By the time Little Knife received the banquet invitation, the currents secretly swirling through Ankandela had begun to surface.
Throughout history, anywhere in the world, what kind of business made the most money?
Without question, monopolies made the most money.
And the merchant associations and guilds of all sizes in Ankandela made their money through monopolies.
If you only skimmed the rules of these merchant associations and guilds, they seemed excellent. Through internal regulation and restrictions on outside competition, they appeared to protect their members' interests while encouraging healthy competition within their ranks.
But was that really the case?
No. To understand the truth, you had to read all of that in reverse: protection meant exploitation.
Their supposedly strict membership requirements and barriers to entry dictated uniform product prices, production quantities, specifications, and quality standards. Internally, they enforced a rigid hierarchy, from apprentice to journeyman to master, with strict rules and reviews governing every promotion.
They also used all sorts of means to exclude outside competition, including banning out-of-town merchants from local markets or charging them exorbitant transit taxes.
A guild might have been a good organization in its early days, but give it a few years, until internal classes emerged and one or three dominant figures rose to the top.
Then the guild became a tool for preventing competitors from ever emerging and exploiting its other members, allowing those at the top to rake in millions or tens of millions a month, much like Shenzhen landlords living off rent.
That was exactly what happened now, when the heads of Ankandela's merchant associations and guilds realized that the interim mayor sent by Prince Chris was saving the city's starving population at the expense of their interests.
Like dogs struck by a stone, they immediately began barking, trying to threaten the