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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.
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.
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Date: 2010-06-18 07:53 pm (UTC)Historically, our world ended up with new levels of wealth when people moved toward a broader understanding of it. First from portable things like spears and pelts to immobile things like farms and houses. Then to the idea of individuals having fairly secure generations-long ownership of land, which encouraged them to build for the future. Then to abstract ideas of shared, partial ownership in business ventures, so that one person could own 1/19th of a ship and a warehouse and a trade contract. The idea growing out of those changes was that voluntary cooperation plus a stable legal backing would let people create new kinds of property, not just more pelts and spears. Maybe your world is actually hampered in some ways by the gods' help, since they encouraged the creation of divinely backed guilds (like the smiths') and stagnant rituals. The world's magic system seems designed to discourage cooperation that could, say, give everyone a magic super-horse, so those more abstract organizations didn't happen much.
What if you could hire a dozen mages to work together and invent a new type of enchantment? Or a dozen skyboat designers to invent a more efficient trading vessel? That would be an expenditure of money with the chance of producing something more valuable in the future, right? It'd be the same general idea as planting a seed and tending it for a season, but would require more careful and abstract planning (preferably with legal protection) to profit from that.
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Date: 2010-06-18 08:12 pm (UTC)Yes, cooperation on magical working is not particularly useful. Cooperation on magical research is, and we (which is to say, my famous grandparent) do that sort of thing a good deal.
But we are far afield from what I can do with my money! I cannot found a research institute, for many reasons.