Karger

So she has left over gemstones or something?

This is the one interpretation that I think actually makes sense. Lin is not actually gaining any money the ghoostbloods are supplying him with money that he turns into marble and then sells. However this raises the new question. How does Shallan expect to make money once she gets the soulcaster? She must known the economics so she knows that their is no way to actually make money just by having a soulcaster. Not the same thing or even realated. Assuming good communication which we know exists(spanreads). Market forces will react quite quickly. A ponzi scheme is about keeping people fooled by clever book keeping. You just have to say that you are making reasonable profits when you are actually getting new investors in your pyramid scheme. Arbitrage(in this case) requires everyone on the planet to not know the price of a major commodity and for this to last several years.

Yes but arbitrage only works in the short term. Lin was doing this for several years. Market forces are occasionally slow but I find myself doubting that they are that slow.

YNYASFW you wonder why they can;t just soulcast away the mice problem in your building.

It could have done two or three transformations or all of them. The only thing we know about it is that it could use topaz.

The fundamental laws of economics are immutable unless scarcity does not exist. Not completely true. I am pretty sure you get the same pay no matter what nahn you are and while your dahn does matter the fact that there exists more government control over wages does not alter economic realities. This is not realy that different from base minimums of pay. In fact having cultural decided upon wages for certain tasks that were more or less immutable was common through large periods of human history(the bible discusses them). Same as with silver and gold which were used across the entire known world for centuries. So gemstones are a renewable resource? How does this have any bearing on the discussion? Goodbye. I hope you are not to frustrated(I mean that sincerely I am not being facetious).

We are not talking about 90% of soulcasters. We are talking about one specific type of soulcaster(or actually two). The anything two one type of essence(in this case topaz) and the anything to anything.

You can limit false scarcity to things like aluminum which can be only produced by soulcasting. If you try and limit the amount of something when you have no real control over the supply it does not work. Marble mining is common enough that Lin Davar's wealth can pass without undue consideration. This indicates that their are more profitable uses for topaz soulcasters then making marble. This should drive up the cost of topaz to above marble. Depends weather or not you are still on the gold standard. Up until 1970s you could go to a bank and get however much cash you had converted into gold at any time. The highprinces don't have soulcasters. They realy on the king for them. They also have to feed their own people and give them basic necessities so it makes sense for them to produce these or trade for them with each other. I am not sure why this matters. Even if they are limited they still have various things they obviously can produce and I would be shocked if marble was somehow the best of them. If they move the soulcasters to different locations(this is pretty easy) then the flooding will not matter as much. With Topaz you could just vary the mineral you are producing at the time(you have quite a few options).

Or maybe he is writing Kaladin being depressed.

65%!

What is clearly not the case. Sorry if I am being dense but I am not sure what exactly you are referring to. This does not matter. Provided the soulcasters the wealthy people own can work fast enough. Think of it this way. If you live on Roshar and have a gemstone that gemstone has actual inherent worth(unlike our money). To a person with a soulcaster this gemstone is worth the exact amount of goods that it can be used to produce. Everyone knows that amount(or at least business people who know about gemstones and soulcasting). Basically. From an economic standpoint. There is no real difference between soulcasting something worthless into the goods you want and just going to the store and buying it. In both cases you are exchanging money for a group of goods. Here is the problem with Lin Daver's scheme. He can't use his soulcaster at peak efficiency(he can't use topaz to produce just anything it has to be marble) . Even if the price stays the same he is putting marble on the market that is competing with other soulcast marble. If I can afford soulcast marble I am not going to just buy marble slabs. I am going to mail them what I want soulcast and save myself the labor and time costs of working it(working marble correctly can take months or years soulcasting can save me time) or just summon the soulcaster to my place of work and have them do it their. Either way saves me money but both are things that Lin is not going to be able to do. Also if for whatever reason marble prices fall dramatically(as they will if he produces too much) his scheme will start loosing money. If Navani Kholin discovers a great use of Topaz in a fabrial then the price of topaz goes up the scheme is shot. Even normal market fluctuations of earthen materials and the topaz gemstone are going to make his scheme (which he can't very at all) impractical at best.

I don't think it works that way. Also shards exist mostly in the spirit world where time is a bit of a wishy washy concept at best. Honor's death caused his craziness not the other way around(if I am interpreting the Stormfather correctly).

The Ardents involved don't seem to mind that much if Kaza is any indication. After all she almost welcomed death and the fact that she did not shocked her entire family. Having a soulcaster is basically worthless if you do not use it frequently. Do you really think anyone is going to let a large number of soulcasters just sit around in a vault somewhere unused? Also in as I mentioned before. Soulcasters in Alethkar are common enough that they altered the way Gavilar's unification campaign went. This indicates several dozen soulcasters that can produce food and other amenities for an army under siege. Even if soulcasters are not often used to their full potential anyone who knows something about economics(and some people on Roshar do know a thing or two about economics) will realize that gemstones have an expected value. Basically even if you can't convert them right at this moment you can still stockpile gemstones and use them latter. Actually I found a better metaphor for what Lin Davar is doing. He is buying marble (because that is what soulcasting marble is) with money and then selling that marble for money and making a profit off of doing so. Do you see why I find this prospect silly? Gemstones on Roshar were only valuable because of soulcasting for most of their history(during the age of solitude). That was their only inherent value. Now they can use them to carry stormlight and make fabrials but that actually drives up their inherent worth causing what is essentially deflation and making having money more desirable then spending it(soulcasting).

Exactly thank you.

If their is an economic imperative then everyone will be doing it or they will be loosing value in opportunity costs. Why do I need to? A topaz is worth x. The amount of marble I can create with a topaz x is on average y. If x is for some reason worth more then y then doing Lin Davar's plan looses him value(that is just mathematics I will spare you the proof). If y is greater then x to the point where considerable money can be made by turning x into y then everyone should do so immediately bringing the cost of the limited amount of x(remember eventually these gemstones shatter and it takes time to replace them) bringing the cost of y down to x.

One of the highprinces in Oathbringer says that they Casmefiend gemhearts will eventually break. My point is that the amount is finite. I don't have to know how much it is. As long as it is finite any time you are making a substance less valuable then the most valuable substance you can make you are destroying value. This is a basic part of economics actually.

My question is that Lin should not be able to generate much money with the soulcaster because he is burning up his profits in gemstone costs. How is he making any money? He is highly restricted in what he can make(marble deposits) and he can't make art or bunkers or whatever else they use topaz gemstones for. Topaz gemstones can make any mineral provided you have an appropriate soulcaster. Therefore an average topaz gemstone G should be able to make a given mass x of any of the following before shattering. x Gold x Copper x Silver x Lead x Tin x Iron x Bronze x Marble x Granite x Alabaster x Geminite x Aluminum x Steel x Obsidian x Every other metal or mineral you can think of but I got tired of writing. The point is all of these substances are possible to create and can be used for something. They all also have prices that fluctuate widely based on availability and demand. Every time you use a gemstone to create marble when some other substance that you can produce you are actually destroying value. This is not even considering marble artwork or the convenience of reducing transport costs that soulcasting offers. Given this I am going to say that basically every time you soulcast you are probably destroying value. Your argument seems to be that soulcasters are so rare and costly to use that they can't use them but we see evidence of constant and even frivolous use of them throughout the series. They are also common enough that during Gavilar's Alethi conquest sieges were generally thought to be impractical because everyone had a soulcaster that could create food(considering the number of places Gavilar had to conqueror if sieges were a thing that he had to deal with he would have mentioned it).

Harmony refuses to mind control people under most situations. Compounding Identity would certainly help with soothing but the gaps would still exist. I am not sure that you can get rid of the flaw that easily.

Prints on metal would not alter its functionality so I don't realy see why they would bother getting rid of them. This does not prove that you can't do it. In fact I see no reason to bother. Availability of soulcasters is high enough that they use them to create street food. Clearly they are not as limited as we might expect.

As stated above we have pretty clear indications that the King has a monopoly on all soulcasters. Make it out of clay then and sand of the finger prints and such. Make it out of ice and do the same. Find a odd Rosharan wood that does not have a grain(I suspect they have some) or sculpt out of alabaster(an easy to carve soft stone) and then soulcast that into marble. All of these methods are easier then sculpting marble by hand(marble is actually a rather hard stone so you find yourself putting way to much force when chiselling).

I would have done this same thing in real life if someone thought they saw Nightblood.

Don't double post you can edit your original post if you have to. Yes. I kind of want some characterization and work to be done with Ialia.

If you want more Lift you can read Edgedancer before Oathbringer.

Greetings.