Poor Transtellars -what are they going to do?

DDHv wrote:
Some smaller transtellers might find a chance for creative and profitable changes in the turmoil.

The slash and burn route wastes resources.

Un-free economies also waste (people) resources because they cannot permit innovation. The innovators might cause upsets to society if they succeed

Remember that the humanity has reached a sort of technological plateau whereby innovation is on the decline. Manticore is the exception not the rule when it comes to their attitude toward R&D. The plutocrats in the Solarian League and beyond are generally of the mindset that technological advancement is a slow and steady process, people in the 20th century P.D. live very similarly to the way people did two or three centuries ago. Even if there is a sudden upsurge in military R&D for the sake of countering the Alliance threat that does not necessarily translate into a sudden upsurge in innovation in commercial fields. Slash and burn thinking does waste resources in the long term, but the Solarian plutocrats have shown themselves to be primarily concerned with short term gain, an attitude I imagine will only be exacerbated as Civilization as they know it comes to the end.

The seeds of what amount to internal problems for the League already exist. The Bowulf representative to the League discovering that several of Beowulf' long-time trading partners are activly moving to cut it out of trade and put themselves in command of several shared interests is only the tip of the iceburg. Maya is one incipient Star Nation that is going to be a multi-system entity with treaty and great economic ties to Erwhon (and Torch) and both RH and SEM plus those "local" systems outside of the present Maya sphere.
There are going to be a LOT of Star Systems that are going to or at least are going to try to take over neighbors or at least lock neighboring systems into some sort of economic if not outright politicl control.

The Verge could be compaired to post-colonial Africa as all sorts of political, ethnic and just plain warlords 1st take control (as in away from current regimes or OFS) and then expand to add neighbors to their control. Look at the Far East post 1900, post 1919 and then they along with Africa post 1945. Blood everywhere along with vast potential for making oneself rich and ruling hundreds of thousands if not millions in your own pocket empires, mostly out of the notice of the bigger players as long as they got to do business.
The former League and Verge and the hinterland will get to be interesting places to live.

DDHv wrote:Un-free economies also waste (people) resources because they cannot permit innovation. The innovators might cause upsets to society if they succeed

<< Shakes head >> They don't innovate because it upsets the POWERFUL elite who OWN said obsolete industries... Not society. The upper crust fiefdom Lords "society" nepotism, bribery, and sloth.

Why there is no such thing as "free trade" except with societies that have same governance structure.

Hi Relax,

Quite right.

Without appealing to Ann Rand's novels, or Tocqueville's report on America, encouraging and protecting innovation and opportunity resulted in the USA catching up to and surpassing western Europe's per capita GDP astonishingly quickly despite's its vast head start in time, infrastructure and resources.

We have the textev from the early part of the series [as well as RFC's posts] of how and why the Manties were so innovative; a major part being their vast merchant marine [the MMM] which I've repeatedly estimated at at least 40,000 if not closer to 100,000 freighters etc, in order to generate its ubiquity, the large numbers or MM recruits for the RMN, and taxes that equaled the wormhole's back before the war.

Who heard or saw quite a bit of new ideas all over 'settled space' by crews able to see the advantages of new processes or techniques, quite aside from those deliberately brought to Manticore because its a rich society with lots of cash to invest in any potential winner, an excellent education system that meant investors weren't easily fooled by fraudsters, a society that encouraged social success by public admission to the nobility protected by a decent judicial system.

Of course it wasn't and isn't perfect, but its so much better than most other places, and its so much easier getting to than any other system you can name, it has become the go-to place for innovators of all types.

Just compare it the attempts at socialist control in Haven that restricted engineers etc from leaving the people's paradise.

In our present, until "too big to fail" and crony capitalism became prevalent, no one worried too much about obsolete industries disappearing, or deliberately forbidding by law competing products etc; it was a natural part of the business cycle of life; if you couldn't compete, you didn't last.

Of course you were a tad less verbose.

L

Relax wrote:

DDHv wrote:Un-free economies also waste (people) resources because they cannot permit innovation. The innovators might cause upsets to society if they succeed

<< Shakes head >> They don't innovate because it upsets the POWERFUL elite who OWN said obsolete industries... Not society. The upper crust fiefdom Lords "society" nepotism, bribery, and sloth.

Why there is no such thing as "free trade" except with societies that have same governance structure.

Barring having been adjudicated and found to be guilty of some serious crime — such as against any government, in the form of treason, sedition, sabotage or espionage — I fail to see why the Transtellars, who are NOT "poor" wouldn't be poised to take advantage of any new opportunities even moreso than anyone else.

It just doesn't make any sense. Especially if you are aware of how business really works. Savvy Transtellars will simply open up new businesses on new fronts. They can't be black balled because they'll simply enter the sector through hidden vectors using "Front" and "Shell" companies if need be. "Fronting" I would imagine to be quite easily accomplished in the vastness of the Honorverse. It is quite easily accomplished here on Earth.

Transtellars are conglomerates. An amalgamation of smaller — and oftentimes bigger — businesses which breaks down to a diversified portfolio of assets that are not simply "paper monies."

Mergers are always available to a Transtellar. If they want to survive, they can survive.

Not only that, really savvy Transtellars — especially having benefit of the foresight of imminent doom — can even position themselves to take advantage of the coming hardships and "thrive" in the face of adversity.

Hi GabrialSagan,

Welcome and please enjoy your favorite simulated beverage ob the simulated forum.

I look forward to reading more of your very interesting posts.

Something to keep in mind is the growth of the GA navies to police the ex-verge and former inner and outer shells of the SL after it is seriously downsized if not fractured as the GA now intends.

From HoS, the RMN had added some 600+ new generation warships to its OoB [without including the FSV's etc] since the June 1920 fleet strength chart RFC provided back around June 2005 at the bar, IIRC.

I expect the ship construction following those ten month's, during the next ten month's before OB to rise even higher, besides adding the ~200 new Invictuses that took almost 2 years to build, so that the RMN could have doubled in ship hulls before its losses at First Manticore.

Regarding any manpower concerns, the 230 old SD's alone that survived First Mantiore have at least 1.38 million crew members and the 1000-1300 fresh ships' companies number less than a million, so almost 400,000 are available for the post OB new construction from them alone.

Given the approximately 40 industrialized systems in the restored republic, and the industrial mobilization after Thunderbolt as mentioned in AAC, the RHN has probably expanded even further, with 400 more SDP's being built at Haven and its 3 major daughter colonies by the winter of 1922 added to the 800 planned to be built at Bolthole before the war, ie at least 400 SDP building slips alone, which if they hadn't switched to building CLAC's instead of more SDP's than the planned pre-war 1200; while the lighter classes including the unarmored CLAC's are each built by several of those industrialized systems.

Even with longer build times, hundreds of each class have probably been built already, with some more improved versions using alliance technology probably being completed before the end of year, so the RHN could number 4000-5000 so far; with Grayson probably up to several hundred [700-800], putting the total GA fleet up to 7000+, which given the overwhelming superiority over the SLN, in combination with local ex-SDF's, ought to be able to provide each ex-verge and shell system [~2000] with a permanent friendly presence besides reinforcing patrols visiting that would prevent the kind of piracy, filibustering expeditions and warlord-ism etc, that some have suggested as the new norm.

Will still there be some of all the ills mentioned above?

Of course. When has man been perfect?

OTOH, thanks to the streak drive, communications will be 50% faster, so the response time will be much faster for any correctional forces reaction.\

Interesting times certainly.

L


[quote="GabrialSagan"]*quote="n7axw"*[quote="GabrialSagan"]There is another option, hire mercenaries. FF and BF are going to be busy fighting the Manties and the Manties cannot be everywhere at once. I have raised this issue before ([url]http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8142[/url]) but it seems to me that if the SLN is busy fighting a real war against a technologically superior opponent there is going to be very little that the League regulators can do to prevent The League's super rich (I.E. The folks who actually own and operate the transtellars) from buying ships, hiring mercenaries and go on their own sprees of conquest. It only takes one frigate in orbit to launch kinetic strikes and it seems like the wealthy elites of The League can afford to buy heavier hardware than that.*quote*

Take it, yes. I agree with you. But hanging on to it could be a horse of an entirely different color. Eventually someone with more resourses will notice and the party is over.

Don

-[/quote]
Yes and no. What I am talking about is the beginning of the end of the League as an effective government, a dark age of interstellar warlordism. Chaos, strife, and uncertainty are bound to arise from that sort of situation. But if it a choice between giving up all their holdings in the Verge and the Shell, effectively hemorrhaging a huge percentage of their wealth, or hiring some ships and soldiers to allow them to continue business as usual (perhaps even increase their profits as mercenaries may allow the wealthy to become even more ruthless and exploitative than they could get away with under OFS regulation) I have a feeling that at least some of the League plutocrats will take their chances getting their hands dirty doing for themselves what they once relied on OFS to take care of for them.[/quote]

On the other hand, there are something like 750 core worlds, each of which can build and run a 1000 ship navy. They didn't because they counted on the SLN. Once it is shown to be a hollow and toothless tiger?

IIRC one of the mandarins already bemoaned the possibility of at least some of the transtellars [abandoning ship] and cutting their own deals with the GA. To quote a former colleague "Business is business. Everything else is [expletive deleted].

Barregos also stated that other sector governors would become warlords and Maya's only chance would be for him to become the biggest and baddest.

Doesn't matter to transtellars who wins or loses or controls what. It only ultimately matters to cut the best deals and squeeze out the highest profit. Maybe the pie will be smaller, but the mantra of all transtellars: adapt, improvise, overcome.

Hi kzt,

I don't know of any textev for how many systems make up the SL core wore worlds, nor do we know how many were OFS and transtellar victims first since OFS was created some 500 years ago, which may explain why so many SL Assembly delegations are owned by the mandarins.

But 750 would represent around 42% of the 1784+ mentioned in CoS, without knowing how many are added each year etc, which I'm willing to accept in lieu of textev though I would have thought it might be closer to 600, but it's not critical to your point.

Given the deep long running antagonisms between some core worlds that could turn into war without the league, I suspect many core worlds have agendas or worries closer to home.

Given the textev only a handful or two of the SDF's have even a squadron of SD's versus Crandall's TF alone matching the size of the top 5% of all the real navies [SFtS], they will have too much on their plates to raid the verge for a while.

The time factor in building their ~1000 ship navies could take at least a decade, probably two; really too late for our immediate story line.

But definitely interesting times for the next story arc.

L

kzt wrote:On the other hand, there are something like 750 core worlds, each of which can build and run a 1000 ship navy. They didn't because they counted on the SLN. Once it is shown to be a hollow and toothless tiger?

kzt wrote:On the other hand, there are something like 750 core worlds, each of which can build and run a 1000 ship navy. They didn't because they counted on the SLN. Once it is shown to be a hollow and toothless tiger?

Manticore didn't run a 1000-ship navy in 1920 PD. In the middle of a shooting war with the biggest and richest star nation outside of the League. And very few systems in the League have anything close to the Old Star Kingdom's GSP. The notion that any random core world could field a Navy similar in size to the RMN is not remotely accurate.