First in real life that would be the case but hear merchants basiclly already own everything not state or guild owned. By creating currency we can eliminete merchant as a middle man and so slash their profits extremly. And while it will make acumulation a bit easier for mercahnts it will also make it easier for everyone else.
Well, no, private possessions explicitly still exist in our society and are still held by individuals so this paragraph isn't actually accurate. While it's true that the vast majority of private property is possesed either by some state structure or association of people in a common profession, but that would also account for the vast majority of nonpersonal property in rl historic that made this transition, This is in and of itself is not really a meaningful difference that would suggest a different outcome in this situation.
Second as far as I can tell berter worked only with relativly small amout of goods. But in our country we have magic, elecricity and many, many goods. If you want to make it real barter you'd need to establish relative price beetwen all or most of them. Like wheet to milk. Milk to cows. Cows to wheet. Rocks to cows. Rocks to wheet. Rocks to milk etc. You could simplify it to one good like everything to wheet... but then wheet becomes currency and you don't have barter. What that also means is that in barter you need to do at least x to the power two work while with currency you only need x work. It's massivly inneficient.
Well, no, barter still happened with large amounts of goods and even does in Godstar's pc society, the merchants wouldn't exist as a class if that didn't happen. Nor would a number of rl societies in history, actually. You are correct to note that this makes trading large numbers of diverse bulk goods easier then alternatives, and that ease is part of why the class that orchestrates this sort of stuff benefits so much and tends to use those benefits too expand their economic niche into other facets of society.
And lastly I admit your last point made me chuckle. I mean it was in a reply to what was basicly my joke but it took me completly by surprise. Good discusion skills
. But to reply siriously I think it's not true becouse if it would help merchants they could easily implement it. Just pay people in coin and take coin back. Merchants own baiscaly all trades so they could easly do it. On top of that there is almost no reason people would reject curency. After all the only thing merchants have to say is "with this you can easily trade among each other without us taking profit" and at least half the socity would immidietly accept it. After all for them it's pure profit and most people don't really care about long term when there is profit. So af far as I can tell my explanation is massively more likely then yours.
I think you'd be surprised to the extent that human beings are capable of coming together and barring social changes that they believe will be detrimental to the classes the feel apart of. If every society wide decision had only short term profit as a motive, you would expect humanity humanity to build only randian hellstates rather the complex interwoven societies that have flourished where ever large enough groups of humans tend to congregate.
Merchant's attempting to force such a social change in lockstep concert against the wishes of society as a whole would not be as easy as youd suggest, considering that merchants are only able to trade things by dealing with the other members of society, aside from any state measures to force them to drop the issue.
And a starving merchants. After all merchants have to travel, make contacts, create family, provide for them, tech them, transport goods, hire workers all of which requires resorces to be spent. That's why I said trades basicly have to be profitable and can't be zero sum. And do you really belive merchants won't make at least a little profit on each trade that would at least allow them to expand their buisness and enable them to make more trades? As I said trades basically have to be profitable for merchants it just won't work any other way.
And even if 99% of merchants did like you said and take just enough that one percent would immiedietly expand their buisness above others and dominete the markets, becoming the most powerfull merchants and making most trades to make the most profit.
I think by zero sum Cassie is likely saying that such dealing should include both the cost of doing business and feeding themselves and dependents, like most professions in the league do.
There is something that stops them: it is called the government. It is a federal consensus democracy that has never chained a hand behind its back to stop dealing with the rich; it's a pretty cool social tech, on the whole, and a vehicle by which we can use future social techs to respond to problems.
While someone else has pointed out that merchants already have extremely outsized influence over the existing government, their precedent for economic factors that massively increase similar classes profits in modern democracies with strong regulation and robust redisribution programs helping facilitite gaining the political power to perform regulatory capture and end those programs of redistribution.
They are the most influential class in government but I don't think this is the same thing as no one else having influence on it. Especially if the quest does not abruptly and inexplicably shift from us voting on social techs to the merchants picking them for us.
I think it's worthwhile to point out that the same mechanisms of state control that would allow the government to impact the social effects of currency can also being wielded to blunt and manage the detriments new social tech might otherwise introduce to the merchant class.
Government is not merely a vehicle for which the other classes of societies seek redress against the wealthy. Plenty of times, it's also been used as a tool by the wealthy to facilitate their own gains as well, many times at the cost of other portions of society. I think it's fair to worry that introducing ways to more rapidly gain wealth along with ways to make it much easier and more efficient to covert that wealth into influence at a time when the class that most benefits from this is the most influential by far in government that theirs's a very sizeable chance that they are able to use this to greatly increase their influence over said government, then use that influence to pursue policies that entrench that position against disruptive social changes and aided them in gaining more power even at the expense of overs
It certainly wouldn't be the first time something like that happened, in real life or fiction.
