Magic Vs. Economics

[Essence]

MOD EDIT: Split off from Disadvantage thread by request - fbmf

So your answer is to nerf spells into being no better than mundane actions? That is fine and dandy if you want to make Telekinesis into a level 1 or 2 spell (a slightly amped up mage hand), but if you want to have any high level magic at all, then the nerfing is a bit much. The whole idea with high level spells is that it is super human, and surpasses what can be done naturally.

The natural counter to this argument, of course, is to allow non-magical characters to do ridiculous things without using magic. There's no particular reason why Fabricate can't be a DC 40 Craft check for a non-magical character, except that some people would jibber and drool and shout at you for claiming that it should be so. If you allow for non-magical people to be uber, then you don't have to stress when magical people get uber, too.

[RandomCasualty]

1139847149[/unixtime]]
The natural counter to this argument, of course, is to allow non-magical characters to do ridiculous things without using magic. There's no particular reason why Fabricate can't be a DC 40 Craft check for a non-magical character, except that some people would jibber and drool and shout at you for claiming that it should be so. If you allow for non-magical people to be uber, then you don't have to stress when magical people get uber, too.

Well, no not really, since remember that the purpose of this isn't to balance caster versus noncaster, but rather to balance the workforce against the lone high level character.

And that absolutely has to constitute nerfing pretty much. Unless you want everyday peasants doing fantastic things. Though that would likely lead to total isolationism, since everyone would effectively be a self contained economy.

An economy is created from supply and demand. If you have characters like wizards who have no demand and all supply, then you effectively cannot have an economy.

[User3]

Not neccessarily. Economies are created because there is a difference in relative cost for different people to produce different goods and services. If the relative costs are all the same, then everyone subsistence farms and more efficient people just make all their own stuff. Even if efficiency differences are massive, an economy will still develope if one person is massively more efficient than everyone else so long as there are some things that he is even more better than everyone else at and other things that he's just better than everyone else at.

That's the problem with spellcasters, their relative cost for everything is the same - a transient and replaceable spell slot and 6 seconds of thinking about their goal. The relative cost for a wizard to fabricate something is actually less than the relative cost to go to the market and come back. Furthermore, the goods and services that adventurers require are the "highest quality goods" (because their job is to personally beat the crap out of small armies, and need every edge they can get), and those can only be efficiently created by... adventurers.

So the people who most efficiently make things only care about things made by each other. They exist in a shadow economy that interacts in no way with the normal economy save that it has a monopoly on all high-quality and mass-produced items. It's as if all the factories were robotic and owned by people who only wanted or needed goods made by the robotic factories. Everyone else is left to grub around in the dirt or starve.

---

If you want to put the economy into a position where anyone who isn't an adventurer is allowed to interact with it, you'd just have to hand out massively arbitrary and creation times to different classes. So as a Fighter you could make Magic Weapons in a high-speed and efficient fashion, while as a Wizard you could churn out scrolls and wondrous items. Meanwhile, you give out the "Farmer" class the ability to produce food in high quality and quantity.

From there, it's actually not a problem if different levels of characters produce more and more stuff as they rise. They just have to continue to be best at whatever it is that they were good at making early in their life. Then it's to their advantage to continue to produce their specialist goods and trade their surplus to others. That's economics.

Is that "unbalanced"? Yes. Economics actually requires an unbalance in production, as well as a way to "cheat the system" by having different people produce different things and then trade back and forth so that everyone gets more in aggragate than if they'd all just tried to make everything they want.

---

As is, the only logical assumption is that every single farmer is a Druid or Cleric. Every single one. And that's unfortunate, because that really isn't what the game implies is supposed to happen.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

THe thing is that high level characters need to in part make use of lower level characters, otherwise your economy falls apart. At some point, those low level guys need to get employed and have a purpose.

The problem is that as written now, high level casters are 100% producers and not consumers or employers. And that doesn't work from an economic standpoint. At some point, they need to be buying stuff. Buying materials, hiring people to help them assemble those materials and so on. An economy has to be about give and take.

Otherwise what happens is that all your corporations essentially become men. Bill Gates is conjuring and producing the entire line of microsoft products at zero cost. Henry Ford is producing his line of cars and trucks at zero cost and so on. The problem is that nobody is getting any money at the bottom of the chain. So you don't really have any consumers. So basically while you can produce infinite amounts of supply, there's virtually no demand at all because nobody has any money to afford to buy anything. The high level guys don't need much, or can produce it themselves. The low level guys don't have any means of making money, since the high levels can produce things more efficiently and don't need to employ anyone.

If your economy includes only high level characters, then it will collapse. There must be a place for the workforce for the economy to stay afloat. Ultimately production is about numbers. If you're making 10,000 suits of plate mail, you need 10,000 people to buy them. If you don't have that, then you can't make any profit.

[Crissa]

How did the economy talk end up in the disadvantage thread and not in the economy thread?

[Fwib]

Maybe because not having a proper economy is a disadvantage?

Right... since we now have a shiny new Economy thread...

Where can we find an economy that works to bolt onto D&D?

[User3]

A real fantasy economy needs one thing: the 2nd ed spell Fool's Gold. Remember that spell? It made a number of fake GP back in the day when GP couldn't buy anything good.

I'm not even joking. DnD right now is played like a RPG videogame, and not even an online game with price fluctuations and inflation and the rest. Tabletop games should have a depth that no videogame does, and to do that if needs to simulate the real world.

And in the real world, people cheat.

People should hate and fear magic objects, and magically created objects. This isn't technology, this is magic, and its the ultimate black box. How do you know that the local wizard is using Wall of Stone to be the local quarry for a new town, and is not using Flesh to Stone in the hopes of having the townspeople create a necromantic town built on the petrified flesh of the innocent?

I mean, a Spellcraft roll of "20 + spell level" will tell anyone if an object was created by or shaped by magic, and I think that a fantasy world needs lots of people wandering around with Spellcraft ensuring that shady casters aren't bilking the locals out of their hard earned silvers. Local priests would be ideal for this, though talented Experts could also sell their services. Since even experts proably won't know what spell or spells made the item, they'll assume any magically created object is at best a fake and at worse an attack of some sort.

Spells like Fool's Gold need to be around so that the people fear wizards bearing gifts. Magic item creation should be something you only trust a good friend to do, because you never know when a wizard is using Liquid pain or dark craft XP to make an item, and when he's burning his own (relatively clean) soul energy. He might even be weaving in a Charm curse that turns people into his slaves, or allows him to scry on you, or alert him when you find treasure, or allows him to teleport demons to your location, or any number of crazy things.

Even trusted local wizards can't be trusted with goods. How do you know that the local wizardly-armorsmith hasn't be replaced by another wizard who is using a magical disquise and that all his armor now turns people into zombies when they die? How do you know that a wizard's bound Djinn that creates bread and silks hasn't slipped the leash and decided to put a slow but deadly poison on the next shipment coming to town?

As for construction, I really think wizards should do that stuff. It explains why you get crazy architecture in a fantasy setting, and we all know that crazy architecture is cool, from needle-thin spires to ice castles to basic dungeons. Good architecture has some social ramifications, allowing for bigger towns with neat stuff like sewers and well systems and efficient multi-level housing and paved roads, but your basic economy is not changed by it.

But of course, some people will automatically trust a wizard. It stands to reason that nobles most likely have a wizard in the family who makes sure that the manor guards have masterwork breastplates and swords, or that their trading business is supported by a network of teleport circles. It stands to reason that the rich and powerful in your society hire mages or cast magic themselves, but wholesale creation of goods should be feared by the people.

In fact, attacking one's mages should be a standard tactic in a fantasy world. A wealthy merchant who makes money by using a wizard to scry on his rivals and outbid them on construction contracts might pay a party to attack another wealthy merchant who uses mages to charm giants to perform construction in a fraction of the time. A wizard who specializes in teleporting people to vacation spots or magic objects to important battles might attack any wizard who sets up a network of flying ships.

In a world were rght makes right and the law is weak, the assumption that any random wizard can set up a money-making scheme is silly. Anything magic can build can be brought down even faster by lower level magic, a principle I call the Fireball Trumps Major Creation Theorem.

[PhoneLobster]

a principle I call the Fireball Trumps Major Creation Theorem.

Molotov cocktail trumps nike sweat shop. It hasn't done anything for stopping it dominating the market.

So whats the point here?

[User3]

Molotov cocktail trumps nike sweat shop. It hasn't done anything for stopping it dominating the market.

Mmm, it really doesn't. The modern sweat shop has men with machine guns, and its made out of sheet metal or concrete. A single dude with some gas in a bottle isn't going to do dick.

The point is this: no one in the world cares too much if a party of adventurers kill a local dragon and steal its treasure. In fact, guys like that are useful to have around when the next dragon decides to squat on your trade route. Even thieves who would ordinarily rob you blind for the gold fillings in your teeth might decide to let you be, since life sure sucked when that stupid dragon kept burning down the town on the days when the tribute wasn't big enough.

When you start outcompeting the local Stonemason's Guild with Wall of Stone, then expect them to hire assasins to kill the guys who have destroyed their livelyhood. Expect wealthy silk merchants to hire Djinni-Busters(TM) when you start to monoplozie the silk trade with your Economy in a Bottle. Expect the king to tax your Fabricated armor to hell when you start to dominate the nationwide armor trade, since he knows that having the entire armor production capability in his nation run by one guy is a huge military weakness, and that "weapon proliferation" is just a rebellion waiting to happen.

From a game standpoint, the "make mad money" scheme is an adventure where you fight society, not monsters. Expect lots of people to attempt to steal from you, kill you, or just flat refuse to work with you.

[Username17]

Actually, the fact that any D&D economic system must live alongside the "heroic" combat system of D&D is simply one more reason why Wizards with money-making schemes should run everything.

Any major economic undertaking, large or small, has to contend with the fact that civil order is a joke, there is no meaningful legal code, and any piece of real estate could be set on fire by a fvcking dragon tomorrow. In short, any enterprise needs the protection of adventurers or it can't even exist. There simply aren't any "guilds", the very idea is preposterous. A bunch of guys in a pile can't perform profitable acts of skilled carpentry without having ogres come and pound them (and/or their work) into the ground. It just can't happen.

For skilled carpentry or blacksmithing to exist, there must be ass-kicking characters with class levels either doing it themselves or protecting it. That means that every source of masterwork armor is either a Wizard with fabricate or a pack of Experts who are the followers of some character with the Leadership feat. The concept that groups of commoners and experts would be able to do something economically meaningful on their own initiative is actually laughable.

All production is made by magical robotic factories or the slave camps of skilled warriors.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1140234289[/unixtime]]
All production is made by magical robotic factories or the slave camps of skilled warriors.

I get your general premise, but why do they have to be slaves? Even with D&D's stock "Your power is directly proportonate to the amount of money you're able to put into it" economy, good aligned adventurers would not be inclined to enslave people to do their work for them, even if it's something they need done and can't do themselves. Is this one of those "Evil Wins" situations?

-Desdan

[Username17]

They don't have to regard themselves as slaves, but they are the guys who show up and work for you for zero dollars because you have Leadership (or its equivalent). They work for you in exchange for food and protection because setting out on their own would probably get them killed.

Which means that technically they are slaves even if you are Good aligned and thus encouraged to call them something else.

-Username17

[Neeek]

1140243950[/unixtime]]

Which means that technically they are slaves even if you are Good aligned and thus encouraged to call them something else.

Basically, they are free to go whenever they want. It's just that doing so insures them a painful death in the near future, from hunger, wandering monsters or non-good adventurers.

[RandomCasualty]

1140234289[/unixtime]]Actually, the fact that any D&D economic system must live alongside the "heroic" combat system of D&D is simply one more reason why Wizards with money-making schemes should run everything.

The problem is that really, there isn't anything to "run".

Real world economy works because it's a cyclical process. Every buisness needs manpower and materials and turns out some product or service which is in turn needed by someone else. Business are run by the demand of the workforce and they produce products which the common man needs, like food, shelter and so on. And this is all predicated from having common men with money. This is why unemployment is bad for the economy. Less people working means fewer people to buy goods, which means buisnesses suffer.

The problem with D&D is that you don't have this model at all. Your lower level laborers aren't really making *any* money because the higher level characters can easily out produce them. However, in turn they're cutting their own throats, because high level casters don't have needs. They can conjure their own food, they can fabricate their own goods and so on. In effect, this is going to cause the economy to be nonexistant, because all the wealth is centralized to a group of people who have no reason to spend it.

So I mean, sure you conjure 1000 long swords, but the unemployed populace can't actually pay you anything for them. And while you can sell them to adventurers, adventurers are going to be pretty rare, so you probably won't sell very many.

About the only way you can really get money of any kind is killing monsters and taking their crap. Opening your own business would be pointless since the world is locked in a perpetual depression where 95%+ of the people have no income.

[PhoneLobster]

The modern sweat shop has men with machine guns,

No they don't. Its not cost effective.

and its made out of sheet metal or concrete.

Oddly they also include other components, not to mention the highly flamable stock, raw materials, furniture etc...

So oddly even if the building is the military bunker you make it out to be it can STILL be gutted by fire.

Its a fact, sweatshops burn down from time to time, one of the great historic events in YOUR countries history that lead to work place reform there was when a sweatshop burned down killing all the locked in underpaid workers...

[Neeek]

1140301237[/unixtime]]
Real world economy works because it's a cyclical process. Every buisness needs manpower and materials and turns out some product or service which is in turn needed by someone else. Business are run by the demand of the workforce and they produce products which the common man needs, like food, shelter and so on. And this is all predicated from having common men with money. This is why unemployment is bad for the economy. Less people working means fewer people to buy goods, which means buisnesses suffer.

That's questionable. It would probably be more accurate to say that polarization of wealth is bad for the economy. Unemployment is really more of a effect of a weak economy, rather than a cause(though, it become a self-perpetuating cause if it gets high enough). Of course, either way, your point stands.

[User3]

Any major economic undertaking, large or small, has to contend with the fact that civil order is a joke, there is no meaningful legal code, and any piece of real estate could be set on fire by a fvcking dragon tomorrow. In short, any enterprise needs the protection of adventurers or it can't even exist. There simply aren't any "guilds", the very idea is preposterous. A bunch of guys in a pile can't perform profitable acts of skilled carpentry without having ogres come and pound them (and/or their work) into the ground. It just can't happen.

So what?

Who says that these guilds aren't run by a couple of 4th level guys, or that the king isn't an epic character, or that the nobility aren't guys with actual character levels? The default fantasy setting is feudal, so its assumed that everyone is under someone's thumb to one degree or another.

The assumption that PCs are the biggest or only cocks on the block is just silly. The assumption that having a large level is the same as being invulnerable is a proposition not supported by the rules, as even the most powerful character can be killed by a hail of arrows or a poor save.

While a red dragon can set every crop on fire in a 30 mile radius over the course of a lazy afternoon, its assumed that they don't do that simply because there are enough powerful individuals in the world to cack anyone being that big of a dick. The only thing keeping the entire world from being set on fire, all the time, is that these powerful characters have split the world up into countries and towns and fiefdoms and empires and guilds and tribes, and when some bastard tries to upset the status quo enough of them get together to put that guy down.

Thats why adventuring exists. Some red dragon dick starts manipulating the trade routes and demanding tribute, and the local trade guilds and governments decide to risk paying some adventurers to deal with the problem. They could do it themselves, but they are busy playing Live-Action Civilization and making sure that everyone has enough food for next winter, and risking the leadership of the civilian world over some red dragon is dumb.

Even the DMG's default hamlet(200 people) has enough muscle to take care of a threat as high as CR 7, and it only goes up from there. The reasons they don't do it is because they might lose a big chunk of their number doing it, and its way easier to just hire some appropriately leveled guys to do it.

And when some adventurer tries to carve out his own little economic empire or makes a power grab, those same guys get together to hire a red dragon to take care of them. Basically, anyone who disturbs the status quo faces the wrath of the rest of the world.

[Username17]

No. While there is plenty of incentive to not go kick over someone else's sandbox, mostly because there's a whole lot of unclaimed territory that you can just sit on, the fact that kings are sometimes badass adventurers themselves does not undermine the fact that adventurers run everything. Exactly the opposite in fact.

The status quo is that small numbers of badasses control all of the means of production and the world is caught in a perpetual depression where all production and consumption is in the hands of a tiny elite.

Sure, sometimes the badasses who run things subcontract to up-and-comers, but only because they are lazy and don't want to die. There is no incentive for anyone to uphold any sort of hereditary rule, and the idea that one would exist is absurd. The world is a meritocracy where the weak either spend their lives kissing the ass of the strong or march off and die in large numbers trying to become strong themselves.

---

Wizards and other high level characters run things. Everything. Sometimes these powerful adventurers are toppled by groups of lower level adventurers. These are called "adventures" and are often the focus of D&D games.

-Username17

[User3]

Quote:

The modern sweat shop has men with machine guns,

No they don't. Its not cost effective.
...

Do a google search using the words "sweatshop" and "guards". You can read dozens of interesting articles about the ways in which armed guards are used to "protect" assets (like the enslaved sweatshop workers).

In fact, in most 3rd world nations, if you don't have armed guards on your stuff, some yahoos with guns will take it from you. My roommate is from Africa and he has lots of amusing anecdotes about roving bandits in his home country.

Oddly they also include other components, not to mention the highly flamable stock, raw materials, furniture etc...

So oddly even if the building is the military bunker you make it out to be it can STILL be gutted by fire.

Its a fact, sweatshops burn down from time to time, one of the great historic events in YOUR countries history that lead to work place reform there was when a sweatshop burned down killing all the locked in underpaid workers...

Aaa, the New York Triangle Shirtwaist fire tragedy..... nothing like appeal to emotion to derail a logical argument.

Sure, industrial disasters happen. Attacks on buildings guarded by armed guys don't happen very often, or at least not sucessfully. The modern world, unlike DnD, spawns no heroes. The guys with the guns win, despite your mastery of kung-fu and pure spirit.

DnD, with its heroes, is a more free place than even the modern world. While a modern government can impose a dictatorship build on technology and supplys and material, a DnD world has sorcerers and fighters born from the peasant stock and those guys can eventally overthrow the ensalvement of your race by a 6,000 year old god-king lich.

Good luck trying to overthrow a modern, 1st world goverment.

[User3]

The status quo is that small numbers of badasses control all of the means of production and the world is caught in a perpetual depression where all production and consumption is in the hands of a tiny elite.

A capitalist dystopia just doesn't jive, for many reasons. Not only is any moneymaking wizard fighting his fellows for economic and social control, but there is one very important consideration: controlling society is a lot of work. Not only will high-level adventurers prefer to spend free time at the beach rather than doing it, but the guys who do engage in money-making, resource monopoly schemes are wasting the most important resource of all: opportunity.

You don't get any XP for running a merchant empire, or access to weird PrCs and magic items if you are overlord of a hamlet. High-level adventurers are busy doing the one thing they care about: adventuring. The wizard who blows his slots every day fabricating shoes is going to be the one out of spell slots when the demon hordes spill into his valley. He'll be the one who only has the 2 per level spells in his spellbook, instead of the dozens of spells per level he would have gained as a full-time adventurer.

As for the world being a meritocracy, the answer is "kinda." The Apprentice rules from the DMG II is the perfect way to level-up one's children or cousins or nieces or whatever without ever having them go on an adventure. One or two guys in every noble family can be the full-time adventurers, and they can train the rest of the family and grant free levels(up to 5). Then, while the real adventurer is out on the Plane of Fire assaulting an efreet forttress, his cousin Bob The Mildly Interesting Wizard can run the family's salt mine and chain of discount cookware shops.

Just like the heriditary empires of old, nobility keeps its position through better training than the peasants. Nobility can also afford to equip its scions with better equipment than any adventurer, making them more survivable in any adventure they do engage in.

The very fact that adventurers have to travel the country putting out "fires" like the latest mindflayer mind-control scheme or drow invasion or marauding gorgon means that they don't have the time to worry about the distribution of cloaks and bread to the local peasants. Its better to let them just govern themselves than to waste effort atempting to ourproduce them and wreck their economy.

[PhoneLobster]

So who's the nameless coward dumb enough to say among other things...

Good luck trying to overthrow a modern, 1st world goverment.

It happens all the time, so much so that "1st world" countries are built around a mechanism to facilitate it.

Think about that for five seconds and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Lets not even go into military coupes, revolutions and the like throughout the world in nations that were as industrialized and advanced as any 1st world nation (they just don't get the title because their population is black, or asian, or south american). As always I point to Chile but lets throw in the region formerly known as Yugoslavia just because its European and more recent.

I won't point to various nations prior to world war 2 with their little facist or communist revolutions because people will shamelessly pretend there has been some sort of magical increase in the power gap between the elite and the masses at some time since then (which there hasn't, but they'll say it anyway because its suddenly THE END OF HISTORY!!!11!!!)

Also...

Referring to a major historical example of something happening that was claimed to be improbable or impossible is not an appeal to emotion. Its a prominent example.

And "industrial accidents" may just happen but leaving your slave labourers locked inside a burning building is industrial MURDER. Locked in "workers" and related fire hazards continue to be a problem to this day.

Anyone who dismisses those kinds of tradgedies as inevitable industrial accidents is not just a VERY bad person they are also decidedly disingenuous.

[User3]

So who's the nameless coward dumb enough to say among other things...

Sorry, I forgot to log-in. Didn't know I'd have any rants addressed to me.....

It happens all the time, so much so that "1st world" countries are built around a mechanism to facilitate it.

Think about that for five seconds and you'll know what I'm talking about.

If you say "democracy", I'm going to laugh at you really hard. Really hard.

Referring to a major historical example of something happening that was claimed to be improbable or impossible is not an appeal to emotion. Its a prominent example.

No, its not. Textile factories burn down all the time, without any help from anyone. Loose cloth, fiber dust, and oils and dyes from the cloth all make those places ripe for fires. I can email you a handly little PDF pamphlet from the UK if you really want the facts.

And your example is not an example of someone deliberately trying to set a fire, or perform some sort of rebellion against the sweatshop system. It was an accident that killed over 200 young girls and, as I said, a tragedy.

But do you see how easily the argument got derailed by the emotional impact of the example?

Thats dirty pool, my good man. Its just the same as starting a debate with the words "well, my opponent is a known child molester....." It doesn't matter if its true, or even relevant. Emotion blinds all rational discourse from that point on.

[Username17]

That's highly disengenuous. You were the one who claimed that modern day society was somehow unassailable, that modern day terrorism couldn't destroy the current means of production, that the common man was somehow more powerless against the machine in 2006 than in D&D.

And that's bullshit. You can be a migrant worker in the sugar fields of Argentina and grow up to be President of Bolivia. Anyone can destroy a modern day factory, it's not even hard.

The entirety of society is held in check only by the fact that a small number of people have paper ownership of all the Capital, without which productivity is a joke. Well, in D&D land, there is no capital save for labor capital, and a small number of people own all that.

---

Let's consider the question of Adamantite production:

You could have it cranked out by a 9th level Wizard. Indeed, every casting of Fabricate can make two thousand, two hundred and nine pounds of adamantite finished goods - which is close enough to one meteric tonne as makes no odds. Alternately, you could have groups of seven 1st level commoners/experts aiding another such that they also never fail a DC 20 Craft check and complete a 7.5 pound Greatsword in just 76 weeks of work - which means that with just 1,100,699 commoners, you can match the day-to-day industrial output of a single 9th level wizard.

Right. One point one million people working in the forges every day can match the idustrial output of one magician using one spell slot every day. We're not even talking about a character who has extra levels in Wizard or Gondian Techsmith, or a character who prepares multiple Fabricates each day, let alone a character who goes all TFC and prepares his spells every 9 hours. Do you begin to see how irrelevent those peons actually are? It's not worth the food to have those people actually performing productive labor.

The only actors in D&D who give a damn about commoners are the gods. And that's because every commoner who lives a good life eventually turns into a Lantern Archon, and those guys are pimp.

You get production quality, production quantity, and military dominance from having class levels. People without class levels cannot compete in production volume, production quality, or military dominance. They are literally extraneous to the economy. Clerics of good and evil gods would still feed them of course, but only as a long-term investment in Lemures.

---

It's not that 9th level wizards get up one day and say "I have Fabricate, I can take over the economy!" it's that there really isn't an economy other than wizards who have fabricate and the like.

Even the sweatshops operated by Fighters with Leadership actually only exist to produce low-value goods like barrels that have a high volume-to-utility ratio and therefore somehow fall under the radar of druids with wood shape.

-Username17

[User3]

Lets not consider adamantite production. Its wickedly expensive and of no use to the common man. Its like trying to say "what if we made all our glasswear out of high-end diamonds?" This isn't El Dorado, where everything is made out of gold.

Lets take cotton and peasant outfits. Raw cotton by weight is around 3 lbs/ft^3, and the standard peasant outfit weights 2 lbs. A 9th level wizard can shape 90 cubic feet, so he Fabricates 135 outfits with each casting(for a profit of 89 gp and 1 sp).

Now, thats a lot of pants. If in a city of 100,000 guys, everyone got one new oufit a year, thats still 740 castings of the spell each year, which is almost all the 5th level slots a 9th level can produce that year.

At a cost of final 1 sp, a peasant can most likely make an outfit in 1 days. This means that if everyone in a town of 100,000 spent one day a year making peasant outfits, they'd equal the productive value of a 9th level wizard.

And frankly, the bulk of production in a DnD society is crap like peasant outfits. Sure, the Wizard can make a profit of over 69K a year making peasant outfits, and maybe he does to some degree, but when you consider the thousands of products that make up a society, you won't have enough high-level wizards to keep the manticores from eating your babies if all of them are building everything in your society.

Fabricate is for high-end crap like full plate armor, meaning that instead of the only six guys in England having full plate, hundreds of guys in a fantasy country of the same size would have it. Traps, instead of being things relagated to story, are commonplace. Some things like ships are only possible in a fantasy setting because of Fabricate simply because the number of sea monsters in the oceans would make shipping impossible for the amount of time invested to build a boat.

[RandomCasualty]

1140377347[/unixtime]]Lets not consider adamantite production. Its wickedly expensive and of no use to the common man.

So what if it's no use to the common man. Remember, the common man doesn't have money. The rich don't need to actually buy anything from the common man, so money simply flows up the power hierarchy and never trickles back down. If you're selling something, you're going to sell stuff to people who can afford it.

Peasants just can't afford anything because they don't provide any meaningful contributions to society. There's simply no reason to pay them to do anything.

Lets take cotton and peasant outfits. Raw cotton by weight is around 3 lbs/ft^3, and the standard peasant outfit weights 2 lbs. A 9th level wizard can shape 90 cubic feet, so he Fabricates 135 outfits with each casting(for a profit of 89 gp and 1 sp).

This is exactly the kind of thing that is going to get created by "slave" sweatshops as Frank already mentioned.