Port Tariffs and Duskendale

[The Sleeper]

In the world book, there is an account of Tywin's tenure as Hand. Apparently he built roads, held tourneys and lowered port tariffs. The last item is the only item that receives any attention, and it comes up three times.

We are told that Tywin lowered port tariffs for Lannisport, Oldtown and King's Landing. But not for White Harbor, Gulltown, Lordsport or Plankytown. And not Duskendale. Another quarrel between Tywin and Aerys appears to have occured when Aerys doubled said tariffs for the aformentioned ports and tripled them for the rest of the realm. When merchants complained about it he restored them to their previous levels and blamed Tywin for it. I have to say that this sounds kind of iffy.

And then apparently one of the reasons for the Defiance was that Lord Darklyn wanted to be able to lower his tariffs and be able to compete with King' Landing.

What's up with that? What I can think off is that Tywin tried to concentrate trade to the major ports of Westeros. And by the way why did Tywin and Aerys stuck together for so many years when they hated eachother?

[GyantSpyder]

I find this all very interesting, although of course we don't know what was happening. There are a couple of ways to look at it.

One way to look at it, which is pretty simple, is Tywin is doing some pork-barrel politics - cutting his own taxes and the taxes of people allied to him, and by extension making everybody else pay more of the share of the crown budget.

Tariffs and customs at ports also seem to be one of the crown's chief sources of income, since the feudal society in general is cash-poor even more than they are actually-poor, and they tend to pay taxes in kind - in grain, mostly - to their local lords. There's only so much the crown can do with grain. It prefers cash money. And merchants are a big way to get that.

So, a simple explanation is that Tywin is shifting the burden of the royal budget away from his coalition and toward the Arryn coalition and toward Dorne. And that Aeyrs was frustrated because he wanted to have more taxes for himself to do more of his own projects, not tax cuts for the lords, so he raised taxes on everybody, but then blamed it on Tywin, since it was Tywin's tax cuts that deprived him of revenue in the first place.

There are two other angles I'd point out - We know from A Clash of Kings when Tyrion inventories the various public officials that he or Littlefinger have bribed or installed on the wharves that there are a few major goods bought and sold at the port of King's Landing - notably wine, wool, dye, I think, and precious metals.

In the wine industry, there is competition between the Arbor and Dorne. Lowering tariffs at Oldtown and raising them at Plankey Town favors the Arbor wine industry over the Dornish wine industry. So there could be politics going on there. Higher taxes at White Harbor and lower taxes at Lannisport favor Lannisport gold exporting over White Harbor silver exporting. This might potentially have to do with the royal mints and who gets to supply the metals that make currency. Possibly. Higher Tariffs on Gulltown, White Harbor and Duskendale would seem to disadvantage the northern and eastern wool industry. Maybe they are not allies of Tywin? At any rate - the tariffs are arranged in such a way that they have economic impacts that would favor the houses that end up friendly to the Lannisters over the houses that end up unfriendly with them.

The third explanation is that the whole story has a certain "reverse-Twilight Zone" aspect (and it's notable that GRRM co-wrote the new Twilight Zone back in the 80s). In the Twilight Zone, they show you some exotic alien or sci fi or occult thing, and it's a metaphor for something that people do in real life - people scared of aliens are like people scared of communists, for example. At the heart is some social phenomena underneath that we all understand to lend credence to the exotic phenomenon.

In this story, there are a bunch of magical or occult or exotic phenomena that are easy to understand intuitively as bad, but there are a bunch of domestic, familiar phenomenon that are very similar to them, but which are harder to understand intuitively as bad.

A big one is slavery, on all levels. There is actual chattel slavery, and there is feudal serfdom or the system of hereditary interconnected oaths, which seems better, but really isn't much different in terms of freedoms. And then there is magical slavery - like killing people and reanimating their corpses into wights to have them fight in your army. This is very obviously bad, but forcing farm boys to become soldiers when they have little or no say in the matter turns out to not be much better, even though on the surface it is harder to identify as bad.

The one that is relevant to this is the ancient practice by the ancient River Kings of refusing to allow for town charters for places like Saltpans to allow them to grow from a very small size.

I tend to think this enforcement was part of The Pact - that humanity is in a binding arrangement with the weirwoods where they are not allowed to grow past a certain amount. Children past a certain number are abandoned or sacrificed, other humans are sacrificed, where people can live is tightly regulated. To some, it's a treaty, to others, it's slavery. The people who actually had a say in it are long dead. It's not very democratic how it gets decided.

But the idea that this evil presence that has defeated and oppressed humanity (or, alternatively, figured out a way for it to live in harmony when it would otherwise have destroyed itself - albeit without any freedom) wants towns to be small is relatively intuitive and easy to see as bad.

The idea that the crown picks and chooses for some towns to get to enjoy the benefits of commerce and for others to pay double or triple tariffs is not that different from being forbidden from growing by semi-magical means, in terms of it being a method of control. Human institutions are powerful like magic and are capable of accomplishing similar things by different means (this is the basis of the juxtaposition of the Faith of the Seven and the other religions with more supernatural elements).

So, the River King might say to a place like Duskendale - you're not allowed to grow. Or, I have to ride into town and carry off or kill a bunch of people (how else do you keep population in check? Is everybody just chugging abortifacient?). And then that pisses them off. And then they blame it on the weirwoods or the Children of the Forest or some old greenseer.

It's similar to Aerys blaming Tywin, because Tywin is the master of the system. And the question is what degree does Aerys, with authority, but without freedom, have accountability for what happens.

And this all also helps explains how situations of equilibria can become unstable reasonably and how peaces that seem permanent can turn into wars.

Why did Aerys keep Tywin around? Because Tywin was really good at his job and really hard to replace. Aerys couldn't do the job of ruling the country without Tywin. And if Aerys dismissed Tywin he'd go from being an annoying ally to a dangerous enemy (which is what happened). Sometimes making nice with people you don't like or don't get along with is the right move. Also Aerys was screwing Tywin's wife and had that additional reason to keep them both at court.

[GyantSpyder]

To add, the Defiance of Duskendale is really interesting as a "history repeats itself" event. It's a relatively small, contained dispute, not really important to the rest of the country at all. It ends up hurting this one guy - he's the one guy that matters - because somebody steps out of line on a power arrangement agreed upon by distant ancestors.

The extended consequences are catastrophic. Because you pissed off this one guy who was barely holding it all together, now he's insane and burning people and there's a continent-spanning war and thousands and thousands of pepole who have nothing to do with it die.

It's a lot like when Nymeria bit Joffrey, or when the catspaw went after Bran, or even when Bran climbed the tower - little events that only involved a small portion of the interested parties, but far-reaching catastrophic consequences.

And I wonder if the situation with the Others is similar. Like maybe they're coming because Mance Rayder dug up their graves or some other minor thing that little or nothing to do with anything.

[The Sleeper]

The worldbook says that he did it to increase commerce and to foster trade relations with the free cities. Which considering the contempt with which he thought of of the leaders of the free cities, according to Tyrion at least. In any case it revolved around the three greatest ports in the realm. He personally depends less on trade as he has goldmines.

[GyantSpyder]

41 minutes ago, The Sleeper said:

The worldbook says that he did it to increase commerce and to foster trade relations with the free cities. Which considering the contempt with which he thought of of the leaders of the free cities, according to Tyrion at least. In any case it revolved around the three greatest ports in the realm. He personally depends less on trade as he has goldmines.

This doesn't make sense on its own, as two of the three cities he cut tariffs on are on the opposite side of the continent from the Free Cities, and the biggest ports that are closest to the free cities, other than King's Landing, didn't see tariff cuts. There's some detail there that's missing.

[TMIFairy]

Fascinating thread! Keep it up! Much more interesting then "will Jon have the hots for Dany" or such like!

[The Sleeper]

Given the very limited information we have, the best I can come up with is that Tywin wanted to control trade in Westeros and thus confine it to ports under his control. For Tywin wealth was a tool, not an end in itself. After all he has an unlimited supply of it. Lannisport and King's Landing are both under his control. It also means that traders from other regions would have to travel to either of those cities to find certain goods, as the ships who brought them in would not call to their home ports, due to the higher ttariffs. The trade and economy of the other regions would regions.

Another aspect of it, is controlling the currency. The seven kingdoms are pretty backward in economic terms. Much of the trade and taxation is conducted in kind and as they don't have fiat currency, there are only two sources of it, mines and external trade. Presumably he mines and mints the majority of the currency. If he diminished external trade as a source, the result would be that anyone who needed money would need to come to him.

Why was Oldtown was included in the reduced tariffs? Well, it's not Duskendale. If the Hightowers became unhappy they could destabilize the entire kingdom.