# City of only rich people?



## Netardapope (Mar 29, 2016)

In my current WIP, I have a race of half-dragons that have enslaved all other beast men in their realm. They've forced them out to handle all the hard work in the countryside and have reserved all of the cities for the Draconian ruling class.

Aside from military, the Drakis spend most of their time lounging about their houses and forcing captive artists to paint images of them, bask in their glory or some other self-absorbed activity. They are a small segment of the population and the rest of the populace supplies them. The only people that aren't Drakis in the cities are household slaves and slaves that work on maintenance.

The rest of the Beastmen will not rebel since they are, to put it bluntly, stupid to a fault. Furthermore, they are also the second highest on the caste system, with slaves from neighboring human kingdoms being the lowest caste.

Would a city supported by the country and filled with only the richest of the rich be plausible?

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## Jerseydevil (Mar 29, 2016)

It depends. If by maintenance slaves, you mean plumbers, people to cart away garbage, food vendors (Slaves would have to go to the market for food, and how far away would that be?), builders, masons, carpenters, and other vendors, then yes, it may be possible, but highly inefficient. Also, what about luxury goods? Do vendors of jewelry and art and the like visit the homes of the rich, hauling all their wares with them to show off? Think of the logistics involved with that, including wagons and carts to haul everything (expensive), animals (expensive and requiring shelter, food, veterinary treatment, and a bunch of other maintenance), overseers (expensive), and tons of extra workers (expensive) which will serve only to drive prices up even further, hooray capitalism. Remember urban sprawl as well. The poor people outside will grow in population until the rich and poor cities collide, which would either lead to conflict, or a single massive city.

I personally believe that a single district within a city for the ruling class, a sort of gated community is much more practical and feasible.


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## Devor (Mar 29, 2016)

In a nutshell, I don't really think it would work.

That is, the idea that one group lives a life where all they do is lounge around, and the other group does all the labor while not being very bright . . . . that's not how the world works.  Or rather, reading your description, I visualized people living in caves and bossing around some awful beastly farmers.  If that's how simple your city is, then sure.  But if you want an actual functioning society, you need a lot more.

Maybe some labor can be commoditized.  But skilled labor is just too valuable.  And management?  I mean, sure, "any idiot can do what my boss does," but have you ever gone up to a bunch of people and said, "Hey, I have an idea, but it's going to take a lot of your best work, help me out?"  It's extremely difficult and demanding to make anything happen from scratch.

Yes, people get by skating on other people's wealth.  But the truth is, for anything to happen in this world, you need highly skilled people doing a lot of hard work, and that includes building a sustainable city.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Mar 29, 2016)

There is a way but it requires some legal technicaliting. You can have two or more adjacent cities with their own governments and own names and you thereby have two different cities. To make this more apparent make the one "city" ramshackle and the other uber decadent. That should work well enough especially if everyone in that other city just commutes to the decadent one.


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## skip.knox (Mar 29, 2016)

Doesn't the Hunger Games essentially do this? Sure it's historically and sociologically and economically (and pretty much everything-else-ally) absurd, but that doesn't appear to have prevented lots of people from accepting the premise.


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## Netardapope (Mar 30, 2016)

Devor said:


> In a nutshell, I don't really think it would work.
> 
> That is, the idea that one group lives a life where all they do is lounge around, and the other group does all the labor while not being very bright . . . . that's not how the world works.  Or rather, reading your description, I visualized people living in caves and bossing around some awful beastly farmers.  If that's how simple your city is, then sure.  But if you want an actual functioning society, you need a lot more.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the input and if u might add, I think I might have overstated the beast men's stupidity. It all varies depending on their race. Some beastmen would get skilled labor but these labors would be separated into the beast man that were born with genetic advantages to it.

For lack of a better example think of Monkey beastmen being the ones that handle all the banana picking operations (this is only an example)

As for the civil unrest that could be caused, instead of blindly obeying the Drakis, they are afraid of them. But I do realize that there will be much skilled labour required, perhaps I should make some exceptions as to whom gets rich in the caste system?

Once again, thanks for the input as I'm having trouble worldbuilding this society. If it's important, the Drakis have only been in power for about 16 years, so this style of government has never been around for a very long time.

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## Netardapope (Mar 30, 2016)

Jerseydevil said:


> It depends. If by maintenance slaves, you mean plumbers, people to cart away garbage, food vendors (Slaves would have to go to the market for food, and how far away would that be?), builders, masons, carpenters, and other vendors, then yes, it may be possible, but highly inefficient. Also, what about luxury goods? Do vendors of jewelry and art and the like visit the homes of the rich, hauling all their wares with them to show off? Think of the logistics involved with that, including wagons and carts to haul everything (expensive), animals (expensive and requiring shelter, food, veterinary treatment, and a bunch of other maintenance), overseers (expensive), and tons of extra workers (expensive) which will serve only to drive prices up even further, hooray capitalism. Remember urban sprawl as well. The poor people outside will grow in population until the rich and poor cities collide, which would either lead to conflict, or a single massive city.
> 
> I personally believe that a single district within a city for the ruling class, a sort of gated community is much more practical and feasible.


In th case of the beast men, they would be all the slaves that you've mentioned. As for rising prices, currency is in the form of gold from beastmen mines. There are only about four Dragonlords that rule autonomously over their separate fiefs in the Dominion. The Dragonlords and their families (which are massive. So massive that every Drakis in the population belongs to one) are the only ones that get to use currency.

Beastmen are expected to manage their own villages and clans for sustaining themselves and the Drakis collect a huge portion of the crop or services for themselves. When beast man clans are taxed too high to the point where they can't afford to eat, they are allowed to go on raids on other kingdoms (maybe even lands of competing dragonlords) and collect the wealth from those lands through plunder.

Beast man number in around 1 million to 2 million in population, but most beast men have very slow metabolism. They could last longer than humans could under severe hunger or thirst.

Thank you for the input! It turns out that it's not easy to spot out flaws when you're the one writing [emoji28] 

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## indonesiancat (Mar 31, 2016)

I think there are two ways to deal with this:

1. You basically make no notice about how rich the people within the citywalls are. Just show off the city as a utopia where everybody is living perfectly.
2. You make some grim, social statement about class. Say for instance, only the rich are allowed to live within the city wall, while all the labourers are only allowed within the city to do their job and are sent out when their workday is done to live in their hovels and shacks outside the city. Basically a mix between the gulfstates and apartheid.


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## K.S. Crooks (Apr 3, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> Doesn't the Hunger Games essentially do this? Sure it's historically and sociologically and economically (and pretty much everything-else-ally) absurd, but that doesn't appear to have prevented lots of people from accepting the premise.



I was thinking the same thing. As well one faction in Divergent is trying to establish something similar within the one section of the city. I think a key point is to establish the physical terrain that would make a certain region provide a specific resource and how the resources are brought to the ruling class in the city.


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## Efigenia (Apr 3, 2016)

The question is where are the other functions of a city being done?  Where is trade organized and where does it flow through?  Where are the rare crafts located, like fine textiles and metalwork?  Where is administration done from?  If they don't have those things, what are the consequences for their civilization?

Cities are optional, after all.

But consider not only how much food and clothes and fuel it takes to support the Drakis, but how much it takes to support all of their staff!

Look at Sparta, Heian-ere Kyoto, the Inca for inspiration.


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## Terry Greer (Apr 6, 2016)

Everything is relative - even among the rich there would be those who are richer than the others. You effectively still have classes, it would be no different to how society has always worked.


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## ShadeZ (Oct 26, 2017)

For some reason reading this made me think of the closet thing in this world to a city of all rich people, Dubia, Arabia. For you WIP I would read up on Dubia or watch some vlogs about how everyone there acts, what it is like, ect.

P.S.. We are talking about a place where they literally keep cheetahs and tigers as pets so it should help supply the crazy rich/what do I do with all this money type mindset. I realize it isn't a very fantasy answer but it should help you get a general idea.


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## Heliotrope (Oct 27, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> Doesn't the Hunger Games essentially do this? Sure it's historically and sociologically and economically (and pretty much everything-else-ally) absurd, but that doesn't appear to have prevented lots of people from accepting the premise.



Exactly. And Elyssium (the film), and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and I'm sure plenty of others. I wouldn't worry too much about it. I honestly don't think too many readers would question the historical accuracy or legality of such a place.


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## skip.knox (Oct 27, 2017)

Not too many, but I did. I could not buy into Hunger Games because the sociology was just so obviously contrived. The whole world was the _deus ex machina_, with every event constructed to provide exactly the plot point needed. The story was enjoyed by millions, and that's fine.


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## Heliotrope (Oct 27, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> Not too many, but I did. I could not buy into Hunger Games because the sociology was just so obviously contrived. The whole world was the _deus ex machina_, with every event constructed to provide exactly the plot point needed. The story was enjoyed by millions, and that's fine.



Yeah, it was written for kids though, which I think matters. Most kids won't think about sociology, or even care.


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## ThinkerX (Oct 27, 2017)

Strangely, my first thought was the old roman city of Pompeii, prior to being destroyed by a volcano.  The city was a retreat for Rome's 'upper crust,' and those people were big time supporters of slavery.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Oct 27, 2017)

^^Are you sure? There's plenty in that series that is definitely not kid friendly [death by giant wasp, for instance].


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## Heliotrope (Oct 27, 2017)

By kids I mean 12-17 year olds. Which are babies to me lol.


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