We should be clear from the start:
The ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ are sometimes attributed to a particular race. They’re also sometimes attributed to the people of Zurich. These are just weird fantasies. The Gnomes of Zurich DO exist, they DO control an enormous of money, but they didn’t quite MEAN to.
There are those who believe that, tens of thousands of years ago, Goblins and a species of humanoid now extinct (we suspect the Elves ate them) intermarried significantly and produced the Gnomes. This explains our mutual ears, although, to be honest, we envy their level of deep green skin. (Do you suppose they intermingled with Triffids? There’s some reason to believe this to be true…but that’s another story.
Some centuries back, the Gnomes were visiting Goblinland (or Goblinia, or “Those Weirdos In The Forest”, as we’re known by various sentient species.) They saw us open a portal in an early attempt to get George Washington to share his hemp with us. We didn’t quite get it. We ended up In a 19th century factory absolutely chock full of gears, levers, water-and-steam-powered machinery…
We were interested in the socks, which is what the factory made. But THEY got interested in all the metalworking. And who can blame them? It was very shiny.
Some of them stuck around, so fascinated they were by the machinery. We don’t know WHOM they intermarried with, but that appears to be how we got Gremlins. (Apologies to any WWII flying aces reading this.) Also, the portal accidentally closed slightly early when Fred accidentally added his name to the Runes of Calling. For this, he would eventually be forced to stand in the corner doing nothing, with breaks for food and sleep, for three years. When he came out, he was unrepentant; but that’s another story.
Then came the printing press. (Look, we live a long time and sometimes time travel, although, like almost all time travel, it usually goes somewhat wrong.) Then printed money. Then they got a great idea—they’d print money, be rich, and be able to buy way more gears, as well as levers, pulleys and (sometimes after Ben Franklin) harness lightning.
Their money was perfect. Unfortunately, the Swiss police (was it Switzerland at the time? We’re terrible at human history) took a dim view of people flooding their market with unofficial but indistinguishable-from-normal currency; it caused inflation, and the Swiss have hated that since time immemorial. So the Gnomes were found and would have been brought to justice…
…but the Church intervened. They were laid-back at the time, which is good; roasted Gnome smells terrible, and we should know. The Church suggested that since they were plainly curious about everything (they took apart everything in the Cardinal’s office during his interrogation of them. They didn’t really pass the interrogation—(“How did you make the machines?” “Oh, out of gears and parts.” “I mean, how did you duplicate our currency with such perfection?” “Well, machines should work PROPERLY, right?”)—
Butt after he’d looked around his office a bit, he realized that his clock was now running on perfect time, a feat no Swiss watchmaker had previously succeeded in accomplishing. In fact, EVERYTHING worked better; even the (terribly inaccurate) globe on his desk now spun perfectly without North America flying off.)
So the Cardinal introduced them to something absolutely, positively irresistible for a gnome: The vast, gigantic machine which ie Economics.
If sticks are primitive tools, then “buy low, sell high” is a stick with a rock attached to it by vines, and Adverse Selection; what would come to be known as Nash Equilibrium, Debt/tax Equivalence, Hysteresis, Ergodicity, and what would—decades later—become called “stagflation”—were absolutely enthralling. AND it was a machine you could work on endlessly in your mind, waking, sleeping, in the shower (If they had showers back then; perhaps “In the big bucket of lukewarm water” is more accurate.
They’ve become addicted, and fascinated, and applied their hybrid Goblin-Human (oops! That was supposed to be a secret. Don’t tell anyone) minds to the task of building a machine that would make profit, not physical money.
Having relatively little use for money (they ha food, board, and a massive engineering budget; a happy Gnome needs little more) they’ve built a massive financial machine which looks like magic. (A minor application of Clark’s Law.)
I don’t want ti know where the money GOES, since the creators of this virtual engine don’t want it themselves. I’m not going to ask; I know what tends to happen to people who ask.
No, Virigina, there is no Santa Claus. But there ARE Gnomes of Zurich, and it’s not a metaphor. They’re weird, but living happy lives.
As Goblins, we think they’ve found a key to lifelong happiness, and we would envy it if we weren’t so frustratingly (to other people) happy with what we’ve got, ourselves.
And forgive Fred. He honestly thought that the slogan “Gnomes go Home” was just a slogan reminding them to stop working to eat and sleep sometimes. So he scrawled I everywhere. Last we saw him, he was hanging by his feet over a crocodile pit, happily making bets in his head about which one would eat him first.
And now you know, and, as we learned long ago: The more you know, the less you understand.
We raise a toast to our Gnome friends: may your days be buy with work, may your nights be busy with work, and may you never discover beer the way that Dwarves did.
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