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[FantasticDorf]

This is more of a kobold minded idea but there's some other places (like human society and certain aspects of dwarven society) where it could be applicable.

The more site, resources & artifacts (and other things that count) that a person posesses, it summarily will allow them to reach a higher ranking, earn titles and generally wield more power if not indefinite power within the civ. So in kobolds case since they don't have a structured government it goes in the order of 'leveling' through the thief ranks on account of the most stolen objects and artifacts healthily contributing to that.

Eventually a kobold will gain so much precedence that in skulking civ terms they will become a equivalent "war" leader & a strategic leader and actively direct kobolds into raids as well as give orders, whereas previously they were taking orders from them, in a meritocracy government/system. Adding a extra layer onto the skulking civ to not be so directionless with its actions and make some smarter investments.

Thief < Master Thief < Prince/Princess of Thieves etc.

But initially whoever is the most prominent member of the society at the worldstart has the title by default, and most lawgivers are the richest in the land by default but will be scrutinized by their wealth.

That's a case of a noble/job professional, but another more domestic one could be the difference between a shopkeep's apprentice & a store owner, given that they both have the same functional job of being traders/shopfront workers but there's one clearly higher ranking worker who either owns the property & gains the title by default or surpassed their previous master by inheritance or otherwise.

If so inclined, this would also open up modding/game opportunities to insert specific noble roles which compete for the lawgiver or a prestigious role and create internal conflict when there are pretender kings & queens popping up in the kingdom in a overflow of lesser nobles  like dukedom's becoming powerful enough to become independent or have thier eyes on the prize of the kingdom.

So yeah something to push for toady's consideration during the later law & property arc.

[NW_Kohaku]

Outside of kobolds, though, that idea begs the question of how they start to gain wealth in the first place?  I mean, presumably, right now, gaining lots of possessions is the consequence of having lots of status and therefore wealth to start with, so if you flip this around and make it so that gaining wealth gives you a better job with which you can accrue more wealth, where does this cycle start? For kobolds, the best thief is the one that rises to the top, but in a communistic dwarf or elf setting, when does this happen?  Even in your own suggestion, it functionally starts with the people who already have status gain more stuff which they use for more status which they use for gaining more stuff...

Also, I remember reading in Debt: the First 5000 Years about how tribes of pre-writing humans were often led by functionally the poorest members of their tribes, because to get people to follow them, they had to give gifts as incentives to get people to go along with them since they had no real organized authority to do anything like organize a guard that forced people to comply with a decree backed by a royalty they didn't possess.  This wound up meaning that they gave away everything they did have in order to gain followers, and they wound up with just the clothes on their back and just enough food to not starve.

[FantasticDorf]

Well that's a firm but fair predicament you have there, but as i've mentioned between the apprentice & the shop owner, there is critical differences for the same job. The apprentice will learn and eventually take over the shop on the basis of 3 primary conditions

• The owner dies/is murdered and with no next of kin the shop now belongs to the apprentice
• The apprentice surpasses the shop owner in skill, causing them to retire - The intended course of action for cycling through master and apprentices imparting experience
• The apprentice obtains the shop via another means such as buying the property

Your ability or circumstances translates directly into success given that in this dwarf physics world if you are marginally bad at a job you perform it poorer and hence the most competent traders earn the most personal wealth, handled in worldgen via local currency and powerful nobles people talk about swaggering around with gold in their pockets.

There's some other things too like personality to take into account, but as the responsiblities change as they gain a new noble status via appointment or just self-development and ambition, the existing set of skills and personality faucets affect negatively or positively, given that a merchantile duke with no respect for the law known to hire brigands and lie would not make a good king.

There's not such pieces of the puzzle implemented yet such as inhereting land or properties, but as of the next version you can inherit family artifacts or actively depending on your status pursue said artifacts from the clutches of others, hence what might prop up a noblepersons position in one kingdom, when it is reclaimed by its rightful owners they might go back to being a lowly humiliated peasant again because of a substantial loss of wealth or even go beserk depending on their personality.

People from rich families often pursuing careers that suit them to stay rich, most certainly you've never heard of anybody in the peasantry even being notable unless they've successfully been the leader of a hamlet for a number of years or were popular enough to be elected the mayor in a small town settlement.

Id say it applies much more to humans than dwarves, but id rule guilds in as a exception given that you must be competent & have a set of skills to proceed within unionistic politics and grow substantially powerful enough to front a guild or form your own. And from there you're powerful enough to lock horns with other guild members and even bodies of government over whatever matter is relevant.

Yeah you're right to point out how feudal goverments basically used fiefdoms as rewards, its a give a man a fish it'll feed him for a day, give a man a fishing lodge and it'll feed him for a lifetime and you might get some out of it too. Easiest way to elevate any notable peasant up to someone of meager importance and work from there by basically raising the value of the things they own by a substantial amount.

Unless the land is ravaged with misfortune and war, hopefully the current lawgiver's won't end up being as poor as that example but just hold onto their seat purely by the will of monarchic inheritance between their relatives.

[GoblinCookie]

Outside of kobolds, though, that idea begs the question of how they start to gain wealth in the first place?  I mean, presumably, right now, gaining lots of possessions is the consequence of having lots of status and therefore wealth to start with, so if you flip this around and make it so that gaining wealth gives you a better job with which you can accrue more wealth, where does this cycle start? For kobolds, the best thief is the one that rises to the top, but in a communistic dwarf or elf setting, when does this happen?  Even in your own suggestion, it functionally starts with the people who already have status gain more stuff which they use for more status which they use for gaining more stuff...

Also, I remember reading in Debt: the First 5000 Years about how tribes of pre-writing humans were often led by functionally the poorest members of their tribes, because to get people to follow them, they had to give gifts as incentives to get people to go along with them since they had no real organized authority to do anything like organize a guard that forced people to comply with a decree backed by a royalty they didn't possess.  This wound up meaning that they gave away everything they did have in order to gain followers, and they wound up with just the clothes on their back and just enough food to not starve.

The bottom line is clearly that it is originally power that delivers wealth not wealth that delivers power.  That is because wealth is a matter of ownership and ownership is a matter decided by those with power.  The people with power in kobold society (everyone?) have clearly decided that stuff does not belong to individuals, in that context it is impossible for individuals to ever obtain power over society through the possession of personal wealth.  The only way for the circle to be broken is for the people with power to decide that particular items belong to particular individuals, whatever the rank of those individuals is.  Then we get into the business of having to distribute at minimum the society's product among the individuals as personal property, which means the powerful get to be the ones deciding the distribution, hence allowing them to distribute it disproportionately to themselves.   

The problem with the situation is alluded to in the second paragraph.  The people who are in the best position to use power to leverage wealth are *not* the politically powerful, that is the actual positions we currently have.  The reason is that people do not like people who are greedy and hoard stuff rather than distributing it to everyone and the politically powerful are generally quite expendable, aka for every person that is actually in charge there are a large number of people who rather want to be in charge and have the 'skills' needed.  It seems that the economically powerful, as in those who have skills that are not so easily replaced are in a better position to become rich because they *can* be hated by everyone and yet remain powerful.  It seems more likely that those folks can use their leverage to essentially blackmail the politically powerful into giving them preferential treatment because they can otherwise 'go elsewhere' and then we end up with a situation where intellectuals are employed by the powerful to justify why it is right and proper that those folks are rich in order that the powerful can avoid being overthrown for caving in to greedy opportunists. 

We then get established the concept that people should not just be given or take stuff according to what they need, they should only receive a return on the 'value' (a fictitious concept made up by the above mentioned intellectuals) that they contribute to society.  We hence end up with a situation where starvation of some people is entirely just, since said people did not 'contribute' enough to the economy to 'earn' their keep.  The final stage is for the people in charge to define their own positions as being of 'very high value' and hence they can now build lavish palaces of themselves and nobody will overthrow you anymore since they think you are 'worth it'.

Your ability or circumstances translates directly into success given that in this dwarf physics world if you are marginally bad at a job you perform it poorer and hence the most competent traders earn the most personal wealth, handled in worldgen via local currency and powerful nobles people talk about swaggering around with gold in their pockets.

Nope.  The most competent traders that presently exist do not earn the most personal wealth since the traders do not trade in their own wealth but in the wealth of the site they are located in or the civilization they represent.

Id say it applies much more to humans than dwarves, but id rule guilds in as a exception given that you must be competent & have a set of skills to proceed within unionistic politics and grow substantially powerful enough to front a guild or form your own. And from there you're powerful enough to lock horns with other guild members and even bodies of government over whatever matter is relevant.

The dwarf situation is actually completely different to the RL human situation to a massive degree, such a degree in fact that pretty much all institutions we might decide to copy-paste in from RL human society are pretty much suspect for being anachronistic.  The most major difference is that human societies are made out of individual households and settlements are created by a process of aggregation based upon how the proximity of other households is more beneficial than isolation.  Then governments come along and create infrastructure that increases the benefit of further aggregation while reducing the costs of the resulting overcrowding.  Hence we end up with larger and larger aggregates with more and more infrastructure+government, resulting in an ever reducing autonomy for the household units. 

The dwarf situation is entirely different.  Because the very space that the dwarves live in is artificial, we start off with infrastructure; very expensive infrastructure to build and maintain (though the game mechanics currently gloss over this).  In effect rather than the above situation where we have independent household units to start with, to begin with we have the infrastructure and the infrastructure 'creates' people.  The more capital is invested in order to mine out the largest amount of space, the more dwarves we end up with, but the people always get the full benefits (and costs) of aggregation since they start off packed together.  This creates a quite huge demand for infrastructure (or would if dwarves needed fresh water to drink and sewage disposal) on top of the initial cost of the fortress itself.

In summary the dwarves start off with a miniature version of the urban state of affairs that it took many millennia for humans to develop, minus any concept of individual households and all that entails.