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1:45

writing excuses. Hey,

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listeners, we want your input on

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Season 20, which I have to be honest

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does not sound like a real number. What

1:54

elements of the craft do you want us to talk about?

1:57

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2:00

use or reference or recommend the

2:02

most. Or do you just having

2:04

trouble with. After. Twenty Seasons. We've

2:07

talked about a lot of things. One

2:09

element of writing. Do you wish we'd

2:11

revisit for deeper? dive on the podcast?

2:14

Email your ideas to podcast.

2:16

At Writing excuses.com. Season.

2:20

Nineteen Episode eighteen:

2:24

And this is writing excuses.

2:26

How to build fictional economists?

2:29

Fifteen minutes long because he your in a

2:31

hurry and. Were out of money. I'm

2:33

Mary Robinette and on I'm Aaron and

2:36

I'm out. And

2:38

we're really talking about six

2:40

similar economies. So or

2:42

three of us, myself, aaron,

2:44

and on one recently had

2:46

an opportunity to participate in

2:48

something that we called the

2:50

Space Autonomy Camp for Writers,

2:52

which was designed to give

2:54

writers greater literacy in economic

2:56

theory for when. They're doing their

2:59

world building. There were a bunch of

3:01

other things that the camp had. As

3:03

a goal that one of the things that I became aware

3:05

of. Even though I was one of the people

3:07

helping create. This camp was that I fundamentally

3:09

did not understand. What the word

3:12

economy meant. Assist Assist. I'm

3:15

fired advantage going into this this event

3:17

because as an undergraduate I'd studied economics

3:19

a double majored in English literature in

3:21

economics or was pretty poor he com

3:24

student of I'm going to be honest

3:26

you know this is essentially what am

3:28

I strong suits but you know as

3:30

a literary agent people are was a

3:32

oh that makes sense you studied economics

3:35

and English that that those in the

3:37

Mary Berry perfectly it's but the reality

3:39

is is that my Econ degree did

3:41

nothing for me on learning how to

3:44

do business. What Econ isn't

3:46

really about that? My.

3:48

Understanding of economics and my

3:51

interest in economics has persisted

3:53

Pass undergraduate is that it

3:55

is very much about understanding

3:57

what. Are. the rules that

3:59

make world work, right? Economics

4:02

is the study of why is the

4:04

world the way it is. And

4:07

so it is fundamentally really core

4:09

to world building. It is not the entirety

4:12

of how you do your world building, but

4:14

it will play into major parts of it.

4:16

What do the people in your world value?

4:18

What do they need? What do they trade

4:20

for? What do they not have enough of?

4:23

And so I like to think a lot

4:25

about what are the systems

4:27

that are in place when examining a fictional

4:29

world and what makes them work? What are

4:31

the scarcities? What are the resources available? Why

4:34

is it weird when Sam Gamgee talks about

4:36

potatoes for like 10 minutes, when

4:38

we're not sure if the new world exists, right? All

4:41

these different things that can come into play of

4:43

like where are people getting sugar from to make

4:45

the cakes you're writing about? Sometimes these

4:47

can be really finicky silly questions. And

4:49

sometimes these can be questions that will

4:51

unlock huge parts of your

4:54

storytelling and give you tools to put

4:56

pressure on your characters or give them

4:58

things to aim for. It's also worth

5:00

paying attention to what has

5:02

been described by many people, but I was introduced

5:04

to it by the Freakonomics authors as

5:07

the law of unintended consequences. A

5:11

great example of that is the

5:13

moment you start paying the testing

5:15

team to log

5:17

to identify and log

5:19

bugs, you will

5:22

develop an underground economy between testers

5:24

and coders whereby the

5:26

coders write bugs and the testers

5:28

find them and give a kickback.

5:30

The economic storm from that is

5:32

an externality, right? And you have

5:34

a negative externality or positive externality.

5:36

So a nuclear power plant releases

5:40

warm water as a waste product,

5:42

right? It's not polluted

5:44

in any sense, but it is just several

5:46

degrees warmer than everything around it. So the

5:48

positive externality is that manatees really love that

5:50

warm water and they will congregate there and

5:52

it becomes a safe place, a breeding ground

5:55

and a feeding ground for manatees. That's a

5:57

positive externality. A negative externality is when that

5:59

nuclear power plant melts down and then poisons

6:01

the area around it for hundreds of years to

6:03

come. And radioactive

6:05

kaiju manatees stomp across

6:07

Florida. In

6:09

my opinion, positive actionality. Anything

6:13

that involves stomping across Florida really

6:15

is manatees learning to stomp. But

6:18

the thing that I see a lot

6:20

of writers doing with the

6:23

economy of their world is just thinking about

6:25

what are my coins called. And

6:29

not paying attention to any of

6:33

the systems that are

6:35

around that or the values that

6:37

the people are, you know, that are driving

6:39

that. One of the terms

6:42

that came up during this camp that I was

6:45

very excited about was, what is your

6:47

incentive mechanism? Like, why does a person

6:49

do the thing that they're doing? Why

6:52

do you show up and go to work? Why do you sit down

6:54

and write? What's your incentive mechanism? What's the thing that

6:56

makes you go, aha? And

6:58

those can be internal. It makes you feel good.

7:01

It can be external. Someone gives you money. What

7:05

are the incentive mechanisms in your

7:07

world? Why do people

7:10

do magic if magic is painful and

7:12

magic and it's also secret?

7:14

Like, magic is going to aid you and you

7:17

can't tell anyone that you're going to do it. Why do you do

7:19

it? I don't

7:21

know. Sometimes

7:23

we put our own, like magic just seems

7:25

so cool that you just assume in a

7:27

world with magic, people would use it even

7:29

if they lose a finger every time. And

7:32

also, no one can ever know. And all

7:34

it does is warm the water one degree. But

7:36

you're like, well, that still seems like fun. It's

7:38

magic. And

7:41

that, you know, maybe that's you doing it for

7:43

the reader. Like, that's the reason. But then you

7:45

want to figure out it's richer if you can

7:47

figure out a reason within your world that this

7:49

is happening as opposed to just because like it's

7:51

fun and cool and different. Exactly. So Think

7:53

broadly about what an economy can be, right?

7:55

If You're talking about gold coins or doubloons

7:57

or whatever it is. you're talking about money.

8:00

Terry, you know, like a trade economy

8:02

but they're also reputation autonomous rights. So

8:04

the reason you might wanna go save

8:07

the village is because people consider you

8:09

a hero afterwards. Verizon economy or not,

8:11

everybody can be considered a hero and

8:14

getting that reputations will cost you something

8:16

and will have value for that character

8:18

going forward. Is also gift

8:20

economy is right. This other way

8:22

to think about how people exchange

8:24

goods and services. They don't have

8:26

to be rooted in a capitalistic

8:28

monetary system France. So if you're

8:31

imagining new worlds of imagining magic

8:33

systems we are mentioning, you know

8:35

future societies. There's a lot of

8:37

ways we can approaches that aren't simply rooted

8:39

in. Are. Sort of extractive exchange

8:41

of goods that we have now. And.

8:43

I think something we don't realize is that since

8:45

the paths that were used. To are very well

8:47

worn in our heads. Yes, like. They'd the stories

8:49

that we tell about the way people are in

8:52

the way people use money. are you know? Where.

8:54

You sit em and so there are. As I was

8:56

thinking about the one of the most fascinating things we

8:58

learned this camp. Was. The Belt the tragedy

9:01

of the Commons test which was such

9:03

the comments and correct me if I'm

9:05

wrong safely some sort of resources in

9:07

it's higher community sort of needs to.

9:10

Take care of like. Access. To

9:12

water if your fists, if you're all

9:14

fishing. And there was a

9:16

theory that okay, if that happens. Somebody.

9:19

Will explain it. And there was an

9:21

entire theory of economics. That like went

9:23

off on that, but there's actually no evidence

9:25

of the in the real world in truth.

9:27

People don't necessarily explore the comments, but like

9:29

once it was decided, Well, that's kind of

9:31

what people would do because. That's

9:33

what accomplice housekeepers about then we actually

9:36

developed that will stay in order to

9:38

prevent the exploitation that we assumed would

9:40

be happy for serve. You end up

9:43

creating your own problems because you're used

9:45

to the path that you've been on.

9:48

He. I'm a this was in see me too

9:50

I hadn't heard about be pushed back against

9:52

the tried to the comments because that's driven

9:54

economic policy no role to the last fifty

9:56

sixty years and Bob. And. my own

9:58

personal belief to or determine And

10:00

right now there's a huge fight going on

10:02

about the digital commons and what is a

10:05

public good and what should be

10:07

held back for private industry and all these different things.

10:10

And it is shaping our world in

10:13

really radical ways. And so it's really

10:15

interesting to stop and think about, we

10:18

make certain assumptions and then we build

10:20

our economy based on those assumptions. So

10:22

when you're building your fictional worlds, what

10:24

are your assumptions about who the people

10:27

are in it like, right? And

10:29

what is picking a certain style of economy

10:32

implied that people are like, if everything

10:35

is very cutthroat and everybody has to be paid

10:37

to do any kind of service or tasks, whether

10:39

that's like mercenary work or whatever it is, then

10:41

you're making very strong implications about what kind of

10:44

people live there versus something like Lord of the

10:46

Rings where people are just going to get together

10:48

to save the world because it

10:50

benefits them because they want to, right? There's

10:52

a very different kind of economy implied by

10:55

Lord of the Rings than by a Joao

10:57

Prokofiev book. Ask

10:59

yourself what is scarce

11:03

and what is necessary. There's

11:06

a term post-scarcity economy,

11:08

which refers to, in essence,

11:12

when everybody can have their needs met

11:14

at no cost, what

11:16

does the economy look like? Well,

11:19

it's got the phrase post-scarcity in

11:21

it, but there are some things

11:23

that will necessarily still be limited

11:26

or scarce, like, say, real

11:28

estate. If we can all get

11:30

fed, if we can all get educated, but

11:33

we can't all own a piece of land, what

11:37

sort of an economy develops? What

11:39

happens when water is free

11:41

and food is free, but

11:44

we have to charge for air? Air

11:47

is scarce and we all need

11:49

it. It's one of my critiques

11:51

of Star Trek, for example, right? Star Trek

11:53

introduced the idea of a post-scarcity economy, but

11:56

then because of the

11:58

structures of producing a television

12:00

show that has to be written on a

12:02

certain schedule for a broad audience, the

12:05

writers end up constantly reintroducing scarcity

12:07

into this world and reintroducing a kind

12:09

of certain kind of economics, right? Whether

12:11

it's like, Oh, we're going to bring

12:13

the fringy and then suddenly money is

12:15

important again, right? You know, they keep

12:17

reinventing currency or they keep reinventing certain

12:19

kinds of conflict. Because when

12:22

you imagine a post scarcity world, it

12:24

requires a more radical act of thinking

12:26

than a TV show is, is

12:29

maybe not capable of, but it's hard to sustain over

12:31

as long as Star Trek has existed. One

12:33

of the things that came up. So

12:36

in this camp, we wound up splitting into different

12:38

groups. And one of the things that came up

12:40

when I was talking to an economist

12:42

was, there's a real world example of

12:44

a post scarcity, which

12:46

was that when the, the,

12:48

the, the empire arrived in

12:50

Borneo, that the folks who

12:53

were there were like, yeah, no, we have everything we

12:55

need. Thanks. We're good. We're great. And they're

12:57

like, but we need you to build these

12:59

things. And they're like, is it interesting? If

13:02

it's not interesting, I'm not going to do it. There's

13:04

other things that I want to do. And that was,

13:06

that was where they started

13:10

to apply all of these

13:12

external pressures of oppression in order to

13:14

get them to do things. Because folks

13:16

were like, yeah, you

13:18

know, there was no incentive mechanism for them to do

13:21

it. This is the opium trade

13:23

too, right? To introduce a

13:25

false scarcity by getting people very

13:27

addicted to this thing to assert

13:30

Western control over governments that were kind of

13:32

like, we don't really need you. What are

13:34

you doing here? And it's so

13:36

interesting. I know we have to go to the

13:39

break, but I would love like in a world

13:41

building way to think, what if they had actually

13:43

come up instead with like some amazing incentive? Like,

13:45

is it interesting? No, but we're going to make

13:47

it really interesting. And here's how or why. And

13:50

I think that is something that's really fun is to

13:52

think about. I think a Lot of times,

13:54

even my own work, you think about people

13:57

bringing oppression as opposed to like bringing awe.

14:00

Like. Maybe that's the thing that they're

14:02

bringing that's lacking. the new thing? something

14:04

that's going to energize people in an

14:06

interesting way, and that creates. In a completely

14:08

different kind of world, you. Are

14:11

it's we're going to take a quick break and

14:13

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15:53

Three. Oz. Fall

15:56

of the House of Usher. Has. A monologue

15:58

in it. Were. A character

16:00

goes off on when life gives you

16:02

lemons. And he says no,

16:04

you don't make lemonade. You. Don't

16:07

make lemonade and he'd just he'd

16:09

been take off. On. This

16:11

beautifully capitalistic tirade.

16:14

On. How you turn you

16:16

having nothing but lemons

16:18

into a billion dollar

16:20

monopolistic, global mismanagement of

16:22

culture and lemons and

16:24

everything. It's. Is beautiful

16:26

and when I am I listen to

16:29

it. when I watch it. I

16:31

can't. Help but think. Ah,

16:34

Is there something besides lemons that I could

16:37

also do this with this? This this this

16:39

is used given me a road map. For

16:42

developing a capitalist system

16:44

that is very believable

16:46

and utterly fantastic at

16:48

the same time. In

16:52

see the is a thing about that

16:54

is. That you. Know what

16:56

they what they did was they applied. Their

16:59

values. And. The model that

17:01

they understood to the problem and it's

17:03

it's that is. You know? It's.

17:05

The only thing you have as a hammer.

17:07

Every problem becomes a nails and and again

17:10

when we're talking about the economy's in in

17:12

our world building the only economy that I

17:14

know. It is the one that I

17:17

grew up in, which is this capitalism

17:19

things I've had. I knew that there

17:21

were other things out there, but I'm.

17:24

In said eight and started to

17:26

get exciting for me to think

17:28

about. Okay, well what happens

17:30

if we're going into space and

17:32

it's a gift space economy and.

17:35

And. What would that look like? How

17:37

would people interact with that will eat

17:39

the we. Scientists.

17:41

And up with this can happen in conversation

17:43

we were talking about gives economies that at

17:46

a certain point he knows you're trading with

17:48

someone and your gift economy and say okay

17:50

we're going to give you this. And

17:52

people who are not coming from a gift

17:54

economy are very confused and don't know what

17:56

to do with it. One,

18:00

just to clarify a little bit by

18:02

what we mean by gift economy. One

18:04

thing that distinguishes the gift economy is

18:06

that goods and services are given with

18:08

no direct expectation of return. There's a

18:10

more ambient expectation that your needs will

18:12

be met down the

18:14

line when that arises, maybe not by

18:17

the person who directly gave you the

18:19

first thing, right? So if everyone is

18:21

participating in gift society, gift economy, then

18:23

needs and desires are taken care of

18:26

collectively without anybody having to map

18:28

out who is owed X, Y,

18:30

or Z, right? Which is a

18:33

very foreign concept to people who

18:35

live in a deeply capitalistic sort

18:37

of mindset. The moment

18:40

that I was like, oh, I understand this more, was

18:43

when the economist

18:45

I was speaking to said, okay,

18:47

but if they give you something,

18:50

they've just won. And

18:52

so I said, oh, this is the

18:54

moment when you're at dinner and

18:56

you're all arguing about, no, I'll get the check, I'll get

18:58

the check. And that we've

19:00

all experienced gift economy, especially those of us

19:03

who live in the South, as politeness battles,

19:06

where it's like, no, no, I will be

19:08

the one who does the nicest thing. Or

19:10

it's just your incentive is community growth. So

19:13

I always think about, I didn't know that's what it was

19:15

called, but one of the things I found

19:17

really interesting at the camp is I was like, well, what about

19:19

barter? And one thing

19:21

that I learned is that actually barter usually

19:23

comes into play when you have two groups

19:26

that either don't trust or don't know

19:28

each other because they can't give each other gifts because

19:30

they don't understand what to give or

19:32

what the other person needs. So they figure out

19:34

like one chicken equals three potatoes and three potatoes

19:36

equals a trip to the moon.

19:38

That's a weird economy, but. Very

19:41

valuable. Very valuable. I mean, they

19:43

were real valuable on Mars. That's

19:45

true, that's true. But my

19:48

mom talking about when she used

19:50

to visit rural Mississippi where my mom's family

19:52

is from, people would just be like, this

19:54

person has a peach tree. And so they

19:56

just give people extra peaches. These people fix

19:58

fences for folks. grandmother would like

20:00

read documents for people and

20:03

sort of be like this is something you

20:05

should sign this is something you shouldn't sign

20:07

and all of those things were just about

20:09

like the community needs to look out for

20:11

itself and so it is good for everyone

20:13

if we all you know have

20:15

a good amount of peaches have fixed fences

20:17

and know you know not to give the

20:19

government our land by mistake and like nobody

20:21

loses in that situation but you just have

20:23

to think like what what should I do

20:25

for other people when you think about economies

20:27

really think about two things what are you

20:30

assuming that people are like and what

20:32

do what does your community

20:34

value right so in a gift

20:36

economy people value community health and

20:38

well-being above individual needs right

20:41

and so if you believe that actually

20:43

everyone will be better off if everybody

20:45

gets peaches rather than I need to

20:47

extract the most value that speeches even

20:49

if 10% of them rock

20:51

right and those are two different sets of

20:53

values there's also two different assumptions you know

20:55

talking about barter versus gift you know in

20:58

a barter economy you assume that people will

21:00

try to screw each other over in in

21:03

a direct way and in the gift economy

21:05

you submit everybody fundamentally cares about other people

21:07

and is going to do their best or

21:09

at least enough people are going to do

21:12

their best that it will compensate for those

21:14

who are trying to be more exploitive we've

21:16

talked about this when we talk about building

21:18

a community of writers when we

21:20

talk about you know you going

21:23

out and meeting other writers for critique

21:25

groups and and whatever

21:28

and how we

21:30

don't want that to be

21:32

transactional there is no sense

21:34

yet if in a direct way in in the

21:36

gift economy you submit everybody fundamentally cares about other

21:39

people and is going to do their best or

21:41

at least enough people are going to do their

21:43

best that it will compensate for those who are

21:45

trying to be more exploitive we've talked about this

21:47

when we talk about building a community

21:50

of writers when we

21:52

talk about you know you going

21:54

out and meeting other writers for

21:57

critique groups and and whatever

22:00

and how we

22:02

don't want that to be

22:04

transactional. There is no

22:06

sense yet. If you come up to me at

22:08

a convention and ask for a bit of writing

22:10

advice, I will give it to

22:12

you completely non-transactional. I do

22:15

not expect anything in return. It

22:17

is possible that I won't give

22:19

it to you because I'm busy

22:21

or off to a meeting or

22:23

brain dead or whatever, but it

22:25

is not transactional. That idea

22:28

that exchanges can

22:31

take place that aren't really

22:34

transactions, they're not even really

22:36

exchanges, it's a

22:38

gift. Well, and

22:41

this idea of, I will

22:43

give you writing advice, one of the things

22:45

that you will hear people in science fiction

22:47

and fantasy say over and over again is,

22:49

pay it forward. There are these phrases

22:51

that we use that underline what our

22:53

values are. In

22:56

Heinlein's Moon is a

22:58

Harsh Mistress, you get there, there ain't

23:00

no such thing as a free lunch. And

23:03

that gets painted on

23:05

their flag, kind of spalled.

23:09

And there are these things,

23:11

these phrases, these aphorisms that

23:13

underline what our values are,

23:16

that are an interesting piece

23:18

of world building that you can do that kind

23:20

of, even if

23:22

you're having trouble wrapping yourself, your head around the

23:24

actual economy, coming back to that can also be

23:26

a grounding thing. I also

23:28

think like just looking at things that you're doing,

23:31

like when you said, oh, I'll give you a

23:33

piece of writing advice, the world building part of

23:35

my brain is like, what if that was the

23:37

thing? Like what if that's the thing, like instead

23:39

of the reputation economy, it's the advice economy. And

23:41

when you run out of good advice to give

23:43

people, you're broke. What if it's gossip?

23:45

Like there's so many things that we could be... I love

23:47

the publishing, I do both these. But

23:52

I think there are a lot of interesting

23:54

things. So I think a lot of times

23:56

we think, because we think of economies as

23:58

being about always extensivational, exchanging money

24:01

directly. We miss all the other

24:03

little exchanges that could be the basis for

24:05

interesting different worlds. Exactly.

24:08

Yeah, and there are also things like different,

24:11

like our Patreon, for instance, goes

24:13

back to the patron model,

24:16

which used to be back in the old

24:18

days, someone's like, you know what?

24:20

I just want art to exist in the world.

24:23

And so you would, you know, just

24:27

pay artists to do art. Part

24:29

of what you were also doing at the

24:31

time was you were also being like, look how

24:33

fancy I am. I can look at these artists.

24:35

All these artists going on the

24:37

ceiling of my house. Yeah. I

24:40

mean, and it's, I'm

24:42

the patron of, you know, Da Vinci. I'm

24:44

the patron of Michelangelo. That means that in

24:46

a reputation economy, you are rich, right?

24:50

You are like 1%, right? And

24:52

so I think, you know, even

24:54

in things that we think of as altruism,

24:56

even in things that we think of as

24:59

these gifts, or whatever, people have reasons for

25:01

doing those things. And economics is thinking

25:03

about why people are making those

25:06

choices on a system-wide level, right?

25:09

And, you know, I love that you're connected to culture,

25:11

right? So like Heinlein's, you know, there ain't

25:13

no such thing as a free lunch. Or I was thinking

25:15

about Octavia Butler, right? Everything you touch,

25:17

you change. Everything you change touches you. That

25:20

is such a radically different view of

25:22

what your values are. And that represents

25:24

people trying to live according to a

25:26

different kind of economic system in a

25:28

world that's collapsing around them that demands

25:30

something very different from them than what

25:32

they are trying to accomplish, right? And that

25:35

is the fundamental tension of that book, is

25:37

how do you survive with these ethics and

25:39

values intact? I love that, because it makes me

25:41

think about that's a way to approach this, is to think about

25:44

what are the values of your world? And then based

25:46

on that, what do they place value in?

25:48

How do they track that value?

25:50

I think everyone thinks that building

25:52

an economy is not asking what

25:54

is valuable, but

25:58

instead I think the question... is what

26:00

do you value? And those are two fundamentally

26:02

different ideas that sound very similar. When

26:06

I leave the house, there's this

26:08

checklist. I need to have my

26:11

keys. I need to have my

26:13

glasses. I need to have my phone. I

26:16

need to have my wallet. Inquiring

26:22

into each of those individually, why

26:25

do I need those? Why is

26:27

it unthinkable for me to be

26:29

caught naked in the wilds of

26:31

Ormuta without one of those? Will

26:34

inform an entire world

26:36

of thought about the economy that

26:39

led to them. I have to have

26:41

a lock on my car and

26:43

on my house. And my

26:45

money is, I have to have it. And

26:49

I can't see with it anyway. Perform

26:52

that same experiment on yourself. What

26:55

is it that you have to have? Why? So

27:00

I'm going to give you some homework. And

27:02

this is a homework that

27:04

I had an exercise that I had

27:07

my students do at the

27:10

space economy thing, which

27:12

is to come up with three catch phrases

27:14

that someone who grew up in your economy

27:16

would know. So for instance,

27:18

the difference between there ain't no such thing

27:20

as a free lunch versus the fictional

27:22

economy that we were building for a moon,

27:25

which was see it, fix

27:27

it. And you can see those

27:30

two totally different worlds

27:32

and the economies that would spin out of those.

27:34

So come up with three value statements,

27:37

three aphorisms, someone that grew up in

27:40

your world would say, and then see

27:42

what economies spin out of those. This

27:45

has been writing excuses. You're out of

27:48

excuses. Now go write. Do

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27:58

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fight and fumble their way across

28:32

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28:35

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28:38

Reese and his Jester's Retinue,

28:40

Christopher Hastings, Carly Monardo, Tim

28:42

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Fisher star as a group

28:46

of unlikely survivors, specifically a

28:49

talking crow, a lich in a

28:51

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punk, and a tiefling hunk. This

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group must solve the mystery of

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