> I had always imagined relations with wealth in the Lunar society as in
> Our modern world, is it the case?
I expect that a Yelmic paterfamilias owns all the members of his extended family, as well as everything that they "own". This means that he can sell his sons or daughters as slaves if he wants, and/or can claim everything that they currently own. The family members have no formal right to protest, either. (Behind the scenes, OTOH, the paterfamilias who does this is likely to be assassinated by his heirs if there wasn't a DAMNED good reason for his acts. If they succeed, he had ceased displaying Divine Justice, like a Shadow of Yelm. If they fail, they were just rebels, like the Rebel Gods). Glittery wealth is to show off to advertise one's position and right to it, land wealth is to fill with peasant or slave farmers, and other types of wealth are for merchants to worry about.
Etyries merchants probably have about the view of 11th century Italians at the most modern. There are no limited-liability corporations in the Empire except for certain charities, just as in Rome. I would doubt that there is any insurance, except to have friends who will give you enough to recover in the hopes that you will do the same for them when they need it. Intellectual property is ownership of a scroll, not the knowledge it contains. Copyrights mean that they government forbids more than X copies made of some document at a time, to reduce scurrelous pamphleteers.
> What about the westeners? reading the exellent write up on knigths
> (V7.293 Peter Metcalfe), I couldn't help thinking it must be different
according to the
> religous inclination as well as the social level/caste.
Knights would view honor as more important than money, at least until they run out of it. There is also the usual rule about not engaging in trade, which gets enforced more or less with the type of society (as extreme examples, a trader is a talar/noble among the Waertagi, Brithini, and the Trader Princes [thus, presumably in Safelster?] but a peasant among the Rokari). Maintaining caste rules would be worth any price (except among Hrestoli Knights, who have transcended such concerns) even where it is not punished by aging or execution.
Powered by hypermail