In Sarnoth proper the currency is “coins” carved from stone and laced with unobtrusive Resonance tech to protect against counterfeiting. But any money people had with them wasn’t of much use once they found themselves in a colony and on their own, so things settled into a “you repair and replace my family’s clothes as needed and we’ll provide you leather to craft with” sort of system.
Pohl understands the importance of getting the kids gifts from Dad's trips.
One issue with barter systems in general I see is that they asume everyone is able to contribute something of equal value. What would children, elderly or those with less desirable or maketable skillsets have to trade with?
That’s what “I’ll get that for you” is FOR. The tadpole needs clothes so YOU do the favor.
I’m sure Agent Then isn’t going to ask for anything *too* onerous… Oh, wait…
Sorry, I keep sending half-thoughts.
That’s how Burning Man works. You don’t necessarily have something that everyone will value but *someone* will value it… and people just kinda let it ride and it all comes out more or less even.
I think it would only work for small isolated comunities like the heaven here, dunno who burning man is unless you mean the character from fallout new vegas though.
I suppose in a way money is also a kind of barter, only transferable, easier to keep track of and the favor is not specified beyond it’s value. 😀
Burning Man is an annual event that takes place in a temporary city erected in the middle of a desert in Nevada. Possibly one of the least hospitable places on earth, and a town of 65,000 people (it even includes a fully operational airport) springs up out of nowhere, lasts for a week, and vanishes without a trace.
The relevance of this is that Burning Man has a “gifting” economy that is similar, but different, to a barter economy.
In general, people bring what they need to Burning Man – either individually, or by joining “camps” that collectively manage the kitchen, maybe lodging, maybe shower, etc.
The “economy” at Burning Man is gifting nonessentials. There’s no barter that I’ve seen. Some people come there to contribute – there’s some peer pressure to that effect. They’ll make stuff beforehand and give it away.
If, as sometimes happens, people show up unprepared (sometimes their fault, sometimes not), then kind-hearted strangers may help them out. Again, not barter.
From my point of view, Burning Man is a somewhat expensive, somewhat rigorous camping trip, with lots of cool art and sculpture and things being set on fire. If you want, you can find community, and/or drugs, and/or opportunities to volunteer.
What you won’t find is anything resembling a real economy.
I suspect that the Burning Man economy sort of works because it only lasts for a week, too short a time for people to notice the parasites on the system. Also because so many are in a pot-induced haze of good feelings…
Money originated as a universal barter medium, making it much easier when you needed to trade a pig for some nails, a visit to the doctor, and five haircuts. For most of history, money was valued for it’s metal content, but now it’s bank entries, slips of paper, and disks of base metal, which we all agree to _pretend_ have value – until we don’t, and that’s called “inflation”. However, even when the money was gold and silver, there wasn’t that much demand for these metals as metals, so the value was supported mainly by shared agreement – or delusion.
I imagine that in most cultures which rely on barter systems, you would have to rely on the able adults to provide for other family members until they are able to provide for themselves in some way. Functionally this is no different than currency based economies, most children don’t actually earn income from outside sources in first world countries, they get it from other adults.
Ohh, elders know lots of stories and harbor a large amount of life experience and other knowledge. And knowledge always a good payment!
Fun fact: In real life, it’s believed that no barter economy has ever existed in any human culture. It seems to have been made up whole cloth by Adam Smith because it was just so utterly unimaginable to 18th Century Brits that a system of goods and services could work on any basis other than “yeah but what can *I* get out of this at this exact minute?”.
It seems likely (pure guesswork on my part), especially with the “you repair and replace my family’s clothes as needed and we’ll provide you leather to craft with” statement by our beloved author, that the only barter is with outsiders. Inside the community there’s just no point to it. You need housing, the housing guy needs food, so you just do each other the favor because the colony works much better if you don’t sleep on the street and he doesn’t starve to death.
that last line, oh my god xD
I have a feeling that Pohl spends time in Havei Jin’Suir performing medicine for the locals, either in association with doctors that live there or as a visiting physician. That would be *his* contribution to the barter economy.
Why do I have a feeling that Tai Li is gonna be the little sister Selkie never had?
Since Then has been revealed to be a dick, Todd should have nothing to do with him.
Get Dr. Bunnyears to buy the leathers, then when they go back to the surface, give him money.
THEY may have no need of it down here, but HE has need of it up there.
And Then can go pound sand.
i agree, then is not only a dick, but also utterly untrustworthy. basically, he´s the *last* person you want to owe one….pohl on the other hand, is a sweety, he might just ask for baby-sitting, or maybe a crsh course in human-style cooking, for when he´ll ever have a human house guest again 😉
I think this is probably a good idea. Then is an associate. Pohl is a friend.
Dave’s doing a pretty good job with Then’s facial expressions– they show he’s up to something that is probably not in Todd’s favor. I wouldn’t want to 1) owe him anything or 2) get on his bad side. As an agent of the government with completely alien values and interests, I’d be very cautious. He could make life very …difficult… for Todd.
I dunno, the expressions said to me that he’s going a little over the top — joking. The type you can only do when people don’t know you / your people all that well yet.
I didn’t take his words at face value, any more than I take Selkie’s threats at face value.
One Pathfinder campaign, I played a character from an underwater race, and since I didn’t know that much about the race I’d chosen, I decided to just wing it and have fun. So I made up cool stuff on the spot, e.g. when talking to NPCs. For example, “Oh, we have giant clutches of eggs, so if a few hundred children get eaten, no biggie.”
Unfortunately, my friend, who is often a GM and has read way more on the subject than I have, was playing a teammate, and every time I came up with something weird, he’d counter with the appropriate data (“No, you don’t, you’re mammals and have only one or two kids at a time!”). At first, I found this irritating (my friend was irritated too, for the opposite reason), but later it merged into a role-play situation that I found amusing:
My character was the type who liked to try to pull one over on the surface-dwellers who didn’t know that much about his people… and he’d run into one of the few surface-dwellers who could actually call him on his lies.
At that point, it got fun ^_^
Agent Brown having the exact same color diving gear, with his hair color not visible through it, makes it really hard to tell it’s not Todd? I figured it out from the cheekbones but it took me a sec (especially cus i looked back and didnt see Agent at all in the last three pages)
I like how you’ve handled this so far. A lot of writers would get lazy, but you haven’t. The “aliens” don’t speak English. They don’t magically accept Earth (or American in this case) currency. They have their own ways of doing things that are wholly incompatible with what we’re familiar.
He’s messing with him. Cuz of course Then would. He’s a dweeb.
Butt stuff favors?
In an earlier panel, with the writing on the store, I’m pretty sure you got this question asked, but have you come up with a writing for the Sarnothi language, or were you just scribbling?
Panel 3, you have Todd talking to himself…
Or maybe that’s Avery and I’m an idiot.
Then didn’t explain himself very well when he took the bow from Selkie; but I honestly suspect he couldn’t. And here this comic makes me like him more. XD “Somewhere between ‘Genie’ and ‘Mafia'” and that gleeful cackle.
I can picture that clerk knocking on Todd’s door one day to collect that favor. He doesn’t have to do much just help mix and pour some cement. Oh and ignore the Sarnoth with the sack over his head.
I don’t think cement overshoes would work as well on Sarnothi for some reason…