Enoki
SOC-14 1K
What happens when you go to, say some TL 4 world off the X-boat routes...?
A universal monetary unit
- Thread starter Enoki
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What happens when you go to, say some TL 4 world off the X-boat routes...?
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Check your travel guide first; if you find that the natives have a gold based currency, buy a lot wholesale, invest in a three dee printer, and see if you can give them some quantitative easing.
The difficulty of making them. Nothing more. And the sentence for doing so. (ISTR that it's at best life, but am not looking it up at the moment.)
Jason M Durkish
SOC-10
Gold coins are the universal currency in Commonwealth space
But then how does the exchange rates get kept up to date?
If the money is backed by the economy of the issuing state, and I'm in Capital, or Terra, or some other far off place, how does the exchange rates get kept up to date with the exchange rates in the Vargr States (Vargr just as an example)?
What's to say that I exchange my MCr worth of CrImps for Vargr, or Solomani, or Hiver Dollars and then jump out into a system that just got the news that the Vargr/Solomani/Hiver's just had the Space Great Depression, and now their dollar is inflating such that the Weimar's Mark looks like a great thing to invest in in comparison. The problem is that they can't keep their exchange rates straight with as long a delay as they have.
It would be slightly better if the Imperium was only a few sectors across, with at most a month or two delay, but with a month or two delay being normal for info from the border of the Imperium, going up from there... You see the issue.
Having something that can be turned in anywhere for the currency there becomes important if you can't trust the exchanges.
Depends on whose doing the manufacturing. If the big government is doing the printing, and so they make them to incredibly high quality standards, then the average counterfeiter isn't going to really beat the system. There's just going to be some way to tell the difference between the real, formally issued scrip and the fake ones.
If a hostile government is making the fakes...
Kick them out of your system?
I don't think the 3i has the problems the Continental Congress did. It has a pretty good navy to stop any jerk with a printer from making the money and throwing it ashore.
via x-boat. you've heard of relativity, yes? maybe this could be called jumpitivity ... no ... how about relajumpity ... well, I tried.
can you imagine all the markets, all the brokers, all the traders, all the investment funds, all the financial algorithsms, hanging on their comm links, biting their nails, waiting for that first radio twitch announcing the arrival of the xboat ....
you can bet that the zho's will churn them out by the mega-dton beating the imperium at its own game on the borderland neutral worlds. poor imperials. the dead heads rely on something physical, but the zho's can tell if you're cheating .... then there's collace over there, tech 13 and right next door to the glisten march markets, whole lotta merchant action over there .... and I'll bet darria plays fast and loose with the outback finances and tries to blame the sword worlds, who will of course have their own action going trying to obtain imperial tech by buying it ....
nah. as an interstellar currency the crimp is deep-fried toast.
No, they won't. If not because they can't (your theory is that they can; I'm not so sure) then because they don't want the Imperium to do the same with their currency in retaliation.
I note that in the real world, governments generally do not go around counterfeiting the currencies of rival countries or even enemy ones (Nazi Germany tried, but IIRC it didn't work out too well).
Hans
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
I'm guessing psychohistory and it's dependent dismal science economics would be farther along by TL15 and so there are likely much smarter handling of currency at the local level then us mere Terran heathens at TL 7.
Likely it also floats to an extent locally off a basket of economic activity, trade, goods and services. I would expect centralized long term guidance and policy, not exchange setting.
Where the CrImp would get hits in a sector from internal empirewide problems would be large scale high capital projects and stimulation contracts that get retracted in tough times. A big terraforming project might get delayed, damaging huge amounts of contracts cancelled and long term damage to subsector prospects.
Externally, I would expect the generally higher TL products make the CrImp tend to be 'hard'.
Likely it also floats to an extent locally off a basket of economic activity, trade, goods and services. I would expect centralized long term guidance and policy, not exchange setting.
Where the CrImp would get hits in a sector from internal empirewide problems would be large scale high capital projects and stimulation contracts that get retracted in tough times. A big terraforming project might get delayed, damaging huge amounts of contracts cancelled and long term damage to subsector prospects.
Externally, I would expect the generally higher TL products make the CrImp tend to be 'hard'.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Oh and did I mention Iridium? Tough stuff to try and mismark or melt down in any way.
For Zhos, I could see a paper currency wherein they 'imprint' a psychic impression onto psionically active material in their scrip, perhaps some sort of plant that becomes threads in their bills, and so a psionically active noble can sense when currency feels 'wrong' or 'dead'.
For Zhos, I could see a paper currency wherein they 'imprint' a psychic impression onto psionically active material in their scrip, perhaps some sort of plant that becomes threads in their bills, and so a psionically active noble can sense when currency feels 'wrong' or 'dead'.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Well, if you want, I did do a much more detailed version of the Maskai for a game and such a while back. The particulars were posted here:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=24979&highlight=maskai
Thank you, Enoki!
I updated many of the Maskai files.
Please find them here:
* External Link: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Maskai ]
* External Link: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Maskai_Empire ]
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Oh dear.
Best read up on what happened when the US stepped away from a bimetallic currency and why before assuming any given metal base or other rare material automatically confers effective management of currency.
What counts are the RULES re: such currency, not what the material is or if it is fiat or not.
Also, handling and protecting valuable currency incurs a cost. For multi-polity trade it is no doubt an absolute necessity to at least have reserve currency balancing if not for every transaction, but inside a stable empire a cryptocheck should suffice.
Just don't lose it.
Slow money.
I recently read Charles Stoss' Neptune's Brood which had some interesting stuff about interstellar currency and exchange. Okay so the whole book revolves around finance, but it is interesting how the money situation works out.
Not sure if it usable for Traveller since they have a STL society as opposed to an FTL one.
I recently read Charles Stoss' Neptune's Brood which had some interesting stuff about interstellar currency and exchange. Okay so the whole book revolves around finance, but it is interesting how the money situation works out.
Not sure if it usable for Traveller since they have a STL society as opposed to an FTL one.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
True enough. The bottom line is the morality and motivation and control mechanisms over the people managing the currency, not the specific tool itself (other then inherent technical advantages and disadvantages).
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
A big McGuffin for the novel Norstrilia are all of the humanspace currencies, and the one that counted was Free On Earth or FOE money, the best currency possible. Rod McBan goes on a stroon futures tear and ends up with piles of FOE money, effectively so much he could buy the planet.
There is also SAD money, Secured and Delivered, which has to do with money secured with tangible goods.
The author was involved with his father in financing Sun Yat Sen at an early age so thinking in this manner was second nature.
Another fiscal mechanism came up in a separate story with a master thief who had a planetary credit card, able to charge millions of man-years against his whole planet. And he did- to the wrong people.
