Foriegn merchant proposal

Now this is not my writing, it was sent to me by Allikath ( I think, someone from the somerset council at any rate), and i'm not even to sure of it myself, but she asked me to suggest it to the town council and see what you guys think....

Quote :

Merchants
The following is part of the town law and to be recognized only for this town

Article 1 The Law
A merchant is to inform the mayor of the town, preferably before he/she arrives in the town, about what goods the merchant expects to sell in that specific town. Before the merchant proceeds to place the commodities on the market, he/she needs to await the permission from the mayor to go ahead. The mayor has the right to decide if the merchant can or can not sell his/her commodities and how much the merchant can sell on the towns market. This is considered a Light crime. The sentence for this crime are described in Article 2.1.2 and Article 2.1.3

Article 2 Definition
Merchant – A player who sells commodities on another market from a different county.

Mayor – The chief magistrate of a town.

Newcomer mentors – Usually a citizen from the town sending welcome letters to new arrivals.

Article 3 How to enforce
From the day this law is declared part of the Town Law, there is one month where only warnings are given to people who violate this law.

Using the newcomer mentors, it is easy to identify who is from another county.
Incase a player from another county travels through the town this mail is to be sent –

Dear -Name-,

Welcome to –town name-. I am -Name-, if you do need anything from this town, please do ask me.

Also if you have anything to trade, town law requires that you discuss it with the mayor (-mayor name-) before you make any purchases or sales. We can discuss prices and quantities.

Awaiting your reply. Enjoy your stay here in –town name-.

Sincerely,
-Name-

It is a security matter. To secure our market isn't bad, but it will give us problems on long term.
Furthermore it will make the game far less fun. Traders have already enouth problems. Look at how many court cases come from Bath. It mostly are things like this. I don't want this for Chard. As he is a trader, I would like to hear Rebo's opinion especially on this.
England has a free market and free trade. If we want Chard to become a wealthy town, we have to base this on trade. With this proposal we would get stuck.

This law seems to have some good intentions, I will concede that. But it has some that I think we must be wary of, and if it were to be implemented there needs to be serious clarification.

Let me start off by defining what I see as the potential positive: Market Protection. This is obviously the primary intent of the law- to protect the markets from "invasion" of foreign merchants. and I will say that that is a positive, HOWEVER, we already have a quite a few laws that do this. Fraud, dumping, etcetera all are in place to protect our markets. I might add, that the laws that do exist are completely and utterly vauge and need to be revisited (or at least clarified and specified) if we are to have any semblance of transparency in our legistlative branch. This seems like an apropriate segway.

This law centralizes a lot of power in the Mayor. I agree the Mayor should be the most prominent person in the town and in town politics, but this very well may be tipping too much power into one person's hands. If the mayor has the absolute authority to deem what can and cannot be sold on our markets, beyond the current vauge laws, then we are venturing far from a "free" market.

All of the things listed in the law seem to be proper merchant ettiquette. I try always to contact the mayor of the town before conducting my trading business for two reasons. 1) It is the proper ettiquette to do so, and 2) you will avoid being accused of breaking some law. Do we need laws that govern all forms of ettiquette? I personally do not think so.

So to sum up this long response: This law is unnecessary because what it aims to prevent is already illeagal, what it aims to enforce should already be practiced, and it ventures down a slippery slope of the concentration of power.

(OOC: Oh! AND this would make a merchant's life way less interesting to role play. Also sometimes the mayor is not available on one day or the other).

-Rebo

Personally i'm not too interested in this law either, but the somerset council members are still buggin me about this, do bellos/marshy have any further input, at the moment it seems a pretty firm "no" to me

I'll have to say I don't like this law either. I think that it's a little too vague, it make things complicated and time consuming. However if a new law were to be drafted, I would be happy to look and agree on it if it were fair to everyone.

I think the main issue is the drain on mayor time, the mayor already has a busy enough schedule as is without having to wade through mails of people proposing things to put on the market, and since mayors often log in say twice or three times a day the merchant could be waiting a long time, a lot of wasted time this law sounds like to me, so I would vote nay

I discussed this with the creators of this idea and I think it is hard to maintain this law.

I know as mayor you are online a lot to make sure things are good in the town but still .. This will be time consuming.

Of cause should you see an unfamiliar face in town then by all means contact him to inquire of his stay in Chard.

Maybe he has some good bargains