Haven Victorious

kzt wrote:

Fox2! wrote:Manticore provides value for money, providing economical access to markets that would either be denied, more expensive to reach, or take longer to reach. They don't go around freebooting their neighbors in exchange for the dubious blessings of the Dusquene Plan.

Other than the occasional park full of children...

But they were Mesan children. They are genetically engineered so they don't quite count as human.

After reading "Our Sacred Honor", I have to ask... why *can't* the PRH support it's people? Where exactly are the costs here? It mentions that goods (including drugs) are incredibly cheap and that Dolists can afford to waste themselves in pretty much any vice they choose... yet it also portrays them as all living in poverty, including Eloise and her sister, a BLS-plus-dual-income household with no children or other dependents. ???

Also, if all these people are consuming, then all the money they're being given is going back out into the economy, so it's not as if there's a complete sinkhole there.





(Also re: the SEM-- forget parks of kids, are we forgetting the entire Silesian Confederacy?)

NortonIDaughter wrote:(Also re: the SEM-- forget parks of kids, are we forgetting the entire Silesian Confederacy?)

Some people just need the guiding hand of a superior culture.

NortonIDaughter wrote:After reading "Our Sacred Honor", I have to ask... why *can't* the PRH support it's people? Where exactly are the costs here? It mentions that goods (including drugs) are incredibly cheap and that Dolists can afford to waste themselves in pretty much any vice they choose... yet it also portrays them as all living in poverty, including Eloise and her sister, a BLS-plus-dual-income household with no children or other dependents. ???

Also, if all these people are consuming, then all the money they're being given is going back out into the economy, so it's not as if there's a complete sinkhole there.

PRH has to get the money from somewhere. All those dolists are not paying taxes. They are getting subsidies for things like rent and there isn't (if you follow the progression of such things on Earth now) a lot of ways for people to invest in providing housing and various services to make much money if the Government is both holding down the things like rents paid or allowed to be charged. Are the people selling the drugs making money? If so, are they legal drugs and they have to do things like pay taxes on the profits? Then you get the little problem that in order to keep various prices low, the government has to subisidze the producers/manufactures (to keep them in business let alone make a big profit ) AND there are price controls in effect on all sorts of things so the people who sell them to the duolists are typicaly prevented from having much of a margin to make a profit. So the ventures into the variouis balck markets operations also don't pay taxes but are also making payoffs, the system just keeps getting worse.
Layer onto that having all those people you are paying NOT TO WORK have no interest in going out to learn the skills (which are NOT being taught in schools) to be able to work in the manufacture of goods that anybody off Haven is willing to buy---quality, level of tech, ability to make delivery on orders of a size making it worth shipping off world- when offworlders can buy better stuff at the same or lower prices from places like systems in the SL?
Sure, Haven can FORCE it's conquests to buy PRH goods-even at inflated prices- but it has a tough time finding others to buy them.

The whole reason they went with the "loot the neighbors" plan was they needed the money, they needed the products etc. They then went right to the Pillage then Burn part because after they robbed the money etc, and confiscated the goods, they also ususaly took chunks of the production equipment AND not only beggared their new conquests, they imposed the Haven education system on them. You really don't want to take your new peons and let them go right on educating their children about freedoms and any kind of non-state controled economic system that would only encourage them and probably provide the tools and motivation to rebel or just sabotage your efforts to control them.

So, Haven was stripping and crushing the populations of each new conquest as it went along which really only had the effect of a sugar rush (or drug hit) on the Haven economy before it disipated by beind dumped into that morass of non-productive dolists. Building more warships and bigger army just feeds the problem as each system you take forces you to pour more people (and ships) into holding those systems and keeping them beaten down so they don't rise on you.
Very bad. And many of the leadership realized it but saw no way to get off the tiger without getting destroyed by the people they were paying to provide political support but nothing elce.
Remind you of anything?

Brigade XO wrote:Remind you of anything?

No, not at all.

Btw, totally off topic, when does the SS and Medicare “trust funds” run out?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

kzt wrote:Manticore provides value for money, providing economical access to markets that would either be denied, more expensive to reach, or take longer to reach. They don't go around freebooting their neighbors in exchange for the dubious blessings of the Dusquene Plan.

Other than the occasional park full of children...

But they were Mesan children. They are genetically engineered so they don't quite count as human.[/quote]


Why do we have to go through the "park full of children" nonsense?
That was done by a Mesan seccie, NOT by Zilwicki. We know this from textev, besides all the comments from people who know him that he would never have done something like it.

ldwechsler wrote:Why do we have to go through the "park full of children" nonsense?
That was done by a Mesan seccie, NOT by Zilwicki. We know this from textev, besides all the comments from people who know him that he would never have done something like it.

Because "good intentions" is not a moral or legal defense when your actions directly lead to thousands of incinerated little kids.

ldwechsler wrote:Why do we have to go through the "park full of children" nonsense?
That was done by a Mesan seccie, NOT by Zilwicki. We know this from textev, besides all the comments from people who know him that he would never have done something like it.

kzt wrote:Because "good intentions" is not a moral or legal defense when your actions directly lead to thousands of incinerated little kids.

KZT is right. The bombs were obtained at Zilwicki's request He did not expect H-bombs, but decided he could work with them. He disabled the locator mechanism and then he sent them out to be used (just not at the park, but the original target would have killed people). We had a long discussion about the criminal liability he faced and decided that it was multiple counts of man slaughter at a minimum under British law (multiple first decree murder counts under US law).
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=400

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=430

Ldwechsler was in on the original discussion and took the same (incorrect) position then.

tlb wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:Why do we have to go through the "park full of children" nonsense?
That was done by a Mesan seccie, NOT by Zilwicki. We know this from textev, besides all the comments from people who know him that he would never have done something like it.

kzt wrote:Because "good intentions" is not a moral or legal defense when your actions directly lead to thousands of incinerated little kids.

KZT is right. The bombs were obtained at Zilwicki's request He did not expect H-bombs, but decided he could work with them. He disabled the locator mechanism and then he sent them out to be used (just not at the park, but the original target would have killed people). We had a long discussion about the criminal liability he faced and decided that it was multiple counts of man slaughter at a minimum under British law (multiple first decree murder counts under US law).
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=400

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=430

Ldwechsler was in on the original discussion and took the same (incorrect) position then.

And did your original discussion include the fact that the Kingdom of Torch was in a declared state of war with Mesa . . . which had just dispatched a fleet of SS renegades to exterminate every man woman --- and child --- on Torch? I'm not trying to minimize what happened here, but if we're getting into parsing fine legal points, that needs to be taken into consideration, as well.

ldwechsler wrote:Why do we have to go through the "park full of children" nonsense?
That was done by a Mesan seccie, NOT by Zilwicki. We know this from textev, besides all the comments from people who know him that he would never have done something like it.

kzt wrote:Because "good intentions" is not a moral or legal defense when your actions directly lead to thousands of incinerated little kids.

tlb wrote:KZT is right. The bombs were obtained at Zilwicki's request He did not expect H-bombs, but decided he could work with them. He disabled the locator mechanism and then he sent them out to be used (just not at the park, but the original target would have killed people). We had a long discussion about the criminal liability he faced and decided that it was multiple counts of man slaughter at a minimum under British law (multiple first decree murder counts under US law).
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=400

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9279&start=430

Ldwechsler was in on the original discussion and took the same (incorrect) position then.

runsforcelery wrote:And did your original discussion include the fact that the Kingdom of Torch was in a declared state of war with Mesa . . . which had just dispatched a fleet of SS renegades to exterminate every man woman --- and child --- on Torch? I'm not trying to minimize what happened here, but if we're getting into parsing fine legal points, that needs to be taken into consideration, as well.

Yes sir, it did. Neither Zilwicki nor Cachet is officially working for Torch. Using nuclear weapons on civilians, when there is no clear military objective, is a violation of the Eridani Edict; which is generally considered to be a war crime by civilized worlds. What did not happen at Torch cannot morally be used to justify what did happen at Mesa.

Despite the dispute about legal and moral status, none of the people in the discussion expected that Zilwicki and Cachet would actually be brought to trial. That might be a failing on our part.

Anyway we are looking forward to what happens with the duo, plus Harahap, in the next book from you and Eric Flint.