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

tlb wrote:I expect that the League should rebuild orbital infrastructure in the 6 systems affected by Buccaneer, but the GA does not need to force that.

PeterZ wrote:No they don't need to force reparations. They can use that complicity to force those Core worlds to contribute production modules as inexpensively as possibly. The more resources used to produce those modules, the quicker the destruction is made good.

tlb wrote:I agree, except that I think that the SLN committed Eridani Edict violations in Buccaneer and using that would serve better as a lever to force action.

PeterZ wrote:And hit them with both arguments to guilt them into paying the entire cost. If each argument was passionately advocated by a serious faction of the GA, the SL may just cough up the money for both Beowulf and Manticore as well as the Indy Core worlds.

Instead of reparations I think that Manticore, at least, would prefer that commerce gets back to normal, so the carrying trade and wormhole traffic will resume a steady revenue stream.
I do not know what Beowulf will want; however since they know that the Malign blew up their orbitals, I do not think that it will be reparations from the League. They have serious decisions to make over what should replace those lost orbitals. Do they have a moon or two? Maybe they should build there instead.

tlb wrote:I expect that the League should rebuild orbital infrastructure in the 6 systems affected by Buccaneer, but the GA does not need to force that.

PeterZ wrote:No they don't need to force reparations. They can use that complicity to force those Core worlds to contribute production modules as inexpensively as possibly. The more resources used to produce those modules, the quicker the destruction is made good.

tlb wrote:I agree, except that I think that the SLN committed Eridani Edict violations in Buccaneer and using that would serve better as a lever to force action.

PeterZ wrote:And hit them with both arguments to guilt them into paying the entire cost. If each argument was passionately advocated by a serious faction of the GA, the SL may just cough up the money for both Beowulf and Manticore as well as the Indy Core worlds.

tlb wrote:Instead of reparations I think that Manticore, at least, would prefer that commerce gets back to normal, so the carrying trade and wormhole traffic will resume a steady revenue stream.
I do not know what Beowulf will want; however since they know that the Malign blew up their orbitals, I do not think that it will be reparations from the League. They have serious decisions to make over what should replace those lost orbitals. Do they have a moon or two? Maybe they should build there instead.

I think they will go for more habitats but each of them smaller. Beowulf has been around for millennia. All there natural real estate has been developed. Those that haven't been developed have limiting features of one sort or another. The loss of Alpha, Beta and Gamma might alter the hierarchy of detracting features of those natural sites, but they do not totally eliminate them.

There isn't enough alternatives to eliminating orbital habitats. Heck, one suspects a net influx of residents after the SL war. How many Beowulfian are living off-planet in the SL for business? Will they still be welcome abroad? Do they want to live there still? I suspect Beowulfians will want to come home in larger numbers than residents want to leave Beowulf. I suspect the same applies to all those Core worlds that were Buccaneered and want to join the GA.

That means a huge demand for orbital modules of all stripes is needed immediately. That can't happen expeditiously without SL production. Until those orbital are up and running, all those damaged systems will have serious housing problems. The longer the physical and economic dislocations last on those worlds, the angrier the citizens of those worlds will feel towards the SL. Getting everything back to normal so that shipping routes will resume as much as possible means a quick resolution to this problem. SL production of orbital modules becomes very important in achieving this.

In the end its not about reparations as much as directing sufficient production of SL industry to manufacturing those needed modules without allowing the SL transstellars to profit excessively...if at all. That would breed its own political problems in the damaged systems. The SL; SL systems and transstellars, can't profit from damage they caused. That was the issue that turned the Protectorates into the abused pool of indentured servitude OFS loved so dearly.

I recall that in Flag in Exhile there was discussion of the possibility that the Peep fleet might dismantle Grayson's orbital manufacturing infrastructure and haul it of to Haven.

I see this as a viable tactic for the SEM and Grayson to obtain components to rebuild their infrastructure. Who in the SL would argue with a squadron of Rollands much less Saggy Cs, Nikes or SD(P)s?

On the other hand, Manticore was probably in the business of exporting fabrication modules to developing systems and may be even SL core worlds who were not cutting edge. How many of these modules were in transit when Case Lacoon wasactivated? How many returned home?

Lets run on the assumption that the SL or New League Government does not pay reparations out of the goodness of their hearts or because they have a quixotic belief in Space International Law and the Sacred Nature of Treaties. So they need a forcing function regardless of the pretty legal coloring used.

Lets also run on the assumption that because the current Fed-Sol gov is broke - as per Mantie plan - that the act of actually assembling the currency needs to come from somewhere. And that even electronic funds can only travel as fast as data...which means at the speed of interstellar ships.

(Incidentally, the Honor terms indicate no actual reparations to be paid, but let's run with it.)

The New League Government can:

Borrow. From someone. Who exactly actually produces an interesting thought experiment if you follow it around for a but and don't hand wave. Lets just say they do. Probably by issuing bonds across constituent systems. I'm guessing the interest rate to convince any major investor to buy in to a NLG which just demonstrated it is non-solvent, militarily a joke, and is backed mostly by the continued presence of a formerly hostile foreign power screaming that if you don't build a galactic democratic constitution in a month we're going to burn down more orbital infrastructure...lets just say it is going to be fairly high.

And someone needs to draft up the issue, issue it (how many months of travel to move bond issue info?), get investors to buy, and then wait the months of travel for bought bonds to return, and then move that money-data to Beowulf et al. (Where no doubt a secondary speculative market on the reliability of NLG bonds is forming.) Lets call it a half year delay to first payment, with no guarantee that anyone will actually make future payments if investors are slow to purchase. This way does not bode well for the mantie economy (minus Author magic).


Use Fiscal Policy and the Money Supply We know where this ends. I look forward to papering my walls with NLG bank notes as their first act of government is to issue a massive currency run. (if they do it in conjunction with taxation, different story, but that has its own problems)

Or, for the GA, I look forward to finding out that my reparation bill is being significantly undercut as inflation cuts the value of the currency I receive it in. I can force the NLG to buy Mantie dollars as the specie needed, but I sure as shit can't guarantee the currency they just gave me for Mantie dollars is going to be worth anything six months from now. Which means the actual reparations came from...the Manties. Which kind of defeats the point of reparations.

At least the currency transmission time will be low. Just fiat up some currency (better hope the NLG uses a fiat currency) and send it on over.

Tax This will work. It will mean the NLG must be tax capable, which probably speaks poorly for the next round of Sollie vs Mantie. the caveat is "if the NLG survives the measure once the GA fleet leaves". If it doesn't, no threat, but we have the same false valuation problems that a mass money print has. The bubble will be fun.

Also less useful: this will be the very slowest means of actually moving the currency to the GA. Assessing, filing, returning (building tax code to begin with...), auditing, putting in place the gov agencies to do those, all with data packets that take a month or more to travel. Hope the GA can live without rebuilding for a few years.

SO the idea that reparations will be quick, reliable, or even nessecarily helpful is sketchy at best. Which means in the interim years the SEM economy should not be assumed to be relying on them.

Of course to even get them, we need

Enforcement

Which will, as posited here, will come from Lacoon like leverage at the wormholes or a more directly extortionate approach of "pay, or we are at war, and you will lose badly."

Lacoon Uber Alles

Requires the GA Navy keep controlling the wormholes. Which means keeping them (expensively) deployed. And turning back ships carrying Sollie goods...which are being carried in Mantie hulls...so, right...to make you pay us money, we are going to not let our merchants make money. Unless they aren't Sollie, because, they seceded. But now they don't owe you Sollie reparations. Or they do and we're back to square one.

But wait! What if we established a fee structure! The method (you must use Manie hulls, transit fee, whatever) doesn't really change the overall effect - you pay to play until you've paid your share.

Well we'll need to leave some sort of people in place to assess those fees. And collect them, and transfer them back to the GA. And deal with local political and military issues surrounding it. They'll have to be GA folks of course - can't have Sollies doing it.

Which means they'll be government appointees; but they'll only be responsible for enforcing the fee structure out there on the frontier, the local systems will of course be autonomous until they do something that can't be tolerated. Then the GA would have to intervene.


Probably don't want to use mainline combat units for it; they have big war things to worry about. Maybe some dedicated light units tied into local understanding...

It'd be like...an "Office"..of...well they aren't part of the GA or too close to the SEM...lets say "Frontier"...oh man...this is sounding really familiar...


The Do It Or We Shoot You Option. Well, there's lots of wyas this could play out. They all generally end in some combination of:

The New League ceases to exist.

The New League decides for a rematch.

The Manties become a sprawling Imperial Power.

Someone takes the Genocide option.

GloriousRuse wrote:Lets run on the assumption that the SL or New League Government does not pay reparations out of the goodness of their hearts or because they have a quixotic belief in Space International Law and the Sacred Nature of Treaties. So they need a forcing function regardless of the pretty legal coloring used.

Lets also run on the assumption that because the current Fed-Sol gov is broke - as per Mantie plan - that the act of actually assembling the currency needs to come from somewhere. And that even electronic funds can only travel as fast as data...which means at the speed of interstellar ships.

(Incidentally, the Honor terms indicate no actual reparations to be paid, but let's run with it.)

Although the League government and probably Sol are currently broke, the Core worlds are incredibly wealthy. I would be surprised if the new League constitution did not include some small provision for a taxing authority to repair war damage and build a more effective navy and cover future emergencies. What this might mean for future relations, who knows?

GloriousRuse wrote:Lets run on the assumption that the SL or New League Government does not pay reparations out of the goodness of their hearts or because they have a quixotic belief in Space International Law and the Sacred Nature of Treaties. So they need a forcing function regardless of the pretty legal coloring used.

Lets also run on the assumption that because the current Fed-Sol gov is broke - as per Mantie plan - that the act of actually assembling the currency needs to come from somewhere. And that even electronic funds can only travel as fast as data...which means at the speed of interstellar ships.

(Incidentally, the Honor terms indicate no actual reparations to be paid, but let's run with it.)

tlb wrote:Although the League government and probably Sol are currently broke, the Core worlds are incredibly wealthy. I would be surprised if the new League constitution did not include some small provision for a taxing authority to repair war damage and build a more effective navy and cover future emergencies. What this might mean for future relations, who knows?

Also, the governments of the member systems bear some responsibility for what the feds do. They are as much part of the Solarian League government as the federal government. Even if they renounce the federal policies that led them to this point, they bear responsibility for what their representatives have done in their name and the names of their citizens.
Those systems' governments are incredibly wealthy in aggregate.

GloriousRuse wrote:Enforcement

Which will, as posited here, will come from Lacoon like leverage at the wormholes or a more directly extortionate approach of "pay, or we are at war, and you will lose badly."

Lacoon Uber Alles

Requires the GA Navy keep controlling the wormholes. Which means keeping them (expensively) deployed. And turning back ships carrying Sollie goods...which are being carried in Mantie hulls...so, right...to make you pay us money, we are going to not let our merchants make money. Unless they aren't Sollie, because, they seceded. But now they don't owe you Sollie reparations. Or they do and we're back to square one.

But wait! What if we established a fee structure! The method (you must use Manie hulls, transit fee, whatever) doesn't really change the overall effect - you pay to play until you've paid your share.

Well we'll need to leave some sort of people in place to assess those fees. And collect them, and transfer them back to the GA. And deal with local political and military issues surrounding it. They'll have to be GA folks of course - can't have Sollies doing it.

Which means they'll be government appointees; but they'll only be responsible for enforcing the fee structure out there on the frontier, the local systems will of course be autonomous until they do something that can't be tolerated. Then the GA would have to intervene.


Probably don't want to use mainline combat units for it; they have big war things to worry about. Maybe some dedicated light units tied into local understanding...

It'd be like...an "Office"..of...well they aren't part of the GA or too close to the SEM...lets say "Frontier"...oh man...this is sounding really familiar...

Although it's possible that the Manties could use a varient of this. If they only collect this extra fees on Solarian goods passing through the Junction then they don't need to strong arm all the individual wormhole owners or scater enforcement units all over a frontier. Manticore does have the advantage that a significant fraction of interstellar freight moves right through their Junction - and it's central enough to the wormhole network that the time it takes to bypass it will cost a lot is lost revenue or delayed receipt of payment -- so they can get away with raising fees quite a lot before it become cheaper to take the long way round to avoid them. (The League didn't have to option to do this because they didn't have a major junction in their territory, so they had little choice but to try to collect tolls at the scattered termini that did land in their territory.

I still don't know if it's a good idea - but only collecting for using the wormholes that are permanent Manticoran territory at least bypasses a lot of the risk that your toll collectors morph into a new OFS.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just thinking about the economics of the Honorverse. I believe that....

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

kzt wrote:

stewart wrote:(2) that 60% to 75% of Solaran trade was carried in Mantie merchant hulls.
Everyone forgets the qualifier. 'At some point in the journey.' They were not being carried end-to-end, they were using Manticoran hulls at some point in the months long journey.

Couple of things to go along with this. The SL had to deal with the loss of the carrying capacity from Lacoon I and II and we had a lot of discussion about that when it showed up. The SL members and ALL of the systems that used all of those routes and ships then lost the ability to ship vis MMM vessels then all those wormholes. There has been NO indication that the SL systems have yet to put any new construction freighters into service.
That being said, and however much various people in the SL either didn't like SEM (and or their merchant marine) before Lacoon I, MMM is again available for the flow of goods between systems across essentialy the known universe. All sorts of people may now hate the Manties -more than before because of the war- but if they have the choice of shipping on a MMM vessel or not getting their goods delivered, what do you think the actual outcome is going to be.
In fact, how many shippers, manufactures or people who place orders that need interstellar transport are going to SPECIFY that no portion of any shipping route can be on a Manticorian owned vessel. In my opinion, dammed few.
Sorting out the insurance issues from the Lagoon I and II are a different question but those are going to be less of a problem. Actually, at the moment, MMM ships are going to have a halo effect because anybody who tackles or impeeds a MMM ship in SL space has to be concerned about RMN getting invloved.
So, as soon as the various shipping lines can get crews back aboard and start booking cargo, off they go. The original shipping routes haven't dissapeared (well perhaps the one to Mesa) but there is going to be a backlog unless all the manufactures and buyers have gone out of business- different problem. Insurance for interstellar transport coverage by/for the individual MMM ships could be a problems but I suspect that SEM will do something to make it available.

Only one of the wormhole terminus taken in Lacoon II is actually owned by a League Member, the rest were indpendent systems though many seem to have had some involvement by OFS- which now ceases to exist. I also suspect that there will be a number of regime changes on those former OFS linked systems and the incomming government might just be very intereste in making agreements with Manticore about participation in the wormholes. At the very least, RMN will be tasked with wormhole bridge security for a fair amount of time till SL 2.0 gets up and running and the thought will have occured to a lot of people that that major asset of any particular planitary system is going to be vunerable until at least SL 2.0 is funtional and the SLN can return to "commerce protection" (which they have previously enfoced mostly by reputation and threat of massive retaliation.

So, yes, MMM is going to be more or less going to be able to jump back into the competition.
Not smoothly but in a big way.

What's the first thing a Manticoran shipping line has to come up with to restart trade with the SL?

Post another $20 billion bond with a SL bank to replace the one they forfeited when they stole their customers cargo. That's per ship, and probably on the low side. Think about the value of cargo of 8 million tons of BMWs.

Wheat is $135 per ton according to the first source I found. That's a billion dollar cargo. For wheat.