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<blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5596227" data-attributes="member: 52073"><p>1) Again, the Profession rules tell us how much he makes; the flavor text tells us how he makes it. Joe Farmer makes his check and gets 10gp worth of stuff at the end of that week. Did he make an extra 1000 pounds of wheat that week? Highly unlikely. Was there some drastic need for whatever crops he was selling that bumped up the price? Maybe. Regardless of how he got it, he ends up with 10gp. It's up to the flavor text to tell us how medieval the economics are--but one thing the rules tell us is that Joe Farmer is <em>not</em> a dirt-farming serf who barely survives day to day.</p><p></p><p>2) The point I was making with the meals and fences was not that those aren't expenses, but rather than those things are included in the wealth Profession gives him. A farmer could, in-game, have his wife cook some meals for his family, have his children can some food for the winter, have his cow Bessie give birth to a calf, have his son cut down some lumber to build a barn, and so forth--but mechanically, that's X gp worth of food he has to buy, Y gp of wood he has to buy, a new cow he has to pay for, and so on. That the farmer only ends up with a handful of silver pieces at the end of the week in-game doesn't change the fact that he ended up with the equivalent X gp worth of goods and services by the rules.</p><p></p><p>3) For the sake of example, I'm assuming a farmer has crops and livestock and maybe a forest he can get wood from and so forth. The same principles apply for Joe Only-Grows-Wheat Farmer, the examples are just less interesting.</p><p></p><p>4) You seem to be approaching this from the perspective of "Here's how medieval economics works; let's apply that to D&D." That's completely backwards. The question in the OP was "How do D&D economics work?" and the answer to that question is "The Profession rules are how NPCs make money." You can explain that in-game using medieval economics, Renaissance economics, or (with sufficiently many spellcasters) post-scarcity economics if you want, but if you want to know how D&D economics <em>actually works</em>, you have to start with the rules, not the flavor text.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You can fit the Profession rules into a Malthusian context because it's not the amount of food you can produce that matters, only the food you can consume. Today, we have enough food production capabilities to feed the entire world. Yet people go hungry. Why? Because the distribution system doesn't work. In the same way, in the D&D world you could have a single level 20 paragon commoner with +bazillion to Profession make enough food to feed the whole Prime, yet you still have the problem that demand outstrips supply because getting that food places while dragons and giants and vampires oh my roam the wilderness is a real pain.</p><p></p><p>Now, why Malthus is so important to you I'm not sure. You'll note that I originally pointed out that he was basically wrong for an industrialized society such as ours (and by extension a highly-magical society such as most D&D settings), and only pointed out that you <em>could</em> reconcile it with Malthus if you wanted to. I never denied that my views on D&D economics were post-Malthusian at all, and in fact attempting to apply his theory to a world which is past "Medieval Europe + magic!" into Renaissance era technology at best, or which essentially replaces technology with magic at worst, is not really feasible for the same reason it's infeasible to apply it to the real world.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eldritch_Lord, post: 5596227, member: 52073"] 1) Again, the Profession rules tell us how much he makes; the flavor text tells us how he makes it. Joe Farmer makes his check and gets 10gp worth of stuff at the end of that week. Did he make an extra 1000 pounds of wheat that week? Highly unlikely. Was there some drastic need for whatever crops he was selling that bumped up the price? Maybe. Regardless of how he got it, he ends up with 10gp. It's up to the flavor text to tell us how medieval the economics are--but one thing the rules tell us is that Joe Farmer is [I]not[/I] a dirt-farming serf who barely survives day to day. 2) The point I was making with the meals and fences was not that those aren't expenses, but rather than those things are included in the wealth Profession gives him. A farmer could, in-game, have his wife cook some meals for his family, have his children can some food for the winter, have his cow Bessie give birth to a calf, have his son cut down some lumber to build a barn, and so forth--but mechanically, that's X gp worth of food he has to buy, Y gp of wood he has to buy, a new cow he has to pay for, and so on. That the farmer only ends up with a handful of silver pieces at the end of the week in-game doesn't change the fact that he ended up with the equivalent X gp worth of goods and services by the rules. 3) For the sake of example, I'm assuming a farmer has crops and livestock and maybe a forest he can get wood from and so forth. The same principles apply for Joe Only-Grows-Wheat Farmer, the examples are just less interesting. 4) You seem to be approaching this from the perspective of "Here's how medieval economics works; let's apply that to D&D." That's completely backwards. The question in the OP was "How do D&D economics work?" and the answer to that question is "The Profession rules are how NPCs make money." You can explain that in-game using medieval economics, Renaissance economics, or (with sufficiently many spellcasters) post-scarcity economics if you want, but if you want to know how D&D economics [I]actually works[/I], you have to start with the rules, not the flavor text. You can fit the Profession rules into a Malthusian context because it's not the amount of food you can produce that matters, only the food you can consume. Today, we have enough food production capabilities to feed the entire world. Yet people go hungry. Why? Because the distribution system doesn't work. In the same way, in the D&D world you could have a single level 20 paragon commoner with +bazillion to Profession make enough food to feed the whole Prime, yet you still have the problem that demand outstrips supply because getting that food places while dragons and giants and vampires oh my roam the wilderness is a real pain. Now, why Malthus is so important to you I'm not sure. You'll note that I originally pointed out that he was basically wrong for an industrialized society such as ours (and by extension a highly-magical society such as most D&D settings), and only pointed out that you [I]could[/I] reconcile it with Malthus if you wanted to. I never denied that my views on D&D economics were post-Malthusian at all, and in fact attempting to apply his theory to a world which is past "Medieval Europe + magic!" into Renaissance era technology at best, or which essentially replaces technology with magic at worst, is not really feasible for the same reason it's infeasible to apply it to the real world. [/QUOTE]
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