Why swords are so expensive?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

No, it holds true if you have economies of scale that affect the differences in scale you're talking about.

you're going to have to unpack that for me a little.

In many cases, businesses have a natural size and it doesn't make sense to scale up past that point

Yes, that is assumed to be the case in perfect competition and many other market structures. The case where firms do not have a minimum of their average cost curve that is relevant to the extent of the market is called "natural monopoly".

(usually because of transport costs, counting tariffs as a transport cost),

I don't think that's right. If transport costs are the reason that the cost curve effectively turns up you get monopolisitic competition between firms that are well spaced out. You do not get firms concentrating together as swordmakers did at Milan and Bilbao, or car-makers at Detroit.

but the very fact that swordmaking was highly concentrated in a few cities tells us that significant economies of scale applied.

If economies of scale in production were unlimited, or at least if their limits were so high as not be be significant, we would expect a single firm at each centre, and that's not what we observe. The fact that sword-making firms grew bigger than the single-worker firm shows us that economies of scale were important to some extent, and the fact that the firms did not all merge at the various centres shows us that those economies of scale were important to only a certain extent. The fact that the firms co-located points to external economies of some sort (such as ready supplies of iron or charcoal), perhaps even external economies of scale (e.g. the formation of efficient-scale service firms). Co-located firms in wide competition does not suggest internal economies of scale.

As far as competition goes, it's pretty much never a benefit for sellers -- it's a benefit for buyers.

Competition between buyers is a benefit for sellers. Consider its absence, oligopsony.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Given how much transportation costs added to the price of commodities, I think you'd need a lot of "cheaper" to justify carrying them even a few hundred miles.

That depends on perishability and value-to-weight ratios. Overland transport was expensive, but the sword-making centres were sea-ports or on navigable rivers.

In any event, this isn't bringing us any closer to the conclusion that swords were cheaper because knives were produced at efficient scale and swords would produced at inefficiently small scale, which is the contention that I questioned.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Brett

In any event, this isn't bringing us any closer to the conclusion that swords were cheaper because knives were produced at efficient scale and swords would produced at inefficiently small scale, which is the contention that I questioned.

For some swords, and for some knives, this could be true. A knife is a tool that is useful in everyday life for a wide range of tasks; in many cultures you even eat with it. A sword is a more specialized tool, useful mainly for killing enemy soldiers. My guess would be that the size of the market differs by a factor of several.

However, I've tended to assume that the real issue, in many societies, is that a sword is bigger than a knife, or a spear point, or other sharp pieces of metal. If you don't have blast furnaces and easy production of decent steel, but have to hammer it out, I think you're looking at a lot of hammering, not to mention repeated folding and the like. With a shorter and possibly thinner blade, not so much.

Bill Stoddard

[Sam Cade]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

The point of my question isn't the price of swords per se, but why the sudden jump of price from long knife to shortsword.

Distal taper.

Most (real) swords have distal taper. Most knives (even big'uns) don't.





..and thus the price jump was justified. :-)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Brett

The fact that sword-making firms grew bigger than the single-worker firm shows us that economies of scale were important to some extent, and the fact that the firms did not all merge at the various centres shows us that those economies of scale were important to only a certain extent. The fact that the firms co-located points to external economies of some sort (such as ready supplies of iron or charcoal), perhaps even external economies of scale (e.g. the formation of efficient-scale service firms). Co-located firms in wide competition does not suggest internal economies of scale.

I'm not entirely sure what we're arguing about, since I never said where the efficiencies of scale were, nor what their magnitude was. From the perspective of a buyer, it doesn't matter the economies of scale are internal or external. I would observe that there is another possible reason for competing firms other than lack of scale efficiency: where you don't have vertical integration and the scale efficiency is only modest, it makes sense for support firms to cultivate multiple competing buyers, and it makes sense for manufacturers to cultivate multiple competing support firms.

In terms of cost to the buyer, merchant markups for goods are substantially influenced by demand; the longer you have to hold on to an item before selling it, the larger the markup. In terms of the relative cost of knives and swords, I suspect that a knife imported from Milan could easily cost a large fraction of the cost of a sword imported from Milan, but most knives were locally made.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

From the perspective of a buyer, it doesn't matter the economies of scale are internal or external.

I'm not sure that that is right. If external economies of scale were available to swordmakers the effect would have been to make swords cheaper, not more expensive.

In any case, the making of knives was concentrated at e.g. Solingen and Sheffield in much the same way as sword-making was concentrated at e.g. Ferrara, Bilbão, and Toledo. So neither transport costs nor difference in market structure can account for the price difference between knives and swords.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Brett

So neither transport costs nor difference in market structure can account for the price difference between knives and swords.

Well, market structure might; people who buy swords might have been willing to pay more for swords, and therefore swords were made with more expensive procedures because people would pay for those procedures. Of course, GURPS prices could also just be wrong.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, market structure might; people who buy swords might have been willing to pay more for swords, and therefore swords were made with more expensive procedures because people would pay for those procedures.

"Market structure" would be something like the degree of monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly, oligopsony, monopolistic competition, natural monopoly etc. What you suggest is rather that the price difference reported is an illusion because of failure to compare knives with sword in the same degree of quality and fanciness.

As you put it:

Of course, GURPS prices could also just be wrong.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Given the number of technologies that Romans were evidently advanced in, wouldn't it be simpler and arguably more accurate to state that at the height of the Late Republic, Rome achieved TL3?

Agreed. By the 1st century AD at least the core of the Roman Empire was at TL3 in power generation.

For example, they had a multiple overshot waterwheel complex described as "the greatest concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world."

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

Evidence of the windmill in Roman times is a bit sketchy, but you'd think that it wouldn't be that hard for a clever Roman engineer to think: Aqueduct + Treadmill Hoist = power source.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Evidence of the windmill in Roman times is a bit sketchy, but you'd think that it wouldn't be that hard for a clever Roman engineer to think: Aqueduct + Treadmill Hoist = power source.

Now that you're familiar with the arrangement, yes. Someone has to have the AHA moment, and until that happens, you get squat all in the way of experimentation.

You'd think the first nomadic hunter-gatherers would have invented wheels and possibly even animal traction (to facilitate their current lifestyle) well before they invented agriculture (for a radical change in lifestyle) but it went the other way around. We're still not sure how long it took for someone to think of rubbing two sticks together to make fire, but it definitely took a very long time.

In the case of the aqueduct+treadmill = power, what's required is a significant change in thinking about water (fluids in general really). "Water is for drinking and cooking and bathing and washing and crafts, not for power!" *shrug*. Windmills are in some ways an easier leap since sails came first, using the wind to do work on a moving platform. Changing that to doing work on a fixed platform is a complicated problem, but you already know it does work.

For certain values of understanding motion and work anyways. Medieval Europe thought some things had it in their nature to go around in circles and other things had it in their nature to go in lines, and that kind of thought makes it harder to really understand what's going on. Which explains why they improved such things via trial and error as much as or more so than they did by improving their theories.