Just for the Halibut... What of the RF post GA victory

The Alignment plans for the RF taking over control of the fragments of much of the SL is taking a beating. That is not to say that it will be that the RF will not accomplish a lot of the Alignment plans in various areas -such as genetics and "social" change- just that things are not going to go anywhere near as smoothly as the Alignment thought. It is even possible that one or more of the RF are going to divert from the plan and look to carve out it's own little empire under whatever cover it desides and just doesn't follow the Alignment orders.
This was always a loose format to begin with. The RF was a way to implant the Alignment social and medical programing.
If the SL doesn't shatter in the way the Alignment expects, the RF is probably not going to be able to funtion in the projected manner either.
Have to wait for the next couple of books. Big smile

darrell wrote:

A Rising Thunder, chapter 28 June 1922 wrote: Much of the system’s consumer manufacturing still existed,
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kzt wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/282/0
" Opposing viewpoint #2: Since every single thing Manticore produces was produced in the space stations, the civilian Manticoran economy is going to come grinding to a halt as we run out of spare parts for air cars, air lorries, agricultural implements, etc. Apparently there is some belief that this will lead to famine, mass starvation, and anarchy...."
"All right, on to Opposing Viewpoint #2. There is actually more validity to this point than to the other one, but from what I seem to be hearing, people are going way, way overboard on it. Yes, the vast bulk of the Star Kingdom 's civilian industry was concentrated in the space stations. Yes, the vast bulk of that industry was destroyed along with the military shipyards and building facilities. Yes, the Star Kingdom is facing a decided and potentially serious shortage of spare parts, agricultural equipment, transportation infrastructure, etc."

I hate to say it, but in this case, RFC is simply wrong. What he said was:

At the fifthimperium, RFC wrote: First, it's going to be possible to keep a whole lot of vital equipment running through parts that were already in inventory in planet-side service facilities (and warehouses) for planet-side equipment. D'oh! Let's see, you keep the spare parts for the starships that never enter atmosphere in the first place on orbital facilities so that you can install them quickly and easily. You ship the spare parts for the air-breathing equipment down to the planetary surface where the air-breathing equipment lives, so that you don't have to ship every disk harrow up to orbit for repairs when it busts a blade. So the replacement parts inventory that got wiped out for the Navy didn't get wiped out for the Manticoran equivalent of the John Deere, Caterpillar, Peterbilt, and Chevy dealerships. I'm not saying there isn't going to be a serious crimp in the supply chain in the fullness of time; I'm simply saying that equipment isn't going to stop working next Tuesday.

Most of those spare parts probably don't exist. The reason is "just in time" manufacturing rather than manufacturing to inventory. There are a lot of good economic reasons why a really good manufacturing process runs with as little inventory it can get away with.

Reason 1: inventory costs money. You've already paid for the material and labor, and it's simply sitting in a warehouse where the investment isn't earning any return.

Reason 2: If you make a new model, a lot of the spare part inventory for the old model will never be used, so it's waste.

Let's take an example: Toyota keeps one of everything that's likely to go wrong at the dealer. If you come in with a busted fender, they can fix it right away. Then they get that model of fender replaced from the warehouse the next day. The warehouse only has so many fenders because it depends on the factories to be able to resupply them promptly - like in a week to a month.

So while the equipment probably won't stop working next Tuesday, the spare parts will run out fairly quickly. In fact, the warehouses that back up the dealers may not be on the surface either; it's possible they were on the space stations. It depends on the economics of that last refill operation from the warehouse to the dealer.

David is really a good writer, but there are areas where his lack of exposure to how large complex industries make the story hit a narative wall for me. Let's take a simple example.

Let's say you are Intel CEO and one of you plays got all blowed up and you need to build a new one. What do you do? Well, you call your suppliers and order new tool sets and but build a building for them and somewhere in the process you hire and train new workers for your plant.

What about if all your plants got blown up and you and the design and finance dept are all that is left? Well, you could do the same thing at a larger scale, but you have a big problem. Cash flow. You need to invest a huge amount of money in long lead time equipment and construction projects, but your current sales are pretty much zero. So where do you get the money? And given that you have no running plants or the training establishment in those plants, how are you going to train workers?

And while this is going on, what happens to your customers? We will get back to that.

Ok, so now you are the CEO of Intel and all your plants got blow up and the plants of every direct supplier got blown up. So before you can order new tool sets you need to have your suppliers rebuild their factories so they can start to build the tool sets you need to build chips. So now you need even more money for even longer. Who is going to lend you huge piles of money so you can invest it in trying to rebuild your business?

Perhaps someone else might come along from somewhere else and offer to supply chips. There are not exactly the same, so it's really inconvenient for your former customers to redesign their system to use brand X chips, but they can supply them next month, not in 5 years. Because your customers are all going to go out of business if they have to wait 5 years for more chips.

So now when you get done building your new plants all your customers have converted their systems to the Brand X chipsets and programming tools. Are you going to recover theses customers? Is anyone going to lend you money in the assumption that you will reestabligh you market leading position? How much risk are they going to feel about this?

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:No DAVID WEBBER said in "Mission of Honor, chapter 30":
“There’s no point pretending we haven’t just taken an enormous hit, Your Majesty,” he said now, meeting her eyes squarely, his Gryphon burr more pronounced than usual. “Our carrying trade isn’t going to be directly affected, and our Junction fees probably aren’t going to fall too significantly—not immediately, at least. The indirect effect on our carrying trade is going to make itself felt pretty quickly, though. As Charlotte’s just pointed out, for all intents and purposes we’ve lost our industrial sector completely. That means an awful lot of manufactured goods we used to be exporting aren’t going to be available now. That accounts for a significant percentage of our total carrying trade—not to mention an enormous chunk of the Old Star Kingdom’s Gross System Product. And as our industrial exports drop, the resultant drop in shipping’s also going to have at least some effect on our Junction fees. .

Doesnt that quote predate the escalation of the confrontation with the League, and the activation of Laocoon?
Just after Oyster Bay Manticore did still have its carrying trade and financial clearinghouse role to the League.

But after Byng got manipulated into blowing away peaceful Manicoran destroyers and Manticore withdrew its freighters from the League and closed ever wormhole it could reach to League traffic those revenue streams logically had to have suffered massive reductions...

Febuary 1922 chapter 24 of MoH: And while we’re doing that, we go ahead and activate Case Lacoön, too.”

March 1922, The Yawata strike happened in chapter 29, chapter 30 discussed recovering from the strike.

So the Solarian League was closed to manticore and would not have been figured in the rebuilding.

You may have been thinking of Lacoon 2, when manticore closed SL controlled wormholes, which didn't happen till
ART, but Lacoon was started before the space stations and shipyards were destroyed.

I think the question of who is going to lend Manticore money comes down to issues of survival and the aftermath.

One the one hand, the SEM's current expenditures have sky-rocketed while its revenue streams have collapsed (is the income tax still in effect or has it lapsed? Though the income it was taxing was presumably disrupted by Oyster Bay too). Traffic through the Junction has been screwed eight ways from Sunday and their local industry is more or less gone.

On the other hand, the Junction is still there and there will be traffic through it after. That's an advantage the hypothetically screwed Intel doesn't have. Even if the SEM does nothing to rebuild, it will still have the equivalent of tolls on the combination of Mallaca, Gibraltar, Panama, Suez, and the Sound. If there is proper interstellar trade in the aftermath a huge percentage of it will pass through Manticore. If the Empire survives, it will be able to pay its debts. While they probably aren't selling too many 1 year bonds, 5 and 10 year should still be doing a brisk business.

The other thing is anyone with assets in the SEM or capital in Manticoran dollars is at risk for huge losses if the Solarian League wins. The League does not seem inclined towards a hand-off policy when smacking down unruly neobarbs. I would expect a policy of transferring ownership to Solarian interstellars at fire sale rates at best. So anyone who has money to lend to the government might want to do so for risk mitigation even if the returns are garbage.

noblehunter wrote:On the other hand, the Junction is still there and there will be traffic through it after. That's an advantage the hypothetically screwed Intel doesn't have. Even if the SEM does nothing to rebuild, it will still have the equivalent of tolls on the combination of Mallaca, Gibraltar, Panama, Suez, and the Sound. If there is proper interstellar trade in the aftermath a huge percentage of it will pass through Manticore. If the Empire survives, it will be able to pay its debts. While they probably aren't selling too many 1 year bonds, 5 and 10 year should still be doing a brisk business.

How much money did Egypt make from the Suez Canal from 1967 to 1975? So I think that the government banning 90% of the human population that can afford space travel from using this and hence preventing them from giving them money is likely to impact their revenue stream just a bit. Other then that, yeah, it would be great.

If the Empire survives, there will be no government in charge of 90% of humanity.

I don't recall Egypt winning any wars.

noblehunter wrote:If the Empire survives, there will be no government in charge of 90% of humanity.

How do you figure that? If the League collapses, the individual system governments will still be in control of the individual member systems.

Weird Harold wrote:

noblehunter wrote:If the Empire survives, there will be no government in charge of 90% of humanity.

How do you figure that? If the League collapses, the individual system governments will still be in control of the individual member systems.

No single government, rather. Whatever succeeds the League will much smaller than the League.

At the moment, ALL SL flagged shipping is denied the use of the Junction. While only two termini are directly going to the League (Sigma Draconis at Beowulf and the leg out to Henessey and bridge to Tera Haut then Erwhon) there is still traffic - non League flagged- through Lynx Henessy and Beowulf.
It is possible that Manticorian ships are transshipping goods out by Hennessy and Beowulf (that one gets real iffy with the pending vote about leaving the League and the present confrontation with the GA. That would be bringing revenue into both the ships doing the movement and tolls.

Once things start to happen as far as the League breaking up. We can expect to see shipping flagged by "former" League members start to use the Junction though they are going to have to avoid areas of direct conflict between the GA and the shrinking SL.

Even Manticore will want to avail itself of certain things manufactured withing the League like tools, and things to help rebuild it's orbital infrastructure and civilian manufacturing. Remember, just because the RMN has all that cool and advanced tech, that doesn't mean that things that made for the civilian market (farming, general manufacturing, industrial heavy equipment, common space related gear/equipment (and it's manufaturing equipment) like life support and recycling etc have generaly been avilable and compatable with "SL" or any number of common (and interchangeable) types of gear.
If you can buy all the stuff to make the equivelent of a "standard" line (like John Deere) tractors, harvesters,the attachments and tools, plus manuals, production detail, software, etc, you can get at least "common" equipment production back up and running, you can supply at least your own system (and part of the rest of the Empire's) needs and have something for export. Same for pieces of heavy industry fabrication plants.
That you are having the military relate stuff manufactured at Beowulf and by Haven is great BUT you need to also have them build you ( produce for you) the equipment that will let you build that Manticore Tech level stuff for yourself.

Don't think that present companies in the SL or who are in systems that leave the SL are going to sell Manticore (though suitable shell corporations and cut-outs) just exactly what Manticore needs to recover it's industrial capasity (from low to high end and into military secret) then you need to go back and look at history.

The existing and developing markest in Haven, Silesia (getting better, they were always worth SL companies selling there and with the stability of The Manticore and the Alderman Empire cutting down on the graft and "other" challenges it will get a lot better) and Talbott now that SEM is going to be helping the SEM systems raise their own standards of education and living, are all going to draw more trade.

Getting through the next 20 years of war and chaos is the challange.