The Back Room

[The_Mather1]

Mather, yeah, I doubt that's a precognitive dream. Experience says they're generally brief and low-detail. I wouldn't be surprised if the mind simply cycled through near-infinite images during sleep, and some fit with reality. And I'm almost certain you must be either depressed or paranoid to come up with such a theory, I have had dreams similar in nearly all aspects which I accept as the norm. Perhaps they aren't common, but that might have something to do with the degrees of sleep and possibly some sort of bleeding effect between the sides of your brain.

I have no memories of any of the events happening in the dream prior to it, nor have I had any similiar dreems. Besides, where would my brain have gotten the audio from? (Her voice was realistic enough for me not to notice any difference from her real voice when running through it in my head.)

 

On the subject of dreaming, you know what I really hate about dreams? I have the inability to sometimes know between reality and dreaming, and it really sucks some of the time, cause once my sister asked me for my xbox controller, and I thought this was a dream and I said yes. When I went to go on my xbox I was confused that I had lost my xbox controller and found out that wasn't a dream, which sucked like hell cause she still hasn't returned that controller.

Another thing that annoys about dreaming is the fact you can feel inside your dreams (I'm not the only one it's really common), and if you dream of something rather horrible, like once I dreamt of a giant hamster eating my insides, it begins to make dreaming a bad experience.

I know, and apparently emotions too can be felt while dreaming.

[archimage_a]

1. This is the past! Remember the Manhattan island purchase for beads? I figure that cloth and some beads for furs is an adequate trade for them.

It would be like going to the north pole and setting up a bottled water import bussiness on the premise that bottled water has good sales in Saudi Arabia.

Or that Ireland was brought off of Britian for beads(Britain is actually closer to Manhatten than Alaska is...)

 

2. Furs are sold to the wealthy in Russia and in other parts of Europe, the latest in fashion. Further, it is not a deficit of trade for the Russians, because the Russians are the ones pocketing the difference.

What?

So the government gives money to the poor for blankets, which they desperately need to stay warm because this is Russia...so the peasents are mildly wealthier, but dead from cold...Natural selection favouring people who told the government to get lost.

 

The government then pays for blankets to be shipped to Alaska.

The government then pays for traders to buy fur pelts off of natives with blankets...Which is like trading tissues for handkerchiefs, since blankets are considerably worse than furs at keeping warm, harder to maintain and just aren't that great.

The government then pays for the pelts to be shipped home.

The government then pays tailors to make fur coats.

The government then pays salesmen to sell fur coats to the wealthy.

 

And then, somehow, expects to have made a profit.*

 

3. Furs were worth a LOT more then than they are now.

 

 

Fur pelts cost 14 shilling for 12 feet, circa 1770

Blankets cost 12 shillings, circa 1775

 

*So you would make 2 shillings.

Based on 1830 exchange rates(Annoyingly doesn't go earlier than that) that is £7.55, or $11.78. (All rates are based off of Retail price index)

Or a 15% markup, which seems fairly good, then you have to consider the costs of hiring/buying the ship, saliors, tailors, traders and supplies for the ship's voyage.

 

 

If we then assume that you have an East Indiaman trading vessel doing the rounds.

A sailor woud expect 38 Shillings a month.

http://pirateshipwrecks.com/history_of_piracy

And you would have about 100 sailors.

So between 3,800 shillings per month(for simplicity we will assume it only takes one month from Vladivostok to Alaska), or 3,800 coats/blankets(Since it is a two way trip.) per trip.

(As the crow flies it is 3,362 miles, though by boat, probably considerably longer, since you would be following coastlines.)

The price of a vessel:

£3,912 2s 1½d

Or $296,000...or 25,000 Blanket/Pelts.

 

Now...

With a native population of 2,500(upper estimate), this would mean each person would need to be killing 144 beavers (A beaver pelt is about 1 foot square) every two months, and harvesting their pelt expertly, to break even on the running costs. Assuming no damage in transport.

 

To break even on one trip you would be looking at 3,152,000 beaver pelts, or around 1,261 beavers per native person.

Then there would be an issue in that an East Indiaman only having 560 Imperial tons of space, assuming beaver pelts weight 1 pound, this is 1,254,400 pelts...So you would be looking at three trips to break even, though with the increased wages, 4 trips.

 

Then considering that this would lead to localised beaver extinction within a couple of weeks it is fairly reasonable to conclude that the entire economic process would collapse within half a year, with output far lower than expected and, most probably, not breaking even.

 

 

 

Thus, the entire enterprise was doomed to failure, unless it was assumed there was an infinate beaver population, the natives didn't mind freezing their backsides off, the Russian peasents didn't mind dying of cold and starvation, the government traders worked for free and the nobility, accounting for 0.6% of the population(210,000 people), didn't become saturated within three months, assuming local fur production didn't suffer tremendously at the new influx...and...ultimately that pirates wouldn't raid the ship worth 5,853,876 shillings** (4.7 million pounds, today's money).

 

**Since I would assume you would go with max tonnage, which would be 560 Imperial tonnes, and assuming beaver pelts weight 1 pound, this is 1,254,400 pelts, making 104,533 coats, worth £62,719 16s 0d or 4.7 million pounds by todays standards.

 

Which would be around 1.2 million beavers every two months.

Considering Beavers tend to live as breeding pairs, with birth rate of 3.6 beavers per year three years, this would require a starting population of at least 6 million beavers to be sustainable...(Killing 7.2 million beavers per year)

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1674/0003-0031(2003)150%5B0139:CADOBC%5D2.0.CO%3B2

 

Before the fur trade began the whole of the North American Contient only had 100-200 million beavers, which were liberally spread from Mexico to the Arctic and from Pacific to Atlantic..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Beaver

Thus finding between 3.6% and 7.2% of them in Alaska is improbable...So within a year, perhaps two, they would have become locally extinct.

 

All assuming the markets didn't fluctuate and the 100 sailors monopolised this 24 million dollar(todays market) a year bussiness.

 

 

All in all, its a brilliant plan, provided no one looks into it.

~Retechian Economics.

[The_Mather1]

Ffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!

 

I wanted to try breathing fire, so I filled my mouth with lighter gas and ignited it... the fireball singed my stache!

[Nexaduro]

... No. Just no.

 

I don't care about anything you say in response, no.

[Retech]

I would point how most of your analysis is flawed, but I seem to have picked the wrong century when fur wasn't so markedly valuable over blankets, so I probaly would've made a loss anyways. :thumbup:

 

Still, the rest of my awesome economic plan was...awesome. If it wasn't for those Chinese invading through Siberia...

[archimage_a]

Wasn't you economic plan something along the lines of:

Focus on agriculture for 20 years, begin industrial revolution, sit back and earn intrest?

 

Seems more like a general concept than a plan :rolleyes:

 

Anywho, economics in hegemony has always been a weak spot...someone should really fix it.

Although economics has always been a weak spot in history, so maybe it can't be fixed...

 

Guess it depends on what understanding of economics the mod has to define what will work and what won't work...

[Earth]

Mather, you would have burned much more than your stache.. And aparently your brains. What little you had left...

Arch, My economics system is based off of things that i know that work, and a general hope that no one realizes i don't know how economy works, really. Besides inflation, and the basics.

[archimage_a]

Earth, please don't insult mather, he is fairly intelligent, just somewhat overcurious.

 

And I don't think any of us know how economies work...I don't think anyone knows how economies work...If they did then fixing the economy would be easy.

 

 

I think its like research though....we have a general understanding of something and that general understanding tells us it is good and therefore we think that we should be rewarded for knowing something clever...and, as with research, the things tend to be so 'out there' that no one else has much of an idea about it so we just accept or reject things.

[The_Mather1]

Earth, I did it, it felt only slightly warm due to the short duration.

Keep in mind that it was the gasseous sort of lighter gas and not the liquid one.

 

Archi put it nicely though, I may be inteligent but I'm mostly [developmentally delayed].

[Earth]

Apologies. That was unduly harsh. But it was incredibly stupid AND damaging to have done that.

[a_bert]

anyone read 'THE ALCHEMIST' paulo coelho

 

'HIS DARK MATERIALS' phillip pullman

[Jehosaphat]

Storkian Economics:

Hmm, I think I'll..... wait, what in the name of carp is thi- to heck with it, I'm gonna go burn stuff in Dungeoneering.

[Earth]

Hmm.

Earth Economics:

Keep it simple. Then make it crazy.

[archimage_a]

so I filled my mouth with lighter gas and ignited it

 

Very low flash point fuels like naphtha, butane, and propane can create a condensed vapor build-up in the oral cavity leading to internal combustion, damaging the mouth or lungs. Naphtha also is quite carcinogenic, and performance careers built on using it entail a high risk of mouth cancer.

 

 

Archarian Economics:

Stuff it, I have metal, I have Chlorine, deploy the mines!

[The_Mather1]

Apologies. That was unduly harsh. But it was incredibly stupid AND damaging to have done that.

Even I think so, but if I din't care about my stache then I would just have kept doing it, except in front of a mirror. It was insanely fun until I smelled burned hair.

 

Archi, it was butane and I made sure to close my throat. I may get hurt a lot due to stupidity and ignorance, but the only major damages to my body were due to various ancestors; broken leg due to my dad, lack of iron due to my mom, hyperlipidemia due to an unknown ancestor on my father's side.

 

Though I don't have a clue how to vapour would be too build up, it was already a gas, my mouth isn't a pressure chamber.

[Retech]

Wasn't you economic plan something along the lines of:

Focus on agriculture for 20 years, begin industrial revolution, sit back and earn intrest?

 

Seems more like a general concept than a plan :rolleyes:

 

Anywho, economics in hegemony has always been a weak spot...someone should really fix it.

Although economics has always been a weak spot in history, so maybe it can't be fixed...

 

Guess it depends on what understanding of economics the mod has to define what will work and what won't work...

 

Well it is like the Soviet five-year plans. :thumbsup:

[Icuownage]

Anywho, economics in hegemony has always been a weak spot...someone should really fix it.

 

Inb4 Economic based hegemony, instead of nations we own businesses.

[Vixion]

Dear Diary,

Woke up, put on lumber jack jacket and toque. Ate canadian bacon and drank maple syrup. Put on snow shoes. Walked pet beaver. Rode polar bear to lake. Canoed across lake with hockey stick. Went to Tim Hortons. Learned new phrases that end with "eh!" Came home to igloo and watched hockey.

Sincerely, Your Average Canadian

 

lol (its a joke dont take it offensively)

[paul191600]

Economics you say?!

 

[archimage_a]

Though I don't have a clue how to vapour would be too build up, it was already a gas, my mouth isn't a pressure chamber.

 

Condensed vapour, aka liquid.

So, for instance, it could condense on your tounge, then, either, go down below the tounge, become compressed and then get ignited...or it could run down your throat and ignite.

 

Also if you have any small holes in your teeth it could enter, then become heated, and explode...Which would be fairly painful.

 

 

And as someone who regularly does silly things:

Its not so much about keeping your body safe, its about making sure that, if something does go wrong, you are prepared to live with the consequences...Since a lapse in attention for a few seconds can lead to 3 weeks of, occassional (3 hours in 24, on average, sometimes more, sometimes less) extreme agony, following by 6 months of slowly decreasing pain...before getting back to where you started.

And lapses tend to occur because you have done something for two minutes and have not crippled yourself, so relax, and then you cripple yourself. :thumbup:

[Jehosaphat]

Yeah, Mather, don't do anything you'll regret.

 

7th grade, I once pretty much chugged a container of clue. I don't know why, but I do remember the digestive issues I had for the month after that.

[Icuownage]

Actually, fire breathing is very simple if you know what to do, a simple piece of information from a reliable source would have saved you trouble.

[The_Mather1]

Icu, there wasn't any trouble, at least it wouldn't have been if I had just covered my upper lip with something non-flammable.

[Icuownage]

Well fire breathing is a cool hobby if you can do it right and would be a nice thing to occupy your mind with instead of other things you seemingly try to occupy your mind with. Simply put, I believe you've succumbed to a wild case of boredom and have left your mind astray, then again I'm not a psychologist so I am most likely incorrect.

[The_Mather1]

Sounds pretty much like most of my life there, summed up in one statement.