[rec.arts.sf.written] Re: Middle Earth Economics

[Ignatios Souvatzis]

Subject: Re: Middle Earth Economics
From: Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written

On 28/01/13 2:09 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On 25 Jan 2013 18:53:14 -0500, wds...@panix.com (William December
> Starr) wrote:
>
>> In article <kdv5jg$7qu$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> said:
>>
>>> On 1/25/13 6:44 PM, William December Starr wrote:
>>>
>>>> Question: did the text ever address the question of whether
>>>> Sauron could have made himself safe from "Ring ==> Mount Doom" by
>>>> pre-emptively destroying Mount Doom? Or would doing that have
>>>> schnorked out the Ring anyway?
>>>
>>> Wiping out a volcano and silencing the very fires of the Earth
>>> would seem to be a bit beyond his power level; he could do stuff
>>> that triggered it on or off, but actually moving it or destroying
>>> it would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Morgoth could
>>> probably have done that if he really wanted to but it would've
>>> been a major effort for him even in his prime.
>>
>> Well, foo. He still should have at least installed a safety grill
>> over it.
>
> I never thought of that. That is a good idea. A bit late
> though. Sauron ought to have thought of it.
>
> From the Mount Doom chapter: "The path was not put there for the
> purposes of Sam. He did not know it, but he was looking at Sauron's
> Road from Barad-dûr to the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire. Out
> from the Dark Tower's huge western gate it came over a deep abyss by a
> vast bridge of iron, and then passing into the plain it ran for a
> league between two smoking chasms, and so reached a long sloping
> causeway that led up on to the Mountain's eastern side. Thence,
> turning and encircling all its wide girth from south to north, it
> climbed at last, high in the upper cone, but still far from the
> reeking summit, to a dark entrance that gazed back east straight to
> the Window of the Eye in Sauron's shadow-mantled fortress. Often
> blocked or destroyed by the tumults of the Mountain's furnaces,
> always that road was repaired and cleared again by the labours of
> countless orcs."
>
> A road, a big bridge, a causeway, and a regular maintenance
> program: obviously, Sauron did think about infrastructure. And yet,
> he blundered horribly by not having a comparatively inexpensive
> precaution in place.
>
> With his expertise in high-temperature metalwork, it is
> reasonable to assume that he could have come up with heat-resistant
> alloys for the screen. We could assume, for the purposes of the
> Story, that such alloys can not be used effectively in magical rings,
> or perhaps, that such alloys would come later in Sauron's private
> industrial age.
>
> Next Week: Sauron's development of large-scale irrigation works
> in Nurn?

I am also greatly concerned about the effects of large-scale
unemployment in Mordor after the collapse of Sauron Inc. - it's all very
well for those hobbits to go home and live happily ever after, but what
about the w-ork-ers?

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