I tried to digest what I had just been told. I was... on pony welfare?
The idea burned me! The fact that it did was surprising, and yet not. On one hand, I was a magical pony in magical pony land, so I shouldn't have been so self-conscious, on the other, I had finished many years of school and many more than that climbing ladders in my profession, not to just be on welfare, magical pony or not.
The money that tinkled in the bag Twilight gave me felt... somehow dirtied. It was pity money, even if I knew it wasn't given out of that kind of heart. They were just kind ponies trying to be kind to one another, still...
There was only one way I could use that money and restore my suddenly bruised feelings. I fixed Twilight with a look and she tensed.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. "I double-counted it, and had Spike recheck it in case. It should be the proper amount."
I waggled the tainted money lightly. "How do I start making my own money?" I figured it would take money to get money, but spending it for that, for getting out of welfare, that felt like the proper use for it.
Twilight smiled. "Oh, goodness. You are a driven pony. I can't recommend it just that quickly, however."
"Why not?" There was a little acid in my tone that I didn't expect and I tried to calm myself. "I've had jobs before."
Twilight nodded. "I've been witness to that, yes. That doesn't remedy your critical lack of knowledge of society, our society." She sat on her haunches. "I propose we visit three friends of mine that should be able to help."
I blinked. Three? "That's a very specific number."
Twilight raised a hoof. "First is Rarity. She owns a store of her own and can give you the ins and outs on retail commerce."
I bobbed my head. Of course. "She sounds like a good start."
"I'm glad you agree." Twilight looked quite pleased. "Next is Applejack. She runs her family farm with Big Mac and Granny Smith and all of them can give valuable insight into the supply side of things, though I imagine you're more likely to pursue a more retail setting for your specific talents, it's still valuable knowledge."
Was I really getting an economic rundown in magical pony land? Why did that sound like great fun?! "Alright, good call. Who's the third?"
Her hoof lowered to point towards Ponyville through a wall. "Pinkie Pie. She is gainfully employed, unlike the other two, and can give some insights on what it's like to be a worker in Equestria. You may wish to put your talents to work in an already established business, and understanding what that means, your rights, and the expectations could be quite useful."
I gave a slow blink. I hadn't expected Pinkie Pie. "Alright... What about Fluttershy and... Rainbow Dash." I felt bad for almost forgetting her name. "Do they have jobs?"
"Fluttershy lives largely on the stipend. Her job, while valued by society, is not one she can reliably charge bits to any specific one pony, so she gets a comfortable but modest amount to continue seeing after the well-being of the animals. She does get a bonus when she averts an immediate disaster, but, mostly, she just lives simply." Twilight looked upwards. "As for Rainbow Dash, she is employed, like Pinkie. She actually has two jobs, but... I would not rely on her to give sober economic advice. She's a mare of action. Talking about the specifics of bit movement would have her asleep in under ten seconds flat."
I had to ask, "But you'd trust Pinkie to give calm advice?"
"Surprisingly, yes." Twilight gave a proud smile, though it was not for herself. "If you ask Pinkie for help, she will focus. She wants to see her friends happy, and you are one of those now. She's also very happy and proud being a baker, and asking about it should keep her interest nicely."
I felt a little warm and happy at being told I was Pinkie's friend. It was a nice little thing. I reached for Twilight and tapped her on the shoulder. "I hope she isn't the only friend I've made since coming here."
Twilight's smile widened. "I should hope not!" She turned in place a moment. "Now what did I come in here for..." She clopped a hoof against her own head. "That's right." She wandered out of the kitchen and I followed after her curiously. She opened a room that led into a study with, of course, more books. She plucked one with magic. "I'm still studying your condition. I can't imagine it's easy living two lives like this."
Was it hard? I tilted my head a little. "I... am glad for the chance. I like this second life, and the first. Both are complicated right now, but that just means I'm not bored. But! If you're looking, can you figure out a way for me to not wake up spontaneously in the middle of things? That part is the annoying part."
Twilight pointed at my hooves. "Like right now?"
I glanced down to see stone slowly rolling up my form. I was waking up, gently. "At least this time I have warning," I sighed out with a smile. "I'll be back, Twilight." I tried to relax and take a natural position, and the stone overtook me.
It was dark. I pulled the covers down a little and glanced over at my clock. Ten minutes before the alarm, by the look of it. If I trained myself to consistently wake up before it went off, I'd always have at least a moment's warning before I froze. That was a mild improvement.
It was time to greet the day! I slipped out of bed and began the rituals that would see me to work.
Oh, I definitely want to sink my teeth deeper into this.
I wanna see True struggle... so yes, I wanna see the adventures of the economic society of Equestria
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I'm with these guys, getting into the nitty-gritty of financial happenings isn't something I read often in fiction.
I agree with the previous three posts. It may be odd, but it sounds interesting.
Still waiting for the big confrontation to arrive. Two ponies with love talents? Will there be sparks or fireworks?
The big trouble with the natural order of capitalism, as the lowest paid slowly improve their lives and the next generation of workers has to be enslaved etc to keep the costs down, eventually the next generation becomes robotics, and technology gets ever cheaper, meaning any remaining living workers steadily get richer and richer, or end up living on post scarcity robotic handouts, because a robot that doesnt feed the poor for free, doesnt have the function to supply the rich either.
Horses can eat freely and readily available grass. Equestria is a post scarcity, food wise, enviroment.
It's curious to imagine a capitalism-optional system. Probably a driving factor keeping it working is pony's natural Harmony, humans would hardly last, we think...
Keep going! ;)
I am with True. I would do everything I could to get off the stipend as fast as I could. It just would leave me feeling dirty as I believe in working hard for my money. Still to each culture their own.
7909222 Sadly, yes. Among other things, the economy of Equestria, being on a gold standard, would otherwise be stable. Individual items might vary in price from year to year (once a reasonable price is determined through supply and demand), but the overall cost of living would stay relatively the same. Then add in the fact that they have an immortal diarchy with theoretically absolute political power, who could step in if there's a problem.
Then, there's magic - jobs that would be seen as "disgusting" or "not worth the pay" would simply be done by magic - and more absolutely than we do. For example, cleaning out sewers would require a unicorn of enough power to simply walk down them, casting a spell that only affects the detrius that would collect as he or she goes. The result would be far cleaner than a guy with a brush could do, and thus be needed to be done far less often.
We've also seen that food production in Equestria is far more efficient than here - a farm with three adults and one child, and one of the adults well beyond working age, can apparantly supply a huge amoung of food every year, and still have time left over to make cider, and for one of the adults to go haring off on adventures.
In general, less work appears to need to be done in Equestria for the same result. The economic impact on a gold standard economy would be difficult to say, but when the Diarchy probably regulates such things, it can easily be handwaved.
Finally, you have the fact that ponies in Equestria are far more likely to do things "because it's right" than humans are. We've only seen a teeny tiny handful of "bad" ponies, and some of them have been significant enemies. And even when a pony goes bad, like Starlight Glimmer, they usually do so for the best of reasons. In fact, the only "bad" ponies we've seen I would say are rotten overall, are Sombra and the Flim-Flam brothers. This means that a pony whose talent is viable for a living will choose the job over living on the stipend, and even if their talent may not be valid for a living, they still will usually have a job, anyway - such as Rarity or Ditzy/Derpy/Muffins.
tl;dr Ponies are more likely to not stay on the dole, and have an economy that can survive large numbers of ponies on the dole anyway.
I would like to see some finance adventures, might be usefull later
7910540 There's nothing to suggest that Equestria is run on a gold-standard system. Bits, when we've seen them, have been colorized gold, but that doesn't inherently mean anything - Sacagawea dollars were also colored gold, but (except for a few special coins) were a composite of copper, nickel, manganese, and zinc. That said, the idea that such an economy would be "stable" is a dubious presumption; like virtually all forms of commodity money, the gold specie standard (which is what that would actually be) would be only stable so long as the quantity of gold remained fixed, particularly as compared to the overall population.
While such a standard has a few advantages (e.g. its inability to be manipulated by political rulers makes it very difficult to artificially inflate its value, or its fixed rates of exchange between markets), its disadvantages largely outweigh those in the long term. For example, that resistance to market manipulation can also work against a government that needs to fight deflation. It doesn't matter how much power Celestia and Luna have, in that case; if they can't make more gold then there's nothing that they could do if there was something that led to a run on banks. It can also lead to constricted market growth, since unless more gold were discovered, an increased population would find that there simply wasn't enough money to go around.
Now, as you noted, a lot of these problems are muted in Equestria. Earth ponies (with the proper cutie marks, apparently) can perform large-scale farming with a very small workforce. However, I find less reason to assume that unicorns are utilizing any sort of magic more complex than telekinesis and artificial lighting in their day jobs - from what we've seen, only a few develop any sort of spellcasting ability more complex than that (which also seems to be largely related to their special talent). At best, they could handle jobs that require moving to difficult-to-reach areas with greater ease, but pegasi can do that just as easily.
The issue with these is that - if Equestria were operating on the gold specie standard - the country would essentially be building a "good enough" economy, which wouldn't be robust in the face of unforeseen problems. That's entirely understandable, of course; it's hard to anticipate problems that have never happened before, particularly when the existing model has worked fine up until now. But at the same time, that's the reason why such problems are typically so catastrophic when they occur. Anything that hits Equestria's economy hard will likely have an extreme impact because there's no mechanism in place to protect it against anything that could do such damage. Worse, the system won't have methods in place to allow for an easy fix - simply saying "it's magic; it can fix the economy" is just asking for things to be wrecked with no easy solution.
7911150 You're forgetting two things:
1 ) Unicorns gain spells based on their special talent, such as Rarity's ability to find gems. A unicorn with a special talent for cleaning, well...
2 ) Celestia has pretty much absolute political power, AND controls the sun, a fact that likely makes negotiations with outside influences MUCH easier. She could directly adjust the economy if needed, perhaps even drawing gold directly out of the ground.
As for the gold standard, the implication is there. With the exception of a few one-off segments (such as video games and the like) they appear to be technologically in roughly the early 20'th century - and the US didn't even START leaving the gold standard until 1933, and didn't finish until 1971. Odds are that, yes, they are on the gold standard, especially as we have not seen any paper money.
7911186 I wasn't forgetting those, I just don't think that they're very relevant:
1) Unicorns do have some magic to help them with their special talent, but that means that a magically-equipped workforce is going to be an issue of innate proclivities, rather than training. That means that you're not going to be able to marshal any particularly large group of specialists short of gathering them from across a wide area (and necessarily depriving the rest of that area of said workforce for the duration involved); essentially, that a given area of labor is going to be self-limited. The only exceptions are those unicorns whose special talent is magic itself, and so can learn spells to accomplish various things, but those appear to be an extremely select group.
2) Celestia's abilities aren't going to give her nearly as much leverage in negotiating with foreign entities (e.g. nations) as a lot of people seem to think. "Absolute political power" is only useful insofar as her ability to govern the areas that are within her political sphere, and she's chosen to self-limit in that regard; as far as foreign nations go, that's not really something worth noting - any plenipotentiary is going to be presumed to have "absolute" authority insofar as speaking for the government goes. Likewise, controlling the movements of the sun doesn't mean anything, in terms of how much authority she can leverage, because she can't use this as a threat. The sun is either universal, or it's not, with no in-between possible. Celestia can't make the sun shine on one country but not another - so long as it's in the sky, it's going to shine on everybody. (Remember, we don't even know that their world is round.)
Insofar as the gold specie standard goes, the implication is not there - Equestria is not the United States, and judging it by that metric is a baseless assumption. Their technological status is in no way an indicator of how any other aspect of their society has developed, which is why they don't seem to have telephones despite having skyscrapers. That interpretation doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
That's ignoring the fact that you're conflating the gold specie standard with the gold bullion standard. The former has gold coins in actual circulation, whereas the latter is where the government will sell gold bullion at a fixed rate in exchange for the local currency. The U.S. stopped using the gold bullion standard in the early twentieth century, but the gold specie standard had been on the decline for years even before the U.S. was established, which is why paper money in America predates the formal founding of America.
That's why she can't adjust the economy directly if it does use the gold specie standard; there's nothing to suggest that she could "pull gold directly from the ground." You have to make judgments based on what we know to be true, rather than based on making stuff up whole-cloth.
Granny Apple - Granny Smith (?) (it's not technically a typo, but I can't recall ever hearing her called Granny Apple, either Granny Smith, or just Granny.)
A calm and happy little chapter. Even the typos don't want to bother it.
7913140 Fix'd! You're almost there!
Saying both “under” and “flat” there is really weird: Less than exactly ten seconds? This may be Twilight trying but failing to be a cool kid with vernacular rather than a writing error, though.
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That is exactly what it is.