The Stable Boy's Economic Theory
I was a farmer’s son. The eldest grandson of a Korean beef cattle farm that had been passed down since my grandfather’s time. If you think someone like me would enjoy the smell of cow dung and manure, that’s just a delusion held by city slickers from Seoul.
Farming is a continuous cycle of pain and endurance. Cultivating a wheat field in the mountains of Gangwon Province is a test of grit and agony even without a tractor, and even if you have one, there are sections where you have to lug a stroller-type seeder or a push-type seeder loaded with seeds and trudge back and forth.
Is the harvest any easier? The hallmark of any profitable crop is that it tests the limits of human labor. If you take your eyes off it for even a second, the pepper fields rot and the cabbage fields wither away.
And the profits from farming never actually return to the farmer. Every time the news says the price of Gangwon cabbage or radishes has gone crazy, the reality is that most local farmers are drowning in debt, eventually selling their land and giving up.
Even with a cash cow like Korean beef supporting us, it was like this; if you only farmed, you’d have to take out loans against your land after a single bad harvest or a bumper crop.
In 21st-century South Korea, a bumper crop is only good if everyone else fails and only I succeed. Why is a bumper crop a problem? Because the price of the produce plummets so low that it doesn't even cover the labor costs.
That’s why, if you’re going to return to farming, it’s better to focus on the livestock industry rather than crops. Television shows you orchard-like gardens, but fruit trees are exactly the kind of thing that only give back as much as you pour into them. Do you know how big a pine nut tree grows?
Thirty meters. Thirty meters!
And they bear fruit—right!—at the very top. You can basically consider the hazard pay for the farmers who climb up there to harvest them as non-existent.
That’s why I like chestnut trees. They grow plenty of fruit even if you raise them half-heartedly. And you can harvest them without risking your life climbing a tree. Instead, bugs and hikers steal the chestnuts.
Vineyards are a continuous cycle of pain from start to finish. It’s no wonder my father, who tried to create an artificial terroir to make his own wine, eventually just converted his wine grapevines into landscaping trees. It’s not work for a human being.
On top of that, life only gets worse in real-time every year. No matter how much you mechanize, there are never enough people to work, and you can’t compete in terms of economies of scale against cheap imports.
People complain about foreign laborers, but without them, the countryside would have already collapsed. Do we have the capacity to pay high wages to hire Koreans? Absolutely not. If someone points to a few successful wealthy farmers and asks, "Isn't it just because you lack the ability?" I have nothing to say.
One of the things people in the countryside are most desperate for is for a real estate development project to pop up so they can exit and leave. Unfortunately, that kind of super-lucky event never happened in our area.
That’s why I hate the countryside. If I had gone to the city like my peers, I wouldn’t even imagine returning to farming.
However, having grown up in a corner of the royal palace in Madrid—the capital of the world’s greatest (but soon to collapse) empire—I sincerely began to yearn for an escape from Spain and a return to farming.
I was a child born and abandoned in a stable. An Expósito.
Fortunately, an old stable hand at the quarantine stall where sick horses were kept took me in.
Juan Manuel.
He gave me my name and treated me like his own child, but he died before I turned twelve. At twelve, I was recognized for the feat of saving the prince’s horse, and my assignment was moved to the prince’s stables. A "non-existent" person who hadn’t even been properly baptized, now the groom for the heir to a noble kingdom! What a contradictory story.
The prince wasn’t a bad person.
He liked observing people and had a personality that kept a distance from the nobles, but he liked remembering the names of commoner servants like me one by one and having meaningless conversations. And he was a boy who loved horses.
Before hunting or riding practice, he enjoyed watching me take care of the horses, and perhaps that was one of the few joys in the prince’s rigid life.
"Juan. When I become king, I will be the greatest king. I will re-establish the order of Catholicism and make this kingdom great under the banner of the great Habsburgs."
"Is that so? That is a magnificent plan, Your Highness."
After having a few such meaningless conversations, he would ask me about the horse’s condition or mood. I would simply answer them faithfully, and that was the extent of our relationship.
"Juan. Olivares said yesterday that we must create a unified army to distribute the burden of Castile among all the kingdoms."
"Oh, is that so? Then, do those people agree to pay more taxes? In my experience, even if the country is going to collapse tomorrow, people hate paying more taxes."
"Uh...?"
"Is that even possible?"
After having conversations like this a few times, he would come back a day or two later and ask again.
"You are wrong, Juan. Olivares says it is possible. He said they have sufficient capacity to pay and that it is not a great burden for them."
"Then, Your Highness, will you clean up Temerario’s horse manure? It’s not a difficult task, but it’s not something you want to do, is it?"
"......I am a prince......"
"That is exactly why it is a problem. If you become king and force them to do it, they will be angry."
"And what if they are angry?"
"That is hard to say. What if they say they won’t clean up Temerario’s manure? Or what if they say they can’t do it right now but will do it when they have time? But if Temerario’s manure isn’t cleaned up immediately, he might get upset or fall ill."
"It is my command; would they dare refuse?"
"Please do not assume that everyone will follow your orders as faithfully as I do, Your Highness. You know that yourself, don’t you?"
When I mentioned the reason he kept his distance from the nobles, he tried to say something, then lost his spirit.
"Now that I look at you, Juan, you’re the same age as me and you only live in the stables, but you’re too much like an old man. Are you sure you’re not 72 instead of 12?"
"That’s because I take care of horses every day, Your Highness. Don’t you like horses too? Today, Aventador will be with you."
At the prince’s suspiciously sharp remark, I subtly changed the subject and pulled the reins of the white horse, Aventador.
Holding the prince’s reins is a glorious position that only nobles can hold. But they don’t manage the horses. I am the groom who manages the horses in their stead, brushing their manes and preparing them in the best condition. And the nobles, knowing that the prince enjoys time for contemplation while communicating with his horse, leaving even his attendants behind, would sneakily visit me under various excuses and provide me with side income.
"Ahem. Did the prince have a good time contemplating?"
"Of course, my lord. The prince enjoys contemplating while watching the horses."
"Was there anything special said?"
"This is something only you should know, my lord?"
"Of course! Tell me quickly."
"He pledged to become a great king who re-establishes the glory of Catholicism."
"Oh! If that’s the case! Then the truce with the Low Countries might end once he ascends to the throne! Good, I must sell off my wool quickly. You know you must not tell anyone about this, right?"
"Isn’t that obvious, my lord? I am just a servant who lives in the stables; even if I wanted to talk, I couldn’t."
"Here! This is a reward for taking such good care of the prince’s horse."
As I bowed my head and politely accepted the gold coin, he walked away happily leading his horse, and I hid the gold coins that gathered that way in a corner of the stable where no one would know. Converting them into safe assets through Genoese money changers whenever I went out to downtown Madrid was one of the few rewards I got from this job.
"Juan. Olivares said it is possible. Unlike you, a stable hand, he is an intelligent scholar, and based on statistics regarding grain production and commercial income, he said they have sufficient capacity to pay taxes, and that it is only a burden because Castile is bearing all the military expenses alone."
His words grated on me, so I spoke up.
"Your Highness, do you know how much you harvest when you plant a single grain of wheat?"
"Uh...?"
"A single stalk of wheat has about 20 to 30 grains, right?"
"Th... That’s right! 20 to 30 from one grain!"
"But in reality, if you sow one grain of wheat, you get about 4 to 5 grains."
"Why?"
"Because mice eat them, birds eat them, and they get sick. If there’s a drought or a flood, you might get one or two grains. In fact, getting 5 grains means you farmed well this year. 6 grains is a bumper crop. 7 grains is a massive harvest in farming."
Of course, in the 21st century, you harvest 40 to 50 grains easily, but as a farmer’s son, I knew well how high-risk and low-return primitive ancient agriculture was. I didn’t wait for the prince’s answer and continued.
"So, let’s say you got five grains. One grain goes to the prince, one to the church, and one to the noble. Then two grains remain. Then one grain is used as seed for the next year, and the farmer eats one grain."
"But let’s say a famine hit and they only got two grains. Then, are you going to take those two grains away from the farmer? Even if you, Your Highness, give up your share, will the church and the nobles give up theirs? They will take all of those two grains, or at least half. Then, would the farmer want to farm again with the one grain left? Or would he rather bake bread and leave?"
"......"
"You know it too, Your Highness. The countless poor in Madrid who are begging to survive—they weren’t created here; they are the farmers who left their hometowns like that."
"And when you talked to that noble lord the other day, you heard that saffron transport is difficult because the mountains are swarming with bandits, right? Those are all farmers who didn’t want to starve to death."
I brought up the story I had heard before.
"Do you remember that Merino sheep farming association? The 'Mesta' association formally asked for a tax reduction, didn’t they? They said locust swarms ate all the pasture, so half the sheep starved to death, and they asked to reduce the taxes?"
"Yes, that happened."
As the prince nodded, I continued.
"What did Count Olivares say then? He said if the sheep were halved, you should just double the tax per head, didn’t he?"
"He did?"
"Do you think that makes sense? If the sheep died and profits decreased, but you only increase the taxes? The tax you receive might be the same, but where are those people supposed to get the money?"
As I spoke sarcastically, Felipe swung his whip, making a threatening sound.
"You are insolent! For a mere stable hand!"
"I apologize for being an insolent stable hand, Your Highness."
As I stepped back with a look of regret, the prince tried to get angry with a beet-red face, but stopped. And when a loud noise came from the stables, he dismissed the attendants who were coming in, and the prince handled the matter quietly.
Looking at things like that, the person himself isn’t bad. When I just prostrated myself on the ground and bowed my head no matter what the prince said, the prince ordered me to get up.
"Get up, Juan."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"I won’t get angry, so speak properly. Is Olivares wrong?"
"I am an ignorant stable hand, so I don’t know much about difficult state affairs, Your Highness."
As I bowed my head and avoided answering, he thumped his chest as if he were suffocating and forcibly pulled me up.
"No, don’t do that, just! I told you to answer properly!?"
"Where would there be a correct answer in the world? But at least from the perspective of this stable hand, that is wrong."
When I answered, the prince spoke to me as if he were someone demanding an answer from an AI.
"Then what should be done? Tell me the solution."
"You have to trade. If you just cut taxes, they’ll make a fuss asking for more cuts next time, so you should say, 'I’ll cut them, but you do something in return.' Or you should tell them to return their privileges."
At my words, Felipe seemed to think for a while, then said.
"They won’t want to give up their privileges..."
"You thought well. They wouldn’t want to lose even a single thing. Oh, by the way, did you know? If you raise a lot of sheep, locusts flourish."
Based on the knowledge I’d roughly seen on YouTube about why locust swarms in 21st-century Africa flourished endlessly, I told him.
"What? Is that really true?"
"It’s true. Locusts lay eggs in pastures where sheep graze. If you farm, it all gets dug up or chickens peck at the eggs, but if vast grasslands for sheep unfold, locusts flourish somewhere out there where people don’t live."
"Then what should be done?"
At his question, I thought about modern locust control methods, but since that seemed impossible, I cut my words short.
"How can humans solve a divine disaster brought on by their own greed..."
"But?"
"I do have a method I’ve thought of, but since it seems impossible, I won’t talk about it."
"What is it, Juan! Answer me right now!"
"I just don’t want to cause you trouble, Your Highness, with nonsense."
Days like that continued. I sold my conversations with the prince for as much as I could without causing trouble, collected silver and gold coins, and lived as if I were there and yet not there, avoiding the eyes of Olivares and the powerful 'Grandees'.
In 1621, the former King Felipe III died, and the prince, Felipe IV, ascended to the throne. And I did my best to submit my resignation and planned my escape from Spain.