MBA color (storytime/Mythology/Origins)

The year is 825. The bitter salt wind cuts through your woolen wraps as you kneel in the wet, stinking, littoral flats of the Rialto, your fellow merchants gathered around in solemn assembly. Because of your unquestionable authority derived from your Anderson MBA, you have been acclaimed as the first true Doge of the fledgling Republic - a term which tested surprisingly well in focus groups compared with “Space Brain”, “Lumpy”, and “Bird shit”.

The accession complete, you stand and raise your eyes to the horizon. “Friends!” you declaim, “We stand at the dawn of a thousand-year Republic. From these muddy, malarial swamps shall rise fleets that shall reach Cairo, Constantinople, and the Black Sea!

"We shall invent the joint-stock company! We shall perfect marine insurance! We shall develop a banking system so sophisticated that the Florentines themselves will despair! We shall absolutely nail double-entry bookkeeping!”

Murmurs of approval from the crowd. A sour-looking man in the back, who still has a spear, lowers it slightly.

“Our fleets will return groaning under the weight of the wealth of the Orient! Silk from Cathay! Pepper from Malabar! Indigo from Gujarat! Crimson dye that will make our nobles and merchants glow like living rubies!

“Imagine it! Saffron! Nutmeg! Lapis Lazuli! Tyrian purple! Cinnabar, vermillion, cochineal, camphor, ivory, caviar! Endless rivers of gold and silver! The very air of Eden - the wealth of Paradise Itself shall pass through our warehouses! And shipping will NOT be free!”

Scarred soldiers and ancient academics alike are by now openly weeping. The sour-looking man drops his spear and falls prostrate; the aspirational avarice has overwhelmed him. The money, they think,THE MONEY! Someone tries to start a slow clap but it won’t be invented for another twelve hundred years.

“Therefore,” you announce, “as my first act as Doge, I hereby decree that La Serenissima, the guiding light of Il Stato da Màr, the Grand Republic of Venice, shall adopt, for its most sacred and lucrative trade, that which shall adorn our ledgers! our guild banners! our national standards! our snapping pennants arising over the horizon from the forest of mastheads announcing our fleets from Alexandria to Acre! our academic hoods for the Collegium Mercatorum we shall one day in the distant future establish in the Great Entrepôt of the Mythical West, in Los Angeles, California…”

You pause. The merchants go silent. The seagulls ignore you, though.

"Our official color shall be... drab.”

Even the gulls go silent.

“Because of the color of the paper”, you explain, gesturing emphatically at a damp ledger. "You see? The medium is the message. The substrate, gentlemen. Listen, anyone can sell purple, ok? The real money is in...“

The spears go back up.