Would this work in a society?

[LonewandererD]

Okay, I will need to work out the details more. The unit for unit system was developed by farmers where a unit of rice would be traded for a unit of grain, fruit, animal fodder, and so on; this worked because all goods where perishable and all had immediate practical use. The unit for unit system (abbreviated to UUS for writing purposes) was then adapted into the trading of other materials but as all meaterials can't be traded by a like-like basis the UUS is used create a base worth of the material and the local trading post (who communicates with other posts across the Dal Lands) works from there to determine an items worth taking into account usability, rarerity and local abundance. They can also prevent the trade of illegal items or items with very little worth (so firewood would only really have worth in your town market), extra cost for manpower and time are meshed out by the haggling merchants who try to get the most for their goods, a lot of shouting is involved but physical altercations are forbidden.

Smaller items are priced in a similiar way, the item is weighed and then the vender puts up the price in accordance with quality, time and so forth. Non-item services either charged a certain amount of commidity currency (or Bajid in form of Dal iron coins, or Chakit in the form of rice) for their services or are completely negotiable. Salary are paid in bajid/chakit or in a portion of the material they helped to create. A salary goes down if lodging and food has to be provided but that is worked out at its appropriate time. All in all it mainly comes down to haggling, haggling is considered to be the most common Dal pasttime, the UUS and trading posts just help to give it some structure and control.

Want to write more but I have to rush off to work.

-D-

[tilt]

good thing you wrote about haggling, cause there is always somebody who's better to get a good deal than others. Or when you need the others product more than he needs yours, alsways a difficult possition to trade from

[jwbjerk]

In it's simplest form "money" isn't anything mysterious, arbitrary or magical. It doesn't have to be metals, though there are good reasons precious metals were frequently used in history.

Let's say you have a barter society. It works, but it's not as convenient. Let's say a rice farmer wants to buy a field from a neighboring rice farmer. Is the second farmer going to be excited about getting more rice? Of course not, he already has all the rice he needs, what he wants is a horse. The third guy with extra horses already happens to have a year's supply of rice laid up-- any more is likely to go bad before he eats it-- what he wants is a some furniture. And so on. People either have to accept things they don't want (often with a limited shelf-life) in hopes they can trade them with someone else, or try to figure out complicated multi-person deals.

That's where some kind of medium of exchange comes in, i.e. money. These are the qualities that make something a good candidate for being "money":

* It's easy to transport -- high value per pound
* It's easy to subdivide
* Lots of people want it
* It doesn't require special care
* It doesn't quickly go bad
* It's uniform -- not hard to assess the value
* There's enough of it to go around

You see why societies would end up using metal as money (and it's not just "pretty" metals that have been used but all of them) -- it fits the above criterion better than almost anything. Salt works pretty well too if it happens to be scarce enough to be valuable. Cigarettes have been used. It's a lot more convenient to carry bits of metal to the market than livestock, bushels of grain, bolts of cloth etc. Metal has intrinsic value. It's hard to obtain, and can always be used to make something.

Unless the society is small and simple, or there are some strong destructive laws/traditions against it, they will end up using whatever available substances best fit those criterion. It doesn't have to be one thing. Coins of tin, nickel, copper, iron, bronze, silver, electrum, and gold have been used as money simultaneously.

[Gidde]

Kim Stanley Robinson did something -- well, if not similar at least in the same general ballpark -- to what you're proposing in his Mars trilogy (Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars). Faced with needing to design an economy from the ground up, they used two currencies; a rare item for an economy similar to what we have, and a useful item for a secondary "gift economy". Check em out if you've never read them and like sci-fi; there's some pretty in-depth philosophical discussions in there regarding society and economy that could be valuable to anyone worldbuilding.

[LonewandererD]

So if I kept my society small, as in each clan being a seperate society from each other, than this system should work? Inter-clan trade does occur but it is for the most part controlled by the nobility and so they would work their own system for it. On the subject of economy, would this be an acceptable tax system.

When anyone creates or harvest any form of goods or raw materials they have to abide by two universal laws, the People's Rights and the Clan's Rights. The People's Rights dictates that should anyone assist in the work in an appreciable manner, such as helping to grow and harvest the crop, than they are entitled to a small portion of it. The People's Rights are ensured by a labour contract where the labourer works for the entire length of the contract and if they follow all the way through then their share is legally ensured.

The Clan Right's dictates that the individual's clan is entitled to a portion of their goods or wealth, normal around a third to a half of it, anything left over is theirs. The individual will keep some of their goods for personal use and most trade off the rest. This is collected the local Yama'N who enforce the taxes and laws in each village and small town, a portion is kept by them, a portion is kept by the settlement and a portion is collected by the local Banares Shi'N. The Banares Shi'N control the towns are a sort of like the mid-high ranked nobles; again a portion is kept by them, a portion is kept by their settlement and a portion is sent on the to reigning D'Shi'N. The D'Shi'N is the clan leader and portion of all the goods received from all across their clan's domain is given to their capital city, a portion is sent to the Jha'N, the leader of the Dal, and the rest is theirs. In all of these cases when any food goods are siezed (these goods gain highest priority) then a portion is put into storage, the Dal are very conscious about planning for the future. This system was first concieved to make sure that the yearly crops would get to as many people as possible.

If a person can'y pay their tax in goods, like warriors, than they pay either in bajid or chakit, where possible, or in other services like manual labour or military duty. People who directly serve a D'Shi'N or Banares Shi'N are normally exempt from tax. The Wandering People and the Spirit Walkers (sort of the local priesthood) are also exempt from tax.

Would this work?

-D-

[jwbjerk]

How do these people divide off portions of things like horses or boats? Say a shipbuilder make one ship a year, or a carpenter makes a few houses a year. How can you divide up these items among the workers, clan, etc?

People have used equally oppressive and counter-productive economic systems, in that sense it could "work", but it wouldn't work well.

[Juggernaut1981]

Um, dense point of history about "commodity fiat currency". The British Pound, is a note valued to be equivalent to one pound of sterling british silver held by the English Monarch.

Running on a commodity system entirely... (two quick examples)
1. Hebrew Law regarding the Levite Tribe (they were given 1/11th of everything since they were not to undertake any labour than working for God)
2. Roman Legion and Salt (by the way, having a pound of salt was actually probably more valuable and useful than a pocket of silver)

As these systems progress, eventually one commodity will become the standard for pricing all of the others. It is common and frequent. From my general encountering of ancient markets, there have been bushels of grain, fleeces, pounds of silver, wine, salt, spices (such as saffron) and any other not-easily grown or acquired commodity with high practical or rarity value.

[Juggernaut1981]

Draft Design Trading/Money System:

Establishing a Baseline:
1 bushel of flour (weighing approximately 60kg and having the same size as a large duffelbag/backpack) is a very common commodity and will supply a small family for approximately 1 month. 60kg of flour will probably make as much as 50 large loaves of bread, will require about 100 eggs, 200g of salt, milk/water & lard or butter. Milk, water and fats (lard, butter) are assumed to be easily supplied assuming most peasants have access to at least 1 cow's worth of milk daily.

This would mean that 1 bushel of flour is roughly equal to 100 eggs or 200g of salt. Milk is basically valueless, but butter and cheese would have a greater value. The reasoning is that if I have a supply of eggs (breeding chickens), I'd need 1 bushel of flour to make my bread for 1 month. So it stands to reason that I would trade 100 eggs for 1 bushel of flour... that way I get flour for my bread and the flour-owner gets eggs for theirs.

I cannot save in commodities. Flour perishes,so do eggs. I need to have something I can store for many years. Hence most groups developed SOME kind of currency.

You could name is something like a "Salter" (if it came from salt), "Bushel" (if it is based on the value of a bushel of flour), etc

[Etheremis]

Fascinating discussion with a lot of excellent points brought up already. The Romans paying their soldiers in salt was the first thing to cross my mind reading the initial post. I would like to point out a few things.

1. The solution lies, I think, with a hybrid system. You espouse that a farmer won't trade in his crop for paper bills. A noble, however, is much more likely to. These bills would more than likely be be deeds and titles. Even if they were money then it stands to reason that is would be redeemable for a large quantity of silver/gold coin. Peasants would probably have a few coins but mostly deal via bartering. Even if the currency was not gold/silver portability is a must.

2. Most people would be ignorant to the exchange rate between between one unit of chickens and a half unit of iron. Most people only want to buy exactly what they need. (I just re-read some of the responses and it was pointed out that weight of unit should vary based on item in question)

3. Supply and Demand. The exchange rates are likely to fluctuate wildly depending on circumstances and location. A farmer in province A has a lot more rice than farmer in province B (because of the drought there). Since the people in both areas need to eat farmer B's yield (what little he managed) is actually worth considerably more based upon weight than farmer A's.

4. Multiple weight systems. Take a look sometime at all the differing weight systems employed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apothecaries%27_system. Some of them were only used for metals and some only for pharmacological. Unless there is one fixed standard of measure it becomes a nightmare.

5. Are there neighboring countries to Dal? The lack of a currency is a barrier to commerce. This barrier is not insurmountable but does make a legitimate concern.

One thing many people fail to consider with regards to currency is that money is an abstract for wealth. Wealth is based on goods and/or services. A gold coin's value is not necessarily because gold itself is valuable. I can have a mountain of gold coins, but no actual wealth. It is because with this gold coin I can obtain x product or y service. The coin itself has no value until it is traded. Also, until it is traded the value of the coin is not fixed. It may say $1 on it, but if someone will give me X for it and another would give me X+Y it's value is not set until I make a deal.

All said and done your system can work but there are a lot of rough edges to it. Bartering is the earliest form of trade. I have some concerns though with this system and the nature of your project. If you are just mapping as a creative exercise and were curious, then the responses I have read are all enough to give you a good idea. If you are planning this as an rpg setting and intend to play it, then i foresee some problems. At that point you should probably list everything by it's value in X and then come up with some exchange rates. That set up is almost analogous with coinage anyway and personally i wouldn't go through the hassle because your players will probably get very frustrated when trying to buy things. It will be novel the first time but eventually it will be annoying.


btw, Hi everyone! I just joined the guild the other day and this is post #1. (I hate "introduce yourself" boards...)

[LonewandererD]

While I ponder my way through points 1-4 I can say for point 5 that no, they're are no "countries" neighbouring the Dal Lands, well at least not any countries that would be open to trade. The Dal Lands are situated in what is known as the "Forgotten World" a continent far removed from the rich bustling empires of the Everlandias. Dal humans are a racial minority, to date they have not come into significant contact with any other human country, with the excveption of the traitor nation, a clan that split off from the Dal and now live in exile, trade with them is strictly prohibited. To the north are the Belpra'Hadun Nations and they are racial sumpremesists who sooner see all humans destroyed than trade with them. To the west and throughout the Dal Lands are the Wya'Kai and Ithkien, the Wya'Kai also would like to see the Dal dead and the ones present in the Dal lands seem to be vanguards and rogue warbands from a greater nation further to the northwest, the Ithkien live as nomads and strictly barter and haggle, they have no use for currency out in the middle of nowhere. The east is open ocean, nothing out there, and to the south are the Sunrise Isles where the Kif reside and because of the distance between them and the Kif's apparent lack of the technology, despite rumours of a hidden Kif nation, they also only barter, the Kif have not developed a concept of currency.

-D-