“Well, that’s just plain wrong,” said Miriam. “That idea used to be called mercantilism. Discarding it was one of the key steps that distinguishes my world from yours. The essential insight is that human beings create value. A lump of iron ore isn’t as valuable as a handful of nails, because it takes human labor to turn it into nails and nails are more useful. Now, if you have iron ore but no labor, and I have labor but no iron ore, both of us can profit by trade, can’t we? I can take your iron ore, make nails, give you some of them in payment, and we’re both better off, because before we had no nails at all. Isn’t that right?”

“I think I see.” Olga wrinkled her brow. “You’re telling me that we don’t trade? That the Clan has the wrong idea about how to make money—”

“Yes, but that’s only part of it. The Clan doesn’t add value, it simply moves it around. But another important factor is that a peasant farmer is less good at creating value than, say, a farmer who knows about crop rotation and soil maintenance and how to fertilize his fields effectively. And a man who can sit down all day and make nails is less productive than an engineer who can make a machine that takes in wire feedstock at one end and spits out nails at the other. It’s more productive to make a machine to make nails, and then run it, than to make the nails yourself. Educated people can think of ways to make such machines or provide valuable services—but to get to the wealth, you’ve got to have an educated population. Do you see that?”

“What you’re doing, you’re taking ideas where they’re needed, and teaching people with iron ore to make nails and, and do other things, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And while I can’t easily take the fruits of that trade home with me, I can make myself rich over here. Which in turn should serve to give me some leverage with the Clan, shouldn’t it? And there’s another thing.” She looked pensive. “If the goal is to modernize the Gruinmarkt, the land where the Clan holds so much power, it’s going to be necessary to import technologies and ideas from a world that isn’t as far ahead as the United States. There’s less of a gap to jump between New Britain and the eastern kingdoms. What I want to do is to develop riches in this realm, and use them to finance seed investments in the kingdoms. If the Clan won’t let me live away from them, at least I can try to make my life more comfortable. No more drafty medieval castles!”