Supplementary materials: The Solar Kingdom · 2:39am Mar 24th, 2014
So, Equestria Daily has changed their fanfiction submitting rules. What does everyone think? Should I try again to get Harmony Theory featured?
Also, here are some rough notes on the Solar Kingdom. Not required reading, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, it might expand the world of Harmony Theory for you.
A brief history of the Solar Kingdom:
When Equestria was divided during the Schism, every civilization on the continent (and most of them around the world) fell into chaos. Ponies were left without the magic they had relied upon to sustain them, the weather became wild and uncontrollable and the very shape of the continent had been violently changed. Everything that had been built up was brought down.
As ponies do in such circumstances, they gathered into herds for protection. These herds were quickly brought under the control of those ponies whose Talents allowed them to dominate the others, either physically or mentally. The herds then competed for resources, fighting bloody wars over sources of potable water or useable shelter. The warlords of the victorious herds then codified their rule and set about both securing their own slices of Equestria against their fellow dictators.
Among these early warlords were the last remnants of the pre-Schism nobility. Specifically the descendents of the ruling family of the Crystal Empire. These winged unicorns were usually powerful enough to hold their own when their leadership was contested, and often claimed a special insight granted by their divine heritage. They were also able to gain the loyalty of the Griffin clans, as the magic of the winged unicorns was the only thing that could prevent the extinction of the warrior race. While they set up several fiefdoms, they remained tied closely to each other by their inability to have children with any but another winged unicorn, making alliances of marriage a necessity.
About a hundred years after the Schism, when the new kingdoms were finally managing to recover from the cataclysm, a visionary leader arose among the winged unicorns. She had a plan to unite the continent once more under one banner, and her charisma and eloquence saw many of her fellow leaders join with her cause. She was crowned Queen Shining Beacon of the Solar Kingdom by the united herds of her followers, and led them in the first unification war.
Shining Beacon was mostly interested in bringing all the separate herds into one, leaving most of the organization of the new kingdom to her advisors and trusted confidants. They created the system of governance still used today. They also made the decision to place a heavy emphasis on religion, a move that was not popular at the time as many ponies felt that they had been abandoned by the Alicorns.
By the time the first unification war was played out, a full third of the sunlands was under the control of the Solar Kingdom. Many smaller fiefdoms, fearing the Kingdom’s reach, banded together into nations of their own, presenting a united front against the threat. The Kingdom did not continue its attack immediately, instead consolidating its gains and ironing out the wrinkles in its new government. Shining Beacon died without seeing her vision come true, but content in the knowledge that it would one day be realized by her descendants.
Over the course of the next several hundred years the Solar Kingdom slowly absorbed more and more of the sunlands. There were some setbacks, including the disastrous reign of King Overspear, but for the most part things proceeded smoothly. It wasn’t until the third unification war that the major opposition to the Kingdom was subdued, but by that point its eventual victory was a foregone conclusion.
Having secured the sunlands, the Kingdom looked outward to the rest of the world, only to find that the Republics were well ahead of them technologically, militarily and diplomatically. The Kingdom has managed to keep up by exploiting their vast crystal resources in the north, but the rivalry between the two nations is now a driving force in Kingdom politics.
A few short notes on the Solar economy:
Currency: The Kingdom uses a fiat currency called the Solar Bit. There are no major banks in the Solar Kingdom, and loans based on interest and repayment are seen as usurious and illegal. Instead a pony can apply for a grant from the Royal Treasury for a specific project. If the application is accepted the Treasury will mint and distribute the money as-needed. Applications are carefully considered for the feasibility of the project as well as the impact on the economy. Any free subject of the Crown can make such an application, but the business ventures of the nobility usually receive greater consideration. Currency is exchanged for goods and services as you’d expect, and prices do fluctuate, but all (non-counterfeit) bits in circulation start out from one of these project grants.
Taxation: The Crown does not collect taxes in currency, but nobles have the right to tax the commoners living or working on their land.
Crown Ownership: A central principle in the Kingdom economy is the concept of Crown Ownership. All land, currency and materials in the Solar Kingdom are technically the property of the Crown. All beings living within the Kingdom owe their ultimate fealty directly to the Crown. The nobles are stewards of the Crown land, and commoners do not even have that recognition. In practice this does not affect the workings of property and exchange, but it is often used as a point of anti-Kingdom propaganda in the nightlands. If the Crown declares a patch of land to be property of a certain pony, then there is no recourse for the previous owner, it is just so. This is often how the Crown raises a worthy unicorn to the nobility, granting them land and title at the same time.
Agriculture: Most of the Kingdom’s food is grown by serfs working the land of their noble landlord. A portion of every harvest goes to the Crown and the military, and the rest is disposed as the landlord sees fit. Most nobles allow their serfs to sell their harvest themselves, and take a cut from the proceeds as taxes. Free farmers own their crops, though they still must pay rent to their landlord.
Natural Resources: Like agriculture, most natural resource harvesting (mining, logging, drilling, etc) is done by indentured workers for the nobility. The nobles then sell the resources to the business sector. The Crown takes a certain percentage of all resources harvested, depending on their needs. There are no ‘free miners’ though some who work in this sector are free ponies working for a wage.
Manufacturing and Business: Most of the industrial manufacturing capabilities of the Solar Kingdom are concentrated in its cities. Often businesses are owned and operated by free ponies, though almost always with the backing of one or more noble families. The introduction of a Republics-style free-market has been resisted by the Crown, who does not want their iron control of the economy challenged, so monopolies and low wages are common.
Indenture: A significant portion of the Solar workforce comes in the form of indentured ponies. The Indenture system is similar to slavery, but not the same. For one, it is mostly voluntary. A pony essentially sells their labor for a period, and is treated as chattel from that point until their contract ends. They do not get paid, nor do they have a say in what work they do or where they must do it. Once their contract ends they are free to leave or sign another contract of service.
Indenture contracts are sold in five-year lots, but there is no limit to how many of those lots a pony can sell. They can, essentially, sell their entire lives into servitude. Indenture is also a fairly cheap option for the buyers, as the price of a contract is always far, far lower than paying a wage for the same amount of time would be. Once sold, a contract cannot be ‘bought back’ by the indentured pony (who does not technically own any property during this time, including any money they may be given), but they can be released early, a process known as manumission.
An owner has certain obligations to their indentured servants, including food, shelter and good health. For this reason it is often seen as a way to escape the ravages of poverty, the guarantee of two square meals a day and an actual bed to sleep in is extremely tempting during tough times. However, while a servant is protected by law from facing physical harm from their owners, they have no recourse if they are sent to work in an undesirable location or dangerous position. Runaway servants are treated harshly and can face any number of humiliating or painful punishments.
The system is also quite often abused. Many have been forced to sell themselves due to nobles and businessponies cutting wages or jobs, something that occurred to the point where the Crown had to step in and put a stop to it. Indentured servants were also often forced to break up their families at a whim from their owner, which would also cause additional hardship for that family if they were living in servant’s quarters. This was stopped recently when the Crown declared that a marriage, consecrated before Celestia, was of higher priority than the wishes of the contract holders, and thus a servant that was married could not be forced to move away from their family. While this has stopped one form of abuse, it also created a new one where servants would marry simply to avoid having to move to work where their owner needed them.
In what is possibly the worst abuse of the system, a quirk of the law allows parents to sell the contracts of their young children. While this is rightly seen as the worst sort of behaviour, it is also widely known as a good way to get one’s children out of impoverished situations. The Crown, by tradition, buys all contracts on those under the age of majority. It then educates the children and sets them to work either as domestic servants for the Royals and their closest advisors, or in the Kingdom Military.
The abuses of the indenture system have long been a point of contention within the Kingdom, with supporters fighting political battles with abolitionists over its morality and usefulness. Recently the abolition movement has been gaining clout, led by the efforts of Queen Aqua Regia, though a feasible replacement has yet to be agreed upon.
-Sharaloth
Very nice, I can't wait to see one for the Lunar Republic. We don't have enough info on that.
Neat.
Oh heck yeah, absolutely.
Of all the stories that I've read on this site, I would have to say that Harmony theory deserves the most to be on EQD.
Do the changes made in Equestria Daily's fanfic submission thing make it easier to get on Equestria Daily? If so, go for it I guess.
How does that even work? Is there like a real life or historical basis for this?
I see you structure story notes pretty much the same way I do. Cool.
If you think it'll have a better chance of being accepted by ED now then by all means go for it, though odds are you'll get an even lesser reasoning for its rejection if such is once again the case.
I believe the only changes is that the pre-readers no longer give reasons for why fics don't pass. You either get an acceptance or rejection notice and that's it.
Still, go for it Sharaloth.
Go for it.
Good write-up. I hope to see info on the Lunar Republic in the future.
I hope the abolition happens by the end of the story.
1950890
How does a bank which is both state‐owned and an obligate monopoly work without interest? Poorly. Frequent lending and exorbitant taxes to recoup losses would be the order of the day; without both such an economy would grind to a halt. In all likelihood there would be a plethora of thinly‐veiled vanity projects and the like getting approved purely to boost circulation.
The fact that Harmony Theory isn't already up there is a travesty. Go for it.
And thanks for the background!
Go ahead and submit it! Harmony Theory is an excellent fic, and clearly deserves to be featured on EqD. And if they turn it down again, well, that's their shame.
1950890
As far as I know no real-life system ever worked like this. I'm not a economic historian, however, so I could be wrong. As to how it works? Very differently to how it works now. The Crown doesn't collect taxes, it essentially has enough money for whatever it wants to do because it will mint money for itself as necessary. Nobles can raise money through taxation or by applying to the treasury, the second method can generate large amounts of cash quickly, but that cash must then be spent as it was outlined in the proposal. Having large piles of money just lying around is discouraged by the Crown going in and repossessing it, so most nobles have an incentive to keep circulating their currency even if they have a wide enough tax base to accumulate large fortunes.
This leads to the situation where nobles aren't super-rich, even though they own all the land (and a good chunk of the people) and set the taxes. Free commoners can be very rich, even though they own none of the land, but are more likely to be poor. The Royals don't have any money at all, but it doesn't matter because they also, technically, have all the money. There is no lending at interest (though it can and does happen between private parties), all money is actual, and tends to stay in circulation.
It doesn't mesh well with any sort of modern economic system, which is why it runs into a lot of problems with the Republics free-market model.
Wait, wasn't that what Charles V tried to do in the 16th century? Fund wars by minting more coins from New World silver? All that did was cause massive inflation and eventually his bankruptcy.
I'm not an economist, but I'm pretty sure that in the long run, minting new coins won't make you any richer – it will just make your (and everyone else's) money worth less.
1950890 1951538 There has been ONE historical example of a medieval bank, done by, surprisingly, the Knights Templar.
What they had done to combat the amount of thieves robbing pilgrims and merchants in the Holy Land was create a set of stations throughout all of Europe and Palestine. A pilgrim could go to a station in Europe and deposit his money there then go to Palestine without getting robbed and then collect his money at a station there. The Knights Templar foresaw an issue of this with an unreliability of identifying the client so they gave the traveler a piece of paper with a unique code that was sent to the corresponding station in Palestine where they could identify him. In other words, they had also invented the cheque/credit card alongside the retail bank. This was done entirely by themselves to build up the financial infrastructure so they had no higher authority to answer to, since their authority came from God.
Beyond that, it was rather hard for anyone achieving a grant from the Royal Treasury, but it was doable, provided the project could be used to either provide more food and/or money, or simply just killing things on the battlefield.
1951538 Minting money doesn't make you any richer. It just makes your money less valuable. If the money wasn't a fiat currency, it would be less of a problem, but you already said that it is a fiat currency.
Wealth is about access to resources. What you really need to explain the situation that you have is that the nobles have far greater access to a preferably limited resource. It can be land, a material, even magic, considering the setting. Land normally works, but the reduced taxation makes this less plausible.
One way that you could be creative and different while acknowledging the setting differences is that the castle retains more magic than most of the land. As such, people would be willing to pay exorbitant amounts to live near to it and those who did could use their magic more efficiently, allowing them to earn yet more wealth, which creates a reinforcing effect.
This would also add yet more shades of grey to the indentures. As indenturing to a wealthy family has other benefits.
Of course, I'm just throwing out ideas here and I don't know a lot about economics myself.
1952154 1951998
No, minting money does not make you any richer, but that's not the point. The Crown doesn't need to be any richer, they are already, by definition, the richest. Money is immaterial to them, they already own everything. When they do decide to pay for something, they mint coins specifically for that purpose. It makes them no richer but it makes them no poorer, either. What it does do is provide stimulus money for those who actually use the currency economy, and keeps the entire system afloat.
That's why it's a fiat currency. It's not backed by any material resource, it's backed by the strength of the Crown, and in the Solar Kingdom the strength of the Crown is absolute. This is not a free economy where you can use wealth to generate more wealth. All wealth must be set to a purpose, or risk being lost. There are no explicitly 'for-profit' companies (though in practice many do operate to turn a profit), and any company that does try to sit on large profits without doing anything with them are like as not to see the Crown take the money they're not using simply because they're not using it. The Kingdom is also fairly rich in material wealth, especially the extremely valuable crystals mined from the north. Again, the Crown owns all of the land, the nobles oversee it, the commoners and serfs work it.
The cycle of money works something like this: The Crown gives money to the nobles, who can't keep any of it, but have to use it to pay the free ponies working for them. The free ponies can then spend that money to acquire goods and services. That spent money then is divided, part of it goes to pay for the ponies working on those goods and services, part of it goes to the owners of the business providing those goods and services. The workers then spend their earned money on more goods and services, and the owners spend their money on higher quality goods and services, and also on expanding or improving their business. The nobles then tax every free pony living on their land to gain some money to spend on their own highest quality goods and services, and possibly pay their workers if they have a strong enough tax base. The cycle goes round again.
As the money never dissapears into anyone's bank account, it keeps circulating, eventually finding a balance where the Crown only needs to inject a little bit of money to keep the cycle flowing.
This is not a good thing, really. It can look very stable, but requires constant management from the Treasury to ensure the proper amount of stimulus is being applied. It also encourages low wages, where workers live comfortably, but only from payday to payday, and any disruption can mean ruin. There are many, many problems with this model, but currency devaluation and inflation are not one of them.
1952332 Okay. That's clearer. Yeah. That makes more sense.
1952332 Right, I think I'm starting to understand. So essentially, the entire country is run as one giant corporation, with the Treasury as a central bookkeeper of sorts? Different "departments" must present their budgets to the Treasury, making it clear what they're earning and what they're spending it on ("all wealth must be set to a purpose"). And no department except for the Treasury itself is allowed to hoard money (which would also make sense in a real corporation). Is that about right?
I imagine a thriving black market, a lot of secret private stashes – especially among the upper class – and a lot of corruption among Treasury officials ("You know, that project grant I applied for – let's discuss it in a more pleasant setting. Like the Ritz, tonight. My treat, of course.")
And I still think that creating money out of nowhere causes inflation... but then again you did mention that the Crown sometimes "repossesses" money (and presumably melts it down or something?) so I guess it balances out.
1952860
That's a fairly good analogy, yeah.
Oh hell, yes. This is why Cash has such a strong foothold in the Sunlands when he's a Republican, the black market there is his playground, and every noble and businesspony who thought they deserved more wanted in on his 'game'.
Could you explain a bit more on how individual royals would go about when it comes to "shopping"?
Taking for example (from chapter 7).
In case Star Fall didn't have any actual cash on her, how would she go about getting access to that "royal line of credit", and would the burger place she and Dash went to receive any recompense for the burgers they got? how I'm understanding it now, royals could technically go anywhere and claim whatever they want as theirs, or would they have to wait for the treasure to mint them some spending money for them to use first?
1969165
Any Royal doesn't have to carry any sort of cash with them. If they have wings AND a horn, It's paid for no questions asked. Star Fall did have to carry cash in that situation, though, because she wasn't carrying any sort of ID. If she wanted to use her royal line of credit (which would be a pile of coins minted specifically to pay off what debts she might incur, up to a specified limit), she'd have to have her credentials handy. In most cases, having a Griffin vouch for you counts as impeccable credentials.
It works like this: the Treasury generally affords each of the Royals (and assorted VIP's like Star Fall) an allowance of bits for spur-of-the-moment shopping (the 'royal line of credit'). This allowance is generally more than a commoner sees in a year, but it's still intended to just be for incidental purchases. If a Royal wanted to buy something bigger or hideously expensive, they'd have to petition the Treasury for the funds. Generally speaking that petition would be accepted, but exceptions do happen, and profligacy among the Royals is not allowed. The exception is the Crown, who can buy whatever they damn well please and don't have to petition for anything.
If Star Fall were to invoke her line of credit she'd basically identify herself (with ID or Astrid), the place she's buying from would note her name and title, and then send a receipt to the Treasury which would then reimburse them. Star Fall would also be required to keep a receipt so that they could be reconciled to ensure the Treasury isn't paying false debts. A Royal wouldn't need to keep a receipt, but one of their minders would grab one for them anyway because in their case it's the responsibility of their servants to ensure they are following proper procedures.
Looks like resubmitting to EQD worked out pretty well.
Congratulations, Shar
I am surely glad you did resubmit! I've been reading a couple of books from the library on and off for a few weeks, and hadn't really been enjoying either of them. Your story had me sit in my chair reading for far too long!
I have no idea why this one wasn't accepted earlier... It's very well done.
I'll be a little sad when I'm all caught up.