the series is how well they modeled the economy.
Found this channel a couple days ago and just want to say I love it. Fallout 4 content -and- educational? You've got a subscriber.
Not mentioning during the Eisenhower administration he created the US interstate system which was largely intended for military and economic purposes. Those interstates in a post apocalyptic world present a quicker way to travel so that month to travel would be much quicker technically speaking, especially I-40.
PsiTerror The interstates were nuked to hell in fallout. Or they’re full of radiation amplified creatures. I doubt traveling on the inter States is viable at all. Because if it was, traveling from the west coast to the east or vice versa wouldn’t be so uncommon
The Joker but it's not uncommon... also people still use the interstates even in 2281 and most likely in 2287 so yes, they're still usable and very practical
Wow, this is one of the best explanations to currency in general, I have ever seen!
Gold: very easy to identify
Pyrite : I'm about to end this man's whole career
I'm so glad I was not disappointed that The voice match what I perceived the face to look like behind it
Why do they use bottlecaps as currency? Because Bethesda.
No
because water
+Canadian Winter_
it predates Bethesda
+Catwithanm16 Most people don't really care about the original games, but true.
+Canadian Winter_ actually most people care about original games and their lore but they can't get into them. You are just another graphics kid.
I think actually cigarettes would have been an even better currency than bottlecaps
[x] rare but not too rare
[x] easy to carry
[/] hard to fake: this is where the caps have the edge because they're harder to replicate, however counterfeit cigs should be easy to spot, since there really isn't anything with which to fake the tobacco and the filter. sealed packages cannot be faked
[x] inflation resistant: yes! in fact they are even more stable because cigarettes that enter the circulation are balanced out by some of them being smoked, however, people would make more efforts to tame their smoking habit since they're inhaling their currency
[x] easily countable: and this is where the cigs have the edge. bottle caps literally only have units of 1 which would make them a pain in the fucking ass at every transaction. Even if it's just to balance out the value of two traded objects, it would make things really tedious to always count individual caps. Cigarettes come in packs and cartons. Sealed packs are sure to have the right amount of cigs, non-sealed ones can be checked quickly, same with cartons for sealed packs. You could have made nuka cherry caps worth 5, and quantum 10 or something, but once it has been established that they all count as 1, trying to get this idea across will either get you screwed over or threatened.
[x] bonus: cigarettes are quiet. after a while it would annoy the world out of you that your pockets jingle jangle jingle as you ride so merrily along. Not to mention when you're trying to sneak up on someone, that wouldn't be the greatest.
i have a better idea: the actual findable currency, or "pre-war money". you have the different values, the counterfeit difficulty, the stability, the silence while moving, etc.
Problem:They're weak. Sure a bottle cap can bend but you can't break it with your hands (I'm sure you can but its really difficult). I know you can rip and "break" dollars but you'll need to do it on purpose. Cigarettes will crumble easily
+Bakerman is Bakin Bread I think people'd jusst stop smoking if they became a currency, just to preserve their money. You're not using dollar bills are toilet paper, are you? Napkins? Note pads? There's no way they'd be stable.
This is pretty much the same story with Metro 2033, except with military grade bullets.
Funfact, cigarettes were (and are) used like currency in siege cities and countries with a fucking big ass inflation.
So using cigarettes as currency isnt a stupid thing to think about.
crazy this was uploaded 5 years ago but never gets old
This is really cool. It must be hard to add comedy, education, and video games and you do it really well.
"Drugs, Drugs never change".
"Relax honey, if they don't pay, fill them with lead".
I guess once the GECK is out, someone should change the story and make the Sole Survivor a drug overlord and call him Austin :D
It would be so easy to counterfeit bottle caps.
Yeah all you would have to do is reopen a nuka cola factory.
Nuclear bombs went off Fallout Tech only has so much life till it just disappears
In New Vegas the Crimson Caravan Company get you to destroy a bottle cap press in the Sunset Sarsparilla Factory in order to prevent devaluation of currency. a cap counterfeiting shack can also be found where a guy has made a total of 18 caps using a hammer and spray gun, but they are so obviously fake it won't let you use them.
Yeah, just reopen one of the Nuka Cola factories they are still functional not infested with man eating monsters or controlled by the NCR, gather the materials that you need in order to make bottle caps, and make them.
Except that they did this in FNV and they send the courier to track down and murder the people making the caps.
In NV it makes sense because few nukes hit the Mojave, but after a few nukes and 200 years, it's likely that the machinery would break down to the point that you'd need like intelligence 8+ to fix it, plus the instruction manuals/experts would be dust by then.
Fallout oriented Shoddycast vids running in the background while I was working on a simple ground cover re-texture mod led to me constructing the most complicated flora and landscape mod ever conceived. Audible can blow me.
Remember when you have settlements there is no limit to how much rethinking you can do.
in FNV there was a gang that got a capping machine working again.
+Alex Giles And don't forget the lady who gives you the quest to break it explicitly states that they have official bottle cap presses they use. The tech to make new bottle caps is not lost in Fallout, at least not by the time of New Vegas. And by implication, well before New Vegas.
shoddycast, just because we are fans of fallout, does not mean we are fans of game theory
+Gavin Ok He never said that, though. He said that if you're a fallout fan, it was very likely that you saw the Game Theory episode they did on bottle caps.
but what makes us MORE likely to have seen that random video on youtube just because we like fallout? NotLikeThis
The fact that the ad on this video was for a rehab clinic... Priceless.
Now that we know WHY is Bottlecaps a currency, there is still one freaking Question: You ran into the Vault at the time world got bombed to shit, you got frozen for 200 years. You wake up, start getting real of what happened, try to get out of the Vault and for no reason you think it is a good idea to pick up bottlecaps, way before you made first contact with the new 'society'. WHY?!?
huuweee That’s your choice to collect them. You could Role Play so he comes back to get them
To add on to the argument if we were to assume you encountered a bunch of greedy and angry people such as per say raiders and killed them they'd likely all have caps and therefore the character would likely see a pattern and thusly determine that caps are important to people in post war america
Fallout 4 addresses that pretty quickly, if you don't beeline for Concord once you leave Sanctuary Hills.
One of the bits of dailogue you have with Blake Abernathy of Abernathy Farm (technically the nearest settlement to Sanctuary and the Red Rocket station) educates the Sole Survivor on how bottlecaps are the main currency for trade.
@@phoenixshadow4631 But why does he collect bottlecaps even before he get out of the Vault for the first time since the bombs? Thats the whole point.he didn't have contact with anyone for 2 Centurys, woke up and thought 'maybe those bottlecaps come in handy' ...
@@huuweee honestly we know that the sole survivor was ex-military (if played as a male) and that many weapons inthe fallout universe were designed to be retrofitted with alternate or even homemade ammo. Assuming that he could craft some temporary scrap ammo from caps using that knowledge could justify it.
i wish stimpacks cost 48 bottlecaps
3:40 Or in that case of Fallout:New Vegas, when someone finds a pressing machine (Crimson Caravan questline)
+Dion Youngbar or in fallout 3 the working nuka a cola factor. that holds nuka a cola's secrets
I actually watched this for the economics content more so than because it was about Fallout. The connection was very well explained!
This was an amazing analysis of anthropological trends and economies. I love your channel!
If Metro taught me anything,its that bullets are the only thing that matters.
+Comrade Canary That's the truest thing ever. Bullets would be the East Coast Currency I'd guess because unlike the West Coast there are very few factions in the east that are able to manifacture ammunition that would enter the circulation (like the Gun Runners in the West who are selling stuff, in the east you mostly have the Brotherhood able to manifacture stuff but you wont get it unless you are a member or kill them)
wilhelmrk Metro currency bullets are incideary rounds,which are pretty much impossible to be made even by the Armory guys.
I was waiting for someone like you to show up, and I. don't regret waiting
Comrade Canary No, they actually are able to reproduce them in the West in the Fallout universe. Don't ask me how but it is stated that they were able to produce all kinds of armor, one would guess so from the top supplier of one of the biggest actual states in the Fallout Universe.
+Comrade Canary
Judging the sheer amount of bullets in the Fallout games Bullets would be an exceedingly inflated currency. Caliber value alone would more or less make it a trade good. Furthermore their weight makes them outright impractical. In metro the restrictive nature of outside access makes it understandable for bullet value but in a society with access to so much ammo it makes it a very weak currency.
People have the ability to repair ROBOTS and super weapons like energy weapons and LIBERTY PRIME yet know one knows how to build a fucking bottle cap maker
I remember a mission in Fallout new Vegas, in which you had to destroy a bottlecap machine. You also learn, that bottlecaps can get destroyed and have to be forged anew.
>Keynes
>thinks leaving the gold standard was a good thing
Start reading more Ludwig von Mises. Keynes was disproved easily by Bastiat before Keynes was even born.
I just posted a comment on how dumb Keynes was. He basically only had a knowledge of 18th and 19th century England. He was a fool. Keynes basically equals screwing over each subsequent generation much his knowledge and ideas led too great depression. Ironically his idea of solving great depression was same as recent prior economic panics. Were basically fucked close to a 100 years of a fake economy prepare yourself
what i think is strange about jet is that i sometimes find it on places that has been closed for 200 years
+kab hes Hmm, maybe people have broke in by means that are not directly noticeable? Like through sewers or wholes in the wall?
CuddlezFurLucifer no i found it in a safe and the key was still on the place where it was left by the owner 210 years ago
+kab hes that honestly has more to do with random loot tables than anything else.
+kab hes That's because Bethesda doesn't care about the lore
jqawesome each safe in that building had specific things in it that hat something to do with the person who owned the safe.
yes bottle caps are rare, has 105,000 in game
105,000 sounds great until you realize that the value of a bottle cap is not equal to that of 1 pound, 1 euro, nor 1 dollar. The rate of goods exchanged for caps in Fallout is not equal to that in real life.
that's how MA y my character has there are properly more in game though
+jrDNis I think of bottlecaps as Yen
+Jared Cicero in the same way gold is rare and still some governments have thousands of tons of it, 100,000 caps is like mega rich
+Bobo Squiggilywinks That's a good comparison.
I feel like the explanation for why the currency caps traveled through the commonwealth/capital wastland the caravans are all around they travel which lead to people hearing they trade in caps
Currently running a Fallout tabletop rpg campaign and I also came up with a Jet Road although more with generalized trade instead of jet. Jet at the basis makes sense. The Hub merchants are the oligarchs of the NCR because of this.
how was removing the gold standard in US currency better for everyone?
The short answer is it's not. It's has actually been detrimental to our economy.
Leftists love it though because it makes it much easier for them to have control and they can just print money as much as they want when it's not tied to anything.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🔪🍴🍺🍺🍺🍺🍯🍺🍺🍺🍮🍮🍮🍮🍮
Honestly, a silver standard would have been far preferable.
I really like the video and you explained it pretty well, but "the technology for creating bottle caps is lost"? Srsly? Cmon mate... There are robots and airships and lasers and shit in the Fallout world, but the technology to produce bottle caps is lost? Bottle caps are literally just stamped metal sheets, every raider with the IQ of a potato could come up with a way to make more bottle caps.
+Captain Dan It's been done, there is a quest in fallout NV where you have to stop a counterfeit bottlecap operation, and there is a machine printing caps and such.
+Diablerie Tandino also there's a counterfeit shack where you can find counterfeit caps but you can't do anything with them and you can't drop them from your inventory makes me wonder if Bethesda was gonna do something with them but took it out or didn't have the time to put it in
"Leaving the gold standard fornthe betterment of society."
THAT has not aged well.
... this works out really nicely, EXCEPT the fact that people were actually back to using golden currency in Fallout 2. It makes sense, because bottle caps, while pretty good at maintaing the three currency requirements, are still: prone to breakage (seeing as they are thin pieces of metal that can bend easily, and have a coat of paint that can wear off after a while, rendering them unidentifiable as bottle caps eventually) and can be forged as there is no rocket science behind their production, with time the technology level must and get back up to the former levels and as seen in some quest in Fallout: New Vegas. So, it makes sense that somewhere between Fallout 1 and 2, people abandoned bottle caps and went back to the established gold standard, the benefits of which had been described. However in Fallout 3 we still see bottle caps, which could be explained by the fact that it's the opposite coast of the US, and it generally appears to be more backwards that the East. What remains really confusing is the usage of bottle caps in New Vegas, very near to the east coast, with the NCR being at its borders. The only explanation I can imagine is that Bethesda decided to use caps anyway because they are pretty, memorable and make the game more unique.
But. But. People used gold in follout 2. And in new Vegas NCR even started making paper money.
Bottlecaps were outmoded for a time, but the reason they came back in New Vegas was because of how NCR$ became devalued after their war with the BoS, which destroyed their gold reserves. Chomps Lewis at Sloan actually mentions how NCR$ are worth less than Caps, barely half their value.
+Colonel Kill Even without talking to him you can discover this by exchanging caps for NCR money(in this case it is always traded at a constant ratio, regardless of the vendor or your barter skill).
+Colonel Kill walls point. I just like how the world and its economy changes from game to game with fo1;2 and new Vegas
re: East coast
FO3 and FO4 take place more than a century after FO1, so there is plenty time for the idea to have spread to the east coast.
my thoughts exactly, plus of course the east would take ideas from the much more organized west.
+SiriusMined I think he was using FO2 as his reference point because of Jet being invented during FO2.
Great video, makes a lot of sense. I think I've also heard that nuka cola was so hugely popular that it makes sense people would equate the caps with worth.
>Talking about gasses
>video scrolls over alkali metals in the periodic table.
I think you picked the wrong end dude.