Transtellars after Laccoon II

Ah, but pretty soon there won't be a home government anymore to pressure into reining in the transstellars' corrupt business practices out in the Verge. Yes, some transstellars will choose to remain headquartered on various Core worlds, and in those instances such pressure will be possible. However, others will likely take over the government of the worlds where they are operating or headquartered, with no ties to any other government or any inclination to be pressured into behaving.

I'm inclined to think that most will get away with their business-as-usual as long as they remain under the radar.

Nico wrote:I'm inclined to think that most will get away with their business-as-usual as long as they remain under the radar.

And if someone decides to do something about them, are you willing to go to war over it? Because the Andermani are a pretty good example of a rogue corporation.

Everything that could happen to them or for them to do will occur.

kzt wrote:

Louis R wrote:Same way John Company went out of business: its activities became an embarrassment to the home government, and it was stripped of its private empire.

All companies are based somewhere; they escape oversight only to the extent that the overseers are happy to have it that way. I would expect that many of the worst offenders out in the Verge and Protectorates are based in places that don't give a rat's tuckus about how they operate 'out there' as long as they behave at home. They may find that they have a lot less support in the future than they've enjoyed in the past. Others probably haven't behaved nearly as badly - and may have home governments that have been keeping them on a shorter leash, or at least would have if they'd made the mistake of drawing unfavourable attention to their operations. And, of course, there's no doubt a substantial number of transtellars that aren't involved out there at all, and haven't wanted to be.

At the scale being talked about, they are larger and more powerful than the government of any planet. These have had literally a thousand years to grow and develope.

OTOH if they persist in actions that Manticore doesn't approve of simply denying them use of the reopened wormhole network will hurt them in an entirely diplomatically acceptable way while giving competitive advantage to transtellars who behave.

If the Honorable East India Company had somehow remained the major factor in the India trade into the 1870s how well could they have continued to do if they were denied use to the Suez canal or the UK - India underseas telegraphy; while less exploitative competitors could take advantage of both?


In a post League world Manticore has a pretty big economic carrot and stick to use to influence interstellar behavior that doesn't meet their approval...

The Andermani were mercenaries who's leader ran a very tight organization and who came to the conclusion that he should help what became thier Home Planet when he found them in trouble. They did not loot the place and move on. They are now an expanding empire but they do operate withing the rule of law- their own and what they find practical in the word or realpolitik and regularized trade with neighbors and others. Not your stereotype "bad" Transtellar.

It is quite possible that some of the Transtellars may make a sucessfull transition to being the governments of various worlds they now control. This depends on if the present governments that share the planet(s) with them survive the loss of OFS/FF military support and threat AND do not- along with said local Transtellar top managers- get killed off in local rebellions as the rest of the planet(s) populations rise up and change things.

There is not a lot that someone like Manticore can (or more importlantly is willing to do) when a system is keeping it's problems in-house. Just removing the FF support may be enough to change the government of a given system. It may be that the transtellar then on the planet will suplant the earlier government or it may fall with the government. We shall see over a wide range of systems.

Another variable in all of this is IF the things being exported/exploited on a given planet continue to be profitable in the change from the break up of the SL. In the short term (5-20 years) various current high value luxury items may not have much of a market. How much exotic wood or alien fish analogs will sell well with hundreds if not thousands of systems involved in fighting for their lives? Loss of the "home office" support because the trading routes are changing and the owners are too busy keeping other locations alive and profitable may blow some local manages out of business if not let them get killed off.

kzt wrote:

Nico wrote:I'm inclined to think that most will get away with their business-as-usual as long as they remain under the radar.

And if someone decides to do something about them, are you willing to go to war over it? Because the Andermani are a pretty good example of a rogue corporation.

No one in the GA is willing, and more to the point, capable of assuming the role of galactic police.

I wrote elsewhere that the GA will likely accept peace with the Solarians only if a number of minimum demands are met: the complete dissolution of the League; the suppression of the slave trade; and the cessation of the neocolonialist exploitation of the former Protectorates and the Verge.

The GA leadership is wise enough to realize that beyond those minimum conditions it would be impossible to accept an interventionist role. What will most likely happen is that they will enter into local partnerships with those successor states with the military capacity to maintain relative calm in their own galactic neighbourhood, where GA forces will only be called in if a problem becomes too much for the locals to handle or if it is taking place too distantly for the locals to support a response effort logistically.

Lacoon II could be very profitable for an independent system to rise to a new 'Manty powerhouse' filling the gap with needed Freighters. Any smaller system that can operate a fleet of freighters could build up a great deal of capital.

A SL Corporation willing to make Fast Freighters can also build up a vast fleet of faster ships. Particularly for further ports. The cost of using or not using the shortcuts would offset the cost of a Mil spec wedge and hyperspace. Lacoon II could cost Manticore in the long run.

One wonders if a Silesian Flagged Freighter could do business with the SL during this withdrawal of Manty / GA Freighters. Not being in either might have an economic advantage. With a few thousand Silesian Freighters one could pickup the most profitable of routes and still use the Junctions. hmm...

Lord Skimper wrote:Lacoon II could be very profitable for an independent system to rise to a new 'Manty powerhouse' filling the gap with needed Freighters. Any smaller system that can operate a fleet of freighters could build up a great deal of capital.

A SL Corporation willing to make Fast Freighters can also build up a vast fleet of faster ships. Particularly for further ports. The cost of using or not using the shortcuts would offset the cost of a Mil spec wedge and hyperspace. Lacoon II could cost Manticore in the long run.

One wonders if a Silesian Flagged Freighter could do business with the SL during this withdrawal of Manty / GA Freighters. Not being in either might have an economic advantage. With a few thousand Silesian Freighters one could pickup the most profitable of routes and still use the Junctions. hmm...

There are probably no Silesian flagged merchants anymore, because if there were. They couldn't get the discount on transit fees by going through the MWJ. Also Silesia is a SEM protectorate now.

saber964 wrote:There are probably no Silesian flagged merchants anymore, because if there were. They couldn't get the discount on transit fees by going through the MWJ. Also Silesia is a SEM protectorate now.

Really, you'd just get an existing major shipping line to move their HQ and change the registration of their ships. And unless they were shipping war material to the SLN (or the Alignment), the GA would almost have to let that kind of thing stand.

drothgery wrote:Really, you'd just get an existing major shipping line to move their HQ and change the registration of their ships. And unless they were shipping war material to the SLN (or the Alignment), the GA would almost have to let that kind of thing stand.

Very few companies that have ships registered to Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands have their corporate HQ there.