Book of the Week: The Arabian Nights Entertainments

28 Nov 2013

Ancient people didn’t have the internet. They got their entertainment from old people telling stories. I imagine an old drunken guy sitting at a bazaar. Old drunk guys survived long enough to tell tales, because alcohol kills bacteria. The Arabian Nights is a collection of those tales in English. I read about The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. The seven voyages are all similar.

1. Start out rich.
2. Lose riches due to misfortune.
3. Everyone else dies.
4. Meet somebody who feeds you and listens to your tale with amazement.
5. Find more riches than you lost.
6. Donate some money to the poor, but keep enough to be filthy rich.
7. Repeat.

Since everyone else dies, there is no one to dispute your tale. Sailing is dangerous, but profitable because it is perceived as risky. Merchants make a lot of money moving goods from place to place, but most of the gains are from asymmetric information.