Economics (Four Topics For SF&F Research #1)
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Economics touches everything we do and every aspect of how we live, but it's often invisible to us, and we rarely understand it well. That also makes it hard to use as a worldbuilding element, but your fictional worlds will benefit enormously from a good understanding of economic theories and practices -- and you'll have that much more material to build your stories, too, not just your settings!
"Spice & Wolf" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
"The Traitor Baru Cormorant" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
"Principles of Economics 3e by OpenStax" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
"Economics (Paul Krugman)" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
"The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
"Economics For Dummies" at Amazon.com:
www.amazon.com...
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Once again, another very informative video.
Also, love the example of SPICE & WOLF (and having read a couple of the novels and having watched a few episodes of the anime, you chose well!). Another example of a SF series using economics--or touching on it--would be STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, particularly with the Ferengi and their system, especially the "Rules Of Acquisition". For years, the economics of the Star Trek universe was never addressed--the idea being that no one needs money. But this seemed...well, unrealistic. DS9's setting--the station is essentially a port-of-call and also a major hub in a very busy area of space--turned out to be perfect to address something that TREK had never really gone into. Lo and behold, it worked (at least for me).
The Paul R Krugman book Economics may be the international version, I couldn't find it for interlibrary loan in California. There is a two book version, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics which is, and there are much cheaper paperback versions as well.
I agree
I like how you started with a scarcity quote, and I will give you another by Thomas Sowell :
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
And it exemplifies the problem with most authors.
They aren't politicians themselves, but they will absolutely insert their own politics into the story and ignore all unconvenient economics aspects. And well, it shows : In most western media, you probably will have a very stereotypical/mannichean "the rich are evil and destroying the environment" at best... I think Spice and Wolf succeeds because it 1/The japanese don't insert their politics as much in their stories, while also being more humble about things they don't understand 2/With its setting, it can showcase some rules at a scale most people can grasp.
Tbh, it's difficult to present proper economics, even if you're somewhat well read on economics (I mean, knowing the basics already puts you ahead of 80% of the population, who think money printing or price control work...), you're still vulnerable to political biases.
For example, you talked about Gold and Silver, but your explaination is too simplistic.
The real reasons are much more political. First and foremost, all European powers (france, UK, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary) either collapsed or ruined themselves so much during the world wars, that it wrecked the system. The gold standard was largely a mean of exchange between states (in fact, it's still the case. That's why states still have Gold reserves, and china-Russia are buying a lot of it, trying to contest the dollar hegemony). It also was a strong limiting factor on how much governments could spend. And there, Europe thought waging total war (TWICE) was more important than maintaining sound money.
The World Wars are what killed the Gold Standard
The Gold Standard that finally got killed in 1971 by Nixon was extremely reduced and a shadow of its former self : it was already dead in many ways, not even limping forward a little, but twitching on the ground. And well, post ww2 Europe was destroyed again, Russia and a good chunk of Eastern Europe was under Communist control (not exactly known for sound monetary policy) and likewise for China. Large part of the world (Africa and India) were under colonial control; so it can be wrapped in the case of France/UK/Portugal, etc.
The USA were the only game in town
And thus, the global (well, western) economy came to rely on the US because the US was tthe only trustworthy actor for investors. That caused plenty of issues (too long for this already long comment), but it's important that it was possible to maintain it, but it would have taken strong decision and forcing the European to go back. And politically, the USA decided to go off the gold standard too because it was advantageous (the USA kept the advantage of having european depend on them : What Giscard d'estaing called the USA *exorbitant privilege*), expanded it a little on other aspects (the USA actually helped destroy France and the UK colonial empire, and started dealing with the newly founded countries, while also fighting off the USSR, doing the same) which helped the USA truly become a superpower, and after the collapse of the USSR, the only Superpower. (Well, now, it's getting seriously challenged, but it was a good 30/40 years run, and I'm curious what China will do)
I could actually go further, and talk about Napoleon (who eroded the gold standard quite a bit himself) or go even further back. But with just this, isn't it more interesting than a mere "it's to avoid manipulation by bad actors ?" (Tbh, if it was just them, it would be easy to fend them off. You really need to be at a state level to really sway things)
Your explaination of "The government did it because it's more efficient" also hides the much more real and darker "The governments did it because they wanted to kill each other on a massive scale"
You're curious as to what China will do? BRICS, and establishing the Yen as a competitor to the Dollar market. I agree with some of what you say and would actually throw the same accusation at you - your explanation is too simplistic. Peace.