Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:Cornering the market on a product does not always imply buying all of that product up. It means owning a fair share of that product outright, yes. But it also means being savvy enough to own shares or have your hand in what is left by shrewd negotiations.

Sometimes these are unfair and criminal negotiations because they border on unfair trade practices. That is why some mergers are shot down. Manticore “owns shares” in the Idaho wormhole bridge and the Erewhon Junction. And it “owns shares” in the Beowulf end by proxy. Manticore took Trevor's Star outright.

Manticore owns the Beowulf and Trevor's Star wormholes because it owns and controls the central terminus (they are legs of the Manticore junction and cannot be used without consulting Manticore). I do not believe that it has a share of the Erewhon Junction (at most a reciprocal treaty). My understanding of the Idaho wormhole was that it is operated for mutual benefit.

Reciprocal trade agreements are NOT the same as "cornering" the market, which I take to imply monopoly control (as opposed to shared control).

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Cornering the market on a product does not always imply buying all of that product up. It means owning a fair share of that product outright, yes. But it also means being savvy enough to own shares or have your hand in what is left by shrewd negotiations.

Sometimes these are unfair and criminal negotiations because they border on unfair trade practices. That is why some mergers are shot down. Manticore “owns shares” in the Idaho wormhole bridge and the Erewhon Junction. And it “owns shares” in the Beowulf end by proxy. Manticore took Trevor's Star outright.

Manticore owns the Beowulf and Trevor's Star wormholes because it owns and controls the central terminus (they are legs of the Manticore junction and cannot be used without consulting Manticore). I do not believe that it has a share of the Erewhon Junction (at most a reciprocal treaty). My understanding of the Idaho wormhole was that it is operated for mutual benefit.

Reciprocal trade agreements are NOT the same as "cornering" the market, which I take to imply monopoly control (as opposed to shared control).

Tell it to the FCC.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

penny wrote:Tell it to the FCC.

What do I have to tell the FCC? The Federal Communications Commission has nothing to do with freight movement nor trade negotiations.

You talk about Manticore "cornering" the market in wormholes, but then can only list two possibilities that are not already part of the Manticore wormhole junction and its associated termini (which Manticore controls, because it possesses the central junction).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:The MWJ has rush hour traffic. Just like LA!

I can accept that. I wonder what its peak times are? Is it twelve-hour rush-hour traffic? Anyway, nothing changes.

I can't think of such a thing. It should be roughly evenly distributed throughout a day. There's no reason for the Junction to operate on any one planet's time: ships will be arriving at nearly uniform times because their origins have very different calendars and the distances are also going to average out the arrival times.

The worst that can happen is that the warehouse some ships use only operate 10 hours per 22.45 hour (one Manticore day) and therefore they start their journey from a warehouse through the Junction at specific times. But I don't see how such a warehouse operator would be big enough to cause such disturbances in traffic. They'd make more money by operating 22.45/10 (I think Manticore weeks are 10 days, aren't they?).

Jonathan_S wrote:You might get some clumping of traffic that originates from a local planet. While the planet obviously always has the full spread of time zones if it's got one city that's the most common destination for shipping and shore leave you probably get a greater concentration of ships leaving during that city's daytime.

But locally originating traffic is going to be a minority of Junction shipping; far more is going to be simply passing through and it's schedule will depend on when it arrived at the first terminus which will depend on when it left whatever previous port it departed from.


More likely you'd get semi-random clumping. So rather than a, say, 9am rush every day you'll get weird and basically randomly distributed lulls followed by a rush of a bunch of ships wanting to use it at once -- just because their scheduled happened to coincide.

And so right after a rush, as the backlog of ships waiting builds, Astro Control will likely start reducing the separation between ships, moving closer to their hard limit of 1 minute minimum separations (or the minimum allowed by lockdown; whichever is longer) until the backlog starts shrinking and then they'd ratchet up the intervals again.

Again. I am considering how things work in the real world. Every system has to have regular hours of business. The stock market is the backbone of any government. It is its lifeline. The MBS is the financial hub of the galaxy. That is the hand that a cornered market on trade has dealt it, courtesy of the MWJ.

Those normal business hours of operation come replete with a flurry of activity the least of which is the buying and selling of commodities. The MBS sees a flurry of activity during normal business hours after the daily stock market closes.

Freighters from every corner of the galaxy are there to buy and sell commodities. After these freighters are loaded up, they want to get on their way. However, Dispatch Boats are given priority transit. Their mail must run on a timely basis. Any government that wants to make money in the market pays tribute to the MBS. How many systems are out there that might dabble in the market? Because they have to, need to, and want to? That represents thousands of Dispatch Boats with a higher priority for transit. And that reality must cause a backlog of freighters waiting to transit.

Freighters could elect to avoid the normal hectic business hours of operation by stopping by after hours. But in that case, it might result in freighters sitting around for hours waiting to be unloaded, if loaded. Stevedores have families and they need sleep. If nght shifts are not as busy as day shifts, then they do not have the manpower to swamp a freighter with stevedores at night. No freighter wants to wait around for hours to be unloaded. In many cases that wait is all night long. See the realities of the real world here on earth. Here on earth, freight drivers pay people off of the street out of their own pocket to unload their cargo! Their schedule is very important! Multiply that reality by the MBS.

That is the reality of financial and business hubs. For instance, let's consider High Point, NC. High Point is the furniture capital of the world. Billions of dollars in furniture is bought and sold in High Point during the furniture market alone, which is twice a year. Spring and Fall. Every single corner of the world is represented there. There are thousands of buyers and manufacturers. You can identify them by their passes and badges. The press are there as well with their own passes. Vendors flock to the city to sell their culinary masterpieces. Entertainment is flown in from all over the world to accommodate the after hours parties and nightlife.

The number of different flags flying around the downtown market area representing various countries in the downtown market is sobering. There are literally more foreign flags flying than at the United Nations building! The amount of business deals conducted during the markets is astounding. Freighters bring samples of furniture from all over the world into High Point to be bought and sold.

Along with the market are other businesses which feed off of the market. Cars loads of people come into High Point carrying translators, dock workers, prostitutes, escorts, cab drivers, tourists, students, professors, etc. Traffic in High Point during each week long furniture market almost brings the city to a crawl. Even though the market itself lasts for only a week. The entire ordeal is three weeks. One week of pre-market and one week after market.

The market is so lucrative that the local university, High Point University, offers advanced degrees in all areas of the furniture market. Like interior design.

Thus is the real world reality of a specific business hub. Imagine trade in the MBS and you should be able to see how any suggestion that the MBS is not busy is laughable.

And with Haven being brought under the MBS’s financial unbrella as an ally, and the new financial and business negotiations between the two governments, and the new governments Manticore is taking on, the MBS’s blood flow is increased several-fold.

And before somebody suggests something so silly. Yes, just like High Point, NC, there are other furniture markets. But if you want to make your mark, you will attend the High Point furniture market. Any other pales by comparison. There are many financial hubs other than the MBS, yes, but let's be real. If someone is serious about making money, the MBS can make you or break you.

You have to remember that the Junction is far more like a canal (or really confluence of canals) than it is a market.

Sure, some ships will be doing business at Landing and therefore will care about business hours of the businesses there. Others would have been doing business at Yawata Crossing (Sphinx) and instead care about business hours there. But most of them are just passing through and, at most, are interacting with the Junction warehouses -- they won't ever head in-system and couldn't care less whether it was business hours at any particular city across the MBS's three planets. And those Junction warehouses are almost certainly a 3-shift 22.45 T-hour a day operation (i.e. always open).

For example a ship carrying cargo from the western side of the League to Sol would pop out of the Junction from Lynx, u-turn and queue up to pop through to Beowulf - its arrival times wouldn't even be based on business hours on Lynx (as it would have little reason to even visit that system; and would instead head directly to the nearby uninhabited system where the terminus actually is)

So sure, of the ships that head in-system most are probably headed to Landing. And so you might well get more traffic coming back from there that departed during its day than its night. (But even then it'd be spread some since unless you're giving your crew extra shore leave it's unlikely that your cargo will finish getting moved at exactly the start or end of the local business day) But you'll have other ships headed to the other planets, or even cities on other parts of Manticore, and hence with different local business hours. And not all those ships have the same acceleration, so you also get differing transit times across the 7 LH from the hyper limit out to the junction will cause traffic to unpredictably bunch up or spread out from how it was when it left the planet.

So given the wild mix of through traffic, local traffic dealing with multiple cities across multiple worlds (so a wide mix of time zones that don't even have fixed offsets from each other), and differing speeds, I don't see you having any kind of fixed "rush hour" at the Junction. There will be busy times; but I don't think they'd be at predictable times of day -- more like when various hard to predetermine factors happen to line up to generate a traffic surge (and other times those factors will line up the other way and you'll get a traffic lull instead)

Manticore has control of the Manticore Wormhole Junction and it may or may not have various treaties or agreements with the Systems that are closest to the 7 termini. Not at the Lynx end, the System of Lynx is not the closest star (which has no habitable planets and not much mentioned to be otherwise useful except possibly metals but nobody's doing anything there yet). The Gregor A has agreements with the Alderman Empire BUT you would have to go try and look that up. Trevor's Star was clearly held essentially alone by Manticore as Haven was NOT able to invoke any legal ownership claims to that side of the wormhole when they took the system and subjugated it. Manticore might not have been able to maintain warships etc on the Trevor's Star side after the war started but they controlled the wormhole.

The only one that appears to have significant agreements is Beowulf but Manticore is running that terminus although Beowulf is a long term and significant ally with a strong military alliance. They also have significant cultural and personal ties with Manticore after generations of marriage between people of both Systems.

The primary advantage that the MWHJ confers is the time (and so operating expense as well as actual elapse time) of moving ships and their cargos between the Junction and any of its termini.

Manticore gives rate advantages (discounts) for SEM flagged commercial shipping and probably other privately owned (by SEM citizens) ships including Yachts...etc. They MAY grant some rate reductions for transits to various System governments or flagged ships but that hasn't been disclosed in the series. Those advantages of flagging directly translate to lower costs being charged on anything they carry through the Junction- in or out -which is a major advantage .

Up to the point of Oyster Bay and the destruction of all the orbital manufacturing capabilities. Manticore companies were producing -and selling- a lot of things to an awful lot of places beyond the various systems that had junction termini. I have the impression in the series that many if not most of the MMM flagged ships have some component of their various routs that come back through the Junction both for some time back at Manticore and to carry cargos from from all sorts of places at to Manticore for transshipment via other termini of the Junction. The idea is Running Fully Loaded- Both Ways. You're able to fill otherwise unused cargo space by taking goods part way to it's destination along a faster route -the junction - than by anybody else. That's why you see all those massive logics/trans-loading facilities outside of any sort of major city or junction of Interstate Highways. Never let your truck run at less that capacity unless somebody pays you more to move their products.
On the other hand, Manticore has developed (or encouraged its citizens/corporations) to develop service facilities out around the Junction and I would imagine at the various termini. So there are "useful" stations near (and within Manticore's ability to defend/ police) the terminus and that just increased the revenues flowing to SEM.

Another point is that Manticore (which has become a powerhouse in Interstellar Maritime Law) evenly enforces Maritime Law and insists its flagged vessels abide by local regulations. On the other side of that is that a Manticore flagged vessel (as we keep being told as with the sour memories of Admiral Bing) can have the benefit of active support if it's government and diplomats for problems with "local" authorities trying to extort bribes or falsely accuse them of violations of local laws.

Places like Idaho hired Manticore (if not a Manticorian company) to do wormhole surveys and I believe that kind of work probably usually come with contract clauses about the ownership and operation of any wormhole found. Manticore has not been ripping off systems where they have helped find a wormhole but I suspect that MMM flagged ships will get some discounts and Manticore will get some ownership and probably operations component to have some control of the asset. Again, this being Manticore, there is probably a mutual defense treaty that also specifically includes the wormhole to give the RMN certain rights to show up and defend or recover said wormhole terminus for people trying to take it.

Yes, there probably are MMM companies that do shady things but if they are truly violating other systems laws, Manticore won't be helping them escape problems they caused themselves.

This took hundreds of years to develop.

Jonathan_S wrote:You have to remember that the Junction is far more like a canal (or really confluence of canals) than it is a market.

Sure, some ships will be doing business at Landing and therefore will care about business hours of the businesses there. Others would have been doing business at Yawata Crossing (Sphinx) and instead care about business hours there. But most of them are just passing through and, at most, are interacting with the Junction warehouses -- they won't ever head in-system and couldn't care less whether it was business hours at any particular city across the MBS's three planets. And those Junction warehouses are almost certainly a 3-shift 22.45 T-hour a day operation (i.e. always open).

For example a ship carrying cargo from the western side of the League to Sol would pop out of the Junction from Lynx, u-turn and queue up to pop through to Beowulf - its arrival times wouldn't even be based on business hours on Lynx (as it would have little reason to even visit that system; and would instead head directly to the nearby uninhabited system where the terminus actually is)

So sure, of the ships that head in-system most are probably headed to Landing. And so you might well get more traffic coming back from there that departed during its day than its night. (But even then it'd be spread some since unless you're giving your crew extra shore leave it's unlikely that your cargo will finish getting moved at exactly the start or end of the local business day) But you'll have other ships headed to the other planets, or even cities on other parts of Manticore, and hence with different local business hours. And not all those ships have the same acceleration, so you also get differing transit times across the 7 LH from the hyper limit out to the junction will cause traffic to unpredictably bunch up or spread out from how it was when it left the planet.

So given the wild mix of through traffic, local traffic dealing with multiple cities across multiple worlds (so a wide mix of time zones that don't even have fixed offsets from each other), and differing speeds, I don't see you having any kind of fixed "rush hour" at the Junction. There will be busy times; but I don't think they'd be at predictable times of day -- more like when various hard to predetermine factors happen to line up to generate a traffic surge (and other times those factors will line up the other way and you'll get a traffic lull instead)

No ship coming from the junction would be headed to "Landing" - a hypership cannot land there - it would transship cargo and passengers at the orbital station for customs control. We have repeated scenes of ships docking at an orbital station and cargo waiting customs in warehouses (including a group disembarking while Hesphateus was destroyed). Yes, some passengers/cargo might circumvent that, for some reason (intra system movement) but even so, Landing, like most large cities today, would have a 24/7 airport (spaceport) so arrival time would be irrelevant for travel purposes.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:You have to remember that the Junction is far more like a canal (or really confluence of canals) than it is a market.

Sure, some ships will be doing business at Landing and therefore will care about business hours of the businesses there. Others would have been doing business at Yawata Crossing (Sphinx) and instead care about business hours there. But most of them are just passing through and, at most, are interacting with the Junction warehouses -- they won't ever head in-system and couldn't care less whether it was business hours at any particular city across the MBS's three planets. And those Junction warehouses are almost certainly a 3-shift 22.45 T-hour a day operation (i.e. always open).

For example a ship carrying cargo from the western side of the League to Sol would pop out of the Junction from Lynx, u-turn and queue up to pop through to Beowulf - its arrival times wouldn't even be based on business hours on Lynx (as it would have little reason to even visit that system; and would instead head directly to the nearby uninhabited system where the terminus actually is)

So sure, of the ships that head in-system most are probably headed to Landing. And so you might well get more traffic coming back from there that departed during its day than its night. (But even then it'd be spread some since unless you're giving your crew extra shore leave it's unlikely that your cargo will finish getting moved at exactly the start or end of the local business day) But you'll have other ships headed to the other planets, or even cities on other parts of Manticore, and hence with different local business hours. And not all those ships have the same acceleration, so you also get differing transit times across the 7 LH from the hyper limit out to the junction will cause traffic to unpredictably bunch up or spread out from how it was when it left the planet.

So given the wild mix of through traffic, local traffic dealing with multiple cities across multiple worlds (so a wide mix of time zones that don't even have fixed offsets from each other), and differing speeds, I don't see you having any kind of fixed "rush hour" at the Junction. There will be busy times; but I don't think they'd be at predictable times of day -- more like when various hard to predetermine factors happen to line up to generate a traffic surge (and other times those factors will line up the other way and you'll get a traffic lull instead)

No ship coming from the junction would be headed to "Landing" - a hypership cannot land there - it would transship cargo and passengers at the orbital station for customs control. We have repeated scenes of ships docking at an orbital station and cargo waiting customs in warehouses (including a group disembarking while Hesphateus was destroyed). Yes, some passengers/cargo might circumvent that, for some reason (intra system movement) but even so, Landing, like most large cities today, would have a 24/7 airport (spaceport) so arrival time would be irrelevant for travel purposes.

Well yes, obviously. I didn't think I needed to spell out "going to Manticore to do business with companies located in Landing". That's kind of like objecting that a freighter wouldn't go to New York since the freight docks aren't in the city any more, or that you can't fly to DC because the airports are actually outside the city limits; in VA or MD.

Yes the ship would probably be offloading to Hephaestus or surrounding cargo facilities (and I agree that relatively few would have permission to run shuttles directly down to Landing); but IIRC the station operates on Landing time and while some of the station facilities would be open 24/7 I expect a fair number do shut down for the station "night".

And even docked at Hephaestus if they need to do business with a company down in Landing that'll often force them wait and conduct that during normal business hours for the city.


(Also airports are a bad example as they often do not run 24/7 having strong noise restrictions that tend to shut them down from about midnight or 1am until 5-6am. For example, while flights could land I've had to wait at least once in San Francisco for customs to open at 6am before they'd allow anybody off the plane. And even when departing from the airport TSA checkpoints are not usually open all night - rarely opening more than 2 hours before the first flight of the day. Though memorably at one smaller airport they warned us that TSA only opened 30 minutes before our 6am departure; and assured us that that wouldn't be a problem. The cargo side might be doing ground operations overnight but they have the same no-fly hours as the rest of the airport traffic)

Jonathan_S wrote:And even docked at Hephaestus if they need to do business with a company down in Landing that'll often force them wait and conduct that during normal business hours for the city.


(Also airports are a bad example as they often do not run 24/7 having strong noise restrictions that tend to shut them down from about midnight or 1am until 5-6am. For example, while flights could land I've had to wait at least once in San Francisco for customs to open at 6am before they'd allow anybody off the plane. And even when departing from the airport TSA checkpoints are not usually open all night - rarely opening more than 2 hours before the first flight of the day. Though memorably at one smaller airport they warned us that TSA only opened 30 minutes before our 6am departure; and assured us that that wouldn't be a problem. The cargo side might be doing ground operations overnight but they have the same no-fly hours as the rest of the airport traffic)

And unlike airports, some of those ships don't need to disembark at all, if their business is conducted entirely electronically. Courier boats, especially those for financial companies, only need to get close enough to Manticore to conduct real-time handshake and have sufficient bandwidth to transmit whatever massive data payloads they have. Shipping companies negotiating with Manticore concerns - those that somehow don't have a presence at the Junction or for the deals that need upper management sign-off - also don't need to dock. Those may still approach the planet at Landing's business hours, but they don't need to come as close, so they may shave off a good half-hour or more of transit time when heading back. And as you said, accelerations are going to wildly differ.

Passengers don't need to disembark on Hephaestus or the replacement station on Landing time because their arrival in Landing will be several hours later anyway. So I wouldn't be surprised if "rush" started on Hephaestus several hours before Landing and also ended several hours later. That suffices for two full shifts, possibly three, which gets similar to airport conditions on Earth today.

Freight, however, is going to be "whenever it gets done" and may also be bottlenecked by available docking facilities and dock-worker capacity. So they'll leave Manticore at all hours.

There may be some clumping of traffic around Manticore on Landing time, but by the time all this traffic reaches the Junction, I expect it to be nearly thoroughly spread out. And traffic coming from Manticore is going to be a small portion of the whole traffic in the Junction anyway.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Tell it to the FCC.

What do I have to tell the FCC? The Federal Communications Commission has nothing to do with freight movement nor trade negotiations.

You talk about Manticore "cornering" the market in wormholes, but then can only list two possibilities that are not already part of the Manticore wormhole junction and its associated termini (which Manticore controls, because it possesses the central junction).

Oops. I gotta stop hanging out with Shannon. That should have been FTC. My badd, but you should have been able to figure that out. No?