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submitted 2 months ago by seaQueue@lemmy.world to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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[-] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 2 months ago

He's also made some damn insightful comments over the years. I wish a little less insightful in this case. He had a programming background and usually isn't full of shit.

"The Merchant Prince's" series is deep into pre-Great Recession liberal economics, but still a pretty good read.

[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I'm not that great at English, what's the grammar on"merchant Prince's"?

Is this a prince that's also a merchant?

Is this a merchant that works or is associated with a prince?

Is it a typo and is supposed to read princess?

[-] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah, it's not totally obvious. It's an old phrase and I've never really liked it. A similar one is "trader prince", which is pronounced a lot like "traitor prince", which of course means something totally different.

Anyway, it's usually a prince that's also a merchant. Historically, it refers to merchants who aren't really princes or even any kind of nobility, but they get rich as fuck by trading across the kingdom. In the case above, the story focuses on a family that wasn't originally noble, but got there after a very peculiar trade monopoly.