Weird Harold wrote:Zakharra wrote:1. I think what you're missing is that the Solarian economy includes the planetary economies since those plants economies require and rely on interstellar transportation of freight in the form of raw material and finished goods and food. The removal of the Manticore merchant marine means a huge hole has been blown in the ability of commerce to flow in the League. The closing of the Manticore WHJ and GA space, and every other junction the GA can get a hold of are more hammer blows to the Solarian economy.
You may have a very good point about core worlds importing food, but I think you're overestimating the interconnections in the Solarian economy; Remember that individual members have the ability to directly tax their citizens so the individual planetary governments aren't as directly dependent on trade as the League bureaucrats.
I think famine is more likely to stress core world governments than economic turmoil. Unfortunately, we don't have any breakdown of agricultural vs industrial vs fat-cat luxury worlds in the Solarian League, so there's no way to predict how much famine is going to drive events.
It's more than that. As hanuman pointed out, the systems are all exporters to a large extent. It's a highly interwoven network that keeps the League together. Each system is fairly dependent on other systems, for raw materials, for good and food to buy, for good and food to sell, for transportation of people and information, it's all connected. Now 40 to almost 50% of the transportation network that hauled all of that has been yanked out from under it and the junctions that let many goods move faster have been cut off. That's going to affect how the system reacts. It suddenly became much harder to get goods and raw materials and people in and out. What interstellar trade that exists is suddenly more expensive, takes longer and every ship suddenly has their choice of cargo to take.
The systems that do produce will have a harder time getting their goods to market, getting payment sent to them, paying out to other systems and businesses. With companies unable to get goods to their markets, a surplus builds up, eventually people are laid off, unemployment goes up, this spreads to other sectors of the economy until a downward spiral comes into being. The planets are going to be hemorrhaging money at a time they need it to build their own SDFs and merchant ships, plus the SL currency is likely going to plunge in value, this will send costs shooting up. Whatever happens, the various systems are going to be hurting bad economically.
I know that the Solarian economy is the combined economies of all the member systems. But my entire point is that I don't think the Solarian League economy is as badly crippled as you are saying. The Solarian League government is absolutely crippled because it doesn't have any income except what it can extract from interstellar trade. But the individual economies of the member systems will not be as badly affected as the Solarian League government. It can't be--all those member systems have other sources of income than interstellar trade. The way people are talking, it sounds like everyone thinks the entire economy is in the same straits as the League government, and it simply isn't true. It will be bad, but not as bad as people have been suggesting. Many planets will still have money to invest in military infrastructure and research.
No. The economy is going to suffer a LOT. 40-45% of all shipping is
gone, every single wormhole junction has been seized by the GA/Manticore, the SL is having to gear up for a war that they are way behind in preparing to fight. Especially since they need to literally build a fleet to fight it from the ground up.
There are likely very very few SL systems that don't depend upon interstellar trade to push their economies along.