Some comments on the economics of the series

One could have really cool and expensive frauds going on. Talk about writing bad cheques.

What happens when the league says the Manty dollar is only worth 10 cents?

Lord Skimper wrote:Add in the trade saving Silesia and the broke Peeps. Perhaps the only money in trade now will come from the Andie's but even they willn't be able to keep the money rolling into Manticore.

Talbot, Silesia are going to cost money. The peeps will be building ships in offset towards reparations, but they are totally broke. As for the US Germany Japan economic example that is after 50 years of relative peace. And the USA has as much debt and ceiling raises, as it does GDP. Best to look at post WWII US Germany and Japan economic levels. Not so rosy.

The destruction of the Manty infrastructure is costing so much and with zero money coming from Sollie space and no one having money in Silesia, Talbot, or Haven, let alone how broke Manticore is or soon will be.

As for Grayson, that has also bothered me. If they can afford so much military naval power the panicking Sollies will be able to raise a 1000 Graysons.

Remember for the most part you only need to kick someone in the pants once or twice before they take notice. Add in a political house cleaning, an enemy going into hiding and economic fortunes so huge that Hauptman looks like Kevin O'Leary pretending to be rich when he barely has two pennies to rub together. Economically the GA is broke. The Manties superiority will only last as long as they can hold the money situation together. Before suddenly the house of cards comes tumbling down. Especially when the populace starts hurting and the enemy isn't the enemy, but that enemy just has to go into hiding while the house of cards falls into place.

Manticore might hold on, the peeps might rebel, Silesia may or may not evolve. Talbot will be happy to keep it together. While the SL falls apart. Think Silesia was bad? 15 Silesia's with Twice the Pirates twice the problems and all the, albeit corrupt, law enforcement disappearing. A shattered league is going to kill Manty trade now and into the future.

A smaller better stronger rich league with the 500-700 best worlds only is going to make it better. Tie up the GA in policing the 1000-1200 new Silesian confederacy pirate hot spots. Albeit Silesia will look and be remembered as being so much better than this cluster ....

Albeit Silesia now that is a cool name!

Actually I think the destruction of the Manty industrial infrastructure coupled with the virtual closure of the Junction and the recall of the Merchant fleet is an explosive cocktail for utter economic meltdown of the Manticorian economy on an epic scale.

Essentially, Manticorian wealth was based firmly on the wormhole, specifically the transit fees charged for transit. This has had a lot of secondary impacts on the economy which Manticore has skillfully leveraged into even more wealth such as becoming a trade nexus and transshipment point for so many of those cargos, to building the largest merchant fleet in known space and the real and tax revenue that has brought to the simply wealth created by exceptionally vibrant trade which comes with all of the former.

The closure of the Junction to deprives the Star Empire of their most abundant resource and further stifles all the other factors which are the source of Manticorian wealth and the destruction of their industrial infrastructure reduces them to the economic potential of a typical verge or rim world which is to say, not much of an economy at all.

Now if you take this and factor in the idea that the value of the money supply is based on the perceived value of the issuer's economy (and in this case it doesn't have to be paper bills or currency you can hold in your hand) then the total value of the entire Manticorian money supply today has to be valued at pennies on the dollar and this leads to a reduction in overall wealth and financial resources that may Earth's Great Depression look like an economic boom.

I'd be surprised if all of this didn't have an impact on the economies of Haven and the Andermani. They, however aren't as dependent for their wealth on the Junction or on interstellar trade throughout known space but it's highly probably that a great deal of their trade was also with the League worlds and disruptions there probably signal economic distress for those nations as well.

Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

Also, by now Manticore has some of its manufacturing capacity rebuilt. If White Haven was correct about his predictions, some of the smaller shipyards have to be in service building the first new ships by the end of Cauldron of Ghosts. If shipyards have been built already, I think we can assume that some factories have also been rebuilt by now.

Manticore is doing fine. They've lost trade within the Solarian League, but they still have plenty of trade with other areas, and manufacturing is coming back online.

Jonathan_S:

I think what you say is right about retail banking and banks extending credit to customers in good standing. There are probably some common-sense limitations on this as well. If a person with 'salary-man' deposit/spending patterns suddenly turned up at the Wormhole branch and wanted to pull their entire life savings out the bank might ask that person to wait an hour.

Something similar would apply to Megacorps and shipping Cartels and other big galaxy wide organisations. Because of their degree of collateral, size etc. etc. authorised representatives would be able to turn up anywhere there is a bank branch they have a relationship with and get funds extended on credit there. The bank branch would then just send the record of the transactions to the central clearinghouse with the next dispatch boat etc. where the account would be adjusted accordingly.

Now considering how the MWJ significantly shortens the information loop, it is no wonder that Manticoran banks and financial entities have a huge competitive advantage in their sectors.

Last point I think Manticore's currency is denominated in dollars.

So many threads.

If two withdrawals are made from an account without enough to cover both, the one that gets there 1st is the one that gets paid. There are exceptions. One occurs when a bank takes the specifice step -when multiple checks/withdrawals hit the same day but there is not enough to pay all of them, they pay the greatest number if individual items and return (and charge for the overdraft that would have been caused) the rest. This presumes that they do the more or less standard batch clearing of physical items at end-of-day.

With the advent of real time electronic interchange, it is POSSIBLE for a bank on one side of the planet to get paid against a check it processes AT THE TELLER with the proper electronic equipment (reads the MICR encoding and the amount the teller puts in). The funds are at the same time "withdrawn" from the person's account with the bank the check is drawn on.

If you end up with real-time banking across inter-planitary distances (even with FTL) then the transaction that gets there first and "hits the account" is the one that is paid. Sorting out who was doing what -when then becomes a subject for discussion between the two people trying to chash the checks (well, the one who doesn't get their check cashes/withdrawal made) with the other party.

SWM wrote:Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

Also, by now Manticore has some of its manufacturing capacity rebuilt. If White Haven was correct about his predictions, some of the smaller shipyards have to be in service building the first new ships by the end of Cauldron of Ghosts. If shipyards have been built already, I think we can assume that some factories have also been rebuilt by now.

Manticore is doing fine. They've lost trade within the Solarian League, but they still have plenty of trade with other areas, and manufacturing is coming back online.

In point of fact, none of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction's termini are shut down at the moment. The only one connecting to Solarian space also happens to connect to the Beowulf System, and the Grand Alliance has most definitely not closed that terminus, since Beowulf is currently a de facto and will soon be a de jure member of the aforesaid Grand Alliance.

For that matter, Manticore (and the Grand Alliance) now has control of a great many additional wormhole termini, and the fact that the Solarian League's merchant fleet is no longer being allowed to use them doesn't mean that the Manticoran merchant fleet can't. All Manty merchantmen were called home as part of the initial Operation Laocoön as the first stage in ratcheting up pressure on the Sollies (and, frankly, to get them out of the way before additional Solarian system governors had the same stupid idea of seizing them to use as hostages against the Star Empire). Once Lacoön II went into effect and the RMN began actively seizing other termini, those termini became available once again to the Manticoran merchant marine. Now, Manticore has no objection to carrying freight for people who are willing to ship it in Manticoran bottoms. In fact, Manticore sees this as a way to gently and gradually pry the people making use of their merchant fleet away from loyalty to the Mandarins. Carrying commerce for them will lessen the economic hit they take from what is effectively the Manticoran blockade while continuing to deny the service fees and shipping duties which fund the Solarian League's bureaucracy.

At the moment, the Star Empire has no intention of holding on to all of those other termini permanently. That doesn't mean that they won't hold on to some of them on a permanent basis, however. In addition, Manticore will probably negotiate an arrangement under which Manticoran shipping pays lower transit fees for other people's termini as part of mutual defense treaties which obligate the RMN to safeguard those termini. In other words, if the normal shipping duty for a 4,000,000 ton freighter, for example, was $10,000, Manticore might pay $7,500 in return for a guaranteed right of passage in time of war from the terminus' legal owner and a Manticoran guarantee to protect the legal owner's territorial integrity and possession of the terminus.

In general, one may assume that the Star Empire is going to continue its support of free trade, to continue to recognize the right of those who have wormhole termini to charge reasonable transit fees, and to be perfectly willing to act as the first line of defense/interstellar guardians of the wormhole network. It is quite probable that the Star Empire will insist on permanent possession of (or at least very, very long-term leases on) termini which belonged to especially bad actors before the war with the League. By the same token, it is very probable that the Star Empire will set up — probably in coordination with other members of the Grand Alliance — some sort of interstellar authority which would move in to stabilize and/or eliminate military threats to traffic through a terminus or the imposition of clearly confiscatory-level transit fees. In that case, however, Manticore would very, very much prefer a multi-nation board with a rotating chairmanship so that it would not be perceived as (and could not in fact become) a Manticoran version of OFS.

In response to the concerns being expressed over how withdrawals might be managed/policed over intrasystem distances. To be honest, this problem is simply not going to arise very often because people who are going to be making bank transactions will tend to be clustered in certain areas of the star system. It's unlikely that anyone is ever going to build a casino in orbit around Neptune or a shopping mall in orbit around Uranus. There are several ways in which banking institutions can deal with this sort of problem on the rare occasions when it arises. A given bank may use any and/or all of the approaches listed below.

First, if a banking institution has multiple nodes in a single star system and they are more than a very few minutes apart in terms of transmission times, then any customer's account may be distributed across all of those notes. That is, if the bank has 4 nodes, then no more than 25% of the account holder's funds may be withdrawn from any one of those nodes except by prior arrangement. This doesn't prevent a theoretical simultaneous withdrawal of funds from two separate locations, one of which might be unauthorized, but it does limit the percentage of funds which could be skimmed/scammed in this way.

Second, every Manticoran bank (and virtually every major non-Manticoran bank) issues electronic, encrypted withdrawal cards (or their equivalent) which must be presented for a withdrawal. The account holder may select the number of cards to be issued; once they are issued, however, it is the account holder's responsibility to maintain secure possession of them. By law (at least in Manticore) any funds disbursed to the holder of a verified card cannot be recovered from the bank by the account holder unless there is proof of wrongdoing by the banking institution. If it can be demonstrated that the card was illegally in the withdrawer's possession, then the withdrawer is legally liable for the funds, but the bank is not. If it can be demonstrated that the card was counterfeit or that the bank's security was hacked (whether by the bank or the withdrawer), then the bank becomes liable for restitution of funds on the basis that it should be more careful about its own electronic security.

Third, in most star systems it is the account holder's responsibility to inform the bank if he is traveling to a location which is going to be beyond reasonable light-speed-limited transmission ranges of his normal bank branch, just as it is the responsibility of a debit card in the United States to inform his bank if he's going to be traveling overseas or spending enough time in another state for him to have significant banking activity. The bank reserves the right to refuse to allow withdrawals from a distant site unless it has been informed and had of time that the customer will be traveling to that site.

Fourth, many banking institutions specifically state in their contracts with their account holders that transactions and payments will not be made until there's been sufficient time for notice of the transaction to reach their central banking hub in a given star system and confirmation of it to return to the site at which the transaction or payment is to be made. This may occasionally be inconvenient, but it would be highly unlikely for any transaction to be more than four or five light-hours from the bank's central hub. The maximum distance between Neptune and Earth, for example, is about 4.34 light-hours, so turnaround time on a transmission across that distance (which is enormously greater than most people are going to have to worry about in a star system) would be under 9 hours.

Fifth, the Banco de Madrid is not (by any means) the only bank which issues the equivalent of coins. A prudent traveler takes a supply of those, issued by his own bank, with him in a highly unlikely instance in which he's going to travel so far from home with in his own star system that communications lag would become a problem. It's also common practice for the account holder to "wire" what he considers to be a sufficient balance to a bank node at his destination, with the understanding that his withdrawals from that node will be limited to the funds he transferred into it.

Frankly, as I say, this situation is going to arrive very, very infrequently. The possibility/probability of deliberate fraud factors into the banking industry's basic assumptions, and practical safeguards have been worked out to prevent it. Those safeguards may, on occasion, fail, but when they do, it is almost always the result of deliberate criminal activity which brings in the legal authorities and in which liabilities are clearly established by law.

SWM wrote:Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

Also, by now Manticore has some of its manufacturing capacity rebuilt. If White Haven was correct about his predictions, some of the smaller shipyards have to be in service building the first new ships by the end of Cauldron of Ghosts. If shipyards have been built already, I think we can assume that some factories have also been rebuilt by now.

Manticore is doing fine. They've lost trade within the Solarian League, but they still have plenty of trade with other areas, and manufacturing is coming back online.

The only terminis that really matters in the big picture IS the terminis leading to Solarian space.

The Solarian League IS the market in known space. Take all of Manticore, all of Haven, all of Anderman Space, all of Silesia, all of the Talbot Quadrant, Allof it and put all together it is a miniscule fraction of the economy and markets of the 1,200+ worlds, many of them incredibly wealthy, that comprise the Solarian League.

Regardless of how you slice it, the VAST majority of cargos passing through the Junction are either carrying cargos from League worlds or too League worlds and that trade and everything that goes with it has just ended.

The Manticorian merchant fleet isn't primarily engaged is hauling cargos from Manticore or the rim to Solarian space, the Vast majority if it is hauling cargos from one Solarian world to another Solarian world. That's what happens when you have over 1,000 a large number of the MAJOR worlds that are trading with each other. That produces tax revenues for Manticorian shippers which produces taxes for the crown. Of course you've recalled your entire merchant fleet so that's virtually all dried up as well.

So who do you have left to trade with. Haven has around 100 worlds but only a few of those would actually be considered major worlds in comparison to League standards and they are all trying to pull themselves out of a century of the most hideous economic abuse possible. Then you have the Andermani who have a few decent worlds and then a few score of Verge and Rim worlds with what, by Solarian Standards, would hardly register on the trading scale.

Yes, Manticore can trade with them provided it can produce anything to trade but that will produce a tiny fraction of the revenue that has been lost, provided those shipping firms actually manage to turn a profit of some kind with the economic upheaval going on and their primary markets closed off.

Basically, it's your conjecture that since Manticore can still trade with maybe 5% - 10% of it's market and trading partners that losing the other 90% isn't such a big deal. Well do the math, it is a VERY big deal.

Simply put, if the Alignment has plannedto utterly destroy the entire Manticorian economy, between Oyster Bay and the actions already taken by the crown, they couldn't have come up with a much better plan to do it.

You're right, Manticore is going to be fine because if it isn't then unless you enjoy reading about economic devastation, it's not going to make a very interesting book. But I am eager to see what kind of handwavium or divine writers intervention it's going to take to do so.

Alizon wrote:

SWM wrote:Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

Also, by now Manticore has some of its manufacturing capacity rebuilt. If White Haven was correct about his predictions, some of the smaller shipyards have to be in service building the first new ships by the end of Cauldron of Ghosts. If shipyards have been built already, I think we can assume that some factories have also been rebuilt by now.

Manticore is doing fine. They've lost trade within the Solarian League, but they still have plenty of trade with other areas, and manufacturing is coming back online.

The only terminis that really matters in the big picture IS the terminis leading to Solarian space.

The Solarian League IS the market in known space. Take all of Manticore, all of Haven, all of Anderman Space, all of Silesia, all of the Talbot Quadrant, Allof it and put all together it is a miniscule fraction of the economy and markets of the 1,200+ worlds, many of them incredibly wealthy, that comprise the Solarian League.

Regardless of how you slice it, the VAST majority of cargos passing through the Junction are either carrying cargos from League worlds or too League worlds and that trade and everything that goes with it has just ended.

The Manticorian merchant fleet isn't primarily engaged is hauling cargos from Manticore or the rim to Solarian space, the Vast majority if it is hauling cargos from one Solarian world to another Solarian world. That's what happens when you have over 1,000 a large number of the MAJOR worlds that are trading with each other. That produces tax revenues for Manticorian shippers which produces taxes for the crown. Of course you've recalled your entire merchant fleet so that's virtually all dried up as well.

So who do you have left to trade with. Haven has around 100 worlds but only a few of those would actually be considered major worlds in comparison to League standards and they are all trying to pull themselves out of a century of the most hideous economic abuse possible. Then you have the Andermani who have a few decent worlds and then a few score of Verge and Rim worlds with what, by Solarian Standards, would hardly register on the trading scale.

Yes, Manticore can trade with them provided it can produce anything to trade but that will produce a tiny fraction of the revenue that has been lost, provided those shipping firms actually manage to turn a profit of some kind with the economic upheaval going on and their primary markets closed off.

Basically, it's your conjecture that since Manticore can still trade with maybe 5% - 10% of it's market and trading partners that losing the other 90% isn't such a big deal. Well do the math, it is a VERY big deal.

Simply put, if the Alignment has plannedto utterly destroy the entire Manticorian economy, between Oyster Bay and the actions already taken by the crown, they couldn't have come up with a much better plan to do it.

You're right, Manticore is going to be fine because if it isn't then unless you enjoy reading about economic devastation, it's not going to make a very interesting book. But I am eager to see what kind of handwavium or divine writers intervention it's going to take to do so.

I believe you are grossly overestimating the impact. I don't believe that the Solarian League was 90+% of the Manticoran market. Yes, it is a big hit, but not as big as you think. You mention that Haven has 100 planets, but you forget about the other 200+ former members of Haven which are also now open to Manticoran business. Then there is the entirely new market around the Talbott Cluster. And there are all the wormholes that Manticore has captured, as RFC just mentioned, all of which are open for Manticoran business. And Manticore did not serve all 1200 or whatever Solarian League members in the first place.

SWM wrote:Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

There are something on the order of 3000 SL systems, with at least 1000 top tier systems. Haven has about 20 of those, the Andies about 20, Manticore 1 and Grayson 1. In terms of systems, there are something like 300 total in the set of Haven, Andy, and Manticore claimed or allied systems, and most of them are poor and undeveloped. So yeah, other then having stopped 90%+ of the traffic and trade in the entire universe, it's just like it was before.

As I said before, it's roughly equivalent to a US airline dropping all their flights to the EU, Russia, Australia Japan and China and redirecting all their airplanes to Africa, Fiji and Malaysia. I don't see how you can replace 20 flights a day to Paris with 20 flights a day to Niamey Nigeria and expect to not go broke.

Alizon wrote:

SWM wrote:Where do you get the idea that the Junction has been virtually closed? Only one terminus of the Junction leads into Solarian space; all the rest of the termini are open for business. And business is picking up on many of those routes. The Merchant Marine has only been recalled from Solarian space. Manticoran merchants are still plying the spaceways to the Talbott cluster, the Anderman Empire, the Phoenix Cluster, Matapan, Basilisk and the Silesian quadrant, and now into Trevor's Star and Haven space.

Also, by now Manticore has some of its manufacturing capacity rebuilt. If White Haven was correct about his predictions, some of the smaller shipyards have to be in service building the first new ships by the end of Cauldron of Ghosts. If shipyards have been built already, I think we can assume that some factories have also been rebuilt by now.

Manticore is doing fine. They've lost trade within the Solarian League, but they still have plenty of trade with other areas, and manufacturing is coming back online.

The only terminis that really matters in the big picture IS the terminis leading to Solarian space.

The Solarian League IS the market in known space. Take all of Manticore, all of Haven, all of Anderman Space, all of Silesia, all of the Talbot Quadrant, Allof it and put all together it is a miniscule fraction of the economy and markets of the 1,200+ worlds, many of them incredibly wealthy, that comprise the Solarian League.

Regardless of how you slice it, the VAST majority of cargos passing through the Junction are either carrying cargos from League worlds or too League worlds and that trade and everything that goes with it has just ended.

The Manticorian merchant fleet isn't primarily engaged is hauling cargos from Manticore or the rim to Solarian space, the Vast majority if it is hauling cargos from one Solarian world to another Solarian world. That's what happens when you have over 1,000 a large number of the MAJOR worlds that are trading with each other. That produces tax revenues for Manticorian shippers which produces taxes for the crown. Of course you've recalled your entire merchant fleet so that's virtually all dried up as well.

So who do you have left to trade with. Haven has around 100 worlds but only a few of those would actually be considered major worlds in comparison to League standards and they are all trying to pull themselves out of a century of the most hideous economic abuse possible. Then you have the Andermani who have a few decent worlds and then a few score of Verge and Rim worlds with what, by Solarian Standards, would hardly register on the trading scale.

Yes, Manticore can trade with them provided it can produce anything to trade but that will produce a tiny fraction of the revenue that has been lost, provided those shipping firms actually manage to turn a profit of some kind with the economic upheaval going on and their primary markets closed off.

Basically, it's your conjecture that since Manticore can still trade with maybe 5% - 10% of it's market and trading partners that losing the other 90% isn't such a big deal. Well do the math, it is a VERY big deal.

Simply put, if the Alignment has plannedto utterly destroy the entire Manticorian economy, between Oyster Bay and the actions already taken by the crown, they couldn't have come up with a much better plan to do it.

You're right, Manticore is going to be fine because if it isn't then unless you enjoy reading about economic devastation, it's not going to make a very interesting book. But I am eager to see what kind of handwavium or divine writers intervention it's going to take to do so.

Are you under the impression that the Beowulf Terminus is the only terminus of any warp bridge that enters Solarian space?

I have repeatedly stated that one of the reasons the MWHJ is so important is because it gives access to the entire network of termini around the League's periphery. And that network allows access to almost every portion of the Solarian League. Which is the very reason that shutting it down to non-Manticoran shipping adds so much time to any Solarian interstellar transit times.

During the decades of war between Spain and the rebellious Netherlands, the Dutch financed much of their war effort by continuing to provide the carrying trade for Habsburg commerce (including Spain's) even during periods of active operations. Much of the Armada's artillery had been cast in Protestant --- including Dutch and English --- foundries, and the money Spain paid for those guns helped finance the English galleons which defeated it.

The situation in the HV is not completely analogous to that episode, but there are definitely similarities. The SEM now has access to/control of better than 90% of the total wormhole network, and the RMN is in position to provide security against commerce raiders in virtually all of the systems to which they connect. Do you seriously think that Solarian transtellars (or anyone else whose livelihood absolutely depends on moving his products to other star systems) are going to balk at using Manty bottoms to do the moving? If you do, then you have an imperfect understanding of just how corrupt and "go along to get along" Solarian interstellar commerce has become. I do not mean to suggest for a moment that the SL's commerce is going to be booming along at pre-war levels, nor do I mean to suggest that there won't be a great many Solarian businesses which will refuse to use Manty merchies even if it leaves them facing significant financial loss or even bankruptcy. But I will positively guarantee you that there will also be a great many of those businesses who will use those merchies to avoid bankruptcy. And there are even going to be quite a lot of system governments who will wink at the use of Manty shipping, given their lack of institutional loyalty to the Mandarins. And, in the meantime, Manticore is going to be levying special transit fees on all non-Manticoran shipping through any of the termini it now controls as an emergency wartime measure. Again, let me stress that Manticore has no objection to Solarian commerce continuing so long as it does so under Manty supervision and conditions . . . and so long as none of the fees and duties previously going to the SL's bureaucracies continue to do so. Indeed, there are huge arguments in favor of allowing that commerce to continue, so long as it doesn't contribute to the war effort against the GA, if only as a means of generating good PR for the SEM.

"See how reasonable we're being? Or trying to be, anyway, when the League lets us! Unfortunately, we can't allow the Mandarins to use these termini to prosecute the war against us, and we have every reason to deny the League the revenues it's historically generated off of the Solarian merchant marine and the service fees we're no longer allowing anyone to collect. But we don't want to put anyone out of business unless we have to, so we're taking over the astro control functions you used to pay the SL to provide, and our emergency transit fees will come to only 50% of what you used to pay OFS and the League. And as soon as this unpleasantness is concluded, we'll happily go back to allowing free transit to anyone, including Solarian-register freighters."

Manticore is going to take a hit, and it's going to be a heavy one, but the only way it could turn into the sort of debacle you're positing, would be for the GA to lose the war. A war that ran long enough could still do serious damage, even if the GA won in the end, but nothing short of outright defeat --- the kind that leaves the SL in control of the MWHJ --- could produce the sort of free fall you've described.