[Dragaera] _Iorich_ random brief comments (spoilers!)

[Alexx Kay]

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> On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Howard Brazee wrote:
>
>> On 1/26/2010 8:42 AM, Alexx Kay wrote:
>>> Lastly, transport by water is*astoundingly*  cheap.  If you haven't
>>> done
>>> the research, you'd be amazed at how much cheaper than ground transport
>>> it
>>> is.  Even in the modern world, with airports, freeways, and railroads,
>>> shipping by water is very often the cheapest option.
>
> Ack, meant to respond to Alexx's comment above too.
>
> Lost in the snippage the claim that Vlad doesn't teleport well - I think
> he didn't like to do it because it made him sick, but we've seen him
> accomplish it under incredibly difficult circumstances (with some help of
> the sort that would be easy to set up here).

Fair point.  On the other hand, he pretty much always lets someone else do
the teleport for him, if there happens to be a skilled sorcerer handy
(which, for him, there often is).

>> And their society isn't one that is designed around doing everything
>> quickly.
>
> So iirc it takes three days to transport goods down river from the start
> point of the novel, at no profit (the profit is going upriver with salt).
> It must take longer going upriver.  So that's over a week's salaries for
> the crews, plus feed for the oxen or whatever that pull the barges
> upriver, plus loading and unloading time at the docks, plus transport to
> and from the docks if the final warehouses are elsewhere.  Can that really
> be cheaper than a teleport, even without time pressure in the society, if
> that's still true?  At the end of the Piroiad we already see that
> merchants are abandoning land travel.

That bit at the end of the Piroiad is telling, now that you bring it up. 
There are a number of possibilities I see:

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'.)

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.

C) Brust changed his mind.

D) Other.

> 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.

Alexx

"There are three ages of humanity: callow youth, my present age
 and the unbearably ancient."  -- James Nicoll