1296 Unchecked Capitalism
Date- 5 April 2321
Time- -/-
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The pawn shops in the inter-realm city conducted their business in such a way that they would be condemned in the markets of both the world I come from but this was the inter-realm city and the devil merchant code did not seem to care how the people did business in its city as long as they paid their rents to it in time and were not proven guilty of a crime. There were too few regulations that the pawn shops or any shop in the inter-realm city for that matter needed to follow. As long as they were overpricing and manipulating the market everything else seemed pretty much a fair game.
The devil merchant code seems to hate losing money so it doesn’t like when it makes little profit over certain goods than the other demon merchant, that was why overpricing goods was taboo but bidding wars in auctions was fair gain.
The devil merchant code hated being manipulated, especially when the demon merchants try to manipulate the market so that the price of certain goods skyrockets and other goods falls to the ground. As long as these two taboos were avoided one can easily stay off the devil merchant code’s radar despite their questionable business practices.
Demon merchants had figured out many ways to prop up a successful business by preying on their customers while avoiding these taboos of the devil merchant code. And the way the pawnshops in the inter-realm city operated was one of them.
The pawn shop’s strategy was simple when a customer handed them the item the pawnbrokers would value it according to what it is worth as an offering to the devil merchant code. A fair method to value the items and the only reason why they managed to survive so far. What followed next was nothing short of predatory lending.
They would only pawn the item for 40% to 60% of its value which carried a high fee, high-interest rate, unnecessary penalties, and other such aggressive credit terms. One delayed or missed payment was all it took for the demon merchants to lose their pawned items. This way the pawnbroker would not only buy the item for a cheap price but also made profits with the high-interest rate, late fees, and other unnecessary penalties.
It did not matter to them that the customer had paid more interest and penalties than the valuation of the item they pawned. The only way they could get out of this nightmare was to let go of their ownership of the item they pawned before their debt outgrows the value of the item. Or else they would not only lose the item they pawned but also be on the hook for the remaining debt. Soon they will charge high-interest rates for the debt, along with late fees and other penalties.
This would usually not work in the native realms of the demon merchant but here the devil merchant would make sure the demon merchant pays everything they owe the pawnbroker even if the demon merchant had to use this soul and body as collateral or just sell it.
These guys were worse than the credit card companies and loan sharks because at least they enticed them with a desirable loan amount while taking a certain risk. However, pawnbrokers did not take any form of risk in these transactions instead they had the strongest goon in all the myriad realms, the devil merchant code.
The only reason the demon merchants went to the pawnbrokers in the inter-realm city in the first place was that they felt with the presence of the devil merchant code they would not be taken advantage of as they would have been in their native realm. But that was their biggest mistake. If they miss a single payment then the very thing that they trusted to have their back will become the gun pointed to their foreheads and will be forced to pay the pawnbrokers even if it cost them their life.
‘No wonder Aul Tuh was so fucking happy to see me enter his pawnshop,’ I felt a chill on my back going through the predatory business model practiced by the pawnshops and the worst of all was that the devil merchant code, one of the most powerful beings in all the myriad realms would act as a goon for the predators. This wasn’t just a problem for the demon merchants not native to the dark realm but all the new demon merchants regardless of what realm they belonged to.
The worst thing was that I could not use the guilty appeal function to report Aul Tul for banning me from his show without any proper reason. Because in Inter-realm city, the shopowners have the right to choose their customer and sell their product to anyone they want as long as they are not overpricing it. I should have guessed that this would be the case when I learned that the Inter-realm city shops had a feature that allowed shopkeepers to keep the customers that could not afford their products from entering their shops. The devil code seems to hold the interest of demon merchants paying hefty rents over the others. It was not surprising that it was biased toward whoever paid it more.
As for why Aul Tul showed unwarranted hostility toward me when I asked to buy realm tokens, that was because many demon merchants from the dark realm felt that the demon merchants that were not native to the dark realm had an unfair advantage.
The unfair advantage they spoke of was that other realms had single digits of demon merchants at best which allowed the demon merchants of other realms to take advantage of the price difference in the two markets to fill their pockets. And since there were many demon merchants in the dark realm, the pricing difference between the market of the devil merchant code and the dark realm was negligible.
The demon merchants from the dark realm did not seem to notice other unfair advantages that they had over the minority instead they were jealous of the only good thing the demon merchants not native to the dark realm had going for them.
Yes, that was what the majority claimed and why they were pissed at the minority.
Because of this Demon Merchants like Aul Tul were hostile toward demon merchants that were not native to the dark realm. Making it difficult for newbie demon merchants to pursue promising careers as demon merchants.
I guess this was one of the monsters that unchecked capitalism breeds.