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Probably more to the tune of, "How can we pay off the Mongols and Jurchens to keep them from climbing our walls!"

Obligatory

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This is very cool and helpful information, so thanks for that. The banking seems like a good practice, especially if that banker has a far and wide influence, and would be good for a merchant after they got their career off the ground. But assuming the merchant is already wealthy: wouldn't it also be viable to go around and place investments in small private businesses? To get those businesses what they need and off the ground in exchange for a share of their profits. Going around and doing that for multiple merchants eventually leads to you earning income from all over the place. You hire a guy with a wagon to pick up the cash and some mercenaries to escort him, they come back, pay them, and now you have a pile of currency in your basement. Eventually, especially for viable business ideas, you can buy them out.

A corporation might not work well, because like you said, there's a lack of effective communication. But you can still own plenty of different shops and whatnot, also act as an investor, and monopolize an area of trade in particular regions.

Well, "Small private business" is more of a modern thing. The modern small business comes from industrialism making things cheap. At this time period, things we would call "Businesses" were mostly owned by wealthy people, and everything else was skilled labor. This is why merchants tended to be the focus of bankers in those days. Off the top of my head, the closest thing to a small business I can think of would be an Inn or a Brothel.

What you are describing is basically normal business practices between individuals, but you are inserting trademark law in there somehow. "Buying out" a Merchant would be buying his stuff and selling it yourself, which would make you just another merchant. You could definitely buy up inns and brothels and ships, that's what a wealthy merchant would do. Ships are the dangerous investment that pays off the most, while inns, stables, and brothels are the rare example of a business that doesn't require specialized labor, though they won't exactly make you super-wealthy. Other things, like blacksmiths or cobblers, wouldn't sell out because their labor set is so specialized they don't have any reason to sell out. They aren't in competition with so many other blacksmiths that they can't make do on their own.

Real quickly, before I post something and end up making myself look like an idiot, is writing in first person frowned upon? I originally assumed that the "thousands of characters" part in the OP meant we'd be using (and therefore speaking from the point of view of) multiple characters.

We prefer third person, since it can be jarring to read through posts and posts of third person. And then suddenly first person.

And when there's so many characters that can be rolling around from post-to-post if it was all in the first person then there's a good chance a reader can get lost on who-did-what.

Real quickly, before I post something and end up making myself look like an idiot, is writing in first person frowned upon? I originally assumed that the "thousands of characters" part in the OP meant we'd be using (and therefore speaking from the point of view of) multiple characters.

It's not frowned upon per-see, you won't get kicked out or anything, but we don't tend to do it.

Personally, I feel that first person only works when there is just one perspective. RP's involve multiple perspectives by necessity (even if you yourself are only playing one character, the other people in the RP have their own separate characters.) It's much easier to remember who is rping who if they use third person.

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Well, "Small private business" is more of a modern thing. The modern small business comes from industrialism making things cheap. At this time period, things we would call "Businesses" were mostly owned by wealthy people, and everything else was skilled labor. This is why merchants tended to be the focus of bankers in those days. Off the top of my head, the closest thing to a small business I can think of would be an Inn or a Brothel.

What you are describing is basically normal business practices between individuals, but you are inserting trademark law in there somehow. "Buying out" a Merchant would be buying his stuff and selling it yourself, which would make you just another merchant. You could definitely buy up inns and brothels and ships, that's what a wealthy merchant would do. Ships are the dangerous investment that pays off the most, while inns, stables, and brothels are the rare example of a business that doesn't require specialized labor, though they won't exactly make you super-wealthy. Other things, like blacksmiths or cobblers, wouldn't sell out because their labor set is so specialized they don't have any reason to sell out. They aren't in competition with so many other blacksmiths that they can't make do on their own.

I want to say something about guilds too. But I don't think guild practice was ever heavily competing with someone. At least not at a local level. And they wouldn't but out anything.

Then again, I think guilds were fairly internalized in their structure. The apprentices would be doing the menial shit required to produce what it was the guild produced, which would pass on to the higher skilled journey men who worked on more complex shit while the masters directed it all. So it's probably not a viable model of comparison either.

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Well, "Small private business" is more of a modern thing. The modern small business comes from industrialism making things cheap. At this time period, things we would call "Businesses" were mostly owned by wealthy people, and everything else was skilled labor. This is why merchants tended to be the focus of bankers in those days. Off the top of my head, the closest thing to a small business I can think of would be an Inn or a Brothel.

What you are describing is basically normal business practices between individuals, but you are inserting trademark law in there somehow. "Buying out" a Merchant would be buying his stuff and selling it yourself, which would make you just another merchant. You could definitely buy up inns and brothels and ships, that's what a wealthy merchant would do. Ships are the dangerous investment that pays off the most, while inns, stables, and brothels are the rare example of a business that doesn't require specialized labor, though they won't exactly make you super-wealthy. Other things, like blacksmiths or cobblers, wouldn't sell out because their labor set is so specialized they don't have any reason to sell out. They aren't in competition with so many other blacksmiths that they can't make do on their own.

By small businesses, I was thinking that perhaps a farmer with acres full of vegetables goes into the market to sell. I was thinking that perhaps by investing in this farmer, the investor can put that farmer in a more lucrative position and gives his farm more attention and is able to sell off more of his product. The investor makes money off of shares, and the farmer makes money because he is selling more of his cabbages than he ever did before. Though I could be far off, since I am not super familiar with medieval trade practices.

Also assuming that someone is in possession of a mineral rich location full of metal veins, my hypothetical merchant can either wrest control of it by buying it out. Or that the person who has it on their property doesn't have the money or means to mine the valuable metal, so the merchant can invest in that and supply miners and equipment. Your examples of taverns, brothels, and ships are also good!

Nothing smells as good as the exploitation of your people.

And then you can be in mercantile competition with Byrd. ;D

*sad trumpet noises because not mentioned*

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I want to say something about guilds too. But I don't think guild practice was ever heavily competing with someone. At least not at a local level. And they wouldn't but out anything.

Then again, I think guilds were fairly internalized in their structure. The apprentices would be doing the menial shit required to produce what it was the guild produced, which would pass on to the higher skilled journey men who worked on more complex shit while the masters directed it all. So it's probably not a viable model of comparison either.

The important thing to remember is that nobody was mass producing here, so there was always a demand. The guild would control its membership so that there was no trouble. The nice think about skilled labor, especially in a market where there is no cheap unskilled equivalant, is that skilled labor can always bargain. If somebody tries to bring the blacksmith down to the level of the wage worker, he won't be able to find blacksmiths who are willing to work for him.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

By small businesses, I was thinking that perhaps a farmer with acres full of vegetables goes into the market to sell. I was thinking that perhaps by investing in this farmer, the investor can put that farmer in a more lucrative position and gives his farm more attention and is able to sell off more of his product. The investor makes money off of shares, and the farmer makes money because he is selling more of his cabbages than he ever did before. Though I could be far off, since I am not super familiar with medieval trade practices.

Also assuming that someone is in possession of a mineral rich location full of metal veins, my hypothetical merchant can either wrest control of it by buying it out. Or that the person who has it on their property doesn't have the money or means to mine the valuable metal, so the merchant can invest in that and supply miners and equipment. Your examples of taverns, brothels, and ships are also good!

Nothing smells as good as the exploitation of your people.

Yeh, i'm afraid this is all too modern.

Farming was much more straight forward back then. Most land would be owned by wealthy land lords who collected rent from the farmers who lived on his land. They would grow the crops and keep a percentage to eat, or sell in their local markets. Some of this land would be communal so the peasants could grow whatever they felt like, or could keep livestock. The land lord owned the land by right and didn't have to pay anything for it. There was no paying for seed, or gas, or utilities. And they didn't have to compete so much, because a lack of industrialism meant that the output of farms was relatively low since everything had to be done by hand. There wasn't really a place for an investor to swoop in and invent "Chiquita Potato".

These weren't consumer cultures. The wealthy would buy rare oriental clothe and the like, but there was not enough wealth being created as a whole for any sort of consumer culture to evolve. Because everything takes more work to make, everything has more value. A guy is just happy he can afford shoes, so "Ye Olde Nike's" doesn't really have a market.

Also, in this time period tenant law was sort of peculiar. I think in theory you could sell land like that, but it wasn't really done. I suppose part of it is that land was worth too much. For an investor to buy land, he would have to somehow pay the owner more than he could get out of it. It doesn't help that land was attached to social standing. When a guy sells his land, what happens next? He can't move into the suburbs because there are no suburbs. Does he just become a rich peasant? Does he move in with his wifes family and content himself as a vassal to his father-in-law?

And too, its not like the miners are needing bulldozers or anything. They can make most of their equipment by themselves. Hell, this was true as recently as the gold rushes of the 19th century, and is why most of the investors of that time were more into land speculation than equipment.

This is why I tend to say that what we think of as capitalism is actually a recent invention. Sure, the mechanics have been there since the first guy traded seashells for a handjob, but modern capitalism hinges on the effects of industrialization.

Sure, the mechanics have been there since the first guy traded seashells for a handjob,

Welp, I know what my next post is gonna be about.

Submitted my first IC post. Did I do it right?

@Spoopy Scary

To add to @Vilageidiotx talked about the most accurate period-model you might have for an economic powerhouse is something like Venice. In which case you have as mentioned earlier: the merchants outpowering the nobles and becoming the institution themselves. As well, Venice cornered themselves a market in one of those non-universal resources and selling it out to people. This being the production of salt, which they may have enforced with their gold or their navy.

Venice though had an edge over the other Italian merchant Republics in that they also had at their disposal The Arsenal, which was the only facility capable of mass producing ships before the Industrial Revolution. And during their hay-day Venice had something like three Arsenals producing ships for themselves and clientele in the region who found it far cheaper to buy Venetian ships because they could produce them so fast and so cheaply over trying to build a navy themselves.

Venice is a little cliche now though.

If I were you, this is what I would do. Since we already have sea merchant states, I would go a different direction. Maybe a "He who control's the spice control's the universe" situation where you have a nation or city state sitting on a rare, and very popular, resource. It has to be something that can make a city rich, while being impossible to find anywhere else. Luckily, this is fantasy, so you have options. Perhaps it is a naturally occurring drug that sprouts from the earth, like liquid LSD or some shit, that is incredibly valuable amongst the spiritual. Maybe it is something more mineral, like a type of glass that bubbles up from the ground and, when tempered a certain way, becomes as hard as steel. Maybe it is a full blow apocalypse-making crater so rich with meteorite stone that your city grew rich on it. Either way, the point is that you have a small state with a lot of money. This means merchants could become richer then land lords. They don't own companies or buy patches of land. Banking becomes a big business for them, since land-bound caravans would want binders for insurance and the ability to transfer money back and forth, since there would always be a risk of being robbed along the road. Other men pull their money by milking all the people in town with money in their pocket. And others might use illegal means, like selling goods at a discount price and then paying highwaymen to steal the goods back for them.

Banking families would rule the state, since they have the most money and the most invested in foreign affairs. These banking families have cohorts in every trade port they can get their hands on, and they have the ability to manipulate politics based on their interests by controlling what foreigners get loans. They might even give gifts to particularly useful allies.

Gunpowder is where it's at.

Unless we have a nation that's already using it.

Gunpowder is pretty common. It's just a mix of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter (which is nitrogen something). Gunpowder has been used for quite a long time, it just remained limited until somebody figured out the gun.

Wait a second, elephants wouldn't live that far in the north, do they? I can imagine mammoths, but not elephants.

Also, wouldn't bows be a better weapons for horsemen than crossbows? I'd think stringing a bow from horseback would be much easier than trying to load a crossbow.

A low powered cross bow could be loaded from horseback, but those would be shittier than regular bows.

And elephants could live in the north. There is no reason it couldn't happen.

Wait a second, elephants wouldn't live that far in the north, do they? I can imagine mammoths, but not elephants.

Also, wouldn't bows be a better weapons for horsemen than crossbows? I'd think stringing a bow from horseback would be much easier than trying to load a crossbow.

First of all, excuse the delay. I am having connection issues, and my internet took a 9mm to the head shorty after I started composing my response.

It is not too far a stretch to have elephants in the northern region. However, I assumed that the region closer to the mountain range was not as chilly (10-20 C). Not sure if this tidbit really applies, but didn't Hannibal bring a bunch of elephants through the Swiss alps or something?

The crossbowmen would be using push lever crossbows, a design that was not uncommon before the medieval period. China used designs like it (Zhuge Liang's Repeating Crossbow) way before the 11th century. Medieval Europe actually made use of the design and even reinvented cavalry tactics based on the use of push lever crossbows.

The image provided in my application is erroneous. I simply googled "Chinese crossbow" without thinking about the mechanics involved and threw the first image that looked relevant in.

The region Maavoimat's at would only be roughly equivalent to where Nepal, southern Iran, Jordan, and Egypt fall on. So it wouldn't be bitter cold, though faced with seasonal fluctuations in weather because of the open north. Summer, when this RP is presumably at and will probably be for some time, will mean they're going to actually get warm moist air.

Yeah, I forgot that it's actually not that far north.