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Medieval Economics in Westeros (convention panel video)


The Dragon Demands

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I ran the Game of Thrones programming track at my local con last week and recorded all of it.   This is the panel on Medieval Economics:

I'm rather fond of this one.  I brought in some rare coins I have like a Roman coin from AD 270 to explain the difference between fiat money and commodity money.

A lot of it is me explaining how inflation cycles worked around the Black Death, difference in money values between Dunk and Egg era and War of the Five Kings era. 

Also, I talk about beer. 

Mostly about the books, very briefly for 2 minutes at the end I mention how absurd it is for the TV series to say "the Lannisters are bankrupt because their gold mines ran dry" - because money doesn't work like that   - direct comparison to the Spanish Price Revolution of the 1500's.  What?  Were the Lannisters mining and *minting* new gold coins?  That's absurd.  It leads to rampant hyperinflation.  That's why real-life precious commodities like gold or petroleum set production limits.  If anything, with less gold, it would be more valuable ( I mean, didn't anyway see Goldfinger?)  Ah, but that's just a brief note at the end. 

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