(TFT) An old post on raceing at the surface...

["Jay Carlisle" <Jay_Carlisle@charter.net>]

This is stuff is an old post that might also help in explaining my thinking 
in dividing a Population into a Power Structure...
I'z lookin for some of my old notes on horses and how to have a Man 'o War 
and his sires like Hardtack and Seabiscuit or maybe a Shadowfax.
Eight Bells was chasing down that bloody big assed brown sob after he had 
broken the spirit of the rest of the field.
She had him in her sights the whole race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCWbKigAZQs&feature=fvwrel
GOD DAMNIT!

Breaks my heart...


Anyhoo...

The oldest and most prestigious event of the ancient Olympics was the 
Stadion running race.
Participants were apparently younger men as there are records of disputes 
over athletes appearing overly mature, but all contestants participated in 
an opening ceremony where 100 oxen were sacrificed to Zeus (used for a feast 
after the games concluded) and each man swore before the statue of Zeus that 
he had been in training for ten months.
If wars werenbt stopped during the games the athletes serving in the army 
were released to compete.

Winners from the larger city states received prizes and money amounting to a 
practical fortune.
Athens awarded her champions 500 drachma as well as an assortment of goods.

This was a pretty big deal.
Sculptors used champions as worthy subject matter; a bard earned a goodly 
portion of their income in singing the tales of past races on demand.

8 chalkoi = 1 obolus
6 oboloi = 1 drachma
100 drachmas = 1 mina (or mna)
60 minae = 1 Athenian Talent (Athenian standard equaling 26kg or about 57.32 
lbs.)
A trireme crew of 200 rowers was paid a talent for a month's worth of work, 
about 4.4 grams of silver per rower per day, i.e. a drachma a man a day.

At her ancient height Athens had around 25,000 male citizens of the hoplite 
class or higher with slightly more non-citizen freemen of the metic class 
paid a hoplite wage of a drachma a day.
The labor class (Thetes) numbered less than 20,000 and earned a half a 
drachma a day.
So to go about her daily business ancient Athens needed something like 
60,000 drachmas in coin, or about 10 talents bin the mixb.

An Athenian champion of the Stadion stood to win a cash prize roughly equal 
to 1/120 of the force of a days labour of the city-state of Athens.

Silver is ~655 pounds per cubic foot.
I can fit a cubic foot in my 1 foot by 1.5 foot by 9 inch GMbs chest; the 
main component of my travel rig as opened out it serves as a screen.
Would but that I possessed the actual silver, I could fit the silver needed 
to run the daily business of ancient Athens into my glorified GMbs bscreenbb& 
that would fall apart if I tried to lift it.

The players just got HOW much gold off that dragon?
And the organs/dung/etc.?

AH! Thatbs just coinb& a days wageb& an annoyance to the powers that be 
(Illuminati players) if you use that prize to liquor up a goodly portion of 
their workforce for a day or so.

Higher level bbusinessb will always of necessity be more like a barter 
system.
Itbs not tied to the coinage system strongly, itbs much more related to the 
political system.

But then therebs this.

Ibve done some stuff on the Thuggiesb&
Uhhhhh
http://tft.brainiac.com/archive/0903/msg00143.html
So before the Britbs arrived, the Nilgiri hills had four major tribes.
The Badaga were the farmers.
The Kota were craftsmen.
The Toda were herdsmen.
Also there were the Kurumba.

The primary producers in this setup were the Badaga and the Toda.
The Kota provided secondary production like tool making.
The Kurumba provided tertiary service, they were the bpriestb class.
The Kurumba protected people from illness and death and so bsoldb were folks 
on this arrangement that when a relative died the Kurumba shaman received 
pity rather than blame for the death they were paid to prevent because they 
had to grapple with such a powerful deamon.

Interesting if thatbs the way death works, but the point of this is that a 
very large chunk of the Kotabs disposable income went to the Kurumba and the 
Kota were the only group with any practical disposable income in the region.
Easier to drain the Kota, who traded for meat and grain with their pots and 
tools, than to constantly deal with three separate groups.
As it turned out one of the most important aspects of that economy after 
survival revolved around bwitchdoctoringb.

In other words, an economy can be largely based on fantasy.
That the concepts that drive the daily exchanges of life are or are not 
based in reality does not change the nature of those daily exchanges in whatbs 
required to execute them.
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