36 réponses à ce sujet

[drome34]

The Qunari do not get "paid" for the work. They work because it is their duty. The Qunari equivalent of a merchant, is actually just a person who has to make sure that every Qunari is supplied and taken care materially. He does this because that is his duty. Nothing a Qunari does is for profit.

 

The Qunari do not look down on any class or role in their society. They would look down on a person who did not emobdy his role however. For instance if a person was obviously not giving his whole in fulfilling his role, they would look down on him for not providing his best.

But there is no "discrimination" between roles. The Arishok would lay down his life for any Qunari, regardless of role, IF the Qun demanded it.

 

Thanks for an interesting response. You really have some interesting ideas about Qunari. How do you feel their economy should be portrayed? Right now they are very powerful, but everything seems to point to that they shouldn't be very powerful.

 

Guilds and crafts exist though which are a form of capitalism.

 

I might be wrong, but isn't capitalism as old as civilization it self? Its just one person abandoning consumption today so he can have more capital tomorrow to invest after all. Maybe even written langue was influenced by the need to codify contracts between capitalists and workers? Some seem to think so. That would make capitalism prehistoric. Capitalism should be known in Thedas, but maybe no-one is using it (like our modern world I guess) and definitely not the Qunari. The Qunari must run into severe economic troubles constantly since no beurocrat can know what is best for you or me. They must have severe capital bubbles etc. wrecking their economy constantly. Maybe that is a reason to expand? Like the communits "it only works if everybody is communist".

[noquar7er]

I find the economical success of the Qunari perfectly logical. Since no one is interested in amass individual wealth, or having better things than their neighbour, people suffice with little. They can invest the surplus in funding expansionist wars, researching technology, taking care of the disabled, or whatever they do.

 

Imagine if peasants in feudal society suddenly stopped paying their taxes and tithe(s?); they would have much more income to invest in building mills, irrigation canals, and so on, and thus get bigger harvests. The Qunari also have a mindset that allows this, as they work for the group, not for themselves, but they believe in progress and hard work regardless, I think.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

Qunari economy and society is a combination of communism, confucianism, shintoism, islam, caste and slavery.

 

The main point to remember when talking about the Qunari is that they are all about efficiency and effectiveness of running a society at the exclusion of everything else.

[Mistic]

I might be wrong, but isn't capitalism as old as civilization it self? Its just one person abandoning consumption today so he can have more capital tomorrow to invest after all. Maybe even written langue was influenced by the need to codify contracts between capitalists and workers? Some seem to think so. That would make capitalism prehistoric. Capitalism should be known in Thedas, but maybe no-one is using it (like our modern world I guess) and definitely not the Qunari. The Qunari must run into severe economic troubles constantly since no beurocrat can know what is best for you or me. They must have severe capital bubbles etc. wrecking their economy constantly. Maybe that is a reason to expand? Like the communits "it only works if everybody is communist".

 

Not really. Primitive forms of capitalism were only possible in certain areas, such as trade, and only in a limited capacity.

 

We must understand that Thedas is a medieval world, so the main objective of the economy isn't to provide enough capital to trade and/or invest, but to provide enough food for the population. Famines were a serious issue. Society was mostly agrarian and during the Middle Ages the percentage of peasant population in Europe could reach 90%. Lands couldn't be capitalized as we understand today, since they weren't managed exactly as personal possessions. Institutions such as serfdom and mortmain work against a capitalist economy.

 

It's a common misunderstanding, though. Few people realize that the famous Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the capitalism we know today needed first the not so well known British Agricultural Revolution. Saying that forms of capitalism existed before that it's like saying that forms of communism or cooperativism existed (in fact, the often forgotten cooperativism is more likely in subsistence economies of the past even if they didn't know the term).

 

So yes, the Qunari model isn't actually bad in an agrarian society in which the main concern is not to have surplus to trade, but to avoid famine every year. That is, a typical medieval economy. Hard to care about capital bubbles if you don't have anything to eat.

[EmperorSahlertz]

Thanks for an interesting response. You really have some interesting ideas about Qunari. How do you feel their economy should be portrayed? Right now they are very powerful, but everything seems to point to that they shouldn't be very powerful.

 

 

I might be wrong, but isn't capitalism as old as civilization it self? Its just one person abandoning consumption today so he can have more capital tomorrow to invest after all. Maybe even written langue was influenced by the need to codify contracts between capitalists and workers? Some seem to think so. That would make capitalism prehistoric. Capitalism should be known in Thedas, but maybe no-one is using it (like our modern world I guess) and definitely not the Qunari. The Qunari must run into severe economic troubles constantly since no beurocrat can know what is best for you or me. They must have severe capital bubbles etc. wrecking their economy constantly. Maybe that is a reason to expand? Like the communits "it only works if everybody is communist".

Capitalism didn't really take root until industry got advanced enough to reliably supply excess of goods. The biggest influence on the written word was probably more the distances chiefs began to rule, where a message couldn't reliably be delivered by mouth, so the message had to be written down, so it could be "remembered".

 

Qunari economy is based on supplying what is needed. Nothing more, nothing less. They do not generate excess (other than what has to be kept in reserve probably), and they do not work for profit (key tennet of capitalism). It is basically a tribal system on a national level. With no concept of money capitalism is powerless, not to say meaningless, and this should permeate Qunari society. Their motivation is not the classic "to get more", but something different. What this other motivation would be, I cannot say, I am no writer. Could probably be the motivation to appear more ffective and thus get a chance for promotion, though that would be a wierd motivation, since a Qunari doesn't actually "gain" anything from a promotion.. Other than a new name anyway....

[drome34]

Not really. Primitive forms of capitalism were only possible in certain areas, such as trade, and only in a limited capacity.

 

We must understand that Thedas is a medieval world, so the main objective of the economy isn't to provide enough capital to trade and/or invest, but to provide enough food for the population. Famines were a serious issue. Society was mostly agrarian and during the Middle Ages the percentage of peasant population in Europe could reach 90%. Lands couldn't be capitalized as we understand today, since they weren't managed exactly as personal possessions. Institutions such as serfdom and mortmain work against a capitalist economy.

 

It's a common misunderstanding, though. Few people realize that the famous Industrial Revolution that gave birth to the capitalism we know today needed first the not so well known British Agricultural Revolution. Saying that forms of capitalism existed before that it's like saying that forms of communism or cooperativism existed (in fact, the often forgotten cooperativism is more likely in subsistence economies of the past even if they didn't know the term).

 

So yes, the Qunari model isn't actually bad in an agrarian society in which the main concern is not to have surplus to trade, but to avoid famine every year. That is, a typical medieval economy. Hard to care about capital bubbles if you don't have anything to eat.

 

Well, capitalism seems to have been important enough in ancient rome, where Augustus forced his (insanely rich)senators to invest atleast 2/3 of their capital inside of Italy to bolster the market and drive up land value.

 

Also the role of capital seems to have had pretty big effects on the economy:

 

In the year 33, distressed debtors, perhaps stirred up by shysters, began to prosecute their creditors for usury. There were so many cases that the government allowed a period of 18 months in which offenders might adjust their affairs in accordance with the law. This precipitated a crisis because loans were called and land values collapsed.

 

http://books.google....GIC&redir_esc=y

 

"The credit of the Roman money market", said Cicero in one of his speeches, "is intimately bound with the prosperity of Asia; a disaster cannot occur there without shaking our credit to its foundations".

 

If the Romans were only bothered with making food to eat why did they have a big, and sensitive, capital market? 

 

The Roman set up state programs to help lend money to farmers below market rate (5%) so as to make them more productive. This didn't work ofcourse, since easy money only creates a bubble with a boom and bust. Clearly , capital played an integral part of the roman world. It should have played an integral part of the medieval world too.

 

I still maintain that capitalism in essence means someone somewhere puts of consumption today, thats saving, so that he can invest it tomorrow. Indeed, I wonder how , or why, we even built civilisation without capitalism.

 

The lack of money market, such as used by the romans, and carefully guarded, by the Qunari should lead to severe problems in creating a surplus of anything.

 

The thousands of clay tablets that tell the story of business (and capitalism) since the very beginning in Babylon seems proof enough of capitals important role in developing society. It is only a matter of degrees. A thousand years ago capitalism would seem to be almost non existant beacause of the glacial devolopment of society, this does in no way mean capitalism didn't exist. It is rather that lately things have moved so fast that it has gotten a name. Laissez-faire capitalism have existed in various periods where the state was weak or purposedly kept a heavy hand out of economics. Sure, many would have been farmers and what not but they still needed capital to develop the land.

 

http://mises.org/Books/creator.pdf

[drome34]

Capitalism didn't really take root until industry got advanced enough to reliably supply excess of goods. The biggest influence on the written word was probably more the distances chiefs began to rule, where a message couldn't reliably be delivered by mouth, so the message had to be written down, so it could be "remembered".

 

Qunari economy is based on supplying what is needed. Nothing more, nothing less. They do not generate excess (other than what has to be kept in reserve probably), and they do not work for profit (key tennet of capitalism). It is basically a tribal system on a national level. With no concept of money capitalism is powerless, not to say meaningless, and this should permeate Qunari society. Their motivation is not the classic "to get more", but something different. What this other motivation would be, I cannot say, I am no writer. Could probably be the motivation to appear more ffective and thus get a chance for promotion, though that would be a wierd motivation, since a Qunari doesn't actually "gain" anything from a promotion.. Other than a new name anyway....

 

Advanced systems of credit and ingots were used before money came into existance. Does it say that Qunari doesn't use book keeping or records of transactions? I guess it is implied they dont. 

 

And how do we know they do nothing in excess? How do the population grow? And not doing something in excess such as growing more bananas in your territory, if its good for bananas, and then trading it for something else that  another territory is particulary good at makes no sense economically. Leading to the question why the Qunari are so strong when they dont seem to grasp basic economics.

 

It is also quite weird to not use money in the first place. According to Menger, money emerged spontaneously through the self-interested actions of individuals. No single person sat back and conceived of a universal medium of exchange, and no government compulsion was necessary to effect the transition from a condition of barter to a money economy.

 

Further:

 

In order to understand how this could have occurred, Menger pointed out that even in a state of barter, goods would have different degrees of saleableness or saleability. (Closely related terms would be marketability or liquidity.) The more saleable a good, the more easily its owner could exchange it for other goods at an "economic price." For example, someone selling wheat is in a much stronger position than someone selling astronomical instruments. The former commodity is more saleable than the latter.

 

And:

 

Over time, Menger argued, the most saleable goods were desired by more and more traders because of this advantage. But as more people accepted these goods in exchange, the more saleable they became. Eventually, certain goods outstripped all others in this respect, and became universallyaccepted in exchange by the sellers of all other goods. At this point, money had emerged on the market.

 

 

http://www.monadnock...nger/money.html

 

This would mean the Qunari did have money in the beggining , but got rid of it. Or that they still have something resembling money , such as a common food or luxury good.

 

I have problems with the idea of everyone in Qunari lands simply waking up each morning saying "Ready to work, sir!" and then march of to do labour. Shouldn't the oppression be rather immense?

 

Anyway, the idea of a duty driven economy is certanly interesting, but I fail to understand how it could be as powerful as portrayed. All history is full of intervention and central planning going terribly bad. It should be the same for the Qunari.

 

For curiosity the early socialists discussed the meaning of money, and came up with 3 possible answers to weather money should be used or not:

 

1. To accept that money would have to continue to be a unit of economic calculation in “socialism”;
2. To argue that labour-time could be a unit of economic calculation “ in an economy where neither money nor exchange were present “;
3. To argue that in socialism “calculation in natura [in kind] can take the place of monetary calculation”

 

 

I wonder how the Qunari do economic calculations, if they do them at all?

[PsychoBlonde]

We don't have enough information to speculate about anything. Maybe they are trading with northern civilizations that we are unaware of. Maybe most of their new recruits (elves for example) are used as their force of labor, and it is enough to expand their land production.

 

It has been stated that the Qunari use slave labor.  How extensively is hard to say (and they don't call it that), but they will lobotomize people with drugs (saar-qamek) to turn them into mindless laborers.  Those and the people who surrender but refuse to accept the Qun they basically send to the mines and work them until they die.  I haven't gotten the impression that their "laborers" are in an enviable position--and if you're male and not a warrior or ashkaari that is the only other job there is.

[EmperorSahlertz]

I don't think you quite understand that the Qunari literally do not have any currency, and therefore their economy is COMPELTELY different than how we understand it. We have grown up in, and become indoctrinated by, a society where money is the end all be all of our lives. We are bred to believe that you can do anything with enough money. Which ends up meaning that money is the ultimate motivater for us (of course there are exceptions, but generally). Why do we take a shitty job? The money. Our economy is dominated by the idea of "the free market".

 

The Qunari are born in, and indoctrinated by, a society where the very idea of currency is meaningless, completely depowering capitalistic ideals. The Qunari do not have anything resembling "the free market". Everything the Qunari make is state authorized and ordered. It is a "command market". Or at least an approximation of it. Usually a command market does suffer shortages, but the Qunari seem to have worked out any chinks.

[EmperorSahlertz]

It has been stated that the Qunari use slave labor.  How extensively is hard to say (and they don't call it that), but they will lobotomize people with drugs (saar-qamek) to turn them into mindless laborers.  Those and the people who surrender but refuse to accept the Qun they basically send to the mines and work them until they die.  I haven't gotten the impression that their "laborers" are in an enviable position--and if you're male and not a warrior that is the only other job there is.

Uhm.. There are plenty other roles within the Qun than soldier for males... Scientists for example are comprised of both sexes.

[ThaWitchKing]

not sure but i think the federation economy from star trek is sorta the same, since they have no currency