The Meaning of Money

What gives money (or any "moneylike" form of currency) its value? What makes us willing to accept it in exchange for concrete items of value? Cory Doctorow dissects this conundrum in his latest LOCUS column:

Moneylike

After an attempt to define money, he explores its origin. He rejects the familiar hypothesis of its having been invented to solve the cumbersome difficulties of barter, labeling this a "folk-tale." Instead of a "bottom-up" model of the creation of media of exchange, he describes money as a "top-down" system imposed by governments, which required the existence of currency to collect taxes in order to provision their armies. Where, then, does the money itself come from? It's generated by governments, and problems can occur if the state issues either too much or too little of it. Doctorow illustrates and analyzes this model at length in an extended parable. Items other than official currency can be "moneylike," such as gift certificates. Elaborating on the concept of "moneylike" media of exchange, he goes into detail about how cryptocurrency works, especially with reference to internet ransomware.

Robert Heinlein includes a discussion of what constitutes value in STARSHIP TROOPERS, where the narrator's high-school teacher refutes the claim that labor alone creates value. Heinlein's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE contains an amusing scene in which Lazarus Long, acting as the banker for a frontier planet colony, destroys a batch of paper money, to the horror of the man he's dealing with. Lazarus has to explain that money doesn't consist of a physical thing with objective value, but a consensus reality people agree on. As long as Lazarus keeps a record of the serial numbers from the bills he gets rid of, there's no need to preserve the bills themselves (which pose a theft risk).

In one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the capital city adopts the Golem Standard. What could serve as a better backing for currency than objects that are almost impossible to steal, counterfeit, or destroy (especially since they're sapient and can defend themselves)?

In the Star Trek universe, conflicting information about the future economy appears in the various series. In the original series, Starfleet personnel must get paid somehow, as shown by Uhura's purchase of a tribble in "The Trouble with Tribbles." Outside of Starfleet, the existence of money is confirmed in "Mudd's Women" and the episode in which Spock poses as a Vulcan merchant. Supposedly by the time of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION the ubiquity of replicators has made the Federation a post-scarcity society with no need for money. Yet on the fringes (as in DEEP SPACE NINE) and outside the Federation's borders, as made clear by the Ferengi veneration of profit, money exists. Gold-pressed latinum as a medium of exchange is explained on the premise that it's one of the few substances incapable of being replicated. (We have to assume dilithium crystals must fall into the same category, or else obtaining them wouldn't be such a vital preoccupation in the original series.) It seems reasonable that luxury goods in the form of items not produced by replicators, such as the Picard family's wines, would require a medium of exchange for their sale. Or are we to assume creators of such products make them for the sheer joy of the process and give them away? Regardless of post-scarcity abundance, widespread actions like that would imply a radical change in human nature that we don't witness among the Terrans of the Star Trek universe in any other behavioral category.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Special Days

Here's a website that lists all the official, quasi-official, or just plain weird celebratory and commemorative days in the year:

National Day Calendar

Every date has multiple entries, so you should be able to find a special day for just about anything you want to celebrate. The explanatory page for each entry includes the commemoration's origin. Some that aren't official holidays have been established by individuals or organizations, while for others the website says it's still "researching" the source. In other words, they don't know. Since apparently anyone can register and add a day to the calendar, it's possible some of these "special days" are simply things made up by people who thought they would sound cool. They're fun to contemplate, anyway.

Here's a page on the history and possible origins of April Fool's Day:

April Fool's Day

These are just a few of the many "days" listed for this week in 2021, in addition to April Fool's Day and the Christian observances of Holy Week events: March 29 -- National Nevada Day, Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, Vietnam War Veterans Day. (I suspect this last one is real for sure.) March 30 -- Take a Walk in the Park Day, I Am in Control Day, Virtual Vacation Day (probably a new invention for the current situation). March 31 -- Bunsen Burner Day, Clams on the Half Shell Day, Manatee Appreciation Day (founded by an organization dedicated to protecting endangered marine animals). This year April 1, April Fool's Day, is also dedicated to sourdough bread and burritos, as well as the regular annual National Take Down Tobacco Day, whose exact date varies. April 2 -- World Autism Awareness Day and National Reconciliation Day, plus an occasion to appreciate ferrets and peanut-butter-and-jelly (presumably not together). April 3 -- National Chocolate Mousse Day, Find a Rainbow Day, and Love Our Children Day (always the first Saturday in April, according to the website). April 4 -- in addition to being Easter Sunday this year, it celebrates school librarians, newspersons, geologists, and vitamin C, among other entities worthy of recognition. It's also listed as National Walk Around Things Day. Well, that's preferable to Tripping Over Things Day. :)

I can enthusiastically support Chocolate Mousse Day, for one. As for today, it's also designated National One Cent Day. The website doesn't identify its origin, but they offer an interesting overview of the history of the U.S. penny, of which we keep a can-full in a drawer, as many people do:

National One Cent Day

When my husband and I got married, in the mid-1960s, some gumball machines sold candy for one cent, and a retro bargain store near our first apartment carried a few items priced at a penny each. The value of a penny faded to essentially nothing long ago, yet we still understand what's meant by the proverb, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Depiction Part 17 - Depicting First Contact - Take Me To Your Leader by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Depiction
Part 17

Depicting First Contact

Take Me To Your Leader 

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of the Depiction Series are listed here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

This Tuesday blog is generally about Alien Romance Novels, about how to blend science, fiction, and romance into romance stories where love conquers all and brings a couple to a happily ever after "ending."  Science Fiction is largely defined as, "The Literature of Ideas."

So you wouldn't think politics was our beat.  Just look at current election coverage, political ads, and punditry of political analysis.  What could politics have to do with Leadership or Literature of Ideas?

However, this blog is about science fiction romance, and in science fiction one must build the entire world behind the characters around some one, single, unique, new, concept or premise.

There is an entire sub-genre of science fiction called sociological science fiction where the science being fictionalized is Sociology.

Such novels examine the fallacious assumptions humans make about "reality" -- such as which traits are inherently just human, and which traits human infants acquire from parents.

What is cultural, and what is genetic?  What precisely defines "human."  Are we just another species of Great Ape, or something else?

And if we're just another Great Ape right now, does that mean we will be nothing more than a Great Ape thousands of years from now?  Or thousands of years ago?

We are now accumulating data about exoplanets, and how common the conditions for life are in the galaxy.  What would Aliens on other planets have in common with Great Apes?

One common organizational theme among chimps and bonobos is that there is a single, dominant individual in each group.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/07/opinions/mothers-day-chimps-bonobos-safina/

With chimps, it is a dominant male, and with bonobos it is a dominant female who creates order in the grouping.

It can be argued that humans likewise pick an "alpha" male, a leader to follow, such as Donald Trump, or any of the 15 other men and 1 woman, Republicans, who ran for the office of President of the United States in 2015-2016.

And on the Democratic side, in US Politics, we have Hillary Clinton.  I see Bernie Sanders as an alpha male, and Hillary as an alpha-female.

To "depict" a human grouping, do you (the writer of romantic fiction ) have to designate a "Leader?"  Does the definition of human grouping include a Leader?

And if so, are we chimps or bonobos.  Do read that article.  It depicts chimps as war-like, belligerent, because they are dominated by a male, but bonobos as peaceful, easier to negotiate with, because they are dominated by a female.

If you look at humanity around this Earth, you see we seem to have some of each kind, but the problem is any particular human can be this kind on Monday and that kind on Tuesday.

The USA has never had a female president (yet), but other countries have been "led" by females.  Has that change in gender of leadership changed the behavior of those groups?

If you listen to the political rhetoric bandied about today, you will hear the word Leader (or related leadership, leading, etc) quite frequently.  The pundits analysis seems to be that everything that's "wrong" with the USA is due to a lack of "leadership."  That may be one of the fallacious assumptions we discussed in parts 3, 4, 6, and 7 of the Theme-Plot Integration series.

Here's the index to theme-plot integration:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

And we built on those concepts later:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/theme-plot-character-worldbuilding.html

To create a theme and a plot for romance novels set among the stars, you need to build your Aliens (maybe not their World, but the Alien species itself) using the human template but with some, single, element different.

Only one difference (per alien species) is not an unbreakable rule, but it is the most reliable rule.

Since this is science fiction romance, you formulate the aliens using the kind of thinking trained into students of science. When designing an experiment, science teaches us to vary just one element at a time -- one feature -- one parameter at a time, and compare the results.

Note how Gene Roddenberry created Vulcans with the single "difference" of being non-emotional.  Yes, there's a long story behind that -- originally Number One (a female First Officer) was un-emotional and the Vulcan science officer was emotional but extra-smart.  To get the show on the air, Roddenberry had to eliminate the female bridge officer because no viewer would believe a man would take orders from a woman.  (how times have changed!)

So we ended up with the non-emotional Vulcans, and Roddenberry redesigned his aliens to suit the network executives so that their entire world culture, perhaps biology, was non-emotional.  Then to make the drama work, of course the non-emotional Vulcans turned out to have raging emotions.  But for Depicting First Contact, we learn to hide all differences except one.

Take C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novel series, which I have been reviewing here for years.  Most recently #16 Tracker #17 Visitor :

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/07/reviews-27-foreigner-series-by-c-j.html

Cherryh depicts her human "lost colony" as having all the varied traits humans have, included complex politics.  Her aliens on this planet, the Atevi, are at first depicted the way Roddenberry  presented the Vulcans to us, as having a single trait at variance with humans, and most everything else pretty much similar.

That single different trait is the first defining attribute presented, and often repeated in various forms.  For the Atevi it is that they don't love, and can't understand Love, but have all other emotions plus one humans can't understand.  They bond in couples, and have vast and complicated political alliances often based on family relationships.  In other words, they're more human than we can realistically expect any aliens we meet (or find the ruins of) to be.

The Atevi form their political alliances around a Leader - a single dominant individual.  And the dominant individuals vie with each other to be the most dominant among all dominants.  But with Atevi, that dominate individual may be either male or female, and the distribution seems fairly random.

We have also seen Gene Roddenberry's Vulcans at least revere an elderly but dominant female, T'Pau.

So, according to that article on chimps and bonobos, there is a distinct difference in brain configuration that developed when a river formed and divided their mutual ancestors geographically.  They evolved in separate directions, and today that brain distinction manifests as a difference in gender of the Leader.

So, should that cliche opening line for a First Contact story be, "Take Me To Your Dominant Female?"

And if so, then what for?  I mean why would Aliens land and make a bee line for a Leader?  Doesn't that plot-element require that the Aliens only do business leader-to-leader?

Is there a fallacy embedded in the whole concept of Leader?

Note, Roddenberry and Cherryh both depict their main Aliens (who will produce individuals who bond with humans) as having leaders.  The Atevi need leaders.  All hell breaks loose among Atevi if Leadership fails.  They are essentially evolved from herd creatures and physiologically need a Leader.  Vulcans, on the other hand, appear to have chosen a social structure organized around a Leader, and a group of Leaders creating a structured government.

The question a writer of romance stories should address when designing an Alien Lover is, "Do humans need leaders?"

When you have a vision of human "society" (as opposed to generic Great Ape society), what humans absolutely need and what humans choose as convenient (because we're lazy apes) or what we choose because some among us are big bullies and grab leadership, then ask yourself what humans need Leaders for.

What purpose or function do human leaders serve?  What happens among leaderless humans (such as a random collection of survivors of a lost colony -- or maybe a colony on Mars).

What is the connection between social Leadership, and Command of "the economy?"

What is "economy" -- where does it come from, who makes it happen, why does it happen, what is it for, and who needs it anyway?

Does an "economy" need a leader as society does?

Now presumably, aliens operate their economy according to the same laws and principles that humans do.  It is something we ought to have in common with any space faring species.  Many famous First Contact stories ...

(such as In Value Decieved In Value Deceived by H.B. Fyfe
Analog/Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950, pp. 38-46
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AnalogSF-1950nov-00038  )

...depict Trade as the first transaction, not friendship, love or even war.

C. J. Cherryh took that approach with the story of how the first human colonists moved from the Space Station around the Atevi world, down to the ground.  At first meeting, the humans managed to start trading with the local Atevi -- much as the first colonists in North America traded with the Native Americans.  It was only later that misunderstanding due to that single Atevi trait that differs from human caused war to break out.

In human sociological history on Earth, we have seen trade precede war many times.  Trade (or an economic transaction -- Value for Value) is perhaps more fundamental to human nature than even sex or war.

Language evolves rapidly and diverges when there is isolation.  If you are writing Historical Romance, you should keep in mind that modern characters could not pop back in time and understand spoken English.  Even written English is not that easy, if you look at some actual manuscripts.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

Even today, with the internet, populations that do not communicate with each other (such as the age-gap) evolve different meanings for the same words. Thus on this blog, I try to define the difference between what I designate as Plot and what I designate as Story, many times.  Plot is the sequence of events or character actions; story is the characters' reactions to those events, feelings and motives, lessons learned. Plot is generally external, Story is generally internal. Many writing teachers reverse the meanings of the words, but all identify these two separate moving parts of the novel's mechanism.

So when you are building an Alien Civilization from scratch, keeping in mind the "one-difference" rule, you might decide that since C. J. Cherryh has already done "Love is Incomprehensible" and Gene Roddenbery started to do "Emotion is Incomprehensible" then chickened out (but I did it in Kraith
http://simegen.com/fandom/startrek/  ),
you might want to explore what single difference your Aliens might have in the realm of Commerce that would make, say, MONEY incomprehensible.

We make many assumptions about "money." It is such a common idea, dating back before Biblical Times, that we often assume that all creatures in the cosmos have money.

But really, what we use for money now is very different from what it was 4 thousand years ago.

Coin of the Realm is a term which had literal meaning.  The reason Julius Ceasar's profile was on coins was that The Leader was the creator of COIN.  The coin was "of the Realm" -- the kingdom or empire struck the coins.  The original concept was that the coin was made of something that had intrinsic value (gold, silver).

Common practice was to shave slivers off the edges of coins and then pass off the light-weight coin as a whole coin.  Also coating wood -- the wooden-nickle -- to look like money was done.  Counterfeit Money has always been with us since money was invented.  Today it's hacking into the bank computers and jiggering the numbers.  Or the Federal Reserve (Central Bank) just printing more of what looks like money but is as counterfeit as any criminal's coin, having the same effect on the economy as counterfeit money does.

Remember, counterfeiting was weaponized in World War II to bring down whole countries by flooding their economy with bogus bills.

So would such deception be the expected practice with your Aliens?  Or would they have an economic system which was immune to counterfeit coin of the realm?

How would you design an economic system that was impervious to a counterfeiting flood (or hacking, identity theft and taking out a mortgage in your name which essentially counterfeit's your personal realm's coin?)

Note how Roddenberry created Aliens lacking all emotion, but Cherryh created aliens lacking only Love, but replaced "Love" with another emotion rooted in different biology.

Look at chimps and bonobos. They trade in mutual grooming, share food, and create an "economy" based on sex and dominance.  Yet they're smart enough to figure out how to cooperate to get food.  Wolves bring down large prey in packs, cooperating for food but then letting the dominant wolf apportion the meat.  Apparently, human tribes can develop a society based on that cooperative model on a tribal level.

One question you, as world builder, have to answer is, "Once food (wealth) is acquired by cooperation, does The Leader apportion the wealth among His/Her followers as he chooses, or do the individuals who cooperated snatch what they think is their own portion?"

Poul Anderson, among many early science fiction writers, pointed out the way to build Alien Species that "make sense" to modern, human readers is to examine the basic biology of animal species that really exist on Earth and extrapolate what kind of civilization that biology would generate, given evolved intelligence.  He founded a long and prolific career on that method, and modern science fiction writers tend to follow that rule successfully.

Understand the biological drives shaping human cultural choices about Trade (such as they may be free will choices), then find one parameter to change to create your Alien.

Which parameter you change, and from what to what you change it, will define your THEME.

Your plot will explode outward from that premise with natural inevitability. You will have depicted an abstract statement about the nature of Reality in concrete terms as we discussed.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Or in this entry on depicting Dynastic Wealth:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html

To do that as well as Roddenberry or Cherryh have done with emotion, you have to understand what money is to humans, and why we created it, then change that why to make your Aliens.

Humans started with barter -- trade.  I'll trade you this horse-halter for that bushel of corn?  No, no not THAT bushel, it's wormy.  This nice halter is worth that other, nice fresh clean bushel of corn.

Trade is object for object -- and it is all about what an object is worth to you, right then.

I'll trade you this gold coin for that bucket of water?  No, this water was too hard to come by -- I'll give it to you if you give me that horse.  Well, if I don't have a horse, I don't need a whole bucket of water.

Value is subjective and situational.

If you're dying of thirst, water is worth all the gold you are carrying.

The value of your aching back (drawing a bucket of water up from the bottom of a deep well sans donkey) vs. the value of a bushel of corn you could buy in town (5 mile walk away, then back again hauling a bushel of corn) if only you had a gold coin to give to the farmer in the market (provided you could get there before the market closed or all the corn was gone.)

Calculating the value of a gold coin is a vitally important skill, and always has a wild card factor, a gamble involved.

Today we call that arbitrage.

The value of a material object, or a coin, is fundamentally guesswork.

A gold coin, or a hundred dollar bill (actually a 1 ounce gold coin is about $1200 today), is coin of the realm, and medium of exchange.

You can "sell" a bucket of water for the value of the water, plus the value-added by that water being in a bucket at ground level rather than 200 feet down a well.  You might sell the leaky wooden bucket with the water -- or not.  Separate deal.

You give the water, you get the coin, you carry the coin to town, you give the coin, you get the bushel of corn.  Now you don't have any water to cook the corn in and you're 5 miles from home where you can shuck the corn and cut the kernels from the cob, making the burden lighter.  You have to pay someone so you can borrow their wagon?

That's an economy.  The bushel of corn cost someone a sore back, too, and a year's work tilling the soil, pulling weeds, etc etc -- it's not easy growing corn.  In the price of that bushel of corn is also figured the cost of paying soldiers to defend the land from invaders who would steal the corn and kill the farmer.  To pay the soldiers, the Leader has to create Coin of the Realm as a Medium of Exchange.

Aliens might trade in buckets of water, but might not have corn, or any kind of vegetable crop. Maybe they only eat animals, but they surely eat something.

Last week, we examined the very definition of life, itself.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/08/alien-sexuality-part-two-what-is-life.html

The value of "life" has mystical variables -- which you can pick through to find that ONE element to change to generate your Aliens.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2007/12/8-pentacles-kavanah.html

So what is the "value" of work?  A material object (hunk of wood, for example) is worth something -- variable with how difficult it was to acquire, how rare it is.  That same material object plus "work" might equal a Polished Soup Bowl, a Comfortable Rocking Chair, hoops-and-loops to hold clothing together (frogs), table, shelves, hair clasps, whatever you can make out of wood.  To make those things requires a) skill and b) time maybe c) bleeding from splinters.

The work is intangible, but has VALUE in coin-of-the-realm.

Consider that the realm authorizing that coin is your own, personal, only-you, ecology of one person. You are a sovereign individual.

Read Clan of the Cave Bear .

http://www.amazon.com/Clan-Cave-Bear-Earths-Children/dp/0553250426/

This famous novel depicts the economy of the sovereign, lone, individual.

Every collected object used for food, clothing, shelter, has an assigned value in time-effort-energy and in how replaceable it is.  When the hero returns "home" to find his little shelter utterly destroyed, you understand what a dollar actually IS.  You understand what ownership and sovereignty is.  And you understand what Capitalism really is (as opposed to what "they" have told you capitalism is.)

The rule of Fallacy being more popular than Accuracy seems to hold with respect to Capitalism.

But words are as variable in value as coins.

Again, consider how language shifts and changes -- the same words do not mean the same thing to all people.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/03/25/how-far-back-in-time-could-you-go-and-still-understand-english/

A word is "worth" (e.g. means) what you say it does, just as a coin is worth what you think you can get for it (fallacious thought or not.)

Today's online dictionaries try to keep up with the ever changing definitions of words.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/capitalism

... defines capitalism thusly:

----------quote---------------
an economic system based on private ownership of capital
Synonyms:
capitalist economy
Antonyms:
socialism, socialist economy
an economic system based on state ownership of capital
Types:
venture capitalism
capitalism that invests in innovative enterprises (especially high technology) where the potential profits are large
Type of:
free enterprise, laissez-faire economy, market economy, private enterprise
an economy that relies chiefly on market forces to allocate goods and resources and to determine prices

--------end quote-------------

No, that's not it.  "Capitalism" is actually just a system of describing what the hero of CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR lost when his belongings were destroyed -- belongings he had gathered raw materials for and crafted into items essential to his survival.

"Capital" is not MONEY.  Capital is not COIN (of any Realm).

Capital, like the "Packing Fraction" from physics, is the Money you do not have BECAUSE you have a thing instead.


---------quote----------
The ratio of the total volume of a set of objects packed into a space to the volume of that space. The difference between the isotopic mass of a nuclide and its mass number, divided by its mass number. The packing fraction is often interpreted as a measure of the stability of the nucleus.
Packing fraction | Define Packing fraction at Dictionary.com

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/packing-fraction

----------end quote---------

As in Physics, Capital has stability measured by how much it cost -- how MUCH is NOT THERE, how much it would take to pry your hot fist away from your possession.

Understanding this secret of reality (hidden by changing definitions of words) makes the difference between the rich and the poor.

I've discussed Rich Dad: Poor Dad previously.  The book explains how what we sometimes call the "cycle of poverty" is more a matter of language facility than wisdom or skill at life.  By cycle of poverty, I mean the phenomenon of poor parents raising poor children trapped in poverty all their lives, raising another generation of poor kids.

We have many prominent examples of those who have 'broken the cycle of poverty' among our political candidates in 2016.

We have Dr. Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, even Ted Cruz, -- they all have tales to tell of that steep, hard climb out of having nothing.  They do not seem (from what they say in public) to understand that what they did depended on knowing the difference between money and capital, but look closely at their stories and it is plain as day.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!   Robert T. Kiyosaki

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle-ebook/dp/B0175P82RA

The secret is simply that capital is not money.  You can 'save' capital.  You can NOT 'save' money.  When you put "money" in a bank, it becomes "capital."  (unless it's in a checking account to be spent).

Money (coin) is a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE -- it is worth whatever two entities (Aliens included) think or say or determine it is worth.  The real value of "money" lies in its velocity, the rates and direction of movement of the coins.  Money is a force (mystically, you can consider it fueled by the Soul.)

Capital is fixed, real, tangible asset that is worth to you exactly what you paid for it, what it cost you to acquire, and that includes emotional investment.

This is what the Atevi can't grasp -- humans LOVE the objects they invest their emotions into (grandma's hand-stitched quilt is worth more than the scrap rags she made it from).  We make things, and we "love" those things because we made them.  It is a capital investment of Self.  We even accuse people of "loving" Money.

Your potential work (your aching back) has a value to you, independent of anything anyone else might think it is worth.  Your potential work is your human capital.  It is potential 'value' because it is unrealized.  You can't exchange it. You can't move it.  You can't reassign ownership.  It is capital.

Money and Capital share a property that I expect Aliens would understand.  Money and Capital can both be "made."

As in Clan of the Cave Bear, a single individual can gather material objects in one spot and craft mission-critical items from that material.

The gathering costs expenditure of capital (remember, labor, your aching back, is your capital).  The crafting (learning to do it, then doing it, failing, discarding gathered material ruined by failure, finally succeeding) of the matter into a usable object costs an expenditure of Capital.

Life -- time, effort, energy, health, RISK, combat with others, competing for rare stuff -- is your Capital.  You invest that capital by gathering then crafting.  Now you HAVE an object that is mission critical, and that object is Capital.

For more iconic imagery on this abstract definition of what is money and what is capital, watch the film Enemy Mine.

http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Mine-Dennis-Quaid/dp/B000I9YXOC/

This is a true Love Story, complete with human/alien pregnancy, sans sex!

When corporations report "Capital Expenditure" they do not refer to taking Capital (land, buildings, factory equipment) and selling it.  They refer to taking from incoming cash flow and BUYING land, buildings, equipment.  For example, if you own a house, and it needs a new roof, you do a Capital Expenditure, spending your wages or salary to buy a new roof (or the materials to go hammer a new roof over your head yourself.)

Capital is STATIC -- trapped, concrete -- but MONEY has a value derived from its VELOCITY.  How trade-able is your gold or silver coin?  What is a dollar worth?  Capital is what you exchange (barter) but Money is the medium by which you exchange it.  Money is a SYMBOL.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/communicating-in-symbols.html

Coin of the Realm has a value based on the value of the Realm, itself.

Your aching back is the coin of your own, personal, sovereign realm.

I think any living Alien species we meet up with will be able to comprehend an aching back (or carapace), or at the very least, "Whew!  I did it!"

Of course, a hive species might have a problem with "I."  Writing a Human/Alien Romance with a hive species might be a challenge.

But assume your Aliens are individuals, and here they are among 21st Century humans on Earth (or maybe finding a human colony on Mars or "out there" somewhere.)

How will they understand working for a living?  Paychecks?  Cell phone bills.  Starbucks expensive coffee.

The film Starman gives you a start on this problem.

http://www.amazon.com/Starman-Karen-Allen/dp/B004ZCM2Q4/

This kind of story fairly well defines science fiction.  In a First Contact situation, you have to set aside your assumptions because they are all probably fallacious.

C. J. Cherryh depicts this process with razor sharp precision in the entire FOREIGNER series, but targets it especially well in the novel VISITOR where the language of the new Aliens, the Kyo, has to be puzzled out nearly from scratch.

Finding your own fallacies amidst your assumptions is extremely difficult, but it is in fact one of the primary skills of the working scientific researcher.  Nothing blinds you to facts more than your assumptions, and how assiduously you have examined your assumptions determines how blinded you will be by Romance.

So, what if your Aliens have as many unexamined and possibly fallacious assumptions as the human Characters in your Romance story?  That could be a source of Conflict for your couple, and misunderstandings greater than C. J. Cherryh has depicted.

Armed with that idea, and your own personal take on what an economy is, where it comes from, why bother to have one, and what "labor" is (Capital or Money?), and who owns the resulting material objects, write a 750 piece of dialog for a First Contact Romance novel.

Consider the subject might be the Minimum Wage.  Suppose the Alien is trying to hire a Security Guard for a foray into the White House and an official, "Take Me To Your Leader" meeting.

What should the Alien pay?  What multiple of the Minimum Wage?  And how do you convince an Alien (with an alien idea about paid labor and skilled labor) to pay that much?

Depict that entire Alien culture's economic system in 750 words of dialogue, and spark the hottest Romance in this Galaxy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Depiction Part 6 - Depicting Money and Wealth by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Depiction Part 6
Depicting Money and Wealth
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In Depiction Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/01/depiction-part-5-depicting-dynastic.html
we started to look at Depicting Dynastic Wealth with an eye toward the Romance form of how to marry a millionaire, billionaire, Prince, King, Duke -- how to marry above your "station."  How to marry into the 1%.

The previous parts of the Depiction Series are:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-1-depicting-power-in.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-2-conflict-and-resolution.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/09/depiction-part-3-internal-conflict-by.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/12/depiction-part-4-depicting-power-in.html

This type of novel depicting the uber-wealthy from the inside is difficult for a writer to create because most writers aren't wealthy. 

Like musicians, actors, and other performing artists, writers are generally work-a-day schmucks, more like Cinderella than like the Prince.  

Those who hit it lucky often live like suddenly discovered movie stars, or suddenly popular athletes on a winning streak, and adopt a lavish lifestyle that eventually bankrupts them.  Those who work for a living (other than Investment Bankers) usually have no reason or means to learn Wealth Management. 

It is difficult to portray real wealth, from the inside, to portray a Character who was raised to wealth and privilege.  From the outside they all seem stuck up, and that makes them plausible to your reader and easy to portray.  

We ended off Depiction Part 5 with the observation that a shift of point of view produces strange inversions. 

In Historical Times, Kings ran the government and made the decisions.  Today voters run the government and make the decisions, then hire working-stiffs to carry out those decisions, bestowing such titles as Prime Minister or President.  But voters (working stiffs) are King now, and now Kings don't run the government, voters do.  It is a point of view shift.

However, while the people we elect either are wealthy, magically become wealthy while in office, or are from dynastic wealth, the voters in general are not. 

We are hiring people to manage trillions of dollars while we have no clue what the world looks like from the point of view of a Billionaire, or what skills it takes to manage trillions. 

The voters are looking at the wealthy from the outside and seeing aloof or stuck-up people.  Is that true insight or just a perspective? 

If you are interested in writing a Science Fiction Romance with a theme centered on Dynasty, you could find some interesting material studying the family backgrounds of dynasties where transmission worked, and where it failed. 

But before you dive into that research, think about what you know about our world, today. 

What does it take to learn Wealth Management?  What does it take to learn the difference between money and capital?

http://amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Robert-Kiyosaki-ebook/dp/B004XZR63M/

RICH DAD - POOR DAD is a key work by Robert Kiyosaki that's been around for years, yet still holds a truth that is the core of depicting the ultra-wealthy, or the scion of the uber-wealthy. 

We learn our initial attitudes from our parents, most especially our attitudes toward possessions, toward power over others ("Come here this instant or you're grounded for a week!"), and toward money and wealth, ("No you may not have an advance on your allowance.") from our parents.  After that, in college, peers and teachers toss in some adjustments, and eventually with our own paychecks, we see what works and what doesn't.

Most people never figure out why the behaviors that work are effective -- or why they can't control a budget or a diet. 

Self-control, self-discipline, self-governance can't be transmitted from parent to child with words. 

It's a do-as-I-do situation. 

Parents have to "model" budgeting, saving, investing, and all the fact-gathering and decision-making processes that go into wise behavior in order to transmit these behaviors.

The children of Aristocrats who grew up to manage inherited wealth well (rather than drinking and gambling it away) were trained from pre-verbal years to view privelege as a responsibility. 

The successful ones absorbed by osmosis the assumption that power must never be used for personal gain, particularly not for the "gain" of soothing one's own emotions. 

We are now seeing some new Fantasy Romances, and Science Fiction Romances, that depict the well-raised (well-mothered) scion of a rich, or nobel family who has internalized this attitude.

Here is a must-read novel from RoC by Juliet Marillier titled DREAMER'S POOL.  It contains a magic-using "Wise Woman" (herbal healer), a Prince, an Arranged Marriage fraught with real Romance, and mistaken identity all rolled into a fast reading tale of wealth and privelege properly stewarded.



Why are these novels of historical Aristocracy such successes in today's market where everyone knows Aristocracy was an utter disaster of a governing process, where the bloody French Revolution taught us so much, where women would never let their parents choose their husbands, and where being a Billionaire is prima facie evidence of skullduggery? 

Why do we think Cindarella got a better deal than her step-sisters? 

Why do we dream of being rescued into a life of wine and privelege when in real life we throw rotten tomatoes at the limos of the 1%? 

Perhaps it is because we are convinced that, given wealth enough to wield real Power, we would do it right.  Consider the biographies of winners of the Lottery twenty years later.  Very often, they lose everything within 5 years.  Could that be because they were not raised by wealthy-powerful parents and don't know the difference between money and wealth that we discussed in Depction Part 5? 

The poor -- or merchant/craftsman/artisan middle income folks -- look at Real Wealth from the outside and see it as easy to live that way. 

When such a 1%'ers life is lived by a person who was raised to it by a woman who was raised to raise boys to wield power without bullying, that 1%er's life looks easy -- from the outside. 

In fact, that "looks easy" effect is the definition of "Mastery."  When a master of a craft does it - it looks easy.  It looks as if anyone could do it without schooling or training or practice.

Have you ever watched a master glassblower?  Then tried it yourself? 

Massive wealth is fragile and must be handled delicately -- and it is very dangerous if it shatters.

History, and historical fiction, is littered with tales of the ne'er-do-well playboy, scion of a Titled Family, who fritters away his inherited fortune, goes into monstrous debt, and either finds his Soul Mate or ends badly in a duel.

Great fiction is composed of the juxtaposition of improbables.

SAVE THE CAT! calls that story type the "Fish Out Of Water."  A person who is out of his element, coping with the resultant conflicts.  A Lottery-Winner is a fish out of water if he/she wasn't already a 1%-er raised by 1%-ers. 

A mermaid on land is story material.

A human in space is story material.

An Aristocrat without principles living in the gutter is story material.

A gutter rat with principles living in a Palace is story material. 

A cop who does a great job as a cop is not story material, unless the story is based on the conflict between the Master Cop and Master Criminal -- and that's not a fish-out-of-water story. 

A cop who gets sucked into the vortex of some Bad Cops (maybe drug running or taking mob money to look the other way), is story material, and potential hero or villain.

An Orthodox Jewish Master Detective from Los Angeles who retires to be a small town patrol cop, but busts an international art theft ring and runs afowl of a Federal government plot involving the library collection of the most respected Rabbi of modern times -- THAT is story material.

Faye Kellerman has been writing a post-Romance series (22 books and counting) called the Decker/Lazarus novels.  The 2014 entry is exactly the fish-out-of-water novel I just described.  It's titled Murder 101.



MURDER 101 gets its title from being set in a college town, where the veteran Detective has taken on a protege.

The Dynastic Transmission of his professional skills (which are a power-management skill set, just like being a King or a Billionaire) is evident in the one family-dinner scene set in a restaurant where his kids and children-in-law gather, where an engagement is announced, and the protege who comes from a rich but dysfunctional family sees a functional working-stiff family functioning.

Decker's kids are cops, or work in allied fields using similar skill sets.  They all manage Power well.  The dominant factor in that values transmission success is Rina, Decker's wife, but his daughter by his first marriage is a successful cop, too.  She gets it from Decker, though she was raised by her mother. 

As I noted in my Amazon review of MURDER 101, the portrayal of the young protege is "off" just a bit.  He goes around with Decker, and Decker gets him to look up information online using the boy's iPad.  OK, fine, a small town police department would not issue high end equipment, but the iPad is the boy's own hardware.  The boy keeps asking people they are questioning the logon code for their wi-fi networks -- NOBODY WOULD DO THAT. 

Furthermore, they are in New York, where Verizon has LTE coverage, and no way on earth would a trust-fund-kid like this one ever fail to connect his iPad to Verizon's LTE (or something faster).  It's cheap and much more secure than strange wi-fi networks.  No way would a trust-fund-kid who is RICH fail to upgrade his iPad to wi-fi capable.  That is a FAIL on the author's part in "depicting dynastic wealth" (trust-fund-kids qualify as dynastic wealth portrayals.)

I call the Lazarus/Decker novels post-Romance because the first novel in the series, RITUAL BATH, is the actual romance -- where Decker and Rina Lazarus first meet.  After a while, they get married, have kids, raise kids, have crises, get invaded by the bad-guys who Decker is chasing, defend themselves well, and get through it all to retirement. 

Meanwhile, in other novels, they also deal with Decker's parents (who adopted him) - with a boy they adopt whose father is a mobster handling Power in a different way - and with Rina's very Orthodox family.



In MURDER 101 we see the Power-handling-skill-set being passed on to another kid who is bound for Harvard Law School and inheriting a serious fortune.  We see the step-by-step progress Decker's tutelage makes on this kid who has lost his way -- and we can infer the effect Decker's teaching will have on how the kid manages the extreme power the inheritance will bring.

In Jim Butcher's new Dresden Files novel, SKIN GAME, we see MAGICAL POWER in the hands of a man who lives, financially, hand-to-mouth.

He is a cop, of the magical variety, and regards that as a responsibility for the safety of Chicago, not as power over the peasants of Chicago.  He's had some love affairs -- and is currently getting more and more involved with a mundane cop who now knows all about the covert world of magic under Chicago.

Dresden comes back from exile on an island to find his woman and his protege and some friends have been trying to keep Chicago safe in his absense.  In the process, they have grown braver, gained skills, and amassed much power as well as wisdom in using it.

His style of power-management has rubbed off on them -- or he is friends with them because they share that attitude.

Jack Cambell is writing two series in the same universe.  I like one better than the other, perhaps just because I like the Hero.  Cambell has a whopping love story holding his THE LOST STARS series together, two military leaders trying to turn themselves into politicians co-ruling a star system even though their training conditions them to distrust each other.

In the IMPERFECT SWORD, they are separated and fight two different battles, winning despite the tricks played against them.  They win by applying their new theory of governance acquired from their former enemy, BLACK JACK.

Most of these novels, in both series, are nothing but large battles told from the POV of the General in charge, or the ship's captain dealing with enemy ships.

But the story and motivations of the characters is all about Relationship.

Taking a purely Relationship driven story, fraught with political philosophy, to an audience that hates romance and won't read non-fiction, and succeeding so very well at it, makes Jack Campbell a phenomenon to behold.



I've just given you 4 very recent novels, all aimed at very different readerships, all sharing a single attribute -- transmission of power-handling-skills.

Each of these novels depicts dynastic wealth of some sort.

Remember, wealth isn't money.  Money symbolically represents wealth, but wealth is not money. 

Wealth is something else.

Many people say that if you have a loving, functional family, you are wealthy even if living hand-to-mouth.  If you have your children around you, you are wealthy -- even if squatting on a dirt floor nibbling raw moldy potatoes.

Others say the only wealth they can't take away from you is your education.

In the Middle Ages, wealth was the ability to apprentice your boys to a Master Craftsman. 

In the Dresden Files, Dresden had built a magical laboratory, spending countless hours tediously creating magical tools from scratch.  By SKIN GAME, all that wealth had been ripped away from him, and he's left with only one tool he's just built plus his training and talent.

Wealth is fragile, but the responsibilities that go with such wealth are enduring.  Long after the wealth has shattered, the responsibilities will hound you. 

Wealth is the potential energy inherent in your very existence which you have packed into the forms of material objects.  If the wealth shatters, the material objects disappear, or wander into someone else's hands.  The objects themselves are not wealth. 

The energy of your life is your wealth.

So Wealth Management is self-discipline.  Wealth management is your ability to  make friends with yourself and persuade yourself to behave well.

So what is Dynastic Wealth?

Is there such a thing as inherited wealth that you have not earned?

If you assume that the concept "Soul Mate" has a valid corrolary in our everyday reality, then you have to consider that the children of Soul Mates somehow actually 'belong' to that couple.

If Souls are Mated, then the personal potential energy that each brings to the One they are when joined manifests as their wealth.

Children are one concrete manifestation of potential energy actualized. 

Children contain some of the potential energy contained in each parent Soul.

If the wealth generated by two mated Souls is inherited by the Child of those Souls, that inherited wealth is, sum and substance, an integral part of the two Parent Souls and the Child Soul. 

You can earn money, but you can't earn Wealth.  Wealth is the substance of your Soul made manifest -- you don't "earn" it; you "are" it. 

Your Wealth (in this science fictional theory) is part of you, just as your body is.

A strong man (or woman) can exert a considerable Power -- with muscles, or clever engineering -- creating a physical blow that can change things.  Hammering a nail.  Blowing up a dam.

What prevents a strong man (or woman) from hammering everything around them to smitherines?

Self-control governs -- the stronger you are, the stronger your self-control must be. 

Laws can't control you.  Taxes (Kings stealing your wealth) can't control you.  Kings can't control you.  "You" are both body and Soul, welded into a unit. 

Historically, we are still here, but Kings are pretty much gone. 

The Kings that are still here rule a constitutional monarchy.  The despots and strong-men are on their way out. (they keep popping up, but my bet is on democracy).

Dynastic Wealth is wealth accumulated over time, over generations.  The demonstrable fact that a second, maybe a third and fourth, generation has hung onto the inherited wealth, and added to it, shows that the wealth is truly theirs - truly a part of their Soul as their Soul is part of their Parents' Souls.

The Mate chosen to marry into a massive fortune (as the Princess-to-be in DREAMER'S POOL), both acquires that fortune and contributes to it, then produces an heir.

The heir is part of the Two Souls Joined, thus part of that fortune, not separate from it. 

That statement is almost a THEME.  To make it into a theme, you need to take it apart and inject the CONFLICT. 

For example, "Only Legitimate Heirs Can Manage Dynastic Wealth And Pass It On."

That would be a theme.  The conflict is in the question so urgently begged by the thematic statement: "So what constitutes Legitimate?"  And is loss of wealth under your management proof you aren't Legitimate? 

Does the husband have to be the father of the child for the child to be Legitimate? 

Is an adopted child a Legitimate heir?

What if something was wrong with the magical component of the Marriage Ceremony?   Would the children be Legitimate?

What if the Parents aren't of the same species? (Think SPOCK!)

What sorts of Tax Laws on inherited or Dynastic Wealth would species on other planets make?  What if they didn't have Souls, but humans did --- or vice-versa? 

THEME: Dynastic Wealth Accumulation is Toxic to Civilization.

CONFLICT: The Legitimate Heir to a throne flees the clutches of those who would place that heir on the throne (and manipulate them?) because the heir believes Dynastic Wealth is bad for Civilization.  Those who want to enthrone the legitimate heir believe the only way to avoid total war is to enthrone a legitimate heir.

ROMANCE: The current occupant of the throne (who is not legitimate) falls head over heels in love with the True Heir, who wants no part of any of this.

This scenario plays out in our real world in varying degrees all the time, especially in the USA.

Today a King doesn't have to be a Billionaire, or a 1%-er.  Today, the owner of a store, a business or a farm, or even possibly just a house, is a King, or at least a Duke, and the heirs have this same tricky problem of somehow managing to hold it all together, add to it, and pass it on.

Since, historically, some of the largest Fortunes (Rockefeller, Railroad Barons, Shipping Magnates,) from the 1800's industrialization, have been inherited by people who have apparently abused that Power, the USA has soured on the entire concept of Dynastic Wealth.

We are all "self-made" successes (or failures). 

Today's 50-somethings do not expect to inherit a single cent from their parents, and expect they won't be getting social security.  It's a bleak outlook.

Those folks are part of your audience, as are their children. 

In the 1940's, Congress made a series of laws essentially oblitterating the ability of a family to build dynastic wealth.

Tax laws were used to break up budding fortunes before they could become big enough to make politicians dance to the tune of the 1%.  (OK, yeah, it didn't exactly work out that way, but we're writing fiction here.)

Here's from WIKIPEDIA (I said we're writing fiction, so this is a good authority.)

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

---------quote--------------

The term "death tax"

The caption for section 303 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, enacted on August 16, 1954, refers to estate taxes, inheritance taxes, legacy taxes and succession taxes imposed because of the death of an individual as "death taxes." That wording remains in the caption of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.[58] The term "death tax" is also a neologism used by critics to describe the U.S. federal estate tax in a way that conveys a negative connotation.

On July 1, 1862, the U.S. Congress enacted a "duty or tax" with respect to certain "legacies or distributive shares arising from personal property" passing, either by will or intestacy, from deceased persons.[59] The modern U.S. estate tax was enacted on September 8, 1916 under section 201 of the Revenue Act of 1916. Section 201 used the term "estate tax."[60][61] According to Professor Michael Graetz of Columbia Law School and professor emeritus at Yale Law School, opponents of the estate tax began calling it the "death tax" in the 1940s.[62] The term "death tax" more directly refers back to the original use of "death duties" to address the fact that death itself triggers the tax or the transfer of assets on which the tax is assessed.

Many opponents of the estate tax refer to it as the "death tax" in their public discourse partly because a death must occur before any tax on the deceased's assets can be realized and also because the tax rate is determined by the value of the deceased's persons assets rather than the amount each inheritor receives. Neither the number of inheritors nor the size of each inheritor's portion factors into the calculations for rate of the estate tax.

Proponents of the tax say the term "death tax" is imprecise, and that the term has been used since the nineteenth century to refer to all the death duties applied to transfers at death: estate, inheritance, succession and otherwise.[63]

Chye-Ching Huang and Nathaniel Frentz of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assert that the claim that the estate tax is best characterized as a "death tax" is a myth, and that only the richest 0.14% of estates owe the tax.[64]

Political use of "death tax" as a synonym for "estate tax" was encouraged by Jack Faris of the National Federation of Independent Business[65] during the Speakership of Newt Gingrich.

Well-known Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrote that the term "death tax" "kindled voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' do not".[66]

Linguist George Lakoff states that the term "death tax" is a deliberate and carefully calculated neologism used as a propaganda tactic to aid in efforts to repeal estate taxes. The use of "death tax" rather than "estate tax" in the wording of questions in the 2002 National Election Survey increased support for estate tax repeal by only a few percentage points.[67]

--------END QUOTE----------

So now, instead of being run by Aristocrats who have inherited Dynastic Fortunes, the USA is run by self-made million&billionaires.

Many first-term electees who are elected to the Federal House of Representatives or the Senate start out so stretched financially that they camp out in their Federal offices between trips home.  They can't afford an apartment in DC. 

If they are re-elected a few times, eventually they retire with a lot more money than you or I would ever imagine.  Nobody says how this little miracle happens, but one famous Mayor became famous trying to sell Barak Obama's Senate Seat because it was "Gold."  What do they know that we don't know?

Most of these self-made 1%-ers were raised by the Poor Dad described by Richard Kiyosaki in Rich Dad: Poor Dad.

The rags-to-riches stories of these people make great reading, very inspiring.

Many, however, did not rise from rags but from comfortable middle income families where they got a fairly good start.  The Founders of Microsoft and Facebook were college students at the time they quit school because their little fledgling enterprise was taking off into a full time job.

-------

Now pull back and take the long view of our Civlization -- not just the USA, but all of Humanity worldwide.

Take a view with a deep perspective showing Civlization all the way back to 7,000 BCE and the advent of Agriculture.

It seems Civilization has always been run by Dynastic Fortunes. 

If we run into Aliens in Outer Space who function on Dynastic Wealth, we should have no trouble understanding them. 

And we've always had "The Poor" -- usually if you were born poor, you were poor all your life and died really young.  Only recently has that changed, and it has not changed everywhere on Earth. 

We've always had Poverty as a fate.  Now we have poverty as a period in a person's life when they barely have clothes and food (think modern College Students).

It's healthy for the human spirit to learn just how little material wealth we actually need.  Some Eastern Religions (and Christianity, too) advocate shucking material "stuff" and venturing out into the world to live on luck and faith.  It works.  It changes people, and they think they're better off for it later.

But people who have never been "poor" (not knowing where your next meal is coming from) -- people raised in comfort if not luxury, taught by parents who imposed strick discipline because the child would become an heir to dynastic wealth, raised by people who had Kiyosaki's RICH DAD perspective and transmitted it, make decisions using a different process.

If you are so rich you don't know that you are rich, you don't look at the world from the perspective of fear or of poverty (except the mob may storm the palace.)

You don't "spend money" -- you achieve goals with your wealth.

True, the goals you choose may not serve the best interests of the poor.

But I'm talking here about a perspective - the attitude of a Character that would color their relationship with a potential Mate.

Civilization has always been run by Kings -- so much so, that when Israel was just starting to become a Nation, they asked God for a King like other countries had.  The Prophet they asked didn't understand why they needed a King when they had God.  A people where all the individuals behave according to the Commandments doesn't need much government -- people behave well and don't hurt each other or steal, and those who have take care of the poor.  If there's a problem, there are Judges in the Gates.  What do you need a King for?  Well -- everyone else has a King, and they won't talk to us farmers and ranchers; they want to talk to our King.

So Kings were the way of the World long before the Book of Kings.

A King who doesn't gain the throne by force of arms gains it by inheritance.

Thrones are all about Dynastic Wealth.

Dynastic Wealth has always run things -- for thousands of years -- and we're still here, wealthier for it.

In the 1940's, after WWII, in the USA, the Inheritance Tax was systematically rewritten specifically, (as a matter of the theory of governance by what we now call The Progressives) to prevent Dynastic Wealth from accumulating. 

So as I said above, we are now governed by New Money.

In this blog about the 1% I pointed out a quote from ROYAL PAINS on "New Money" and referenced the Estate Tax.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-7.html

New Money settles things with Lawyers; Old Money settles things over coctails. 

How much of the ineffectual decision-making we see in our current government is due to the decision-making processes inherent in the mind of a person of New Money? 

People raised by a Poor Dad (or no Dad) trying to handle the Power of real Wealth (and wealth that isn't their own) will grab at The Law to cure whatever problem they have.  Old Money knows how to apply dynastic power to finesse away problems and keep stability.  (If you hate the status quo, old money is the enemy!  Wow, Conflict!) 

Now go back to the 1960's and Johnson's WAR ON POVERTY initiative, and check out what progress we've made.

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

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/the-war-on-poverty-after-50-years
----------QUOTE------------
Since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history since the American Revolution. Despite this mountain of spending, progress against poverty, at least as measured by the government, has been minimal.
------------END QUOTE----------

You want to write a HOT ROMANCE? 

Remember the STAR TREK episode CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER by Harlan Ellison.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/combined 

Kirk - adventure Hero Extraordinaire and crazy sexy playboy - meets up with his TRUE SOUL MATE who runs a soup kitchen during the Great Depression.

You can write that Romance, and end it with an HEA.

Worldbuild a place where Dynastic Wealth has been destroyed, and some hotshot yoyo idealist wants to get rid of all restrictions on inheritance and rebuild the Aristocracy of Extreme Wealth.

Opposing is the Soul Mate who sees any wealth in the control of a private citizen as purest Evil. 

This would work easily on an alien planet, maybe a shipwrecked human colony  living with some Natives (think about C. J. Cherryh's FOREIGNER universe).

Play that conflict out until their child comes of age with an opinion of his own -- maybe there are siblings?  Maybe one sibling is a clone of the father? 

THEME: we must rebuild the capacity to accumulate Dynastic Wealth
CONFLICT: The Couple accumulates wealth and is attacked by The Mob that greedily wants to steal or destroy it all (think French Revolution).

To make this work, you have to create a scion of a family that inherits Wealth and uses it well to keep people safe and government stable.  Opposing him/her, you need The Poor -- and you need a scion of a dynastic fortune that isn't a wastrel but is bent on gaining personal power.

Many of these novels have been published, many very well written, but there are still variations -- especially in the Science Fiction or Paranormal Romance hybrid genres -- that have to be treated.

Consider the role Romance novel has played in feminism, presenting the kick-ass heroine in a good light, showing young women what it is to be a hero and a woman at the same time. 

In the Western, we have heroic women who can keep a home together without a man to protect them and the children.  In Romance, we have women who rescue themselves and then turn around and rescue their guy. 

By looking at what it means to be a woman from every possible direction, women readers have come out of trying to dress and behave like men, to being charming and feminine in dress and manner, yet assertive and when warranted even aggressive at work, play, and local politics.

Perhaps it's time for the Romance hybrid genres to tackle the issue of what it means to be a Soul Mate, produce children, and bequeath them a Fortune.

I expect to see novels where children are tasked by their semi-wealthy parents to double their inheritance and pass it on, creating in 300 years or so, Dynastic Wealth in order to eradicate poverty as the "War on Poverty" has failed to do by destroying Dynastic Wealth? 

The four novels I've discussed here, Murder 101, Skin Game, and The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword, and Dreamer's Pool, as well as the TV Series ROYAL PAINS, all in different genres aimed at different readerships, tiptoe around the edges of this theme of Dynastic Wealth as the prime weapon in the war against poverty. 

THEME: To command extreme wealth without destructive errors, one must be born and raised to the task.

Or:

THEME: Civilization will disintegrate without Dynastic Fortunes.

Consider, if today we decided the inheritance tax has to go -- so that we can rebuild dynastic wealth -- then what experienced people could train the next generation to wield that power in a constructive way?

Depict your King/Billionaire from the inside as understanding and acting upon the distinction between Money and Wealth, between Cash and Capital.  But when depicting such a King/Billionaire from the outside, those same actions will seem Greedy, callous, and irresponsible to the 99% who can not perceive the distinction.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com