It’s bad form to reply to my own post, but a strong cup of tea has invigorated me with some ideas that follow on from building the first working beam engine.
I’m introducing a second invention, halfway through, because you need something to pump industrial quantities of capital as well as water.
Firstly, you probably won’t have the cashflow to purchase another mine and build another engine for at least a decade. Not unless you’re mining silver, or there’s a severe economic supply contraint on copper, tin, or whatever you’re extracting, permitting you to make extraordinary profits.
You will have the cashflow to improve—and probably replace—your engine, your workshop, and your craftsmmen in two or three years.
You now have a business model. No, TWO business models.
Firstly, municipal water supply already exists in the Roman Empire: there’s an existing demand for big beam-engine pumps, and you can demonstrate a profitable and reliable working model. Your craftsmen might defect and start up a rival business—if they can get capital (which they can’t) or interest a Patrician—but you can let them go, secure in the knowledge that they can only ever copy what you’ve already done.
They cannot compete with your next technological improvement, or the one after: your emerging commercial rivals are no better than the industrial pioneers and inventors who took decades to develop things that you know completely, a century ahead of their best possible learning-curve.
Your second business model is that you know where the all good ore lodes are, and how to get at them—flooded or not. Even if you don’t, mine-owners with a flooding problem are going to tell you where the few known ones are...
...But developing those resources still needs far more capital than you possess; and your objective is to become Emperor, not just a provider of steam pumps to grand patricians with an ore lode, and Proconsuls with a municipal supply problem.
No, you need a second invention: the Joint Stock Company. Lots of wealthy families and merchants would love to have something to invest their money in—Rome’s a surprisingly rigid economy, above a certain level of family wealth—and you’ve got an idea they can see working.
So: get the articles drawn up—and sworn before a Quaestor (and a Vestalis if you want it to be a convincing demonstration of good faith that’ll get people killed for suborning or betraying) - and open up another mine.
And another. And a bigger one, with a horse-drawn tramway to move the ore and the coal. Lucky you, knowing the Mass Haul calculation, and the principles of bridge design, soil mechanics, and a simple optical level…
So now you have cashflow, an expanding demand for steel and machine tools, bulk transportation, and coal. And capital.
Sounds like an industrial revolution, right there.
And you’re always going to be first with the right technology, at the right time: whatever significant technology anyone else invents—or copies—you will always know its flaws and how they were overcome in subsequent improvement and developments—or how that particular technology was superseded by something far, far better when materials became available.
You also have a substantial political power base among your shareholders: merchants and mid-level patrician families who will, within a decade or two, be wealthier than the entire senatorial class of Rome.
Before you’re wealthy enough to actually have a significant political power base, it’s going to be obvious you’re getting wealthy. At that point you’re going to need political patronage to avoid having, say, joint-stock companies outlawed.
If the means by which you’re gaining wealth are not seen as legitimate, you won’t be allowed to accumulate enough to do you any good—and in a society with no ideology of economic liberty, any new means of accumulating wealth undertaken by anybody who isn’t already on top is almost automatically seen as illegitimate by the people who are already on top.
Partially correct, and partially wrong. The great patricians and senators will try to keep down a plebeian, but this is equally true of a fellow-patrician emerging as a dominant power.
But people could and did succeed in Rome: your point is an objection, not an insoluble problem.
I would point out that not getting assassinated—or coming up against a power bloc that can stop you—is a problem with all ‘Become Emperor of Rome’ scenarios: and it was solved by all emperors.
It boils down to politics. A strong point of the Joint-Stock plan is that you make a lot of people wealthy: a broad power base is a strong power base.
Consider this: many ancient and noble Patrician families are in a state best described as ‘genteel poverty’. Give them enough of a share to regain a place in public life—but about the same, or slightly less, than the share you sell to merchants, so that these aristocrats cannot dominate the power base and—and you’ve got a very powerful influence in the senate.
The other place to secure influence is the Army. Families of successful (or influential) generals and mid-level commanders must get a share. At least one Legion, within reach of Rome, should start receiving mass-produced high-quality equipment ….Or mass-produced equipment as good as the standard issue, but at factory prices—much to the profit of the commanders and the procurator. (This is legal in Rome: cost-effective supply was properly incentivised).
“The Joachimsthaler Legion stands with Rationus’ is a declaration that will put a stop to any drastic setback.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t even start on trying to get the Praetorian Guard ‘onside’ - too obvious, certain to alarm the Emperor, and fatal.
Improving the water supply, temple donations, and economic mobility: that’s a good route to popular support—and the ‘Vox populi’ was a matter of importance in Rome. Not that it was a democracy by that time, but the ruling classes took great care (and great expense) to maintain popularity. And there was a direct ‘Will of the People’ channel in Rome: the Tribunes.
Arguably, they are a point of failure: your public works, equalisation of wealth for plebeians, and temple donatuons would count in your favour—and should—but the Tribunes are a point of failure if your enemies seek influence there. Note, however, that the tribunes existed explicitly as a counterbalance to the great patricians and the emperor: that’s the way you play against ‘the people who are already on top’.
Finally, be sure that you and your supporters are liberal with donations to the Temples. And, indeed, to the causes and projects of the existing Emperor’s supporters… Some of whom will be happy to be shareholders, discreetly, because they’re not all rich—old families, again—and financial dependence on the Emperor is an uncomfortable thing.
In short, you’d play politics. But politics powered by an important invention of the modern age—Shareholders—with crude steam engines to prime that particular pump with money.
It’s bad form to reply to my own post, but a strong cup of tea has invigorated me with some ideas that follow on from building the first working beam engine.
I’m introducing a second invention, halfway through, because you need something to pump industrial quantities of capital as well as water.
Firstly, you probably won’t have the cashflow to purchase another mine and build another engine for at least a decade. Not unless you’re mining silver, or there’s a severe economic supply contraint on copper, tin, or whatever you’re extracting, permitting you to make extraordinary profits.
You will have the cashflow to improve—and probably replace—your engine, your workshop, and your craftsmmen in two or three years.
You now have a business model. No, TWO business models.
Firstly, municipal water supply already exists in the Roman Empire: there’s an existing demand for big beam-engine pumps, and you can demonstrate a profitable and reliable working model. Your craftsmen might defect and start up a rival business—if they can get capital (which they can’t) or interest a Patrician—but you can let them go, secure in the knowledge that they can only ever copy what you’ve already done.
They cannot compete with your next technological improvement, or the one after: your emerging commercial rivals are no better than the industrial pioneers and inventors who took decades to develop things that you know completely, a century ahead of their best possible learning-curve.
Your second business model is that you know where the all good ore lodes are, and how to get at them—flooded or not. Even if you don’t, mine-owners with a flooding problem are going to tell you where the few known ones are...
...But developing those resources still needs far more capital than you possess; and your objective is to become Emperor, not just a provider of steam pumps to grand patricians with an ore lode, and Proconsuls with a municipal supply problem.
No, you need a second invention: the Joint Stock Company. Lots of wealthy families and merchants would love to have something to invest their money in—Rome’s a surprisingly rigid economy, above a certain level of family wealth—and you’ve got an idea they can see working.
So: get the articles drawn up—and sworn before a Quaestor (and a Vestalis if you want it to be a convincing demonstration of good faith that’ll get people killed for suborning or betraying) - and open up another mine.
And another. And a bigger one, with a horse-drawn tramway to move the ore and the coal. Lucky you, knowing the Mass Haul calculation, and the principles of bridge design, soil mechanics, and a simple optical level…
So now you have cashflow, an expanding demand for steel and machine tools, bulk transportation, and coal. And capital.
Sounds like an industrial revolution, right there.
And you’re always going to be first with the right technology, at the right time: whatever significant technology anyone else invents—or copies—you will always know its flaws and how they were overcome in subsequent improvement and developments—or how that particular technology was superseded by something far, far better when materials became available.
You also have a substantial political power base among your shareholders: merchants and mid-level patrician families who will, within a decade or two, be wealthier than the entire senatorial class of Rome.
Purple rather suits me, don’t you think?
Before you’re wealthy enough to actually have a significant political power base, it’s going to be obvious you’re getting wealthy. At that point you’re going to need political patronage to avoid having, say, joint-stock companies outlawed.
If the means by which you’re gaining wealth are not seen as legitimate, you won’t be allowed to accumulate enough to do you any good—and in a society with no ideology of economic liberty, any new means of accumulating wealth undertaken by anybody who isn’t already on top is almost automatically seen as illegitimate by the people who are already on top.
Partially correct, and partially wrong. The great patricians and senators will try to keep down a plebeian, but this is equally true of a fellow-patrician emerging as a dominant power.
But people could and did succeed in Rome: your point is an objection, not an insoluble problem.
I would point out that not getting assassinated—or coming up against a power bloc that can stop you—is a problem with all ‘Become Emperor of Rome’ scenarios: and it was solved by all emperors.
It boils down to politics. A strong point of the Joint-Stock plan is that you make a lot of people wealthy: a broad power base is a strong power base.
Consider this: many ancient and noble Patrician families are in a state best described as ‘genteel poverty’. Give them enough of a share to regain a place in public life—but about the same, or slightly less, than the share you sell to merchants, so that these aristocrats cannot dominate the power base and—and you’ve got a very powerful influence in the senate.
The other place to secure influence is the Army. Families of successful (or influential) generals and mid-level commanders must get a share. At least one Legion, within reach of Rome, should start receiving mass-produced high-quality equipment ….Or mass-produced equipment as good as the standard issue, but at factory prices—much to the profit of the commanders and the procurator. (This is legal in Rome: cost-effective supply was properly incentivised).
“The Joachimsthaler Legion stands with Rationus’ is a declaration that will put a stop to any drastic setback.
Incidentally, I wouldn’t even start on trying to get the Praetorian Guard ‘onside’ - too obvious, certain to alarm the Emperor, and fatal.
Improving the water supply, temple donations, and economic mobility: that’s a good route to popular support—and the ‘Vox populi’ was a matter of importance in Rome. Not that it was a democracy by that time, but the ruling classes took great care (and great expense) to maintain popularity. And there was a direct ‘Will of the People’ channel in Rome: the Tribunes.
Arguably, they are a point of failure: your public works, equalisation of wealth for plebeians, and temple donatuons would count in your favour—and should—but the Tribunes are a point of failure if your enemies seek influence there. Note, however, that the tribunes existed explicitly as a counterbalance to the great patricians and the emperor: that’s the way you play against ‘the people who are already on top’.
Finally, be sure that you and your supporters are liberal with donations to the Temples. And, indeed, to the causes and projects of the existing Emperor’s supporters… Some of whom will be happy to be shareholders, discreetly, because they’re not all rich—old families, again—and financial dependence on the Emperor is an uncomfortable thing.
In short, you’d play politics. But politics powered by an important invention of the modern age—Shareholders—with crude steam engines to prime that particular pump with money.
You might have infeential distance problems explaining that one.