Economics of the Rahi Vasa Company

The Rahi Vasa Company is a mercantile company in origin and at heart. It is an economic powerhouse, with fleets of trade ships, warehouses of inventory, and vast trade halls. While it does not seek to control all cargo shipping that passes near it or the Hui'leia, it does monitor and trade with it.

There are no restrictions or tariffs on trade, so many illegal items, people, and drugs pass through the ports, but the Spies ensure that undesirable items such as outlaws and drugs do not make it further inland. However, the Rahi Vasa Company does not condone slavery as it violates the concept that everyone has something to trade, as trades must be consented to. Ravaco will attack slavers and free slaves whenever they find them.

Because of the other half of the core belief of the Ravaco culture is 'trade with everyone you meet', a custom of the Rahi Vasa Company is that it will force every ship it meets on the open sea or who dock at its ports to trade. If they refuse to trade, then the trade will be in blood, and people and cargo seized. Most people understand this and often take the chance to bring an extra amount of goods, as there is the chance they may get exotic items from the Ravaco for a good price through this custom. However, those who were ignorant or resisted have spread a reputation of the Ravaco as pirates.

Each Ravaco will spend six months of each year at sea, and the rest at land. This tends to produce a society of multidisciplinary people, as well as a large churn such that each person can find the work they enjoy.

Agriculture
The Kana Vasa islands are highly fertile, and produce large amounts of root vegetables like taro and kumara. Sugarcane and Sour Cane are also cultivated, as well as banana and coconut. Along the shores Saltrice is cultivated and harvested with nets, but the lack of taste relegate it to a poor bawa's staple, feed crop and export good. There are very few large animals on the islands, but Pillpig are use to turn over the soil and as a low intensity meat source. The Ravaco have extensive fish farms in the tropical reefs around their islands and use these as a food source. The Ravaco try not to import staple foods as they find it safer and easier to be totally self sufficient in this crucial area.

In addition to food crops, the Ravaco also cultivate large amounts of flax, spice, grapes, and coffee. These are trade goods, as the flax is turned into cloth, and the spice sold at a premium or used in the creation of strong spirits. The grapes are turned into wine, and that is then traded. Coffee was introduced to the islands, but the climate suited, and cultivation is small, but growing.

Coinage
The basic coin of the Rahi Vasa Company is called the Labour. This is a coin that is pentagonal in shape, roughly the size of a mans thumbnail and weighs about 10 grams. The faces are stamped with Ravaco script for 1 on one side, and 9 masks on the other, indicating who backs the currency. Each labour's edges have a serration to them, allowing someone to easily shape the coins into a regular dodecahedron. This prevents counterfeiting or shaving of the coins.

One Labour is set to the worth of one hour of unskilled, heavy labour, while the prices of a basic existence work out to 12 Labours per day. This way, even an unskilled worker can work 12 hours and have enough coin for 2 weight fish, 2 weight bread and a pallet in a flophouse.

Higher denomination coins also exist, of the same shape and edging, but different materials and size. The 72 Labour coin, called a Sixday represents a weeks earnings for hard labour, and if the labourer stays in the same lodgings all week, it will cover all expenses. It is about twice the width of a Labour, and weights about 2.5x as much.

While most people will use Letters of Credit lodged and honoured at the many credit houses within the Rahi Vasa Company for amounts over 3-5 Sixdays of coin, there is one final higher denomination coin used when coin payment is needed, such as payment between credit houses or transactions with long distance traders. This coin is called the Anuul, and represents 52 Sixdays, or one years earnings for a labourer. It is the the size of the circle made between a thumb and forefinger, and weighs 100 grams. It too can be formed into dodecahedron, a sensible feature given the higher value material.

Pay is often done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, with jobs more skilled than basic labour having higher pay. A sailor should expect to earn 20 Labours over a 8 hour day, and a fisherman slightly more if the seas are running well. A craftsbawa should expect 32 to 40 Labours per day, depending on rank. Notgils, Master craftsmen, and other professionals can easily expect 60 Labours for a 5 hour day.

Trade Bar
A Trade Bar is the rarest and most unusual of Ravaco Coinage. Technically, not a coin, it is a length of wood, 10cm deep, x 15 cm wide, x 30 cm long. On one of the large faces is mounted a thin iron plate, suitable for engraving. Trade Bars are manufactured when a quorum of the Smiling Merchants agree that one can be made, after a Smiling Merchant freely donates information that was not purchased with Trade Bars to the Smiling Merchants at large. The Trade Bar or Bars are crafted, engraved with a number, and are from then on, part of the Smiling Merchants personal wealth.

Trade Bars have two functions, the first to provide a currency for high value information, and secondly to have an incredibly valuable trade item in circulation without disrupting other coinage.

To conduct a transaction with a Trade Bar, you must offer knowledge of information in return for the bar, nothing else is allowed to be traded for them. For example, a rich farming vali, anxious to know why they have been approached about their crop early might go to an information broker working for the Smiling Merchants and offer their sole Trade Bar. They would be told that there is pestilence on the mainland, and grain prices are going to soar, allowing them to move on the market and reap for a hard currency profit. In another example, a sea captain with a mage on board might forsee a mighty storm, and take this information to a representative of a Smiling Merchant who would meet with them in person and offer six whole Trade Bars for the information.

Each time a Trade Bar changes hands, a Notgil must be present to record it, both in iron face of the bar itself and in the records of the Nonogon. With each bar having a number and secure records, if any discrepancies occur, all relevant bars are simply destroyed.

As the face of the Trade Bar fills, it naturally becomes worth less and less, as the information which allowed its manufacture becomes valueless. Similarly so, a Trade Bar with a full face cannot be traded any longer, and must be brought to a representative of the Smiling Merchants, where it exchanged for hard currency, then destroyed. This usually takes roughly eight transactions, depending on the nature of details needing to be recorded.

As the sole source of Trade Bars in their most valuable form (never traded changing to once traded), Smiling Merchants can easily amass information from selling trade bars, but also buy them back with lesser secrets they learn through their other sources. This gives them unparalleled awareness of even clandestine or obscure happenings, allowing supeior strategic maneuvering of their wealth, power and influence.

Manufacturing
The Rahi Vasa Company is a leader in ship design, with commercial interests driving the already efficient Bawa designs. The main Rahi Vasa Company design is the Drua, a twin hulled vessel often 40 meters or longer. It consists of two plank built canoes which are able to be paddled as normal ocean canoes, but together they can have a large platform and sail mounted between them giving them much more deck space and a much higher speed.

To support this, there are major plantation forests, shipyards and dockworks throughout the Kana Vasa Islands. Ship construction is usually done in the coldest and stormiest part of the year. As an outgrowth of shipbuilding, the Rahi Vasa Company has high numbers of skilled carpenters, joiners, and woodcarvers.

In addition to shipworking, the Rahi Vasa Company operates large wineries and distilleries which make the various alcohols which are a very common trade item. Other manufacturing includes clothworking and dying using the flax which grows wild and various pigments, although trade for certain colours leads to those able to supply them making tidy profit. Bookcopying and later, printing are also common.

The Rahi Vasa Company's weakness is that is has no large sources of good metals on the Kana Vasa Islands themselves, and must rely on their mines on Othus, where large quarries and smelters operate.

Organisation
While the Rahi Vasa Company is technically a single corporate entity, during day to day life large portions of it are allowed to act as independent business entities, trading with and competing among themselves. Any group of Ravaco can band together and start a business and it will be allowed to act how it wants.

While the Smiling Merchants may trade with such entities, they reserve the right and authority to decree action and response without trade or payment. This authority is granted from the governed, and this is understood, which combined with notions of honourable trade ensure that the benifits of the actions to the population at large outweigh the lack of material payment.

There are no taxes levied by the corporate leadership, rather they have a series of fees which must be paid. As the sole landowners of the Kana Vasa Islands, the owners of all buildings, roadways, ports and cultivated crops are charged an annual cost for the ability to use the companies land. Similarly, owners of water infrastructure, ports and roads charge people for their use.

Trade and Transportation
Ravaco trade is a religious act, and a pillar of Ravaco life is that everyone has something to trade, so trade honourably with everyone. Ravaco from the age of 5 years will be routinely engaged in trade, with a weekly living cost levied against them, that they are expected to pay for with work for the vali. From then on, Ravaco life is saturated in mercantile acts and behaviour.

Stalls, markets, and businesses are utterly ubiquitous, and the easiest way to find something is to offer to pay. Even a minor vali of just fifty Ravaco will have a stall set up with goods and an honesty box for trade among them. The counter side to this is that Ravaco can be isolated, reserved or unhelpful if you are not acting like you mean to do proper trade, and want something for free.

While standard mercantile operations occur as in most nations, the Ravaco have an interesting form of charity. The learnings of elderly or disabled bawa are often bought and it is not uncommon for a cripple to be telling stories to a gathering before collecting payment.

Transportation overland is usually done by cart or wagon, usually using haulers as no beasts of burden are common on the islands. This is slow and inefficent, so more commonly goods are transported to the nearest shore, as even small communities of a single vali will have a pier or dock suitable for a shore sized drua to load or unload cargo.

Drua are the main cargo carriers for the Rahi Vasa Company, ranging from 20m shoreline craft, to 50m or larger open water sailing vessels. With holds in both hulls and a large open deck, they can easily carry a wide variety of cargo with ease. In later technological periods, a shift to catamaran container ships echos the design and cultural affiliation with drua and their transport role.