How big will the Star Empire of Manticore's economy be?

TFLYTSNBN wrote: Manticore recovers by committing piracy. All the fab modules in transit to customers when Case Lacoon was implemented now belong to Manticore. If insuffectient, squadrons of raiders will visit various SL core systems to capture and appropriate fab modules. Might only take 10% from 10 systems or 100 systems just to be nice.

Nonsense, whatever the manufacturing situation; the RMN is not going to stoop to piracy. Simple self preservation will argue that, if morality is insufficient. The reformed Solarian League is bigger than the SEM by every measure except militarily. The SEM has spanked Sol as a way of pointing out how far the SLN strayed from their ideals and forcing them back on the correct path. Whether the SEM will at some later date face punishment for that remains to be seen. How much more likely will it be that the League seeks military supremacy if the SEM acts capriciously?

tlb wrote: Manticore recovers by committing piracy. All the fab modules in transit to customers when Case Lacoon was implemented now belong to Manticore. If insuffectient, squadrons of raiders will visit various SL core systems to capture and appropriate fab modules. Might only take 10% from 10 systems or 100 systems just to be nice.

Manticore isn't going to do that. The government and the Queen and the majority of the people who are involved (for which we have examples across the series) wouldn't even think to go in that direction. Why? Because after the shooting stops, Manticore wants and needs to go back to dealing with almost all of the systems that are members of the League or had any contact and trading with the League and put trade and commerce on some kind of normalized basis. Manticore (and it's business leaders etc) WANT AND NEED to not be at war with all of those systems and that commerce and treaties have to be both in good faith and the system of commerce operate under the rule of Law no a collection of barbarian brigands who steal anything (nailed down or not) and then come back and dictate terms from the bridge of a warship parked overhead after destroying a few cities and towns with KEWs just to show the will do it. This isn't some criminal enterprise with a navy of pirates to back up their demands or just go out taking what they want.

If you think Manticore should do as you suggest, why don't you suggest that Manticore with the GA (remember Haven knows a LOT about beating up systems and stealing infrastructure and crusning population under military governments headed by SS) now go out and expunge all remains milatary ships of the SLN and any League (or non League) planet that has cooperated with the League and drop a KEW into the capital of each system "just to show them we are serious".......Something along the lines of what Honor said when proposing the Harrington Plan. Manticore wants trading partners, we can't create a couple of thousand systems who will deriving and smoldering for the next decade or more waiting till they get enough strength to come back and work together to kill us.

It's going to be bad enough with all the people who's rice bowl has been broken when the Mandarins and their cronies are removed from power, influence and the graft & corruption system build with and for OFS and their partners lose what they have.

Brigade XO wrote:

tlb wrote: Manticore recovers by committing piracy. All the fab modules in transit to customers when Case Lacoon was implemented now belong to Manticore. If insuffectient, squadrons of raiders will visit various SL core systems to capture and appropriate fab modules. Might only take 10% from 10 systems or 100 systems just to be nice.

This is an example of what I hate about messing up the quote structure; I did NOT write that, "TFLYTSNBN" did. My remarks were right in line with what Brigade XO wrote, but unless you actually go back to check you will not know that.

Relax wrote:
Manticore's economy will be as big as DW needs...

-------------------

Manticore's economy will be as big as DW needs...

Relax's comments are most valid.
However, for argument's sake....

Manticore's economy is based on three primary foundations

1) Manticoran manufactured goods -- consumer, industrial and military

2) Merchant traffic, and the fees, thru the Junction (and it's 8+ termini)

3) Merchant Marine carrying trade -- both Manticoran manufactured goods and others' goods


The manufacturing sector was diminished, but not eliminated by the Yawata Strike, and currently (post-Yawata) on the path to recovery

The Carrying sector remains with either Beowulf cargo or (increasingly) Havenite manufactured goods. This is a direct economic feed to the Manty shipping firms, not the government and thus a direct feed to the economy in general.

The Junction Traffic remains, and after a short dip, will likely increase to the former OFS-protectorate systems. Similar to Manticore-Grayson or Manticore-Sidemore in earlier years.

Add to that the increased internal markets of Talbott and Manticoran Silesia.

Just a few thoughts

-- Stewart

1) Post Yawata, besides the fact that giant chunks of what were export industries got blown apart and their staff killed, until new orbital infrastructure is built every Manticore export has a gravity tax on it. Cheap and plentiful fusion power makes it much smaller than a modern equivalent would be, but you’re still having to run every ton you do make up the gravity well in atmospheric craft that are entire orders of magnitude smaller than the current space faring equivalent. Dollars and days are working against the former marry competetive advantave here.

2) For two years, this source has been cut off from the other 1,728 systems in the universe. “Well, we’ve seen an uptick in silesia” is not sufficient to compensate. Incidentally, time of data being time of flight means that it may be half a year or more before certain parts of League space know the war is off. God knows how many businesses that used to have traffic simply folded or redirected inside their much larger home market in the interim, and how long it’ll be until they come back.

3) As we’ve already done the numbers on, the core alone carries twenty times the consumer base that the entire SEM and GA combined have. If RFC hasn’t made it where manticore was kept afloat by “60% of that trade” we might have an argument. As it is? A new Talbots internal market is like getting access to Ecuador after being told you cannot trade with North America, Europe, or China.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote: Manticore recovers by committing piracy. All the fab modules in transit to customers when Case Lacoon was implemented now belong to Manticore. If insuffectient, squadrons of raiders will visit various SL core systems to capture and appropriate fab modules. Might only take 10% from 10 systems or 100 systems just to be nice.

This is an example of what I hate about messing up the quote structure; I did NOT write that, "TFLYTSNBN" did. My remarks were right in line with what Brigade XO wrote, but unless you actually go back to check you will not know that.

You should feel honored that someone has inadvertently given you credit for one of TFLYTSNBN's most outrageous, tongue in cheek ideas.

I might have gone further by siggesting that not only should Honor Harrington taken time to pillage rather than just burn Sol System's orbital industries during Eigth Fleet's goodwill visit, she should have dispatched her male crew members to inseminate as many of the local woman as possible.

GloriousRuse wrote:1) Post Yawata, besides the fact that giant chunks of what were export industries got blown apart and their staff killed, until new orbital infrastructure is built every Manticore export has a gravity tax on it. Cheap and plentiful fusion power makes it much smaller than a modern equivalent would be, but you’re still having to run every ton you do make up the gravity well in atmospheric craft that are entire orders of magnitude smaller than the current space faring equivalent. Dollars and days are working against the former marry competetive advantave here.

2) For two years, this source has been cut off from the other 1,728 systems in the universe. “Well, we’ve seen an uptick in silesia” is not sufficient to compensate. Incidentally, time of data being time of flight means that it may be half a year or more before certain parts of League space know the war is off. God knows how many businesses that used to have traffic simply folded or redirected inside their much larger home market in the interim, and how long it’ll be until they come back.

3) As we’ve already done the numbers on, the core alone carries twenty times the consumer base that the entire SEM and GA combined have. If RFC hasn’t made it where manticore was kept afloat by “60% of that trade” we might have an argument. As it is? A new Talbots internal market is like getting access to Ecuador after being told you cannot trade with North America, Europe, or China.

A deindustrialized Manticore trying to compensate for the lack of trade with the SL by trading with the Talbot sector and Silesia is like two drunks helping each other to cross a busy freeway.

The industrial infrastructure that was destroyed during the strike on Manticore is comparable to the industrial infrastructure of Europe and Japan after WW2. Those industrial assets may have taken decades to build, but the actual monetary value is comparable to perhaps one or two years of prewar GDP. An analysis of market valuation of major industrial companies supports this estimation. Given some initial assistance in the form of advanced machine tools (fabrication modules), those industrial assets can be rebuilt within only a few years if manufacture of consumer goods is restrained.

Another analogy is the effect of the industrial assistance offerred to Grayson in HotQ. Just a few, ten megaton freighters worth of stuff transformed Grayson into an industrial powerhouse. The biggest problem is the loss of the skilled workforce. However; in a prolong society there must be many people who had moved to other careers after working in orbital industries that can return to their old careers or help train new people. This works better for Manticore than Grayson. However; some significant fraction of the workforce will have been on vacation or elsewhere during the strikes, not to mention the entire staff of Wehland.

We must not forget that Manticore must have been accumulating massive foreign reserves over the centuries that the MWHJ was in operation along with Manticoran shipping and export of manufactured goods. Those foreign assets can be sold to buy fabrication modules to be brought to Manticore or to compensate the buyers of Fab Modules that were diverted by Case Lacoon. Queen Elizebeth alone (who I visualize as resembling Wendy Williams), probably has enough cash stashed in her bra to replace Wehland or even Vulcan. A five year hiatus on major warship construction will help Manticore bootstrap its heavy industries.

Manticore should be able to fully reconstitute its heavy industries within a decade.

GloriousRuse wrote:2) For two years, this source has been cut off from the other 1,728 systems in the universe. “Well, we’ve seen an uptick in silesia” is not sufficient to compensate. Incidentally, time of data being time of flight means that it may be half a year or more before certain parts of League space know the war is off. God knows how many businesses that used to have traffic simply folded or redirected inside their much larger home market in the interim, and how long it’ll be until they come back.

Lacoön One was ordered in early Feb 1922 PD, Oyster Bay/Yawata Strike was Feb 26, it looks like Lacoön Two wasn't until April, and the war ended before March 1923 PD

That's barely a 1 year cut off from the League member/controlled worlds. And for most of that time Manticore would also have been picking up a small increase in trading because the Trevor's Star terminus should be reopened to non-military traffic and the hundreds of worlds of the (restored) People's Republic of Haven would be newly opened to external trade.

That doesn't mean that Lacoön and the Yawata Strike weren't massive economic hits. But the former wasn't as long lasting as you'd indicated and there were some slightly larger offsetting factors that you hadn't mentioned.

Jonathan_S wrote: And for most of that time Manticore would also have been picking up a small increase in trading because the Trevor's Star terminus should be reopened to non-military traffic and the hundreds of worlds of the (restored) People's Republic of Haven would be newly opened to external trade.

No, Per David the terminus was always open for traffic other then during active military operations in the vicinity of the terminus.

"…However, there seem to be some additional misconceptions floating around. Specifically, discussion as to whether or not the Trevor's Star terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction was used during the period when Trevor's Star was held by the People's Republic. The answer is that, yes, it was."
...
" So here's what happened, people. After open hostilities began, additional restrictions were placed on all passage through the Trevor's Star terminus of the Junction. Light warships were placed within energy range of the emergence point, and it was made clear to everyone involved that any ship coming through which did not immediately follow the procedures on which they had been thoroughly briefed before being allowed transit or failed to conform with any additional orders from traffic control after making transit, would be fired upon and destroyed."


http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/280/0