Halkegenia Online Thread 6 - //"Pixies!"\\

[Screwball]

The problem you are discounting is that the Nobles have evidence of their divine right which didn't exist in RL.

And no that's not how it works, before Saito came around it was a pipe dream that anybody without magic would be a threat to a mage. And even with his super runes he was only a threat because he had a magic eating sword.

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Again, bullshit. In the 1600s IRL. the existence of God was self evident and a fundamental fact of life. They were burning central Europe to the ground and butchering people in job lots in a war that was, proportionately, far more brutal and destructive than WW2 over the issue of the correct way to worship him. That's not the actions of a group of people who have even the slightest doubt over the existence of their God.

On the subject of their armies, I have to speculate that you're either an idiot or you're being deliberately obtuse. Their armies include mages that are not landed nobility. Quite apart from that, if commoner soldiers in numbers weren't a threat, nobody would bother using them, but they do, so, therefore, large numbers of commoner soldiers must be a threat to mages. One landed noble has the power to tell the Crown what to do, because he can raise more commoner troops and mage soldiers than the Crown can. Or, rather, while he probably can't alone, him and his friends can as a group. The number of mage soldiers he can raise is dependent on how much money he has, which is, in turn, dependent on his land. If the Crown beats him in a fight and takes most of his land, he's not going to have any money with which to pay those mage soldiers, but the Crown, which now has the income from his former lands, will be able to. Unless he's as powerful as Karin, he's not going to be able to take on all those mages by himself.

 

[Anzer'ke]

Ok, how to put this... somehow i dont like it really... its well written, and interesting, but somehow it completly clashes with how i see aki.
Writing her from a more water-spirit perspective is interesting though, but somehow i always saw her as far closer to being human/fae, with honestly being unaware of the wrongness, not as an otherness just filtered trough akis body and brain.

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Gotta say, it makes a lot more sense. She was never anything close to human to begin with so otherness seems spot on.

Okay where to Begin.

1. Addressing the TVA:

• The TVA is one of those situations that I think people rarely look at the long term effect of societal effect as a whole. Case in point what it did was take tax dollars from all over the country and spent in on an area that benefited only a small part of the country as a whole. Only a small area of the country benefited at a negative benefit to the nation as a whole. Remember in a not fiat- country money cannot be produced out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere, which meant that other parts of the nation were deprived.
• Many acres of farmable land was destroyed to create the dams. While the land owners got paid, look what happened to the tenant farmers who were the ones actually using the land received nothing and became unemployed workers.
• While the TVA provided electricity to the region, people usually fail to mention that the price the TVA charged for electricity to heat their homes was often hire than using oil or coal.
• The TVA has never run at the break even point which they were intended to do so. The only way they appear to be able to do so is though government subsidies (which means that the government plunders money from other parts of the country and gives it to their pet project).

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This being the same as any other power station. You seem to be strangely opposed to government spending on this particular project. Why?

Yeah, that happens for any power supply method and is indeed something to work around by utilising different land. Given that this kind of power station is far easier to locate off the beaten track it has an advantage there.

How is that the technology's fault? Blame greedy people running it.

Yes, that's how social services work. This like asking healthcare to make a profit. It completely misses the entire point.

2. Ever-Lasting Battery: My mistake I thought it was hitchhiker's but I can't remember from which sci-fi novel I read that mentioned a company that went bankrupt since they create a reusable device that never needed to replaced.

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So what? You seem to have put the cart before the horse quite prodigiously here. The company is irrelevant next to something as valuable as that, an eternal power source would be incredibly useful and improve quality of life for absolutely bloody everyone. That's the important thing, not the stuff we make up to organise ourselves and make someone lots of numbers.

3. Difficulties in Having Worker-Run Companies

• Capital: Where will these worker-run companies get the necessary capital to run there factories? Capital does not mean only money, capital means raw materials, land, start up funds. Unless I am deeply undercutting the amount of savings an average worker would have at the time, I highly doubt they would have the capital to fund the project themselves. Which means they need investors.
• Investors: Why some of you toss around the concept of Noblesse Oblige and having nobles freely give away money my counter argument would be as followed, if the nobles truly believe in this why have they not done the same to the farmers already working on their land. Its human nature to be greedy and to want more. There is a reason why those who are truly charitable and generous are always remembered as held to be exemplary, they are unique and not the norm.
• Investors 2: So since they are unlikely to get donations to run these factories, the workers must look towards investors. So what would investors want. Based on the average investor they want returns and control. If these were in equity investments then they would want ownership control; i.e the right to control the direction and policies of the company. If these were debt investments then they would want their control leverages; i.e if said investor did not get their monthly, quarterly, or yearly return then the debt-holder has the right to intervene. Also generally when these large scale loans are drafted you usually have performance covenants, ie if certain metrics are not met then debt-holder has to the right to intervene.
• Management: The problem with having workers run companies is once again human nature. The workers interest would be in the interest of the workers and not the investors or the end consumer. For example, how would the company be structured. Will they self-appoint managers or will they run things based in committees. If they self-appoint mangers then you run the risk of managers trying to gain more power for themselves or demand more payment for more services rendered. If you have committees then you run the risk of inefficiency and bureaucratic nightmare.
• Self-Termination: Again, how do you handle the business cycles. It is folly to believe that businesses will always succeed and a company would not have to fire individuals. The case in point, what happens when the company needs to fire someone due to either lack of demand for products or in technological innovation. How would they determine who to let go in this situation?

Anyway, will write more later

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From the Fae. This was already addressed as a pivot point.

Which leads into this, again they'd have to let go of the money as a long term good. If you want short term effects then that leads to bad places. Which is the whole point, that said...

Investors want profit, so do the workers. Given that such a system would reward effort directly you'd be far more likely to see it. As stated by Aranfan, these kinds of companies do exist and work very well, usually they get beaten down rather than failing.

Please stop throwing that ridiculous phrase around. Human nature is like a clay model, a few intrinsic properties but almost entirely malleable. And given that these things exist and function pretty well off the committee method I think you're talking nonsense to justify a bias on your part here.

And again, Aranfan, real life thing. etc

In addition to which you just reminded me of something biologically important. The Fae lung design is going to be a two edged sword, the higher ability to take in oxygen that would be required for high altitude flight would mean they would be extremely vulnerable to airborne pollution or other gasses. So it's probably not going to be by choice that they have to move but by necessity. It also means that we are likely to see facemasks become a Fae staple in battle given just how much particulates a battle of that time period tended to put into the air.

Except she can't neuter the nobles, the majority of their political power comes from the church and their magic not economics.

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That's an interesting idea and I hope it gets some position in canon. Though for right now it's not canon at all. It would make sense though. Cool thought.

Ahahahahahahaha...that was a joke right? I mean you do remember the Montmorency family right? Or how about the simple fact that commoners still have the numbers on their side thus revolution is a thing? All in all getting popular support (which also feeds to the church) and the economics would certainly let her neuter them.

Worker-run companies aren't an impossibility, since they exist IRL. They're even pretty successful, like the Co-Op in Britain. They're not going to exist while the situation is one where only a very tiny handful of organisations exist with much in the way of liquid cash, though, unless at some point there's a policy of 'privatisation' to try and basically create a market economy once there's judged to be enough people with enough money from working in factories for there to be an actual consumer base.

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Love the co-op. Also you know, Valve.

Not entirely familiar with the Co-Op. Have to look into this to comment. Although question I would ask can not co-op members shop at said stores and do they receive any tax breaks/ subsidiariesfrom the UK government.

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This is just outright bizarre. Yeah, anyone can walk into a co-op. It's a store, just like any other. Though generally they have better hours and pay and so forth, source: friend who worked in one over a pre-uni summer, some years ago.

And again, Valve.

Also dear sweet fuck slow down please guys.

 

[Aranfan]

Um from my knowledge they are paid by the hour and by the day. Bonuses are given to those who are diligent (measured in work hours as well as peer-based and management based performance reviews) but everyone gets the same base pay and the bonuses are non-monetary mainly food items, company sponsored vacations and they can exchange it for cash. The thing is the top is getting tired of the carrot approach while getting minimal results so changes will have to implemented for good or ill.

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I see. Yeah, those incentives aren't set up to really make the workers feel like they have a stake in the company. No profit-sharing, no say in management, and more directly: no deduction in pay for poor performance. Keep the carrot and add that stick and workers will suddenly have a much stronger work ethic because their livelyhood will depend directly on the quality of their work.

The "workplace democracy" think ties livelyhood with quality of work without also being evil.

 

[Quickshot0]

Actually that would be worse, if you want a rapier to be usable for even the single lunges that were used in real life it blade needs to have the ability to bend. So a harder material like mithril would be more not less likely to shatter when used in that manner then a softer metal.

Though if I were to guess the real reason would be the system didn't render the physics of weapon durability correctly.

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Considering she's already used her weapons like this, this point is kind of moot as clearly the weapon did not do as you suggested and shatter.

But skipping past that detail, there's another thing as well. If the metal isn't just harder, but also stronger, then it's quite possible you can use it more like a normal blade. And there their materials are supposed to be stronger then normal steel, this isn't much of a leap to make. So I'm none to convinced that her weapon would shatter as you suggest. (I'm not even convinced a normal Rapier would really, I thought they could endure atleast some abuse after all)

 

[Xexilf]

Gotta say, it makes a lot more sense. She was never anything close to human to begin with so otherness seems spot on.

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Guess we have to disagree here. According to Sirocco, she is something mindless, thingking with a human (or fae) brain. Now we might have to debate soul mechanics or something (which we cant, since we have no idea how that works) but i would expect her to end up pretty humanlike.

 

[Screwball]

Sorry about my quotes, manually inputted them so it led to some problems.

My counter example here would be the development of the Hansa (admittedly that led to its own economic and political problems down the road). Wealth can still be created, but its grown organically. For example since Halk is in a commodity based currency-economy, wealth is created by those who mine and mint currency. Not entirely sure where the mines are in Halk so again drawing real-world parallels. With expansion of trade, it causes more markets to open, which does lead to a transfer of wealth. The producers of the desire good receive currency in exchange for their desire products, making the producers rich at the expense of the consumer. However, unless the consumer produces no material of their own, they replace their spent wealth by shipping their own products (can either be grain or other commodities) to other parts of the world and thus seek to replace their own wealth by finding the markets that support the highest returns. Eventually the country that produces the currency, the ones with access to the mines, produce more currency in order to buy the goods they cannot produce on their own, thus increasing wealth through these measures.

Mind, if Halk is currently in a Mercantilism era, then I concede that it is a zero sum game.

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Well, the Hansa were mercantilist. They were buying stuff at low prices where it was cheap, moving it to somewhere it was expensive and selling it at high prices. They therefore accrued vast wealth, but they weren't really creating it; they were effectively taking it from the places where they bought and sold things. The only reason they seem to fit is because they ended up with lots of money; money without the economic theory isn't necessarily capital, because it's not going to be put to the task of adding value to stuff, it's going to be used to move stuff around and pocket the price difference between locations.

If you could move enough stuff, the price would go up at the place that produces it (so the people there couldn't buy what was previously cheap, ie, they've effectively become poorer, although the individuals selling the good would be fabulously wealthy) and the price at the destination should go down (they've effectively become richer). In that situation, though, what you'd probably actually get is the price goes up at the production centre (because the traders are buying so much they're making the good scarce), and the traders put the price up at the destination to keep the profits themselves, so both locations actually become poorer and the wealth is transferred to what amounts to the haulage firm. This is why mercantilism is bad, especially since it also usually results in a handful of large trading companies that form cartels or even have monopolies (sometimes state-enforced monopolies, as with the East India Company) on trade with a geographic region.

I guess that crudely, in mercantilism, the ones with the money are the ones who move stuff around, while in capitalism, the ones with the money are the ones who make things, and simply having money doesn't mean that you'll make the transition.

 

[Aranfan]

The question is healthcare makes a profit so that the profit can be invested into new technology or more workers. If doctors, cannot make a profit in order to pay back their loans or see a return on their investment (the amount of money and time spent on education), what encourages them to be doctors?

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The desire to save lives?

Wait, I agree that Mercantilism is a horrible system, so what are we debating about?

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If "capital" is a worthwhile concept in the fae's current economic climate.

 

[Candesce]

I guess that crudely, in mercantilism, the ones with the money are the ones who move stuff around, while in capitalism, the ones with the money are the ones who make things, and simply having money doesn't mean that you'll make the transition.

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Well... strictly speaking, moving things around (and investing in better/more ways to move things around) is entirely capable of making everyone involved wealthier, but that does to some degree require that the people involved actually understand what they're doing. Microeconomics 101.

The bigger issue is that mercantilists tend to invest their money into military force and breaking shit, which makes nearly everyone involved poorer. You have to understand that wealth isn't zero sum before this stops looking like a good idea.

 

[Screwball]

If "capital" is a worthwhile concept in the fae's current economic climate.

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Well, it is. It's just that it's only really the Fae, Crown and Fae-associated nobles that have it to start off with, because they're the ones with liquid cash that are going to be willing to invest in productive enterprises on a large scale and in an organised manner at the start of things. Everybody else (probably) has most of their cash invested in land or business ventures already except for major nobles who aren't on good terms with the Fae, who I would think would rapidly change their tune once, for example, the de Vallieres start producing more steel than the rest of Tristain combined. What doesn't exist is a class of wealthy capitalists to provide non-state investment.

Seeing that the rest of Halk runs on capital (raw material and gold) then yes, they have to have their own source of capital.

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Money and capital are not the same thing. It basically requires the conceptual leap from finished goods being worth more than raw materials, to the investment of effort needed to effect that transformation creating wealth. Capital is what allows that creation of wealth to take place. If you have lots of money but you're not using it to create wealth, then that money is not capital. Plenty of capital, moreover, is not money; a blast furnace is capital, the arrows and knives used by a hunter are capital, a loom is capital. Even intangibles, like the knowledge of the furnace operator running a crucible furnace is capital. A gold bar sitting in a treasury somewhere doing nothing is not capital, because it's not doing anything and not being used to do anything. Using capital as part of an economic system on anything more than an ad hoc, individual basis, moreover, requires the recognition that it exists in the first place.

 

[Aranfan]

Well. Triggerhappy asked what the best way to avoid the nightmares of the industrial revolution were, and having co-ops become dominant early on would do much to curb the hell that was the early industrial revolution.

 

[Anzer'ke]

Because its plundering from one part of a nation and thus depriving them of resources to support another part of a nation that is failing. Instead of questioning why said areas are failing, we instead allow for cronyism to decide where the money flows.

I only bring up the TVA because Afran held it up as example. But yes, lack of desire to make a profit means that there is no incentive to increases services because as an owner you literally do not care about the compeitition.

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Are we both talking about the Tesla Wireless Power station here? Because as things stand I have no idea how any of what you're saying is a criticism of anything more than the very things that killed it. ie Greedy short-sighted investors.

The question is healthcare makes a profit so that the profit can be invested into new technology or more workers. If doctors, cannot make a profit in order to pay back their loans or see a return on their investment (the amount of money and time spent on education), what encourages them to be doctors?

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No, the investment comes from people outwith the healthcare system who do not want to die or see others die. Why on earth you think that this is of such little worth as to be left to its own devices I do not grasp.

...Did you honestly just ask this question?

Okay, firstly source: Scottish Med student for two years and change, currently switching to neuroscience degree. Lots of interaction in the field.
Doctors do not have good lives. Not on avergae. The hours are shit, the pay is shit, people treat you like shit. It is shit. If you think that people get into this field, enslave themselves to debt and throw away their youth in study, to make a profit...well then you must be joking.

I can honestly see no other reason for that chain of thought. It just doesn't make sense.
People become doctors because they want to be doctors. Either to help people (generally both the most fucked up by it and the most likely to get through it) for some illusion of prestige (ahahahahahaha) or because they don't yet know what it entails. Or they get forced into it somehow, that last one would include me.

In short, if you cannot understand that saving peoples lives in a value in and of itself then you need to stop and think for a while because you have completely lost touch with reality.

So you would be fine with continual unemployment. Aftier all what happens to the workers of said company when they are not out of a job because there is no demand for their products.

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Certainly. Those people now have no power requirements. Meaning a massive reduction in expenses. Continue at this rate and you reach the next step, ie no need for money because everything is already in place.
So yes, I would be very happy with continual unemployment in a world where all needs have been met by technological advances.
This makes far more sense than running in hampster wheels, crippling yourself just so that you can continue to perform "work" (at this point no longer actually achieving anything useful) so that you can uphold an imaginary necessity for money. You are advocating ignoring reality to support a system, which is again you placing cart before horse.

I'm sorry but do you think that Capitalism is the end point and there will never be advancement past it?

Yes, but you are determining that this would be the only investment investors can make. The whole entire point of Time -value of money and risk analysis is to determine where investors should put their money.

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In canon...it kind of is.

In real life, again the companies exist and usually just don't have investors. Either way your point is bust.

Mind you, this is literally what I do for a living so its not nonsense. If it was nonsense, you know how easy it would be to have projects gain investment funding. Instead of spending time running financial analysis and models to show investors the future estimated return is the best return they will get compared to other investments, all I would need to say by that logic, is we are helping people and that is why we need the money.

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Dude, the fact you do it for a living does not make it a valid aspect of reality. You might as well argue that gambling is intrinsic to reality because bookkeepers make money. Being able to make money of something depends on the economic system, which in the modern era is absurdly detached from reality, hence engineered obsolescence and this whole discussion.

Valve is still a for profit corporation if memory serves. However, if you are referring to their flat organizational structure, then I point out that we as gamers do not care (majorly) if they are late with a project or if they are early. If Valve was part of a supply chain, then yes the inefficiencies caused by the flat structure, which Valve openly admits, would cause economic problems for the company.

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So what? You asked for examples and I'm giving them. This shows your points to be invalid. The sole exception is inefficiencies which exist because they are both flat and a creative company. They make and invent stuff. That is why they are slow. Meanwhile their flat structure makes them absurdly effective when they do come out with something, see their list of hits a mild long and genre defining, plus steam and so forth.

If you want a worker owned example valid for your attempt to claim slow supply structure, that would be the Co-op...which doesn't have that problem...so you seem to be fresh out of argument.

If that was the case we would not be suffering a general shortage of general practitioners in America. Hell, just look at what specializations doctors are heading to, generally the more well paying areas. That should be evidence.

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No that's because america's healthcare system is absurd and disgusting in every way I can think of that doesn't involve outright torturing the patients. As for doctors heading for such fields, aside from this being a generalisation to the point of not really being correct to start with, you built an entire system of healthcare to enforce that kind of behaviour, that's the reason it happens like that.

Doctors don't like the system. America also shits on it's doctors to an incredible degree, most especially with regards to studying medicine and the absurdly high debt+time that it takes over there.

 

[Nicholai]

After reading three pages of posts mostly on why capitalism is bad, how the nobles will / won't run things, and so on I don't know if we're actually helping TH with these posts.

Let's look at what we know - and please bear with me. I am trying to keep this short. If I go into detailed-analysis mode this post is going to be tens of thousands of words. Thus I am simplifying these points to their "smallest common denominators" to save everyone time.

• The Industrial Revolution (IR) was extremely traumatic for societies.
• The influx of new technology & devices that allowed one individual to do the work of many led to massive, sudden unemployment.
• Those unemployed individuals, many from agricultural areas, moved to the cities to find work.
• Those same unemployed individuals became cheap labor in the cities.
• Taking advantage of the surplus of cheap labor, "robber barons" created factories that (ab)used that surplus to create new goods.
• Due to extremely low wages and overcrowding, the people moving into the cities lived a squalid existence. They had little and health / disease were a concern.

The Fae, Lady Sakuya in particular, will know about these effects in general terms. They also have the Arrun Library to research the IR in. I expect they will begin planning ways to offset these issues as much as they can. There are some things they can do to avoid creating the "squalor" of the factory/city environment. Getting eco-friendly laws put into place before they are needed, for example. They can also take some steps to avoid future problems that will let them create new jobs for individuals in areas that will be losing them.

Take, for example, electrical power generation. (And see the prior posts about how they can use magi-tech to generate power.) In America we have hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines running all over the place. What few people realize is that as the distance of line increases, the throughput decreases. Energy is lost to resistance of the medium. That's why high-voltage lines exist - they reduce the energy loss. Energy also has to be used within a very short time (milliseconds, I believe) after it is generated. Electrical energy also cannot be stored very efficiently in the long term. Batteries, for example, lose charge just by sitting on a shelf even if they are not used.

What's the solution? Laying the groundwork for power plants in many locations. Every major city, then the smaller cities, then even villages. If they can create "green" power with natural wind & solar sources - great! If not and they can create "green" power with magic of some flavor - great! I expect either or both to be viable. In the short term electricity won't be all that useful. In the long term the Fae know how powerful it will become. They can begin investing in "day time" power - windmills and other applications - as well as "off hours" generation. In our world many power companies that use renewable power have extra sources of electricity that are brought online during the night or whenever they are having heavy loads. The bright side to using magi-tech to generate power is that it can be done anywhere you can have mages and technicians. In our world we have to keep power plants reasonably near where the power will be used and wherever the fuel is coming from.

Another consideration that the Fae will be very aware of is that the stages of scientific & economic growth after an IR will require scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other highly-educated individuals. (Modern day medical specialists, for example, are massively better educated than their Tristanian peers would be.) They can start trying to get the Tristanian nobility to agree to allow public schools to form. Those schools will start absorbing some of the workers for a period of time - just like we see during economic recessions in our world as people go back to school for another /an advanced degree. In a perfect world the students of those schools will walk away able to take on more complex jobs than a semi-skilled set of hands in a factory.

(In practice I assume this will take several generations to sink in, but the Fae know they have to get started somewhere..)

Finally, the Fae know that in our world many European cities have remained unchanged for centuries. I got to visit Italy several years ago and I lost track of the number of buildings I saw that were older than the discovery of the new world. Many of those buildings and cities have been retrofitted to accommodate modern technology. The Fae can convince the Tristanian nobility to put some of their workers to work tearing down buildings that won't be cost-effective in the future and beginning to build new ones that will either work as-is for a significant time or be built specifically so that they can be retrofitted. Having conduits in the walls specifically so that when electricity /phone lines /internet lines /new magi-tech gizmo lines are available they will be easy to insert into the buildings is one example.

Anyway, that's my two copper. Does anyone have a suggestion I missed?

 

[Quickshot0]

If that was the case we would not be suffering a general shortage of general practitioners in America. Hell, just look at what specializations doctors are heading to, generally the more well paying areas. That should be evidence.

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Sadly it turns out that American motivations are an outlier in human motivations. (In fact if I recall correctly it's the largest outlier) So using comparisons from inside the USA, as a final arbiter of evidence on human behaviour isn't quite as solid a proposition as one would initially expect.

 

[Biigoh]

Well. Triggerhappy asked what the best way to avoid the nightmares of the industrial revolution were, and having co-ops become dominant early on would do much to curb the hell that was the early industrial revolution.

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The problem is that co-ops need things that aren't currently available in the setting. Keyword being currently. Think about those nobles who have the money to spend on fianancing factories and such ventures, why would THEY agree to throw their money away. Because that's what would effectively happen to them. It's not an investment as they're not going to get ownership, and there's no guarantee that said venture will even succeed under the control of commoners so that's no guarantee that if they loan the money that they'd get repayment even if it's at "cost" and no interest (ha!).

You could say that the state can throw money at such ventures, but again they would require dipping into their reserves and outright spending it and they wouldn't be able to replace it when more ventures approach them. The royal family and the government would bleed money and go into debt unless they rise taxes. No one likes increased taxes.

And the fae might be able to sponsor such things, but if so, you're looking at the wealthier guilds and heads of states, which goes back to nobles and the state again.

That's part of the problem with co-ops, they need a starting capital, and thus would need someone(s) with sufficient money to start things up. But since it's a co-op, the investors... yeah... you need people who can invest in the co-op and said investment would be a "small" number and hope that things don't go sour and you lose your investment (if it's a loan).

 

[Screwball]

After reading three pages of posts mostly on why capitalism is bad, how the nobles will / won't run things, and so on I don't know if we're actually helping TH with these posts.

Let's look at what we know - and please bear with me. I am trying to keep this short. If I go into detailed-analysis mode this post is going to be tens of thousands of words. Thus I am simplifying these points to their "smallest common denominators" to save everyone time.

• The Industrial Revolution (IR) was extremely traumatic for societies.
• The influx of new technology & devices that allowed one individual to do the work of many led to massive, sudden unemployment.
• Those unemployed individuals, many from agricultural areas, moved to the cities to find work.
• Those same unemployed individuals became cheap labor in the cities.
• Taking advantage of the surplus of cheap labor, "robber barons" created factories that (ab)used that surplus to create new goods.
• Due to extremely low wages and overcrowding, the people moving into the cities lived a squalid existence. They had little and health / disease were a concern.

The Fae, Lady Sakuya in particular, will know about these effects in general terms. They also have the Arrun Library to research the IR in. I expect they will begin planning ways to offset these issues as much as they can. There are some things they can do to avoid creating the "squalor" of the factory/city environment. Getting eco-friendly laws put into place before they are needed, for example. They can also take some steps to avoid future problems that will let them create new jobs for individuals in areas that will be losing them.

Take, for example, electrical power generation. (And see the prior posts about how they can use magi-tech to generate power.) In America we have hundreds of thousands of miles of power lines running all over the place. What few people realize is that as the distance of line increases, the throughput decreases. Energy is lost to resistance of the medium. That's why high-voltage lines exist - they reduce the energy loss. Energy also has to be used within a very short time (milliseconds, I believe) after it is generated. Electrical energy also cannot be stored very efficiently in the long term. Batteries, for example, lose charge just by sitting on a shelf even if they are not used.

What's the solution? Laying the groundwork for power plants in many locations. Every major city, then the smaller cities, then even villages. If they can create "green" power with natural wind & solar sources - great! If not and they can create "green" power with magic of some flavor - great! I expect either or both to be viable. In the short term electricity won't be all that useful. In the long term the Fae know how powerful it will become. They can begin investing in "day time" power - windmills and other applications - as well as "off hours" generation. In our world many power companies that use renewable power have extra sources of electricity that are brought online during the night or whenever they are having heavy loads. The bright side to using magi-tech to generate power is that it can be done anywhere you can have mages and technicians. In our world we have to keep power plants reasonably near where the power will be used and wherever the fuel is coming from.

Another consideration that the Fae will be very aware of is that the stages of scientific & economic growth after an IR will require scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other highly-educated individuals. (Modern day medical specialists, for example, are massively better educated than their Tristanian peers would be.) They can start trying to get the Tristanian nobility to agree to allow public schools to form. Those schools will start absorbing some of the workers for a period of time - just like we see during economic recessions in our world as people go back to school for another /an advanced degree. In a perfect world the students of those schools will walk away able to take on more complex jobs than a semi-skilled set of hands in a factory.

(In practice I assume this will take several generations to sink in, but the Fae know they have to get started somewhere..)

Finally, the Fae know that in our world many European cities have remained unchanged for centuries. I got to visit Italy several years ago and I lost track of the number of buildings I saw that were older than the discovery of the new world. Many of those buildings and cities have been retrofitted to accommodate modern technology. The Fae can convince the Tristanian nobility to put some of their workers to work tearing down buildings that won't be cost-effective in the future and beginning to build new ones that will either work as-is for a significant time or be built specifically so that they can be retrofitted. Having conduits in the walls specifically so that when electricity /phone lines /internet lines /new magi-tech gizmo lines are available they will be easy to insert into the buildings is one example.

Anyway, that's my two copper. Does anyone have a suggestion I missed?

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The first thing that springs to mind is that they have to break the nobility before they can truly start to industrialise, because Halkeginia is likely to still be at the stage where peasants can't move around without the permission of their lord, so if the nobles still have all their rights, there won't be any migration to the cities. In the short term, it's not so much of a problem, because early industrial enterprises don't usually grow up in cities; they grow up near the sources of their raw materials, which means that new industrial sites - and, therefore, the wealth they produce - can be built on the land of nobles 'favourable' towards the Crown while there's still doubt over the advantage they provide. In the long term, that advantage needs to be levered to destroy opposition to central authority so that free movement of people can actually take place (broadly, early industrial nobles, Crown and Fae to crush rebellious nobles, Fae, and Crown + rebellious noble land to crush early industrial nobles, probably Crown vs Fae at some future point well beyond the scope of the story). In Europe, that shattering of aristocratic power had already taken place in countries that industrialised first, and the power of the local nobles over the peasantry was a big part of why places like Russia lagged so far behind.

I doubt that they'd outright tell anybody this, though, excepting maybe Henrietta, Mazarin, Marianne etc. Certainly, it wouldn't be made public knowledge - and they might deliberately refrain from translating books on economics and the Industrial Revolution to stop anybody from finding out. If the nobles knew, it would be an immediate civil war, or in this situation, all the nobility defecting to Reconquista.

 

[Biigoh]

snipped

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This oddly makes a fair bit of sense. Far more sense than what I've been saying... but that's not exactly hard at this time of day... @_@

 

[Anzer'ke]

After reading three pages of posts mostly on why capitalism is bad, how the nobles will / won't run things, and so on I don't know if we're actually helping TH with these posts.

Let's look at what we know - and please bear with me. I am trying to keep this short. If I go into detailed-analysis mode this post is going to be tens of thousands of words. Thus I am simplifying these points to their "smallest common denominators" to save everyone time.

• The Industrial Revolution (IR) was extremely traumatic for societies.
• The influx of new technology & devices that allowed one individual to do the work of many led to massive, sudden unemployment.
• Those unemployed individuals, many from agricultural areas, moved to the cities to find work.
• Those same unemployed individuals became cheap labor in the cities.
• Taking advantage of the surplus of cheap labor, "robber barons" created factories that (ab)used that surplus to create new goods.
• Due to extremely low wages and overcrowding, the people moving into the cities lived a squalid existence. They had little and health / disease were a concern.

The Fae, Lady Sakuya in particular, will know about these effects in general terms. They also have the Arrun Library to research the IR in. I expect they will begin planning ways to offset these issues as much as they can. There are some things they can do to avoid creating the "squalor" of the factory/city environment. Getting eco-friendly laws put into place before they are needed, for example. They can also take some steps to avoid future problems that will let them create new jobs for individuals in areas that will be losing them.

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This is a bit simplified. There are other issues here. We could focus on the mental shitstorm say:

For instance, the mindset before and after was very much altered in order to obtain better workers. It was "encouraged" for people to develop the belief that working constantly like they were forced to was a noble thing, that people should do with their lives (see the "protestant work ethic") and thus they complained less.

Then there's the masses of changes to common terminology and implied thought originating in the 'robber barons' of this time, the vilification of anarchy (and the invention of the bomb throwing anarchist meme) would be one I care particularly for. Though that is a bit spread out on the ol' time line.

Point being that it is as much about preventing large scale brainwashing as anything else.

Then there's the continued stratification of society. The Fae could instead set this up so that in the long term it will lead into more equal conditions.

Finally, the Fae know that in our world many European cities have remained unchanged for centuries. I got to visit Italy several years ago and I lost track of the number of buildings I saw that were older than the discovery of the new world. Many of those buildings and cities have been retrofitted to accommodate modern technology. The Fae can convince the Tristanian nobility to put some of their workers to work tearing down buildings that won't be cost-effective in the future and beginning to build new ones that will either work as-is for a significant time or be built specifically so that they can be retrofitted. Having conduits in the walls specifically so that when electricity /phone lines /internet lines /new magi-tech gizmo lines are available they will be easy to insert into the buildings is one example.

Anyway, that's my two copper. Does anyone have a suggestion I missed?

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Beautification of cities is not to be underestimated as a serious matter. Making them large, open and very pretty indeed is not something to be sniffed at.

Also making them energy efficient as current engineering allows us (as much as possible with what they have) would save ridiculous amounts over the timescales the fae planners are going to be thinking in.

 

[Mahrac]

After reading four pages filled with what should be tl;dr posts, I'm reminded why I stick to military matters over economic ones; much simpler.

 

[Vaermina]

That interpretation of effects on lungs is rather questionable. For instance birds managed to survive the worst of the Industrial Revolution. Not to mention there are some ways to increase Oxygen uptake, with out making some kind of hypothetical modification to the lungs that requires much more air passing through it. (Increasing oxygen binding molecules, modify oxygen binding molecules, increase CO2 resistance, increase lungs internal surface area) Also the lung system already has an anti-particulate filtering system, so such pollution would also have to bypass that.

Considering Faerie also seem to have a better constitution then the normal human, it makes this interpretation even more questionable.

PS it should be noted that certain branches of humanity already can live at fairly high altitudes as is, like for instance Tibetans.

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Birds have an entirely different lung system then humans do.

In addition to that your forgetting that energy takes the simplest path available to it. So given the choice of just increasing the number or density of the Alveoli in the lungs, or creating entirely new molecules and biological structures it would have gone with the one that was easiest.

Considering she's already used her weapons like this, this point is kind of moot as clearly the weapon did not do as you suggested and shatter.

But skipping past that detail, there's another thing as well. If the metal isn't just harder, but also stronger, then it's quite possible you can use it more like a normal blade. And there their materials are supposed to be stronger then normal steel, this isn't much of a leap to make. So I'm none to convinced that her weapon would shatter as you suggest. (I'm not even convinced a normal Rapier would really, I thought they could endure atleast some abuse after all)

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Which is understandable since none of the weapons she used in this story so far would have been considered RL Rapiers.

 

[Screwball]

Mind you if that is true, why do we have British Citizens coming here for treatment instead of relying solely on British Healthcare.?

Apologies TriggerHappy. I will stop now and take any further conversation to PM.

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American citizens also travel to Canada, Britain and the rest of Europe for healthcare. Medical tourism is a thing that isn't really all that closely related to actual quality of care. It's related to where the specialists are, and the US system is very good at generating specialists in bizarre and rare illnesses.

 

[Aranfan]

That's part of the problem with co-ops, they need a starting capital, and thus would need someone(s) with sufficient money to start things up. But since it's a co-op, the investors... yeah... you need people who can invest in the co-op and said investment would be a "small" number and hope that things don't go sour and you lose your investment (if it's a loan).

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That "problem" applies to every business venture. Every business venture is a risk. Unless you think co-ops are more risky for some reason?

 

[Vaermina]

Beautification of cities is not to be underestimated as a serious matter. Making them large, open and very pretty indeed is not something to be sniffed at.

Also making them energy efficient as current engineering allows us (as much as possible with what they have) would save ridiculous amounts over the timescales the fae planners are going to be thinking in.

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That's going to be difficult, if they want to expand their existing cities any they will have to buy the land from the Nobles who own it. And given that those nobles already lost a good chunk of their land to the Fae I don't think they will be in any hurry to sell to them.

Hmmm that makes me wonder if the Treaty included a provision that would allow them to carry their laws into any new founded cities or not.

 

[Quickshot0]

Birds have an entirely different lung system then humans do.

In addition to that your forgetting that energy takes the simplest path available to it. So given the choice of just increasing the number or density of the Alveoli in the lungs, or creating entirely new molecules and biological structures it would have gone with the one that was easiest.

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That's a horribly weak argument, especially as a random energy system isn't responsible for creating the Faerie, and we have many examples in the transition where the simplest available path wasn't used. (Nor the energy cheapest)

There your basic argument is false, that means your entire line of logic has no foundation and probably as such also false.

As such, I don't see the problem. Doubly so as with in nature such variations have developed as required and Industrialization has failed to harm them as you suggest. So I even have positive evidence supporting my point.

 

[Screwball]

That's going to be difficult, if they want to expand their existing cities any they will have to buy the land from the Nobles who own it. And given that those nobles already lost a good chunk of their land to the Fae I don't think they will be in any hurry to sell to them.

Hmmm that makes me wonder if the Treaty included a provision that would allow them to carry their laws into any new founded cities or not.

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Generally speaking, the founding of new cities in this sort of social setup requires some sort of royal charter or permission, so presumably any such extension of Fae laws would be written into said charter (or not, as the case may be). It'd probably be case by case, basically.

 

[Aranfan]

Depends again on how much control or leverage the investors can exercise. If this is limited then yes, the risk greatly increases.

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If the Fae that Duke Vallire are working with have set themselves up as a co-op then it entirely possible for that stigma to be lost. Keep in mind that the draw is superior technology, even if they are seen as "riskier" they could still flourish in this environment.