The New Worlds Patreon is closing out a labor-focused month with a different angle on the topic: forced labor, of the sort generally grouped under the term “corvée.” Comment over there!

Having looked at the basic ideas of guilds and unions, the New Worlds Patreon now turns its attention to the question of how such groups (and others) can achieve their goals. Short answer: collective action! Longer answer: comment over there . . .

This week the New Worlds Patreon arrives at the reason I asked my patrons if they’d be all right with me delaying our August poll results until September: labor unions, i.e. the groups that are very much in the news right now, striving to protect their members against rapacious corporate interests. We’ll get to strikes and other such actions next week, but for now, comment over there!

Thanks to the flexibility of my patrons — who allowed me to swap in a timely replacement for the winner of the topic poll for August — this month the New Worlds Patreon is looking at some labor-related economic topics. We’re starting off with guilds — comment over there!

A month that started off with foreign diplomacy winds up spying on citizens at home, as the New Worlds Patreon takes a look at internal security. As usual, comment over there!

Diplomacy and espionage: they go together like peanut butter and the knife you use to spread it over bread. The New Worlds Patreon is taking a look at intelligence work — your comments over here will hopefully not self-destruct any time soon.

For diplomacy to have a chance, you need the right person to be conducting it. The New Worlds Patreon takes a look at the diplomats themselves — comment over there!

For July, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention to international affairs with the first of several posts on diplomacy! Comment over there . . .

I’m betting that quite a few of you have examples you could trot out for this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay, which concerns what happens when storytellers fail to think through the consequences of their worldbuilding. Share yours over at Book View Cafe!

Today’s New Worlds Patreon post comes with a trigger warning for discussion of many unpleasant critters, as we talk about vermin . . . comment over there!

This week on the New Worlds Patreon, some of the ways in which societies have tried to make themselves better by doing worse things. Comment over there . . .

This week, the New Worlds Patreon looks at what kinds of odd jobs the desperately poor might take in order to make ends meet. Comment over there!

Following on the general trend of the last two months of posts, for June the New Worlds Patreon is turning its attention to the very poorest stratum of society. We begin with the practice of begging — comment over at Book View Cafe!

Having looked at the people upstairs last week, now the New Worlds Patreon pivots downstairs, for a look at the servants . . . comment over there!

And in Year Seven, the New Worlds Patreon finally got around to talking about the aristocracy . . . Comment over there!

Having looked at the ideas of class and status, now the New Worlds Patreon is turning to the question of how those things get layered: which people are considered to be the most important and respectable in society, and which people are the least? The common answers aren’t always what you might assume . . . comment over there!

For the month of May, the New Worlds Patreon is turning its attention to the social divisions within society! We begin by clarifying some terminology that often gets carelessly used — that of class, status, and caste. Comment over there . . .

The end of the month means the end of a theme (for now), and so the New Worlds Patreon‘s last economic piece for April is on the complexity of two very different systems, manorialism and post-scarcity. Comment over there!

I promise, the New Worlds Patreon is not going to take you too deep into Econ 101 — but this week, we are talking about how much a given economy is planned and controlled vs. left to do its own thing. Comment over there!

The next stop on the New Worlds Patreon tour of economic systems is the concept of property ownership! Comment over there . . .