Economy wrecking spells?

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

If by "you" you mean, "A powerful and skilled mage specialized in this particualr feat." I've been thinking about this, and I keep coming back to the idea of mages being fairly rare. Think about this: what does a lawyer do besides read books and articles, carry around a briefcase, and go to courtrooms? Surely something anyone can do. Yet lawyers are expensive. It would be difficult to grab a lawyer each and every time you needed some advice. Few people have the aptitude and training of a lawyer. Further, you could imagine that lawyers might revolutionize many aspects of society, but what will draw a lawyer toward one field over another?

In my view, a mage who spends his time creating metal is probably no more a source of great economic change than any other large source of metal, such as a new mine. Such mages are rare enough to be considered rich veins in their own right. Now, if a given spell creates such a large amount of metal that it seems simply ridiculous, that is a problem with the spell design, not a problem with world design. Economically, I could see one or two such mages affecting the price of metal, but not affecting the society's use of metallurgy in general. Also, if you were a king, would you want your society's supply of metal being dependent on one or two mages?

The problem with the lawyer analogy is that it isn't the correct scale. It is effectively saying, "one or two people go to law school and upon gaining the required education wrap up all legal cases currently in the system over the course of the next year."

Steel is a popular metal today (and historically) because so much can be done with it with relatively minute alterations of it's composition and manufacturing process, in addition to it's relative low cost. If those conditions arise in a medieval economy via Earth to Stone, the ripple effects will probably look a lot like the early effects of the industrial revolution, especially if magic can also provide a power source to replace horses (like the steam engine did).

And if I were a king, I would take a large supply of metal whose source may be compromised by force over a small supply of metal whose source may also be compromised by a larger amount of military force.