"One book costs upwards of half a day's wages for a very well-paid second-circle wizard.  Right then.  I need to check your book manufacturing technology at some point and see if the bottleneck is printing or papermaking or human labor to operate the machines or if there's some downstream distribution issue or what, because that is not a sustainable book price for a civilization that's trying to own a reasonable number of books."

"Anyways.  The reasons I wouldn't expect that particular attack angle to work on me if I thought anything more careful than a pure snap decision is, first of all, that I'm explicitly aware of contrasts between easily commensurable quantities and how those can distort my cognition by calling attention to themselves.  Second, that I'm constantly putting a sort of wordless quantity on how much I want things.  In Civilization I could easily have translated that quantity to unskilled-labor-hours or, more usual for myself, the minutes or hours of my time that I'd spend to get something - including by working to buy it, if it was something that could be bought directly with money."

"The fact that I don't actually have a bank account full of unskilled-labor-hours, anymore, and instead have a completely unfamiliar currency called 'gold pieces', is contributing to a constant state of disorientation in the back of my mind.  I'll seem less timid and hesitant once I actually know how much everything around me costs and this core process of all of my cognition is able to actually run again."

"Your next question is why my salary of 500 gold pieces per week doesn't establish a value for my time of 71 gold pieces per day.  Because that's a trivial side payment compared to the expected worth of my future share of Project income, is why, more or less.  I could spend a day describing the reasons for the exact structures in the Project articles of incorporation to the Church of Asmodeus, which is something I've now been requested to do at some point, and earn 2000 gold that way.  I'm not running off to do it because it's obvious that a day of my time is worth much more than 4000 gold to Cheliax, assuming they offered me half the real value to the Church there.  If at any point I found myself even considering spending a week of my time to avoid spending 500 gold pieces on something, it would be obvious that I needed a higher salary, what with, for example, all the Security wizards here also costing 500 gold a week each."

"So how much is my time actually worth in gold pieces?  What are gold pieces worth to me in terms of anything else I want?  I have no idea.  Thankfully there's a pretrained reflex and habit in my brain that already knows how to assign quantities to anything it wants, and it can go on assigning those quantities even though they're currently meaningless to me in terms of money, and so I can go on pretending to be a functional human being."

"One book costs upwards of half a day's wages for a very well-paid second-circle wizard.  Right then.  I need to check your book manufacturing technology at some point and see if the bottleneck is printing or papermaking or human labor to operate the machines or if there's some downstream distribution issue or what, because that is not a sustainable book price for a civilization that's trying to own a reasonable number of books."

"Anyways.  The reasons I wouldn't expect that particular attack angle to work on me if I thought anything more careful than a pure snap decision is, first of all, that I'm explicitly aware of contrasts between easily commensurable quantities and how those can distort my cognition by calling attention to themselves.  Second, that I'm constantly putting a sort of wordless quantity on how much I want things.  In Civilization I could easily have translated that quantity to unskilled-labor-hours or, more usual for myself, the minutes or hours of my time that I'd spend to get something - including by working to buy it, if it was something that could be bought directly with money."

"The fact that I don't actually have a bank account full of unskilled-labor-hours, anymore, and instead have a completely unfamiliar currency called 'gold pieces', is contributing to a constant state of disorientation in the back of my mind.  I'll seem less timid and hesitant once I actually know how much everything around me costs and this core process of all of my cognition is able to actually run again."

"Your next question is why my salary of 500 gold pieces per week doesn't establish a value for my time of 71 gold pieces per day.  Because that's a trivial side payment compared to the expected worth of my future share of Project income, is why, more or less.  I could spend a day describing the reasons for the Project's exact contract structure to the Church of Asmodeus, which is something I've now been requested to do at some point, and earn 2000 gold that way.  I'm not running off to do it because it's obvious that one-day delay in Cheliax achieving a larger economy is worth much more than 2000 gold.  If at any point I found myself even considering spending a week of my time to avoid spending 500 gold pieces on something, it would be obvious that I needed a higher salary, what with, for example, all the Security wizards here also costing 500 gold a week each."

"So how much is my time actually worth in gold pieces?  What are gold pieces worth to me in terms of anything else I want?  I have no idea.  Thankfully there's a pretrained reflex and habit in my brain that already knows how to assign quantities to anything it wants, and it can go on assigning those quantities even though they're currently meaningless to me in terms of money, and so I can go on pretending to be a functional human being."

"One book costs upwards of half a day's wages for a very well-paid second-circle wizard.  Right then.  I need to check your book manufacturing technology at some point and see if the bottleneck is printing or papermaking or human labor to operate the machines or if there's some downstream distribution issue or what, because that is not a sustainable book price for a civilization that's trying to own a reasonable number of books."

"Anyways.  The reasons I wouldn't expect that particular attack angle to work on me if I thought anything more careful than a pure snap decision is, first of all, that I'm explicitly aware of contrasts between easily commensurable quantities and how those can distort my cognition by calling attention to themselves.  Second, that I'm constantly putting a sort of wordless quantity on how much I want things.  In Civilization I could easily have translated that quantity to unskilled-labor-hours or, more usual for myself, the minutes or hours of my time that I'd spend to get something - including by working to buy it, if it was something that could be bought directly with money."

"The fact that I don't actually have a bank account full of unskilled-labor-hours, anymore, and instead have a completely unfamiliar currency called 'gold pieces', is contributing to a constant state of disorientation in the back of my mind.  I'll seem less timid and hesitant once I actually know how much everything around me costs and this core process of all of my cognition is able to actually run again."

"Your next question is why my salary of 500 gold pieces per week doesn't establish a value for my time of 71 gold pieces per day.  Because that's a trivial side payment compared to the expected worth of my future share of Project income, is why, more or less.  I could spend a day describing the reasons for the Project's exact contract structure to the Church of Asmodeus, which is something I've now been requested to do at some point, and earn 2000 gold that way.  I'm not running off to do it because it's obvious that a one-day delay in Cheliax achieving a larger economy costs much more than 2000 gold.  If at any point I found myself even considering spending a week of my time to avoid spending 500 gold pieces on something, it would be obvious that I needed a higher salary, what with, for example, all the Security wizards here also costing 500 gold a week each."

"So how much is my time actually worth in gold pieces?  What are gold pieces worth to me in terms of anything else I want?  I have no idea.  Thankfully there's a pretrained reflex and habit in my brain that already knows how to assign quantities to anything it wants, and it can go on assigning those quantities even though they're currently meaningless to me in terms of money, and so I can go on pretending to be a functional human being."

"One book costs upwards of half a day's wages for a very well-paid second-circle wizard.  Right then.  I need to check your book manufacturing technology at some point and see if the bottleneck is printing or papermaking or human labor to operate the machines or if there's some downstream distribution issue or what, because that is not a sustainable book price for a civilization that's trying to own a reasonable number of books."

"Anyways.  The reasons I wouldn't expect that particular attack angle to work on me if I thought anything more careful than a pure snap decision is, second of all, that I'm explicitly aware of contrasts between easily commensurable quantities and how those can distort my cognition by calling attention to themselves.  First, that I'm constantly putting a quantity on how much I want things.  In Civilization I could easily have translated that quantity to unskilled-labor-hours or, more usual for myself, the minutes or hours of my time that I'd spend to get something - including by working to buy it, if it was something that could be bought directly with money."

"The fact that I don't actually have a bank account full of unskilled-labor-hours, anymore, and instead have a completely unfamiliar currency called 'gold pieces', is contributing to a constant state of disorientation in the back of my mind.  I'll seem less timid and hesitant once I actually know how much everything around me costs and this core process of all of my cognition is able to actually run again."

"Your next question is why my salary of 500 gold pieces per week doesn't establish a value for my time of 71 gold pieces per day.  Because that's a trivial side payment compared to the expected worth of my future share of Project income, is why, more or less.  I could spend a day describing the reasons for the Project's exact contract structure to the Church of Asmodeus, which is something I've now been requested to do at some point, and earn 2000 gold that way.  I'm not running off to do it because it's obvious that a one-day delay in Cheliax achieving a larger economy costs much more than 2000 gold.  If at any point I found myself even considering spending a week of my time to avoid spending 500 gold pieces on something, it would be obvious that I needed a higher salary, what with, for example, all the Security wizards here also costing 500 gold a week each."

"So how much is my time actually worth in gold pieces?  What are gold pieces worth to me in terms of anything else I want?  I have no idea.  Thankfully there's a pretrained reflex and habit in my brain that already knows how to assign quantities to anything it wants, and it can go on assigning those quantities even though they're currently meaningless to me in terms of money, and so I can go on pretending to be a functional human being."

"One book costs upwards of half a day's wages for a very well-paid second-circle wizard.  Right then.  I need to check your book manufacturing technology at some point and see if the bottleneck is printing or papermaking or human labor to operate the machines or if there's some downstream distribution issue or what, because that is not a sustainable book price for a civilization that's trying to own a reasonable number of books."

"Anyways.  The reasons I wouldn't expect that particular attack angle to work on me if I thought anything more careful than a pure snap decision is, second of all, that I'm explicitly aware of contrasts between easily commensurable quantities and how those can distort my cognition by calling attention to themselves.  First, that I'm constantly putting a quantity on how much I want things.  In Civilization I could easily have translated that quantity to unskilled-labor-hours or, closer to myself, the minutes or hours of my time that I'd spend to get something - including by working to buy it, if it was something that could be bought directly with money."

"The fact that I don't actually have a bank account full of unskilled-labor-hours, anymore, and instead own a completely unfamiliar valuable called 'gold pieces', is contributing to a constant state of disorientation in the back of my mind.  I'll seem less timid and hesitant once I actually know how much everything around me costs and this core process of all of my cognition is able to actually run again."

"Your next question is why my salary of 500 gold pieces per week doesn't establish a value for my time of 71 gold pieces per day.  Because that's a trivial side payment compared to the expected worth of my future share of Project income, is why, more or less.  I could spend a day describing the reasons for the Project's exact contract structure to the Church of Asmodeus, which is something I've now been requested to do at some point, and earn 2000 gold that way.  I'm not running off to do it because it's obvious that a one-day delay in Cheliax achieving a larger economy costs much more than 2000 gold.  If at any point I found myself even considering spending a week of my time to avoid spending 500 gold pieces on something, it would be obvious that I needed a higher salary, what with, for example, all the Security wizards here also costing 500 gold a week each."

"So how much is my time actually worth in gold pieces?  What are gold pieces worth to me in terms of anything else I want?  I have no idea.  Thankfully there's a pretrained reflex and habit in my brain that already knows how to assign quantities to anything it wants, and it can go on assigning those quantities even though they're currently meaningless to me in terms of money, and so I can go on pretending to be a functional human being."