IC -- A Personal Digression Upon Investment

[sythyry]

[I personally don't agree with Sythyry on this, and didn't much want zir to write it, but zie insisted. -bb]

I find I have no great desire to set my money whirling around the tree, even if it should, in time, come back doubled and redoubled. 

First of all, it seems to me that money should be a reward for honest effort.  I am properly paid -- and paid well! -- for enchantments, for healings, and (paid poorly! I am not that good!) for embroidery and smithwork.    More money, I suppose, is deserved for risky endeavours, such as adventuring: but the risk multiplies the reward due to the effort; it does not add it it.  Pure investments of money, such as giving a wine-trader ten thousand lozens for a long trading trip and hoping that my share after it is done is eleven thousand, are no significant effort on my part, and do not particularly fit my dignity as a noble of sorts. 

Second: Nor even my convenience.  I do not wish to be forever fussing to find good merchants to invest in, fretting about how their commerce is going, losing money when I guess wrongly, gleefully noting a few more lozens when I guess rightly.  Bankers do this sort of thing, which is why banks and bankers are wealthy.  It is not how I wish to spend my time... and, though time is plentiful, my special tricks with time will not help much for this.  

Third: La!  Which is to say, my primary concerns are, I think, the safety of prime civilization from Vae; my friends and companions; enchantment; the cause of transaffection.  Perhaps I am missing something, and probably I should count fine dining among them.  These are enough for a somewhat over-full life (and, with fine dining, an over-full belly as well).  Fussing about money and investments is none of these; money is a means to an end, and, as an enchanter, I generally can earn more, honestly, at need.

Besides, I dread to imagine what sorts of Doom I could get in, if I indulged in investing.

Comments

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised you feel this way. There are even monster cultures that feel that being a merchant is lower in status than being a farmer because the merchant does not actually create anything - they only move things around. (My own culture ranks bankers as highest in status and farmers amongst the lowest - my culture is really backwards)

You might ponder ways beyond the running of Castle Wrong to monetarily support the cause of transaffection, but honestly you're not really the activist type (it's almost a variant on adventurer, but you're dealing with other primes rather than monsters so the tactics/strategies are completely different) and I've no idea where/who you'd go to figure such a thing out.

Sounds like ~mother~ was actually right on this one - land is a good way of holding money you don't need/want right now without paying for it and without requiring an apprenticeship with a banker (*shudder*) to understand. The simple rule would be "bank for spending money, land for spare money".

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

There are even monster cultures that feel that being a merchant is lower in status than being a farmer because the merchant does not actually create anything

Merchants create the most valuable thing of all: time. Imagine what life would be like if you had to individual approach every farmer and manufacturer of the things you use in life and arrange for their purpose and transportation. Thankfully we have people who deal with all that for us so unstead we can just go to one convenient location and get what we want in one trip.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[I really didn't want to forward that to the time-mage... -bb]

They don't create time. They may let one use one's ordinary allotment of time more efficiently -- which is all to the good! and worth paying them for! -- but they do not create it the way I do.

However, I don't think anyone was suggesting I be a merchant. They suggested that I invest in merchants. Now, I understand that investing in a merchant is, in effect, helping people in distant countries save time (and, more relevantly, get goods that they could not get from nearby), but it doesn't feel like I'm doing very much, because I am simply sitting at home fretting.

So I shan't be doing that.

I shall fret about other things, like what to do about Feralan, and how to fix my skyboat. These frets seem more consequential somehow.

[Sythyry sometimes does pick up new ideas, but they take a while to get into zir head, and zie's a bit pompous about refusing before that. Better than many WTfolk, who don't even think about them; but certainly not fast. -bb]

[rowyn]

Thanks for sticking up for the usefulness of merchants. :)

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Even the culture in question was glad to have merchants around. They just weren't accorded as much status based on their profession as guildsmen, farmers, or scholars/generals (nobility), who were accorded more status in roughly that order. Honestly, we don't like our own traveling salesmen much more than they did.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Of course, assuming we are speaking of the same culture, it could be attributed to sour grapes. Our traveling salesmen can be pushy and annoying, while their merchants were frequently (or at least apparently) more wealthy then near everyone else, ruling caste aside.

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible, but I feel like I've already assumed too much understanding of a culture based on different values and worldviews than my own. I am comfortable saying that merchants would send their brightest children to school so they could become scholars (and therefore nobility) and thus increase the prestige of the family.

(the culture in question is China, particularly during the Han dynasty, although some aspects of this status assessment can be seen even to today)

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

[Ah, that fits then; I was thinking pre-rail Japan; the two held similar, but not identical, castes in this respect]