Lacöon I

Hutch wrote:We also know from textev (ART or was it MoH?) that Koloskhov (sp) is scared to death that the Transtellars may make their own deals with the GA/SEM to save their profits, rather than biting the bullet and pitching in to help save the SL.

Which makes a lot of sense. Closing down the wormhole network is Really Bad for any business dependent on fast interstellar transport. If you don't aren't a Mesan puppet corp, and aren't in the Verge-looting business, why in the world would you want to prop up the Mandrins' war? You want a deal cut, and back to business as usual, as fast as possible. And if the Mandrins won't be reasonable, maybe the Manties will.

Unless, of course, the Manties have decided that the transtellars have to go as well. All of them. Because if they're powerful enough to corrupt the League, they're far too powerful as non-state actors for the fragmented post-League galaxy the GA means to create.

Not saying it'll happen, but I can dream.

Those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it.

Don't remember who said it, but it fits. GA is blockading SLN. The British blockade of France in the Napoleonic era wars, was dependent on the extra skill of the Brit navy. But smuggling increased at the same time.

Wonder how it will work out

BTW, the ebola thread sheds some light on the effectiveness of our currently weak quarantine policy. Our policy makers don't seem to remember about major historical plagues, and how health measures led to their defeat. Quarantine is also a blockade, although the enemy is different

DDHv wrote:

Those who do not remember history are destined to repeat it.

Don't remember who said it, but it fits. GA is blockading SLN. The British blockade of France in the Napoleonic era wars, was dependent on the extra skill of the Brit navy. But smuggling increased at the same time.

Wonder how it will work out

BTW, the ebola thread sheds some light on the effectiveness of our currently weak quarantine policy. Our policy makers don't seem to remember about major historical plagues, and how health measures led to their defeat. Quarantine is also a blockade, although the enemy is different

Actually, the GA is not blockading the League. They are not preventing League ships from trading with other systems, except for direct trade between the GA and the League.

To put it in modern naval terms: all they are doing is recalling their own ships and stopping Solarian ships from using the Suez and Panama Canals. They are not standing off the Solarian shores and blocking ships from entering or leaving. They are not stopping neutral ships from trading with the League. They are not even blocking neutral trading ships from traveling through the Suez and Panama canals.

Of course, it's a bit more than that, mainly because the wormhole network is even more important than the Panama and Suez canals combined. But that's essentially it. Manticore is not actually blockading the League. At least, not yet in the text.

Hutch wrote:And are they going to want to spend billions of their SLN credits on crash-building a new shipyard? Especially since its' their income streams that are drying up and the Verge worlds many of them have been bleeding are no longer producing like good vassals.

Soulless corporations such as the Transtellars have been cast as are more likely to try and get the governments to do it....but that would mean raising taxes in the middle of an economic down-turn, and we all know how popular that can be....

I'm sorry, but I just can't see it. I do concur, Manticore's recovery is perhaps quicker than it should be IRL, and the debt incurred to rebuild it will affect their economy post-war (see Great Britain post WWII), but under the demands of survival (and with Beowulf now fully committed to help), the Manties are more likely to pull it off than the Sollies.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Who built the liberty ships in WW2? Who paid for them? Why was this done?

kzt wrote:

Hutch wrote:And are they going to want to spend billions of their SLN credits on crash-building a new shipyard? Especially since its' their income streams that are drying up and the Verge worlds many of them have been bleeding are no longer producing like good vassals.

Soulless corporations such as the Transtellars have been cast as are more likely to try and get the governments to do it....but that would mean raising taxes in the middle of an economic down-turn, and we all know how popular that can be....

I'm sorry, but I just can't see it. I do concur, Manticore's recovery is perhaps quicker than it should be IRL, and the debt incurred to rebuild it will affect their economy post-war (see Great Britain post WWII), but under the demands of survival (and with Beowulf now fully committed to help), the Manties are more likely to pull it off than the Sollies.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Who built the liberty ships in WW2? Who paid for them? Why was this done?

As I recall, the liberty ships were used to transport war materiel, and thus were effectively navy transports. The freighters we are talking about here would be purely civilian transports, used for commercial purposes.

drothgery wrote:

Hutch wrote:We also know from textev (ART or was it MoH?) that Koloskhov (sp) is scared to death that the Transtellars may make their own deals with the GA/SEM to save their profits, rather than biting the bullet and pitching in to help save the SL.

Which makes a lot of sense. Closing down the wormhole network is Really Bad for any business dependent on fast interstellar transport. If you don't aren't a Mesan puppet corp, and aren't in the Verge-looting business, why in the world would you want to prop up the Mandrins' war? You want a deal cut, and back to business as usual, as fast as possible. And if the Mandrins won't be reasonable, maybe the Manties will.

I got the impression that most of the Solarian Transstellars had their hands in the cookiejar that is the Verge and their bottom line is dependant on the SL government's deals. It's probably not all of them, but a good portion.

And the Question is, would you give a company a break while you are fighting a war with home planet? Would Pan Am be encouraged to fly regular air routes between San Francisco and Tokyo in 1944? Woudl General Electric and Westinghouse still be allowed to operate their Japanese facilities? In 1944, the answer was a complete no.

I'm not ceertain you could "pardon" a corporate entity without pardoning their entire homeworld.

Theemile wrote:I got the impression that most of the Solarian Transstellars had their hands in the cookiejar that is the Verge and their bottom line is dependant on the SL government's deals. It's probably not all of them, but a good portion.

Remember that the Sollies we see in the novels and short stories have almost nothing to do with the life of the average League citizen. For citizens of League members, the League government is not particularly important. The illegal immigrant ghetto in Old Chicago is a tiny percentage of the Sol system's population (or even Old Chicago's). The SLN is, on a per capita basis, absurdly tiny (the entire SLN could be manned by less than 1% of the Sol system population, and if Sol isn't less than 1% of the League, it's not a lot more).

The economy of the entire Verge, combined, is probably smaller than Sol (or any number of heavily populated core worlds), alone. The corrupt transtellars looting the Verge are only important because it's a major source of funding for the League government, which is only the case because the League doesn't have the ability to levy direct taxes.

SWM wrote:

kzt wrote:Who built the liberty ships in WW2? Who paid for them? Why was this done?

As I recall, the liberty ships were used to transport war materiel, and thus were effectively navy transports. The freighters we are talking about here would be purely civilian transports, used for commercial purposes.

Actually, the Liberty ships were built by commercial shipyards under contract and not at Government shipyards. Many of the ships that survived the war went into commercial use.

And the ships were for a demonstrable military use.

And furthermore <grin>, you still need the yard and tooling and personnel to build 2-4 MT "Liberty Ships", and that is where we part company, kzt, because you think all (or at least the large majority) of Core Worlds can do that easily, while I don't

Most of the shipyards for the Liberty ships already existed pre-1940; could the U.S. build them today with our current shipyard status? Between questionable and doubtful.

Won't stop me from buying you a beer at Honorcon...

We ar forgetting at some point the alliance will be raiding hteir infrastructure and industry, so those systems actually capable of building freighters might soon be targeted.