Some comments on the economics of the series

Alizon wrote:Since the Greyson's used dispersed yards rather than huge space stations which contained lodging and even whole family life for workers, it's very likely that off-duty personnel were housed dirtside at the time of the OB attack and if I recall correctly, Blackbird is a large asteroid surrounded by dispersed yards which means that it's off duty workers were probably housed there and had a good chance of survival as well.

Blackbird is a moon of the gas giant Uriel.


Also, Textev disagrees with you on anyone's chance of survival:

Beginnings
OBLIGATED SERVICE
Copyright © 2013
by Joelle Presby
wrote:
A fresh crew met them in the boat bay, all wet-faced but focused. The new crew swarmed around Claire's team to check systems and take the shuttle back out with a turnaround speed that almost certainly broke regulations. Commander Greentree stood just inside the doors to the bay and said not a word to slow them.

Instead, he asked Claire if she'd like to sit down. The boat bay control room held only the chair occupied by the tech cycling shuttles in and out. Greentree's normally slight wrinkles furrowed around blank eyes. She short-circuited the death notification as much as she was able.

“I saw the debris. I know. My cousins' club was in the B3 section of the Yard. They weren't planning any vacations, not that they had the money for that. So I know Lucy and Mary have to be dead.”

Commander Greentree just closed his eyes. “I'm sorry for your loss.” He started to ask something just then just shut his mouth silently.

Claire tilted her head. “You didn't know about my cousins? Then what was . . .” Realization dawned. “The Ephraim. They were behind schedule still.”

“It was quick,” said Commander Greentree. “It had to be. The warships in dock were directly targeted.”
She nodded, tears finally beginning to come.

“Some of the crew would have to have been on leave or training,” Greentree said.

Claire just looked at him, and his mouth tightened. Most of the training facilities were in the Blackbird Yards. “Or visiting home,” he amended.

Her throat closed up on its own accord. She made her way to her stateroom where Cecelie met her with some food and murmured condolences. Only then did she realize that Jennie Ayres had probably been living on Blackbird as Captain Ayres liked her to do while the ship was in the yards. Claire fished a cream colored elegant paper invitation from the Ephraim's Wives' Club from the pile in her desk. They had rented the Blackbird Officers' Club for a special occasion ladies luncheon. Today. Claire's legs folded beneath her.

The entire story gives a fair before and after set of descriptions.

It too far out for routine commuting. You could use the deep water oilfield crew rotation scheme, but apparently not.

Alizon wrote:Since the Greyson's used dispersed yards rather than huge space stations which contained lodging and even whole family life for workers, it's very likely that off-duty personnel were housed dirtside at the time of the OB attack and if I recall correctly, Blackbird is a large asteroid surrounded by dispersed yards which means that it's off duty workers were probably housed there and had a good chance of survival as well.

Because of the way their orbital infrastructure was built, the Greysons probably lost a significantly lower percentage of their trained workforce and engineers than the Manties did and this would have included Manticorian engineers loaned to the Greysons.

Blackbird was a moon of the gas giant Uriel. Grayson did not have a base on Blackbird itself; all Blackbird personnel were aboard the orbiting yard and stations. We have text that there were almost no survivors at all; all the dispersed yards were hit.

What doesn't make sense to me is that people seem to think that there are exactly X Petatons of cargo in the galaxy to be shipped in X number of freighters.

The only thing that will happen is that freighters will substitute high margin cargo for slightly lower margin cargo. As long as the marginal profit of the cargo exceeds the operational costs of the freighter the freighter CAN remain in operation.

The shareholders/owners might not be happy about the haircut, but they wouldn't be hurting nearly as much as the planets which all of the sudden are getting only 1/3 of their usual trade volume.

Say there are three planets on a freighter's route:
A, which produces Airplanes and Apples
B, which produces Boats and Bananas
C, which produces Cars and Carrots

Now the freighter no longer travels to planet C.
What happens to the prices of Cars and Carrots on C? The prices go down, it may be possible that the Car and Carrot industries collapse if this continue for long enough.
What happens to the prices of Airplanes, Apples, Boats and Bananas on C? They go up. However due to lack of shipping there are shortages.

Meanwhile what is happening on planets A and B? They are both experiencing Car and Carrot shortages and higher prices for both. They are also both experiencing slightly depressed prices for Airplanes, Apples, Boats and Bananas. This is bad for producers but good for consumers.

The freighter, as you might guess, is also less profitable, but still travels with full holds on each run.

Now eventually C is going to get so desperate they will want to lift the 'blockade' against themselves. A and B will be somewhat effected but will survive.

With the exception of the most underdeveloped systems I think it is unlikely that a freighter will turn up and not be able to fill its holds.

If present day Earth is considered a middle/low level economy in the Honorverse then consider the wide variety of goods that a freighter can pick up:
1. Minerals
2. Electronics
3. Manufactured Consumer goods
4. Heavy Industrial Equipment
5. Agricultural Products (Meat, Diary, Crops etc.)
6. Luxury Goods
7. Fisheries and Forestries Products
8. Textiles and Fashion
9. Hydrocarbon products
10. Chemicals
11. Pharmaceuticals
12. Cultural products and Media
13. Tools and Instruments

I'm certain that I'm only scratching the surface. There is bound to be a planet where such things are in demand.

Timber on a space station, seafood on a desert world, exotic (to the off-world customer) forms of alcohol.

On any planet with a functional economy there will be something to export and a local demand for off-world goods.

*edit for spelling typo.

Hi BobfromSidney,

Kudos for pointing out the obvious, but sometimes it needs to be stated boldly.

From the textev so far the MMM on hand has been and is expected to be rather busy, so the huge unemployment for SEM merchant sailors some expect may be somewhat delayed.

If the SL is a 50/50 split between 300-400 LY in radius, the average radius of inhabited member systems is ~14.717
LY, or ~29.4 between neighbors or about 9-10 days for most freighters.

RFC had a post a while back about the relative low amount of non-MMM local traffic, as opposed to all that the wormhole network could affect which the MMM had come to dominate, though Beowulf also has a large MM, though I can't remember more details at the moment darn it, which may have been in 2012 or 2013.

From the beginning of the series the references to the MMM involved it's dominance of the non-core shell, verge [and protectorates] and the independents beyond.

Over the 20 years of the series, the MMM has somehow insinuated itself into the heart [if not becoming] of the SL's economic life blood, the dependence upon interstellar trade wasn't yet clear, and whenever I suggested the size of the MMM was at least 10,000 if not somewhere between 40,000 to 100,000 freighters etc because according to the textev, revenues from custom duties on the MMM equaled that of the WHJ, there were those who scoffed but then refused to suggest any such range themselves.

While the SL is obviously the richest market for the MMM, it isn't the only one by any stretch of the imagination, and from all the Sollie comments the MMM's access is often restricted or limited by the OFS etc, obviously sometimes at the behest of it transtellar clients/pardners and their pirate friends who harass their competitors.

Removing that bureaucratic limit ought to increase the MMM's traffic in the protectorates several times given the very limited traffic we've seen so far for rather little investment in the GA escorts, if a few [4-5] squadrons of LAC's, be they RMN, RHN, GSN or Beowulfian, are quite sufficient as the textev indicates for the SC and TQ etc, while LAC production in the RoH is evidently in the 1-2 thousand per month from Lovat [over 10,000 destroyed there], and carrying all of those required for the protectorates would keep quite a few freighters busy, just for the orbital bases, even if CLAC's carry just the LAC's as in the TQ, though several hundred systems may require freighting them as well.

Kolokoltsov knows there are at least several core systems quite willing to leave the SL as well, I doubt the GA will ignore the trade opportunities, indeed their example should encourage emulators who want the increased traffic and business in the their locale, so just how much trade the MMM loses for even a brief while may be far less than some think.

The 'old league' core includes several dozen systems that easily average over 30 Billion in population for ~2.5 Trillion, while the other ~1700 systems add another 10+ Trillion totaling 2/3 of the human race, so the SL 'old league' might be an eighth of the potential market by population for the MMM albeit the richest, for perhaps over 25% of the market value, yet much of that evidently will happily trade with the MMM, including the transtellars.

One of my first posts at the bar, which earned a kudos from Richard Earnshaw [RFC's interlocutor], which BTW impressed the heck out of me, was on the vast impact, because huge is simply too small a term to describe its effects, of the WHJ on the whole financial and economic aspects of the SL, NTM the rest of humanity, simply because the WHJ got news faster than anywhere else; almost everybody who could would head there to find the best deal for their cargo, or simply sell it to save time going wherever and picking up another head back, and while all termini have such, Manticore's having the most means it rather than the the SL and Sol in particular probably has the single largest financial/investment market of current humanity [despite any SL complaints about de jure versus de facto], which RFC essentially confirmed NTM wasn't affected much by OB, given how much such trade didn't involve Manticore's now damaged heavy industry, and is still pumping billions a day, if not trillions a month, into the SEM's economy, besides the WHJ fees and the MMM's excise taxes, etc.

Manticore's WHJ traffic doubled in twenty years despite a huge long war and doubling the fees, for a four fold increase before Lynx was added, which probably one reason the SKM/SEM can sell all the bonds it apparently needs, NTM tapping the SEM's huge internal wealth.

Given the size of the MMM, I suspect many of those with actual space suit time ratings would be among those recruited for infrastructure assembly crews if the MMM unemployment is as severe as some suggest.

It's too late to continue tonight, so I'll see you all tomorrow.

L


[quote="BobfromSydney"]What doesn't make sense to me is that people seem to think that there are exactly X Petatons of cargo in the galaxy to be shipped in X number of freighters.

The only thing that will happen is that freighters will substitute high margin cargo for slightly lower margin cargo. As long as the marginal profit of the cargo exceeds the operational costs of the freighter the freighter CAN remain in operation.

The shareholders/owners might not be happy about the haircut, but they wouldn't be hurting nearly as much as the planets which all of the sudden are getting only 1/3 of their usual trade volume.

Say there are three planets on a freighter's route:
A, which produces Airplanes and Apples
B, which produces Boats and Bananas
C, which produces Cars and Carrots

Now the freighter no longer travels to planet C.
What happens to the prices of Cars and Carrots on C? The prices go down, it may be possible that the Car and Carrot industries collapse if this continue for long enough.
What happens to the prices of Airplanes, Apples, Boats and Bananas on C? They go up. However due to lack of shipping there are shortages.

Meanwhile what is happening on planets A and B? They are both experiencing Car and Carrot shortages and higher prices for both. They are also both experiencing slightly depressed prices for Airplanes, Apples, Boats and Bananas. This is bad for producers but good for consumers.

The freighter, as you might guess, is also less profitable, but still travels with full holds on each run.

Now eventually C is going to get so desperate they will want to lift the 'blockade' against themselves. A and B will be somewhat effected but will survive.

With the exception of the most underdeveloped systems I think it is unlikely that a freighter will turn up and not be able to fill its holds.

If present day Earth is considered a middle/low level economy in the Honorverse then consider the wide variety of goods that a freighter can pick up:
1. Minerals
2. Electronics
3. Manufactured Consumer goods
4. Heavy Industrial Equipment
5. Agricultural Products (Meat, Diary, Crops etc.)
6. Luxury Goods
7. Fisheries and Forestries Products
8. Textiles and Fashion
9. Hydrocarbon products
10. Chemicals
11. Pharmaceuticals
12. Cultural products and Media
13. Tools and Instruments

I'm certain that I'm only scratching the surface. There is bound to be a planet where such things are in demand.

Timber on a space station, seafood on a dessert world, exotic (to the off-world customer) forms of alcohol.

On any planet with a functional economy there will be something to export and a local demand for off-world goods.[/quote]

One point on the rebuilding of Manticore's industry that seems to overlooked, at least where the labor force is concerned:

Although the impact of the presence of the returning Grendelsbane workers will have has been pointed out, and the fact that the R&D staff of Weyland will be heading to Bolthole, no one here (White Haven did when in the meeting with the Queen after Oyster Bay) has mentioned that:

Mission of Honor, Chapter 30 wrote:“The solitary bright spot I’ve so far been able to find—aside from the fact that Trevor’s Star is still intact—is that Weyland was virtually empty when the attack went in.” Several people blinked in surprise, and White Haven’s lips twitched in something which might one day become a smile once more. “Vice Admiral Faraday had scheduled a surprise emergency evacuation exercise. Given the interruption in the station’s operations—not to mention the expense and the disruption of government services on Gryphon when all those life pods dropped in so unexpectedly—I imagine Faraday probably anticipated taking more than a little flak over his exercise.” The ghost of a smile disappeared. “As it happens, he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. He and his staff were aboard when the station was destroyed. All of them were lost, as was almost all of the station’s senior command crew and a quarter of its engineering staff. But because of his exercise, the entire R&D staff and over ninety-five percent of the station’s manufacturing workforce—and, thank God, their families—were on the planet and survived. That workforce will be literally invaluable when we start trying to rebuild.”

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.