goodqueensansa:

Before the reading, he talked briefly about The Lands of Ice and Fire book being released soon.  All the maps are being blown up to poster size and also there will be new maps included.  He said that blowing the maps up proved problematic because it left a lot of empty space, which he had to fill in with new locations.

The reading itself was an excerpt from The World of Ice and Fire, to be published the year after the map book.  The book is basically a fake history book ‘written’ by an Archmaester.  Certain spoilerly bits, such as Summerhall, will conveniently be smudged or have ink spilled on them.

*note about names*  The spelling of most of the new names here are rough guesses.

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I think I love this guy, no pedo.

So last time we started to talk about Ralph Offenhouse. Or, more accurately, I asked you to google him, conceded that you probably didn’t, and then went on a long ranty metaphor about money. Hopefully this time we’ll be more concise, because today we’ve got one very important concept to cover: The principle of Scarcity and its Obsolescence in the Future. 

Let’s start with Scarcity. You may know it as a way of saying how little of something there is (e.g. the roadside courtesans I usually frequent are scarce in this particular neighborhood).  However, in economics scarcity takes on a different meaning (This happens a lot more than you’d think - just ask any economist. Almost every economic term has a layman’s equivalent that mean something slightly different). In economics, scarcity is a way to separate resources that can and cannot be sold. More accurately, it is a way to separate exhaustible (scarce) and inexhaustible (public) resources. The basic premise of scarcity is that the resources used to create scarce good (a car, for example) cannot be reused again without dismantling the good. In other words, you can’t use a car’s engine in another car without taking it out of the first car. However, a public good (let’s use air, since it’s the most common example) can be recycled over and over again. There are no ways to stop someone from consuming air so that you can sell it back to them profitably. There’s no market for air, or any other public goods. All scarce goods, however, have a market. Even jellybeans. 

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Google Ralph Offenhouse. Go on, take as much time as you need, and then come back.

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                -Abraham Lincoln-Smith IV, Esq.