[Dragaera] _Iorich_ random brief comments (spoilers!)

[Philip Hart]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Alexx Kay wrote:

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>> On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Howard Brazee wrote:
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>>> On 1/26/2010 8:42 AM, Alexx Kay wrote:
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> A) The trend towards teleport-shipping was short-lived, and turned out to
> be not economical.  (At least for bulk goods.  Actually, the more I think
> about it, the more I like this.  Bandits like to rob merchants of either
> cash, or smallish valuable objects, not 'sacks of grain'.)

I can only see the cost of teleporting falling quickly as the techniques 
are perfected/simplified/widely taught.

> B) The trend towards teleport-shipping took a long time to be established.
> It *starts* just after the Interregnum, but isn't fully established until
> several hundred years later, when Paarfi is writing.

I don't think this will work, but I don't much care about this anyway.

>> If in fact the calculation works out cheaper for the crew/longshoremen/etc
>> salaries/etc., then that means there is an incredible gulf between the
>> value of manual labor and simple magical labor.  I don't know how that
>> would be supportable economically or societally.
>
> Why not?  In our world, computer programmers (who I think are a decent
> equivalent to 'sorcerers') make a *lot* more money than manual laborers.
> And our society at least pays lip service to egalitarianism, whereas the
> Empire make no bones about oppressing peasants as much as possible.

A good programmer trains for years and years of a human life to earn, 
what, $100/hr, or x10 what a bargeman makes, or x1 what a longshoreman 
makes?  Vlad and Cawti picked up teleporting on the side I think - 
Morrolan learned it in a few days starting from functional illiteracy 
iirc.  And programming is an evolving and challenging job - I'm talking 
about replacing maybe 30*5*10 Dragaeran hours of labor with << 1 hr of 
trivial work for anyone able to do it.

Maybe this is standard industrial or computer revolution stuff, 
maybe we already know this and I'm just catching up, anyway it's 
important for the society.