Some comments on the economics of the series

Belial666 wrote:Graysons:
The planet was two centuries behind in overall technology and productivity per man-hour. That's a lot. Let's say, for the ease of calculation, that this technological jump the Manties gave them about tripled overall productivity per man-hour. This allowed the Protector to shift, say, half the workforce working on the military and leaving the other half on anything else.

cthia wrote:What is the Honorverse main currency? I can't find textev, even in the Pearls. I know that the League has the League credit. Then there is the Havenite credit. The Manticoran credit. The Rembrandt stellar. The Grayson austin. What determined the exchange rate?

Is it based on Gold? What is it backed by?

I began thinking about it, ever following the dilemma of a cloud hanging over our own country. The inevitability of our own dollar ceasing to be the world standard currency. I cannot believe the average American ignores this news. Who can know the ultimate repercussions for the American way of life.

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php ... .s._empire
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... -to-an-end

Duckk wrote:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1950

cthia wrote:What is the Honorverse main currency? I can't find textev, even in the Pearls. I know that the League has the League credit. Then there is the Havenite credit. The Manticoran credit. The Rembrandt stellar. The Grayson austin. What determined the exchange rate?

Is it based on Gold? What is it backed by?

I began thinking about it, ever following the dilemma of a cloud hanging over our own country. The inevitability of our own dollar ceasing to be the world standard currency. I cannot believe the average American ignores this news. Who can know the ultimate repercussions for the American way of life.

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php ... .s._empire
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... -to-an-end

Between star systems, things get trickier. Here, something has to be physically carried from Customer A to Customer B, which is where institutions like the Banco de Madrid really come into their own. Interstellar financial transfers come in many styles and flavors. The example which was used in Torch of Freedom was of the Honorverse equivalent of cold cash, or possibly what we might think of today as bearer bonds. There are many, many other types of financial instruments, the majority of which are usually some variation of a letter of credit, stock certificates, or bonds.

cthia wrote:The financial system in the Honorverse is both very modern and very archaic to our 21st-century eyes. It is modern in the sense that virtually all currencies are "abstract," based on something other than, say, precious metals, and very archaic in that there is no interstellar equivalent of instantly verifiable wire transfers or similar financial instruments. Everything has to be transported physically between star systems.

This results, among other things, in a two-tier financial system. Within a star system, transfers can be instantaneous or very close to it. Electronic delays are counted in minutes, not hours or days or weeks, and so there is very seldom a physical transfer of cash or cash equivalents. As a result, the mechanics of intra-system economies are “paperless,” with procedures which can easily extrapolated from our present-day experience.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:The financial system in the Honorverse is both very modern and very archaic to our 21st-century eyes. It is modern in the sense that virtually all currencies are "abstract," based on something other than, say, precious metals, and very archaic in that there is no interstellar equivalent of instantly verifiable wire transfers or similar financial instruments. Everything has to be transported physically between star systems.

This results, among other things, in a two-tier financial system. Within a star system, transfers can be instantaneous or very close to it. Electronic delays are counted in minutes, not hours or days or weeks, and so there is very seldom a physical transfer of cash or cash equivalents. As a result, the mechanics of intra-system economies are “paperless,” with procedures which can easily extrapolated from our present-day experience.

Actually, just to nitpick, some intra-system monetary transfers could take over an hour. (Unless FTL-comm Hermes buoys are available)

Just using it as an example, the Blackbird yards around Uriel (Yeltsin VI) vary between 37.5 and 64.5 light minutes from Grayson (Yeltsin V), and some mining habitats could be further out than that.

Heck Sphinx and Manticore vary between 9.7 and 32.7 lightminutes from each other. (And don't forget that when furthest apart, so on opposite sides of the sun, you'll have to add a bit of extra distance as you'll have to relay the radio or laser signal; can't send it through the star)

Still, the majority of transactions are likely to be over much shorter distances than that; just around the inhabited planet and their orbits. Although there can be exceptions -- I'm sure a fair number of periodic monetary transfers had to happen between Manticore and its Junction, and that's 7 light-hours from the primary.

Anyway, end nitpick. (sorry about that - it doesn't change your main point)

runsforcelery wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually, just to nitpick, some intra-system monetary transfers could take over an hour. (Unless FTL-comm Hermes buoys are available)

Just using it as an example, the Blackbird yards around Uriel (Yeltsin VI) vary between 37.5 and 64.5 light minutes from Grayson (Yeltsin V), and some mining habitats could be further out than that.

Heck Sphinx and Manticore vary between 9.7 and 32.7 lightminutes from each other. (And don't forget that when furthest apart, so on opposite sides of the sun, you'll have to add a bit of extra distance as you'll have to relay the radio or laser signal; can't send it through the star)

Still, the majority of transactions are likely to be over much shorter distances than that; just around the inhabited planet and their orbits. Although there can be exceptions -- I'm sure a fair number of periodic monetary transfers had to happen between Manticore and its Junction, and that's 7 light-hours from the primary.

Anyway, end nitpick. (sorry about that - it doesn't change your main point)

Actually, the text you quoted from Cithia was actually him quoting me.

You're quite right that intrasystem transactions can take an hour or two. For that matter, if they're from a wormhole terminus, they can take several hours (the Basilisk Terminus, for example, is 10 LH from Medusa), but these are definitely the exception. In fact, most really long-range transactions would, indeed, be related to a terminus and the clusters of interstellar traffic. In those cases, we really aren't talking about intrasystem transfers, but rather at the final (or initiating) leg of intersystem transactions. The transfers from the outer-system nodes to the inner-system banking facilities are really just transfers between the same branch of the same institution --- bookkeeping, for all intents and purposes.

The main point, as you noted, is that electronic-transfer intrasystem banking in near real-time is practical, whereas the same cannot be said for interstellar transactions.

Jonathan_S wrote:On the one hand it's just one more way to accidentally, or deliberately, overdraw the account; on the other if you do that with a check the bank just refused to honor it and charges you a penalty. They can't exactly retroactively fail to honor your cash withdrawal. [G] I know it's something banks had to worry about before their branches were all electronically linked, just not sure how they handled it, or how it'd be handled in the future.