The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics

Logorrhea is a remarkably good short story anthology, besides The Cambist and Lord Iron, Crossing the Seven is of literary and conceptual interest:

"Our laws here are simple and just. You will only swear to do no harm while you stay within Sucusa, and you are free here as long as you wish."

That sounded simple enough. But I had seen too much already. "What do you define as harm, that I should avoid, Majesty?"

The queen laughed. "Well spoken, messenger. The obvious sorts of things."

"I will swear willingly not to lift my hand against anyone in your city. But beyond that... if I were to tell the children of your city the strange truths about Fagutal and Oppius, would that be harm? What if I described the hard choice I made when the scholar fell down the mountain? Is that harm? Is it harm to seek the bed of a woman, or a man here? At what age or time of life may they give consent, and is that consent sufficient in the eyes of your law?"

Oh, bravo! True rationalist fiction, and that is very rare.

It occurs to me that this could be made into a good film at a relatively low budget. You would basically need seven good actors (Olaf the cambist, Lord Iron, Lord Eichan, the three judges, and Mrs. Wells), a couple dozen extras, and the crew - the only special effects would be makeup and (probably) the title sequence.

Finally got around to reading it. Very good find. :)

There're some subtle bits that're missed, like the games that can be played with arbitrage when there isn't a collectively agreed upon valuation, but overall, very nice.

(I am confused about what the second gunshot was, however.)

I've actually seen that before, but I don't know where. And it is indeed a good story.

This is a great story, thanks for linking it. The PodCastle reading of this story is also quite good.

Though I initially really liked the resolution to the second story, thinking about it further has made me realize that it's incoherent.

The cambist's answer in the second tale appears to be that life is valued by society's willingness to allow each one to trade life for pleasure, and that because the king is given a greater degree of freedom to trade, it follows that society values his life-time less. (Though even in this view I can't see how one would actually come up with a numerical result.) One flaw in this argument is that society holds freedom as having a value independent from life or pleasure. Another shows up if you imagine the counterfactual case of the king being a health freak: if he used his freedom to eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, while the prisoners only got dry bread, he would likely live longer than them -- but the way the cambist defines it, that wouldn't change the respective value of their days of life. Nailing the coffin is the fact that only a prisoner would make such a trade.

I think the question as asked is insolvable, because it doesn't specify perspective. If you asked the king how many days of a prisoner's life he'd trade for one of his own, and a prisoner how many days of his life he'd trade for one of the king's, you'd get different answers, and they'd both be correct; the utility functions simply differ.

Great story, though.

[As a side note, I wonder if there are some characteristics common to arguments that are wrong but in which it's difficult to locate the wrongness. Even though I know that the answer the cambist gave is wrong, and I can provide a counterexample that proves it, I still don't know exactly where it's wrong.]

I agree this is an awesome story.

Just read it today. Thanks!

Very nice story but the ending is incomplete.

What became of Lord Iron?

It seems that he's claiming the life of someone in prison must be more valuable because they when there's a choice between something that makes them live longer and something that makes them happy, their given what makes them live longer.

They're in prison as punishment. Their happiness has negative value. If he's assuming the value of their happiness and the value of the King's happiness are the same, he'll get a very wrong answer.

Also, I thought the answer to the last question was very obvious. Granted, he took a fraction of the time alloted, but it still seems like they acted like that one was supposed to be by far the most difficult.

The ending in particular was very well done. I can't easily think of a better way it could have been resolved.

Thanks for linking this. I'd like to read more fiction like it.