Alex Rozov in the comments of my channel, and before that, in the channel “Myth Eaters”, proposed an interesting problem:
There is a myth that the nymph Amalthea, daughter of Ocean, in the form of a goat, suckled the infant Zeus in a cave on Crete. Amalthea had a horn of plenty, from which, upon a magic word, the fruits of the earth poured out in an endless stream… When Amalthea cast off her goat skin and disappeared, the horn was lost somewhere.
Suppose Amalthea’s horn was suddenly found where it was lost: on Crete.
How will this affect world politics and the economy?
Well, let me try to fantasize.
So, after another earthquake, a landslide revealed an ancient cave, and a couple of days later, some hiker tourists climbed in. In the cave, they discovered a stone bed, a table, and on the table, a goat’s horn in excellent condition. Since everyone on Crete has been badgered about Zeus’s caves and the myth of his foster mother, the hikers chuckle, thinking, “here’s another one, and even the horn is in place. Hey, Horn, what will you give us? At least give us a couple of oranges.” The Horn provides. After recovering from their initial shock, the hikers begin spamming requests and quickly find out that the Horn doesn’t pour beer and doesn’t give meat. It said “fruits of the earth,” so it will be fruits of the earth, period. A command recorded and played back from a phone works perfectly: the Horn does not require personal presence to execute an order; it only needs an instruction on what to serve. It also turns out that outside the cave, the Horn loses its magical properties. This is precisely what determines that the Horn will not leave Crete, and its further fate will be tied specifically to this island. Otherwise, of course, tourists would have no trouble smuggling a goat’s horn out of Greece, since it’s not exactly a golden treasure.
What happens next? Tourists disciplinedly turn to the Euphoria of Antiquities, and some legal complications begin. The object is clearly older than 1453, which means it undoubtedly belongs to the state. Theoretically, its place is in a museum, and tourists are entitled to a reward for the find. But the object is useless outside the cave, and the cave is located on private land. Unlike mainland Greece, in Crete, deep in the island, most land is either private or municipal, rather than state-owned. Thus, local archaeologists begin studying the cave, while the horn itself is also being studied by various other specialists who, of course, are interested in the physics of the materialization of the earth’s fruits. The owner of the cave, a certain Manolis Petrakis, sets up the “Amalthea” restaurant nearby, where he treats guests to vegetarian cuisine, and starts wine production right there, because in Greece it is difficult to think of a more high-margin way to process the fruits of the earth than making wine with a beautiful legend. Thus, during the day, eggheads study the horn, and at night it provides the location owner with raw materials for processing.
Next, large-scale business by local standards enters the game. The state, Mr. Petrakis, and the agro-industrial company AGROCRETA agree to create a special public-private partnership, the “Amalthea Consortium.” The concession agreement states that the state grants the consortium the exclusive right to use the Horn for 30 years and ensures permits for infrastructure installation, in exchange for which it receives a fixed annual payment of 50 million euros and 20% of the consortium’s net profit. Mr. Petrakis provides his real estate for the consortium’s use for 30 years, receiving a fixed annual payment of 2 million euros and 10% of the consortium’s net profit. The AGROCRETA company invests money, manages the consortium, bears the entrepreneurial risks, and receives 70% of the net profit from this.
Now the consortium’s task is to build logistics from the cave to the port of Heraklion, located 50km away across rugged mountainous terrain, which at its peak had a turnover of about 3 million tons per year. The “Princess Xenia” highway in Montenegro took 7 years to build, and with a length of 41km, it cost almost a billion euros. OK, the consortium doesn’t need a highway, just a good road for serious freight turnover. But even so, one must budget at least 4 years and at least 500 million, and, of course, the construction will be contracted to the Chinese. In the meantime, they will have to lay down gravel, then pour concrete up to the nearest local road, and be limited by its modest capacity.
Thus, from the very beginning, the consortium management will face the question: what to produce?
While all traffic is provided by ATVs and helicopters, they will have to work on special orders, such as “deliver 100kg of coffee beans to Mr. Papadakis’s craft roaster, full analogs of the lot sold at an auction in Costa Rica for 50 dollars per kilo” — but such a delivery will satisfy all the hipsters on the entire island for long, and the rest simply won’t understand why they should buy such expensive coffee when Lavazza is available in the supermarket.
When the first trucks start coming, they can already be loaded, for example, with cocoa beans, because there is a more than solid price per ton of raw material, and the global market is quite large. As freight turnover further expands, one could think about natural rubber, but here is the problem: you can’t eat it. The stupid artifact is enchanted to provide the owner with fruits of the earth for food, not for just anything. So, rubber, mahogany, and the like will unfortunately have to be left to the local producers, but on saffron or natural vanilla, one can make up for it completely, simply by driving all other producers out of the global market, because why would they even be needed.
But when, finally, a full-fledged highway designed for the heavy traffic capable of fully loading the port will be built, the main cargoes will essentially remain the same cocoa and coffee, and the consortium’s capacity will only be enough to bite off a certain share of the global market for these goods; logistics will not allow for more. Of course, in addition to this, all of Crete will have access to cheap durian, coconuts, and other exotic items that previously were expensive solely due to the long logistical arm. But there is no point in shipping these tropical goods beyond the EU, as tariffs begin there, and Asia can fend for itself—Heraklion is not made of rubber.
And if anyone fears that an endless stream of rice, wheat, and potatoes will pour from Crete, they are fearing in vain. This will only happen in years of local crop failures, military crises, and the like. The Horn must not leave the cave, and no matter how much you expand or reinforce its vault, it will still be a hole of a fixed width, through which a conveyor belt travels one way with empty packaging and the other way with filled containers, then reloads onto trucks, goes to the port, is loaded onto container ships, and is distributed around the world. From one single port, and there are thousands of such ports in the world.
In order for the Horn of Plenty to truly crash all global food markets, and the energy market along with it due to biodiesel, a new transport revolution will be required. Someday, perhaps, this will happen, but I see another event as far more likely. It is not for nothing that at the very beginning of the story, scientists began to study the horn. It is they who will eventually find that physical principle on which it operates. And when a universal synthesizer stands in every home, the goat Amalthea will finally be able to consider her mission on Earth accomplished. Where to look for her after that? I suppose on the Jupiter moon of the same name, but for a description of that stage—turn to the Strugatskys.
