Tag: political analysis

Vale Economic Development Plan

(For previous parts in the series, see here) 

And so the Seven Kingdoms Economic Development series comes to a close – I’ve been asked repeatedly to extend this by taking a look at Slaver’s Bay or the whole of Westeros or other things, and I might do so if I’m feeling it, but I’ve got some great projects coming up soon that will require my attention so that might be down the road a bit. 

The Vale’s an interesting case to end on – it’s got some good stuff to work with, but it seems like the Vale never quite lived up to its potential in part because of an excess of highborn conservatism has held it back. So let’s see what we can do to fix things…

“It stretched before them to the misty east, a tranquil land of rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by its sheltering peaks. Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its fields, and even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than here.”

One of the first strengths of the Vale that we need to tap into is agricultural productivity. While geography means that the Vale doesn’t produce as much in absolute terms as the Reach, the Vale significantly punches above its weight in terms of per-acre production. 

My recommendations here should now be quite familiar: a Northern-style agricultural revolution to increase the yield from existing farms, linked to a Reach-style sub-treasury, land bank, and marketing and purchasing cooperative. Together, these measures should mean that overall levels of production are up and generating the most possible wealth for the kingdom, while ensuring that our system of storehouses (going to make damned sure that a LOT of our storehouses are going to be located inside the Giant’s Lance – more on which in a bit) help the Vale survives the winters.

One new element (which I had intended to introduce during the Westerlands section but ran out of space, so assume that the Westerlands is also doing this) is terraced farming. This is especially crucial for the more mountainous northern half of the Vale – Strongsong, Heart’s Home, Snakewood, and Coldwater – which don’t have the broad plains of the Vale of Arryn proper, and which we can now add to the net-surplus part of our Kingdom. There’s going to be some social and military implications

“On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountains opened up suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky, and snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. The Vale of Arryn bathed in the morning light.”

The second target for development is mining and manufacturing. Now, given that the Andals’ conquest depended in no small part on iron, I highly doubt that the only thing that can be harvested from the Mountains of the Moon is marble, and I’m not about to take the WOAIF’s map at its face value – especially when the map puts said Mountains in the middle of the Vale as opposed to its western border. So I would guess that there is a good bit of iron in them hills – and given the iconography of the Royces, I’m guessing there’s a good bit of tin and copper for bronze. 

Likewise, the Snakewood Forest, the many mountain streams, and the suitability of the terrain for sheep-herding, means that there’s opportunities for timber/lumber/woodworking, and wool cloth production as well. Now, the Vale is not going to out-compete the Stormlands, North, Reach, Westerlands, or the Iron Islands in any of these fields, but the idea is to diversify the Vale’s economy away from just exporting staple crops towards more value-added products, while boosting its exports to imports ratio. Also, while the Vale can’t match any of these other regions for volume of exports (and thus prices), its proximity to the Braavosi market (and thus lower transportation costs) will give it enough of an edge that it won’t get boxed out. 

“Nor did the Kings of the Mountain and Vale neglect their fleets. In Gulltown they possessed a fine and formidable natural harbor, and under the Arryns it grew into one of the foremost cities of the Seven Kingdoms. Though the Vale itself is famously fertile, it is small compared to the domains of other kings (and even some great lords), and the Mountains of the Moon are bleak, stony, and inhospitable. Trade is therefore of paramount importance to the rulers of the Vale, and the wiser of the Arryn kings always took care to protect it by building warships of their own.”

One of the great underutilized resources of the Vale is Gulltown, which given that it’s one of the oldest cities in Westeros, it’s incredibly close to Braavos and the other Free Cities, should not be as small as White Harbor. The fact that it isn’t suggests the prevailing noble prejudice against merchants and commerce in the Vale has held back the development of its only city.

Hopefully, by locating the headquarters of the Vale Sub-Treasury (as opposed to its actual storehouses), the Land Bank, and the marketing and purchasing cooperatives for agricultural, iron, timber, and wool-production in Gulltown, we can begin growing the city – building a larger merchant class, deepening capital markets, and expanding warehousing and long-shoring employment. 

Moreover, with the capital from the Land Bank and the cooperatives, we can begin to develop the Vale’s commerce by copying Braavos’ Arsenal and build a fleet of vessels that can do double service as a merchant marine and a larger Gulltown navy. The objective here should be to expand the rather modest Gulltown fleet to around 100 full-size ships, giving us some naval punch. 

Moreover, given House Arryn’s position as Warden of the East, we have more of a legal pretext to engage in pirate-hunting and seizing the Stepstones than the Greyjoys or Martells or Baratheons. Incidentally, we’re also going to want a naval outpost on the Sisters to keep that unruly place under our thumb, and promote trade with White Harbor while giving us more of a presence in the Bite should it ever come to war. 

Four-and-sixty knights had been invited to vie for places amongst Lord Robert Arryn’s  new Brotherhood of Winged Knights, and four­ and-sixty knights had come to tilt for the right to wear falcon’s wings upon their warhelms and guard their lord…

the eight victors would be expected to spend the next three years at Lord Robert’s side, as his own personal guard.

With the wealth of the land and the sea flooding into our coffers, it’s time to begin institution-building. The first thing we need to do is better knit together a Kingdom very much divided by mountain passes through a program of road-building – the High Road needs to be extended from the Eyrie in two directions, the first heading northeast to Ironoaks-Old Anchor-Longbow Hall, and the second southeast to Redfort-Gullotwn-Runestone. Next, we need to build another mountain road to connect Heart’ s Home, Strongsong, Snakewood, and Coldwater to the Vale proper, which would probably want to cross over the mountains at around Ironoaks or Longbow Hall, depending on which area has the easier pass. 

These roads will greatly improve transportation, and thus commerce and communications between the southern and northern halves of the Kingdom. However, as with the terraced farming and the expansion of industry, this is going to bring us into conflict with the mountain clans, who are a major barrier to the development of the Vale. Which unfortunately gets us into the area of economic development that hearkens back to ideas of primitive accumulation through expropriation. 

Thus – expanding on the idea of the Winged Knights from Alayne in TWOW, we would want to create an order of Knighthood much larger than just 8 men. Rather, I would look to a force of at least 700 knights (the top 7 of whom would be the bodyguard of the Lord of the Eyrie) whose task would be to hunt down the mountain clans and drive them out of the Vale, and thereafter to patrol the roads and maintain the peace in the Vale. Moreover, because I’ve been reading a lot about Byzantine cataphracts and how they combined the skills of the armored lancer and the compound recurve horse archer, I like the idea of using the Winged Knights as a military academy to train the knights of the Vale into an all-mounted army to be feared. 

Finally, the Eyrie – depending on whether the Eyrie actually does have secret paths down the mountain that would require a besieging army to spread itself across the base of the mountain, I’d put some money into building them so that it is much more difficult to stave out the Eyrie (then again, with much of the Vale’s agricultural produce being stored in the sub-treasury storehouses dug into the interior of the God’s Lance, it’s going to be very difficult to do so). Regardless, you’d definitely want to start building into the mountain, such that you can house and supply more men in Stone, Snow, and Sky (the latter two of which could use some improvements), move men between castles unseen, and if besieged, move men behind the besieging force to cut it off from its own supplies. 

Westerlands Economic Development Plan

(For previous parts in the series, see here)

So this development plan is slightly unusual, in that it’s covering a part of Westeros that I’ve actually written about the economics of in some detail – see here, here, here, here, and here– and the Westerlands is actually unlike most of the regions we’ve covered on this series. It’s actually more economically-developed than its peers (going by percent of the population not employed in food production), and has a huge amount of liquid capital it could dump into economic development.

So, if I’m the head of House Lannister, how do I play such a strong opening hand?

Finance and the Golden Bank

The first and most obvious step is to create a Golden Bank of Casterly Rock (much better security in the Rock than in Lannisport). My initial calculations suggest that the Lannisters might well have 2 billion gold in their vaults, given their yearly income and how many years they’d been piling up wealth. Even the lowest estimates say they’ve got a couple million. Through the magic of fractional reserve lending, this reserves could easily support a level of lending forty times the size of the Westerosi economy.

While the creation of this bank is basically at the root of everything else we’re going to do, it’s not a simple “I Win” button. The danger of dumping 18 billion gold into the Westerosi economy is that you’d generate a wave of hyper-inflation so bad that you’d make the Spanish Price Revolution look like a mere stock market hiccup. While in the long run providing the liquidity necessary for Westeros-and indeed even Planetos-wide economic development, the short-term implications would be the destruction of the Westerlands economy, as skyrocketing inflation would destroy the value of our reserves, cause our goods to be non-competitive, and cause the price of food to soar faster than wages, leading to massive socio-economic conflict.

So the key here is to carefully manage the Golden Bank’s lending: invest as much as possible in raising productivity (since you’re going to need the economy to grow at a good clip to ensure that supply doesn’t fall behind the added demand from your investments), and never invest more the economy will bear.  

In order to ensure this latter goal is adhered to, one of the things the Golden Bank will have to be careful about is, once the goldsmiths of Lannisport realize how much money they can make from banking, is preventing financial bubbles and panics. Luckily, given the strong position of House Lannister vis-a-vis its subjects and the similarly strong position of the Golden Bank vis-a-vis, it would be pretty easy to establish strong regulations – reserve requirements, lending restrictions, oversight and regular auditing, etc. – to make sure that non-Lannister banks might spark a price revolution.

Industrial Policy

So now that I have all the liquid capital I need, it’s time to put it to work – and the first target for investment is the Westerland’s already relatively-advanced industrial base.

As I’ve mentioned before, the presence of silver and gold mean that there’s quite likely also a good bit of iron and copper in the hills and mountains of the Westerlands. And while gold and silver might be more prized metals than iron and copper, there’s a much bigger market (and more room for growth) in the production of domestic goods made of iron, copper, bronze, brass, and pewter. So one of our first targets for industrial expansion is the more intensive and larger-scale mining, smelting, and manufacturing of these metals.

Another step in making the Westerlands dominant in metalworking is large-scale industrial espionage. Given that I have all the gold in the world for bribes, it’s time to raid Qohor for their steelsmithing, Myr for its artificers, and Braavos for its standardized parts/assembly line technology. Once I’ve got that skill inside my borders, it’s time to make sure that skill is spread to my existing workforce and across the generations – first, by either creating and/or renewing/expanding guild charters, especially in regards to training and licensing smiths and artificers to ensure quality and the transmission of knowledge; second, by providing Lannister patronage for Institutes of Technology, the equivalent of the historical Royal Society, etc.

Third, at some point, I want to invest in the ability to get my goods to market faster (and thus cheaper), given the inconvenient fact that Lannisport is stuck on the wrong side of the continent. This requires substantially more investment than in the case of the Riverlands or the Reach, because you’re building canals with much more verticality (which requires lots of locks) and you’re building in the mountains. However, a canal that links Hornvale to the Red Fork (and to a lesser extent the Silverhill river to the Gold Road, given that Lannisport-to-Mander/Lannisport-to-Oldtown is a pretty short trip already) would cut the time from the Westerlands to King’s Landing from over three months to five days.

Trade and Investment

Now that the flow of Westerlands merchandise is faster than ever, it’s time to get the best deal possible for our goods. To do this, I plan to use the leverage of the Golden Bank’s financing to promote the creation of industry-wide marketing and purchasing cooperatives – with the idea being that you’d get better deals the closer you can get to a monopsony and monopoly position.

At the same time, one of the things that House Lannister and the Golden Bank can do is engage in the stockpiling of raw materials, foodstuffs and finished goods (a la Sweden) – in the industrial equivalent of the Reach’s sub-treasury system. When prices for Westerlands metalworks decline to the point where they threaten the profitability of Lannisport’s factories and workshops, have the Lannisters buy up the surplus to maintain incomes, and act as a floor on prices; when prices rise to the point where they threaten exportability, sell off the stockpile at a profit. Do the reverse for raw materials like ore and fuel, and of course food, to keep the Westerland’s trade balance firmly in the black. And it just so happens that the Westerlands have tons of empty mines which can be easily converted into storage for these goods.

All of this is designed to not only enhance the economic development of the Westerlands but also the central position of House Lannister. As the central source and regulator of credit, the organizer and financier of the cooperatives and stockpiles, House Lannister becomes the guarantor of prosperity for the Westerlands economy upon which the fortunes of every artisan and merchant (and ultimately the lords who live off their taxes) depend. Let any lesser House dare to challenge House Lannister and the resulting credit crunch will drive them to their knees even as their subjects riot in the streets (naturally, House Lannister offers generous financing for loyal subjects).

At the same time, the history of finance tells us that, at any given time, there’s a limited amount of good investments in any one place, and if too much money chases too few investments, you get dangerous speculative bubbles. So the next phase of Westerlands economic development is investment in the other regions – but on Lannister terms. A Mander-to-Blackwater canal would be good for both the Westerlands and the Reach – so let’s make sure that it’s financed with Lannister gold in return for a good number of shares and Lannisters on the board, and some trade concessions on Reach grain. An extension of the River Road to Maidenpool is good for House Mooton – but only as long as House Mooton understands that what’s good for House Lannister is good for House Mooton.

Rather than seeking domination through monopolization of political power, here House Lannister extends its influence throughout the continent by ensuring that House Lannister’s support is so crucial that no one would want to do without. And of course, now this means that prosperity in the rest of Westeros now means prosperity for the Westerlands. And it means jobs for lesser Lannisters, Lannys, Lannetts, and Lantells, who can keep their eyes open in the rest of the country.

Institution-Building

Now that we’re rich even richer, it’s time to show off how magnificent we are.

A mere 20-30 ships in the Lannisport navy when the mere Redwynes have 200 ships? The Lannisport Fleet should be at least 300 strong, enough to destroy the Ironborn for good if they ever attack again (incidentally, the Iron Islands could be a great target for expansion – lots of good metals in them islands).

Does Oldtown have the Citadel and the Starry Sept? Time to build a Golden Sept even bigger and more magnificent, and hire as many ambitious young maesters and halfmaesters as necessary to establish a University of Lannisport! And so on until Lannisport is the largest city in Westeros.

And while we’re at it, the Westerlands should have more cities than the rest of Westeros! Kayce, Hornvale, Sarsfield, the industrial centers near Pendric Hills, Nunn’s Deep, and Castamere, etc.

(the next entry in this series will be the North)

Reach Economic Development Plan

(I know I said Dorne was next, but you go in the direction the muse points)

The nice thing about doing development policy for the Reach is that you’ve got a lot to work with – the Reach is highly productive, densely-populated, and quite wealthy. However, despite these natural advantages, there are some glaring examples of missed opportunities. 

Step 1: Harnessing the Land

The great strength of the Reach is in its incredibly fertile soil, so we begin by playing to our strength, focusing our efforts on making sure that the farmers of the Reach are at their most prosperous, so that House Tyrell can be as well. 

This begins with constructing a Mander-to-Blackwater Canal. It’s something I’ve talked about before(link), but the advantages are so clear that it’s kind of mind-boggling that it hasn’t been built yet. King’s Landing needs huge supplies of grain, the Reach is the major source of grain in Westeros; Oldtown is tied for the largest commercial entrepot in Westeros, and yet the journey from Oldtown to Essos (or vice versa) is easily twice as long as the journey from Plankytown or Gulltown or White Harbor or King’s Landing. 

A canal linking the two rivers would expand the Reach’s, well, reach enormously, by reducing the time-to-market from around 21 days from the Reach to King’s Landing to 8 days. 

  • To begin with, this would allow the Reach to dominate the agricultural market on both coasts of Westeros and the Free Cities, shipping not only more perishable goods like wine but produce and grain (products where a few day’s difference can mean the spoilage of huge amounts of goods). 
  • Moreover, it makes the Mander the natural commercial highway of Westeros – leaving aside the fact that no foreign merchant in the world is going to take the longer and dangerous route across the Sea of Dorne to trade with the west coast, the speed advantage of ships vs. carts means that internal trade will gravitate towards the Canal, because why take five and a half months overland from Gulltown to Lannisport when you can take the Canal and get your goods there in 13 days? 
  • Finally, it massively increases the Tyrells’ power at court. With the capitol’s trade passing through my canal, with Tyrell grain able to undercut any competitors from the Reach or the Riverlands, and with travel to and from the Reach decreased in time, it’s much easier to project both soft and hard power w/r/t the King and Small Council. 

Equally importantly, once the Canal is built, it becomes an enormous moneymaker for the Reach. Taking the port of London for a historical example, in 1613 the port of London brought in 109,000 pounds in customs duties (this was well before the explosion of commerce that would see the port bringing in 1.26 million a year in 1710 and so on and so forth) – that works out to 87,200 dragons annually in revenue. That’s a staggering amount of money on top of what House Tyrell already earns from its lands and feudal taxes, which means it can be put to use instantly. 

That money would help to capitalize a Land Bank of Highgarden. This would essentially be a kingdom-level central bank, which with 87,000 dragons annually as its reserve (to say nothing of House Tyrell’s normal tax and land revenues, or deeds to House Tyrell’s lands and real estate) would produce 872,000 dragons in deposits and 741,000 in loans – and that sum is going to increase dramatically as the reserve keeps growing thanks to our canal. So this land bank has all of the sudden made House Tyrell the equal of House Lannister in income…unless the Lannisters start their own bank (more on that when I get to the Westerlands). 

Here I’m going to borrow from the Populists, and link the Land Bank to a sub-treasury system. The basic idea is that farmers would have the right to sell their crops to a public warehouse at a guaranteed minimum rate in exchange for an official letter of credit, which they could then redeem for their crops again if prices rose. It works on several levels: 

  • first, it increases and stabilizes farmer’s incomes and their access to credit, while massively expanding the Land Bank’s reserves by a huge factor (forget the Lannisters, I’m now the richest House in Westeros by far); the classic Tyrell style of doing well by doing good. 
  • Second, it allows for the stabilization of agricultural prices. If food prices falling is going to damage the incomes of peasants and lords alike (including that of House Tyrell), the sub-treasury’s minimum ensures that a bumper crop benefits farmer and consumer both. If a sudden spike in food prices would lead to famine, House Tyrell is here to save the day (our pleasure really, sure you’ll return the favor some day) and making itself the indispensable force across a continent’s economy.  
  • third, it massively increases House Tyrell’s influence within and without the Reach. Within the Reach, the sub-treasury’s bargain is too good to turn down – which now means that the whole of the smallfolk now have a direct connection and dependence on House Tyrell, as will many lords who’ll be all to happy to turn their excess crops into cash in hand. Except now House Tyrell has the power to seize your crops and capital, rouse your smallfolk and vassals into rebellion, if you cross me. Outside the Reach, our influence over the price of food is now so strong that we would make Petyr Baelish’s proposed manipulations in the Vale look like child’s play.  
  • fourth, it provides for an explosion of credit to invest in increasing productivity. Want to build a barn or pens for livestock or a silo or a mill, buy more livestock or a new plow, or some new seeds for a more diverse crop or more fertilizer for a better yield, or maybe drain some marshy land or clear a wood for more farmland? The Land Bank of Highgarden is happy to extend a loan on easy terms. As prospers the land, so prospers the fisher king.  

Step 2: Industry and Infrastructure

So now I’m hugely rich and have money to invest, it’s time to diversify the Reach’s economic base. To begin with, textiles – with my immense and more productive farmland, the less fertile land can be turned over to large-scale flax production for linen. The foothills of the Red Mountains are perfect for herding sheep for wool. Combine that with all of the lovely rivers and setting up watermill-powered factories for the production of linen, thread, and woolen cloth. Once you’ve got that up and running, time to do some industrial espionage – see if you can copy (or bribe craftsmen who know how to make them into immigrating to the Reach) Dornish silks and satins, Lorathi velvet, tapestries from Qohor and Myr, fine woolens and lace and carpets from Myr. They don’t need to beat them for quality as long as I can bring to market more cheaply than the competitor thanks to the Canal.

Next, there’s probably good minerals in the Red Mountains – so let’s get some mines running, poach some craftsmen from Qohor or the Westerlands to build up metalworking. Not that I’ll necessary need an arms industry right now (in the mean time, they can make pots and pans), but I don’t want to be dependent on imports from the Westerlands if I might need to go to war with them. 

Third, infrastructure. The Canal is good, but the Hightowers would pay nicely for an extension linking the Mander to the Honeywine to diminish the threat that the Canal would shift trade away from Oldtown. Moreover, as a matter of security, boom chains on the Mander and the Honeywine would provide protection against Ironborn raiders and improved control over canal traffic. 

The Reach has a fair few roads, but it could stand to use more. In the north, a ringroad that connects Old Oak, Goldengrove, and Tumbleton would allow for swifter reinforcements on my northern border, and enhance overland travel and trade; in the south, a ringroad connecting Sunflower Hall, Uplands, Horn Hill, Ashford, and Grassy Vale (as well as Oldtown and Highgarden) would do the same for my southern border. Finally, bridges – while I want to keep the Canal clear (with one exception), for better movement I want a stone bridge over the Silverhill river by Goldengrove, over the Blue Byrne by Grassy Vale, and over the Cockleswent by Ashford. 

Step 3: Institution-Building

With all of this increasing wealth and productivity and increasing industry, I’ll need some cities to put people in. To a certain extent, I’ll need to play this by ear – don’t know where concentrations of agriculture, commerce, and industry will warrant cities, precisely – but I do have two cities particularly in mind.

First, a port-city at the mouth of the Mander (Canalmouth? Mandertown? New Oak?). In addition to quite a lot of harbor facilities to service the Canal trade, this port city will be designed around a shipyard, as well as a sizable garrison to protect the boom chain (I will make very sure that the port and shipyard are behind and not in front of the chain). In addition to providing repairs and refits for passing ships, the purpose of this shipyard is to build a proper navy for the Shield Isles (as well as a decent riverrine navy with plenty of transports). A few dozen longships is not sufficient for my major northern naval defenses, so I want to build up a decent-sized fleet of at least 20 if not 50 ships of the line – House Redwyne may need to be mollified by creating a reserved Redwyne post somewhere in the chain of command – Admiral of the Northern Navy? Lord/Castellan of the city? Master of the Shipyard? Depends what they’re willing to give me for the privilege. 

Second, a city across the river from Highgarden – to be known as Newgarden – with a swinging bridge across the Mander, with its . The first purpose of this city and this bridge is to act as the central customs point for the Canal (although subsidiary points will be needed at Canalmouth and at Tumbleton), and I’ll probably need to build an artificial harbor to host the canal trade as they pay their due. The second purpose is to give a location for the Great Council of the Reach – which I want for the same reasons that the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands does, but even more so because it’s the chivalry and pageantry-obsessed Reach, and a Versailles strategy will be super-effective. Throw some epic Grand Balls, hunts, jousts at Highgarden proper – but only if you’re important enough to get an invite across the bridge – to keep everyone currying for favor, but to keep everyone busy, stuff Newgarden full of gambling dens, race tracks, Braavosi theater troupes, all the singers you can shake a mandolin at, go wild with it. While I’m at it, recreating the Order of the Green Hand a la the Winged Knights is a great idea – but why not shoot for 700?

Next, time to invest my money in human capital. First things first, time to start sponsoring students at the Citadel – but my object here is to produce large numbers of half-maesters who I can use as administrators, experts, and above all, teachers. The Citadel might get stroppy, but as long as all of them have to get their accreditation at the Citadel and we agree that a maester’s chain is necessary for the top management jobs. Second, establish a network of free schools – probably can’t manage one per village, but one per town/major castle should work – with a competitive examination system to get into the Civil Academy at Newgarden I’ll establish to train and recruit the vast army of bureaucrats to run my new institutions. 

At the same time, can’t neglect the practical subjects – I’ll want a Naval Academy at the Arbor (go where the ships are) to train up professional naval officers, a Military Academy at Old Oak (close to the Shield Isles and the northern borders) to do the same for the land forces, and an Engineering Academy somewhere close to the new industries by the southern border.