Tag, your it!

I don't know why but I find the concept of relay trade such a cool idea. The Inca used similar systems to that of the Chinese, Indians and Persians leveraging a system of well engineered roads, chasqui or messengers to deliver information through out the empire. The Silk Roads adopted a similar system of merchants who would bring the goods so far and then sell them often times to another merchant who would then sell them in another market each time marking up the products and repeating process. This allowed merchants to turn their products more often and remain in territories that were familiar to them. I would imagine very few merchants singlehandedly took goods from say China to Arabia. The time for the journey would be too long and the risk to high to justify the incremental profits achieved by cutting out the countless middle men.

It reminds me of the crack trade really...

The chain of people, producers, importers, runners, and hustlers each one cutting the product or adding their markup and margin. The producer could sell direct, to all the users, but, like the merchants along the silk road, the time too move great quantities of product is too long and the risk too high. Who really looses in this economic paradigm is the user as the product tend to be very expensive. It is also no wonder why the Sea Roads were established.

Hmm - Sea Roads... Not a very clever name now is it? Silly historians... Sea Roads...

Question, which came first... the Silk Road or the Sea Road?

Oh but wait... of course there is still room for yet another plagiarized graphic off the web...