[Glorantha] Re: Rune Magic

[Fred]

You get my point, though... if you have a windfall, and you have some
cash left over after the annual harvest festival, there isn't much you
can do to keep it against the re-minting.

On 6/17/06, Donald R. Oddy <donald at grove.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <33d89280606160918q62095845ib164a6de17369c78 at mail.gmail.com> Fred writes:
>
> >You're a peasant.  You have a particularly good year, and sell a calf
> >(if you let it grow up in your herd, you'll need more pasturage, which
> >you don't have).  You've got a few pence in your pocket.
> >
> >The currency is about to be re-minted.  If you want to avoid the tax,
> >what do you do with the cash?
>
> Well ignoring the question of who is going to buy a calf for cash,
> lets say you get threepence for it. You pay your landlord a penny
> towards your rent and another to the church towards your tithe
> which leaves you with a penny. That'll do for a new axe or a needle
> for your daughter's dowery. You're doing well because when your grain
> crop is harvested you get to keep most of it. That means you won't go
> hungry over the winter and you'll probably have some spare to barter
> with neighbours for the stuff they make better than you. If you're
> doing really well you can seal some in a pot and keep it for future
> years.
>
> In practice most of the trading occurred at a single market after
> the harvest was brought in and before livestock was slaughtered
> for winter which was also when rents and tithes were due. So
> there would be a lot of bartering of produce between peasants
> so they could pay their rents which were usually denominated in
> produce. And tithes were literally one tenth of the peasants
> production although substitutions must have happened - you can't
> pay someone a tenth of a cow. My guess is that grain was often
> used as the balancing measure since it can be split almost
> infinitely.
>
> Incidently English peasants didn't have pasturage - pasturage was
> part of the common land so it wasn't a constraining factor. That
> was the amount of winter feed the peasant could harvest, typically
> enough for a single milk cow.
>
> --
> Donald Oddy
> http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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-- 
"Being a patriot no longer requires a musket, but it still takes balls."
     -----Me