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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3508598" data-attributes="member: 18280">Yes, but "usury" usually applies to money, not goods.Of course.  In order for a society to function, it assigns relative values to items that people require daily.Similarly, scutage was sending money instead of men at arms to a liege -- but the money varied, and the liege could say no.I agree that people have an implicit understanding of the value of things in their society and that is not an anachronism.  It would be difficult to put yourself into an NPC's boots and decide what the value is to the NPC if that were not true.  Similarly, while you cannot know the absolute value of an object on ebay, you can gain a rough idea of its value.  I would hazard that it is unlikely for anyone to do any real work on a setting without gaining some insight into the rough values of objects relative to each other, including where they differ from "book value".Scale, and attitude.The elite in D&D have power that we don't normally consider in the real world (although our elite probably have the same level of power).  As in The Godfather, the reply to the statement that Senators don't have people killed, "Now who's being naive?" probably applies.Anyone who can make you the Doohickey of Wondrous Power simply doesn't need to.  The trick is convincing him that he wants to.  At some point, economics becomes politics.RC</blockquote>