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Rosharan Spheres to US Dollars

Jofwu

Entry posted by Jofwu

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u/Aradanftw on Reddit put together a post converting Roshar's spheres to US Dollars. So this is 99% their work and not my own! But I thought it was interesting and something that I might want to reference more often down the road. Perhaps I'll remember to add more things to it.

My main "contribution" was a push to reduce the values by an order of magnitude. The diamond chip was originally set at $2, based on the price of a loaf of bread. I'm not sure Aradanftw was entirely on board with this opinion, but the prices I've posted below are 1/10th of that. I'll admit that I'm not great with economics and inflation values, so I'm happy to be corrected on this. But it seems to me like we should compare the prices to Earth prices at a similar level of technological development? So I'm thinking we should look more at 19th century (-ish) US dollars rather than 21st century US dollars? The price of bread in early/pre-industrial society is different than modern society. Even now you can go to non-Western developing countries where a bit of bread is going to be a lot less than $2. And, admittedly, part of the drive for this is that $2 as you SMALLEST denomination of currency seems off to me.

Aside from that price shift, I've also reorganized everything from lowest value to highest, and reworked some of the details. So assuming 1 diamond chip = a loaf of bread = $0.20, we've got the following prices:

Rosharan spheres to US Dollars:

  • 1 diamond chip (smallest denomination) - $0.20
  • Apothecary bandages, per armlength (1 diamond chip) - $0.20
  • Candied fruit (1 diamond chip) - $0.20
  • Shallan's trip to the Palanaeum (2 diamond chips) - $0.40
     
  • Bridgeman slave daily wages (1 diamond mark) - $1
  • Bridgeman daily wages (2 diamond marks) - $2
  • Tozbek's sailors' daily wages (1 ruby chip) - $2
  • Shallan's slaves' daily wages (1 ruby chip + 5 ruby chips toward slave debt) - $2 + $10 toward slave debt
  • Apothecary needle and thread (2 diamond marks) - $2
  • Soldier's daily wages (5 diamond marks) - $5
  • Bowl of firemoss, each (1 garnet broam for three bowls)- $6.60 per bowl
     
  • Adolin's tip to Kaladin (1 emerald chip) - $10
  • Apothecary larmic mucus (2 ruby marks) - $20
  • Mraize tips Mem for getting the aether from his suit (3 ruby marks) - $30
  • Apothecary lister's oil (2 sapphire marks) - $50
  • Palanaeum alcove rental (2 sapphire marks) - $50
  • Shallan's mistaken offer for candied fruit (1 emerald mark) - $50
  • Apothecary knobweed sap, per bottle (2 sapphire marks) $50
     
  • Copy of Words of Radiance, found by Gaz (2 sapphire broams) - $200
  • 1 emerald broam (largest denomination) - $200
  • Shallan's weekly stipend (3 emerald broams) - $600
  • Renegotiated price for Shallan's books (2 emerald broams and 3 sapphire broams) - $700
     
  • Tvlakv's trade wagon and 5 slaves (5 emerald broams) - $1,000
  • Artmyrn's initial offer for Shallan's books (10 emerald broams) - $2,000
  • Shallan's aluminum necklass (10 emerald broams) - $2,000
  • Gaz's debt (80 ruby broams) - $3,200
  • Wikim and Balat's knives, each (20 emerald broams) - $4,000
     
  • Dalanar's offered price to purchase Sadaes's bridgemen, each (60 emerald broams) - $12,000
     
  • Palanaeum chit of admittance (1,000 sapphire broams) - $100,000
  • Sadaes would reject even if Dalinar this much for bridgemen, each (1,000 emerald broams) - $200,000
     

Again, I'm not ecoomist or historian, but I think these sound somewhat reasonable? Could be shifted around a little one way or the other, but I think the order of magnitude feels right.

There are people (in extreme poverty) in our world who live on $2 per day. The wages for the sailors does seem a bit low, but both they and the bridgemen also essentially have free housing and (presumably) meals. So that's more of a stipend than a wage. Seems like a very reasonable wage for what is essentially a pre-industrial indentured servant?

The minimum pricepoint of $0.20 STILL seems weirdly high, but I don't think we can go much lower. The bread doesn't seem bad, though it's odd to me candied fruit costs the same. What do you charge for a non-candied piece of fruit? Do people just not do that? They'd buy more than one piece? Perhaps the people at the bottom of society tend to just barter goods directly instead of using spheres.

Books costing a few hundred dollars apiece seems somewhat reasonable? I expect books cost even more, prior to the printing press. But then Roshar is a bit more culturally developed despite that technology, so demand is probably bringing that price down.

Dalinar's offer to buy the bridgemen is crazy. There were about 1,000 bridgemen I believe, which puts the total cost (if Sadeas had agreed) at $12 million. Apparently Dalinar could afford that (if only barely) while Sadeas's counter-offer of $200 million was going too far. So that's interesting.

 

EDITS:

2021-08-17

  1. I saw someone point out a WoB in which Brandon says that 1 dollar = 1 clearmark "sounds about right". (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/75/#e4380) Now, this is the kind of detail that I REALLY don't think Brandon is likely to remember off the top of his head, especially in the middle of a signing. So I don't put much weight in this. But it's something and it's exactly what I had here. So that's nice.
  2. Thanks to Caleb Richards on Facebook for catching an error on the cost of the Palanaeum alcove rental. Had $500 when it should have been $50.
  3. I did a quick search through Dawnshard and Rhythm of War and didn't find anything of note to add. Didn't get any transactions in the book where the spheres exchanged are made clear. So this should be up-to-date through RoW.
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Frustration

Frustration Stormfather

Posted (edited)

I don't think using the price of bread is the most accurate, though the prices look nice.

 

I think it would be better to look at the minimum wage, as without a way to look at the number of sphere's in circulation it would give us at least a rough approximate of the economy.

Assuming an eight hour workday the national minimum wage in the US is $58

 

Now there are three places I can think of we could look at for a Rosharan equivelent

Slave wages, Non-citizen wages, and Citizen wages.

       A slave's daily wage is 1 Diamond Mark

       A non-citizen's is 2 Marks

        and a Citizen's would be 4.

 

Assuming it goes by slave wages

1 Diamond chip is $11.60 which definatly feels too high but I'd thought I'd mention it.

 

On Non-citizen wages 1 Diamond chip is $5.80 which also feels really high

 

And on Citzen wages 1 Diamond chip is $2.90 which almost lines up with what the original number were.

Other sphere weights going on this value

Spoiler

Diamond chip $2.90

Diamond Mark $14.50

Diamond Broam $58

 

Lesserweight gems like Garnet, Helioder and Topaz

Chip $14.50

Mark $72.5

Broam $290

 

Middle weight Ruby smokestone and Zircon

Chip $29

Mark $145

Broam $580

 

Prime Pair Amethyst and Saphire

Chip $72.50

Mark $362.50

Broam $1450

 

Emerald

Chip $145

Mark $725

Broam $2900

Now if these numbers feel off to you take your states 8 hour minimum wage and divide by 20 that's a Diamond chips value, and you can use the coppermind chart to get the other values https://coppermind.net/wiki/Spheres

Edited by Frustration
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Jofwu
4 hours ago, Frustration said:

I think it would be better to look at the minimum wage, as without a way to look at the number of sphere's in circulation it would give us at least a rough approximate of the economy.

Assuming an eight hour workday the national minimum wage in the US is $58

I think this basis is problematic though. Minimum wage in a modern nation–one of the richest in the world–seems rather arbitrary. We could pass a bill tomorrow that changes the minimum wage. And the median daily income worldwide is quite a bit lower than this.

The poorest people in the work living on more than $2 a day seems weird to me.

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Frustration
12 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

I think this basis is problematic though. Minimum wage in a modern nation–one of the richest in the world–seems rather arbitrary. We could pass a bill tomorrow that changes the minimum wage.

And that would change the value of a dollar.

13 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

And the median daily income worldwide is quite a bit lower than this.

Yes, but we don't have a world wide currency so making that conversion isn't possible

14 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

The poorest people in the work living on more than $2 a day seems weird to me.

It does, but there aren't any smaller denominations of curency, my one answer is that we might have looked far more into this than Brandon did.

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Jofwu
6 hours ago, Frustration said:

And that would change the value of a dollar.

Yes, but it's not a 1:1 change.

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

Yes, but we don't have a world wide currency so making that conversion isn't possible

It's absolutely possible? Converting from one currency to another is rather straightforward. You have to take into account differences in purchasing power, but that's not an uncommon exercise (much less impossible). The Wikipedia page about it isn't short.

Generally purchasing power is based on comparing the costs of comparable goods and services. If bread costs 2 USD in the US and 4 CAD in the Canada, and the current exchange rate is 1 USD = 2 CAD, then we can say 1 USD and 1 CAD effectively have the same value. (if we are basing purchasing power entirely on a loaf of bread) It's basically the same thing as comparing the relative values of a single currency over time, with inflation in the picture.

This is why I jumped towards looking at the price of bread. It's a very imperfect point of measurement to be sure. There's a reason that "market baskets" typically consist of a great many goods and services... But I think that approach to comparing value makes more sense than minimum wage.

I'll fully admit this is pretty wonky though, and rather arbitrary, when we're comparing two different currencies across major time gaps. It's less like comparing the Euro to the US Dollar and more like comparing 2020 US Dollars to... Chinese currency in 1700.

6 hours ago, Frustration said:

my one answer is that we might have looked far more into this than Brandon did.

That I agree with fully :lol:

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Frustration
44 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

Yes, but it's not a 1:1 change.

That is true, and I will fully admit that without the information on the demographics of Roshar and what percentage earns what, my estimate is very bad at best.

46 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

It's absolutely possible? Converting from one currency to another is rather straightforward. You have to take into account differences in purchasing power, but that's not an uncommon exercise (much less impossible). The Wikipedia page about it isn't short.

I was meaning that there isn't one economy, but yes, it can be transfered between.

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