Maybe It Would Have Worked In Prance
As a mare of what she personally believed to be rare intelligence, Victoria Park (or rather, the blackened gold earth pony who was currently calling herself that) felt she understood something about ponies. How they thought or, better yet, how they didn't think. She could not only recognize those moments when herd instinct began to take over, but had thought of ways to take advantage. And there were better things than that deepest of drives. There was competitiveness. Unwarranted self-confidence. It also helped that as far as Victoria was concerned, the main intellectual difference between the average pony and a blade of grass was that the grass expressed somewhat fewer opinions.
She often described herself as a professional investor, which she generally interpreted as a proven means of getting ponies to give her their money. Unfortunately, there was a flaw built into her declared occupation: the rather unreasonable expectation that every so often, she would have to give some back. It was something every investor had to deal with: the money wasn't technically hers. (Emotionally, yes. Technically, no. 'Legally' was a dance she was used to performing.) Bits could be pulled back. Ponies would go through emergencies which, in their opinion, required them to sell off stocks, and Victoria would then have to find some way of explaining why the company's need was greater than theirs: something which was doubly true when she was the entire company. But it was a sad truth: if you were going to sell shares, then you had to accept that shares could be sold back, and it wasn't always possible to reach border or fur dye in time.
Victoria had been thinking about that. Mostly because she truly loved money, but in small part because she was sick of fur dye. That there had to be a way of parting ponies from bits which they would never expect back. And then she'd had an idea, one which had placed her in Canterlot under a new name in a rented third-floor office, while sporting her own colors for the first time since puberty because nopony was looking for those. She'd crashed a few parties and dropped the right words into twitching ears, then listened to their echoes as they bounced inside hollow skulls. In a way, she'd advertised, mostly through letting the distortions which built up in the flow of rumor work for her. And now, as pony after pony came up to her dimly-lit desk (because renting such a huge space for the sake of appearances hadn't left much for lighting devices), she was beginning to reap the rewards.
"Tontine," the latest unicorn egotistically declared from his side of the desk. (Victoria knew three things about him: his name was Jet Set, he had money, and he was wondrously stupid.) "I've heard all about it, of course. I consider myself an expert. But -- just for the sake of comparison -- let me hear how you describe it."
He was already looking at the bottle of sherry she'd placed on her side. (She'd gone through a lot of sherry.)
She smiled.
"It's a simple concept, really," she said. "You buy shares in a common pot." There was an actual pot, at the back of the office. It was large. It was black. It was already half-full. "This money is non-refundable." She'd found it best to get that part out of the way immediately.
"Non-refundable," he carefully repeated. There was an exceptional lack of speed to the words, as if he was trying to work them out between syllables.
"That means you don't get it back," Victoria clarified. "Under any circumstances."
Jet Set rather visibly thought about that for a while. It was possible to see the gears moving behind his eyes, and thus it was equally possible to see when they skipped.
"Then what do I get?" he finally tried. "Although this is really so I can hear how you perceive --"
"-- the money is sensibly invested," Victoria politely interrupted. "You receive an initial annual dividend based on how many shares you purchased."
The stallion squinted, focused through the little lenses which were precariously balanced on his snout. Victoria could tell it was meant to make him look intelligent, if 'intelligent' could be swapped in for 'constipated.' "And how is that different from putting the money into a bank? I can take my money out of a bank."
Which was why she'd abandoned banking, especially after having taken the money out first. "There are a limited number of shares," Victoria clarified, and that was true: the limit was whatever she was going to sell before the initial deadline. "But the final pot remains constant. So does the interest it earns. However -- other ponies only collect their dividends for as long as they're alive."
He blinked.
"Dead ponies," Jet Set decided, "seldom have much need for money. So what happens to their dividends?" With a snort, "You keep them, I suppose?"
"No," Victoria smiled. "You do."
Two more blinks. She wondered how much of his mind had been dedicated to powering the movements.
"Explain," he finally said.
"The interest earned by a tontine," she told him, subtly nudging the bottle towards him, "is divided between all living investors. As investors pass into the shadowlands, the number of ponies collecting drops. But their interest still has to be distributed. So if a thousand ponies join and enough time passes for a hundred to die... you gain some part of what they would have earned." She allowed herself to rather visibly inspect his body. "And you, sir..." are using minor illusion spells because exercise would require effort "...if I may say so, are such a healthy specimen! I can see you enjoy sports! And win at most of them."
"Nearly all," Jet Set declared, puffing out what little chest there was. "In fact, if not for a certain interruption at croquet --"
"-- and as a healthy stallion, when so many others around you aren't taking care of themselves..."
This time, she saw the dim light go on behind his eyes. She wondered if it was the first one.
"I would like you to think of this, sir," she softly said, "as a wager. To see your state of glowing health --" although the actual glow was sparking a little and so mostly suggested the illusions were faulty "-- is to know you have decades ahead of you. In the race of years, I would personally bet on you to go a very long way. Possibly ahead of the entire herd. And given the price of a share, the eventual size of the pot... well, if you glance a little to your left --" her foreleg nudged the bottle in that direction "-- you will see a charted projection for what the last pony would earn annually. Just in interest."
He looked.
He kept looking.
Eventually, he began to lightly drool.
Victoria used the opportunity to offer sherry. After all, fluids had to be replaced, and it helped if that replacement encouraged investor brain cells to die.
There were, of course, a few basic rules.
Children weren't allowed to purchase shares: a pony had to be a legal adult in order to join the tontine. Shares also couldn't be given away to friends (although you could purchase for one as a gift, or several, because buying your friends into a tontine showed how much you loved them) or passed on in wills. Once the original owner died, that was it.
The investment manager had permanent custody of the pot and as Victoria was the investment manager, she considered this to be a very good rule indeed. Several ponies had asked what would happen to the pot after the last shareholder died, and Victoria had told them it would be donated to charity. She had no issues with donating the pot to charity, especially since the money would have been removed.
And of course, annuity dividends would be paid on schedule. That was the hard part. Earning the interest was easy, as Victoria was actually a rather talented investor. It was just... giving ponies money. It hurt her soul. It made her mark ache, and having an icon (forelegs scooping piles of money inwards) experience pain was something of a feat. But it had to be done, because the tontine needed to be successful. As Victoria's schemes went, this one was rather long-term. Because if she reliably paid out the interest on the first tontine, ponies would be willing to invest in a second. Then a third...
Victoria understood something about how ponies thought, and also how they didn't think. And she'd made her charts show honest math (which had also hurt). Take the duration of a pony lifespan, then see every investor as a runner in the ultimate race -- because that was how they saw it.
An accident here. An illness there. One by one, ponies would drop out, falling into their graves. The interest would be split up among a steadily-dwindling number. But the investors never believed they would be the first to go. They would feel they had entered a competition, and that unwarranted self-confidence would insist that they, and only they, would be the last across the line. And she'd shown them the numbers. The last dozen runners (although by that age, it would be more of a stagger) would never need to worry about money again. The final pony limping (or being pushed) would be wealthy on a level which barely existed in dreams.
She'd seen their eyes. Pony after pony deciding that the mere act of entering the race meant they had already won it. And she had answered their questions, queries which meant that in their hearts, they'd already committed. The level of gold in the pot was rising by the hour.
Admittedly, some of the questions were... worrisome.
They tended to share a theme.
"You know," the stallion proposed, "this would be an interesting sort of wager for other things."
"Really?" She was always willing to listen to new ideas, especially when they had the potential to give her money.
"For example," the stallion proudly went on, "I have a bottle of wine. Two hundred years old. I keep meaning to open it on a special occasion, but nothing's ever been good enough. So what if I made this form of wager with my friends? We all put some money in a new pot. And the last one not only enjoys our dividends, but gets to open the bottle and toast to the memory of the others."
"That's interesting," Victoria said, and meant it: not only would she have an extra pot, but with the clearly-valuable wine in play --
"Of course," the stallion decided, "there would need to be a Clover Clause."
"Clover?"
"Yes." An annoyed snort. "Clover doesn't deserve that good a bottle. He's completely incapable of appreciating it."
Which was followed by a very long pause.
"There would need to be," the stallion finally concluded, "a second bottle." And with the thinnest smile Victoria had ever seen, "In a way, it's a pity I'm going to miss his reaction..."
"So if it's down to just myself and Duchess..."
Victoria nodded to the With Two Remaining line on the chart.
The mare looked thoughtful.
"Duchess already bought in, didn't she?"
"Six shares," Victoria truthfully said.
A puce foreleg thoughtfully rubbed the underside of the elevated chin.
"I," the mare considered, "never really liked Duchess..."
"So when you die," the wife said, "I'll get your dividend. And you know I'll be taken care of."
"What if I don't go first?" the husband naturally asked.
"Don't be silly!" the wife laughed. "I'm a little younger than you, and everypony knows mares live longer! I'll be fine!"
"But what if --"
"It'll be you, dear. I just know it. It's a mare's intuition."
Reluctantly, "I suppose, statistically..."
"In fact," the wife whispered, her tones only truly audible to Victoria, "if you fail to clean the restroom trench one more time, I can just about guarantee --"
"-- what was that?"
"Oh, nothing," the wife brightly said. "So. Ten shares, then?"
She'd stayed open late: the sheer flow of traffic had kept her active well after Sun had been lowered. But as far as Victoria was concerned, it was just about time to close the office or, at the very least, to buy a larger pot. The current one was threatening to overflow.
Victoria looked at the gold glinting in the dim light, and smiled.
The initial concept had required some refinement. Finding ways to make it truly work and when she'd decided she'd had it right, she'd quite naturally gone to where the money was. That money had just come to her.
She would pay out the dividends reliably, because that was what would encourage ponies to join the next tontine. She would run it under the rules as she'd written them, because those rules were hers: something so new had no regulations to follow, nothing in the way of government oversight. The only pony watching Victoria was Victoria, and she trusted herself to do the right thing for herself.
She would issue interest vouchers, and ponies would be happy. She would watch a few naturally drop out of the race. And then... well, the other thing about a tontine -- the personal thing -- was that you had a huge pot of money sitting around, and the investment manager was the only pony who had access to it. In time, there would be multiple pots.
Pots could be moved.
She had, by her estimates, a minimum of five years before she would even need to think about fur dye. But it wasn't so long to wait. Nopony truly watching her, no employers or overseers or authorities or police. Fraud charges were impossible with something so new, not for the mere concept. Nopony could do anything until the day after she vanished, and then it would be too late to do anything at all...
There was a solid knock at the door, one which possessed a degree of echo.
Well, it was never too late to make a little more money. "I'm still open!" Victoria merrily called out. "And I have a few shares left! Come in!"
The door opened. The mare on the other side took a single measured step forward, and Victoria's heart found itself locked in ice.
"An interesting concept," that rather large mare declared. "I have been reviewing the tales for some time. And as somepony with an interest in mathematics, I believe myself to have fully recognized all the implications of your unique idea. They were well worth considering. And, in my opinion, also worth... watching. Which, of course, would currently require participation."
She couldn't move. The window was right there, she was sure she could survive the jump, and she couldn't move...
"The last pony surviving collects all of the dividends?" the mare asked, and stars softly twinkled in the semi-tangible mane as dark energy deposited a bag of bits next to the final bottle of sherry. "Do tell me more."
