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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felix" data-source="post: 1422145" data-attributes="member: 3929">"What would happen if magic were to be used in a commercial manner" is the question I am hearing this thread asking. I would think that magic would then permiate society because there are so many mundane things that magic can be applied to in order to make life easier. Every household would own wands of Prestidigitation. Clothes are cleaned instantaneously. Food tastes better. House is clean. Baby stays amused. Use it to play games with guests. This item is easy to create, people can learn how to use it, and it frees up so much time for the washer/cook/cleaner/babysitter/host that it becomes absurd to think someone wouldn't buy one. There is so much money to be made by the wizards and so much value to be reaped by the buyer that if wizards ever become as clever as they are intelligent, you will start to see Elminster-brand Presto-sticks in everyone's home.That is just one spell. Levitation or something similar to Tenser's Floating Disk would be applied to shipping things short distances. Teleportation Circle would link major cities. Yes, it might take a while for these circles to become widely available, but how long did it take for airplane travel to become affordable for the average person after the first powered aircraft flew? 100 years? Mage companies, in the quest for greater power, will look to become wealthy from their creations. They will create so that their product becomes affordable for more and more customers, increasing their revenues. The commoners will buy because it "improves their life" somehow (never have to eat wife's bad cooking again!). The companies will compete with each other for revenues so they can become more powerful.As for divine magic, it is so cheap to heal someone (Cure Minor Wounds) that it would be given away for free if only people came to the services. Got hurt? Go to a church service. More powerful remedies, of course, would have different prices. And they would be paid. Raise Dead would be coach class, Ressurection as business class, True Res as first class, and Reincarnation instead of JetBlue. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />What I suggest is that wealth and living standards would increase not because of (rather sometimes in spite of) altruism, but because of the profit motive. This is pure Adam Smith economics, and is easier to swallow if you believe that people are naturally selfish and motivated by profit.I'm sorry, but I have to pick on this statement.Internal Combustion Engines. I'm sure you don't consider this to be an "explosive" and don't want it to count, but it does utilize a fuel that explodes when lit. Everything with an engine houses an explosion and affects you greatly, I feel sure.M.A.D. Meaning "mutually assured destruction". The nuclear weapons that don't affect your daily life created your daily life. If there was only one posessor of nukes, life today would be fantastically different than it is now.T.N.T. Besides showing great movies, TNT cleared much of the western US for development, along with Nitro-glycerine (sp?) and dynamite. Travel from East to West coast US would be a lot different if it hadn't had holes blown in the mountains. How did we gain the resources and ability to feed, shelter... everybody on the planet? I think it is because the profit motive was followed. I think a change to altruism and redistributionism would only happen if it promised profit... ie, good PR. I don't think companies give to charity because they want those who benefit from charities to feel better (even though they do), but because it looks good... so their sales go up. And go up more than the cost of the charity donation. Besides, if the profit motive has gotten us this far, why wouldn't it carry us far enough to actually make it economical to feed every person born? And who is to say that magic isn't such a low cost provider of health care that this wouldn't be the case? If it were profitable to spread healing to the masses at no charge due to the increased worshippers, then I think they would do it. I'd hate to see an Evil church figure that out though. The Evil god of Destruction spreading healing to the poor and saying that the Good god of Healing and his worshippers should be killed because he won't provide free health care... hrm...But then, that's not the real world, eh?</blockquote>

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