Noble Land Grant confusion

[rancke]

This is a big reason why you can't. Yes history is full of useless layabout rentseeking tyrants milking their populations, and many of those tyrants got guillotined, shot, hung and in other manners, lost their jobs. You may not think you are being a rapacious lord, but from the other end of the purse strings, things look different.

It's not either/or. Yes, if I squeeze my people till the blood runs from under their fingernails and the economy grinds to a screeching halt, they may revolt and the Imperium may fail to back me up, but taxing people a couple of credits isn't going to ruffle anyone's feathers (except people who'd be against me anyway on sheer principle). And history shows that rulers can tax people a good deal more than the rules imply without making them react and without affecting the economy.

So wait, are you looking to play as system governor and actually working out the planetary budgets? Or are you still planning to leave everything to the seneschal, and go adventuring?

I'm looking to have a campaign setting with enough verisimilitude not to strain my willing suspension of disbelief past its breaking point.

This is a big stretch. The rules appear to be for PC characters who are out adventuring instead of staying home and attending to affairs of state. It is intended to model an annual paycheck, and that is all.

The way I see it, if you don't want a PC to have the disposable income of a lord of a medium-sized country, you should refrain from giving him the title, powers, and estates of the ruler of a medium-sized country, not artificially reduce his income to that of a minor lordling.

While there are game balance issues involved, the rules are not "blatantly wrong". The cash is not as much as some of the despots of earth history obtained, but then the rise of the middle class ruined the aristocracy's stranglehold on wealth with the Industrial Revolution.

But the description of what 'economic control' entails shows that Imperial nobles_T5 are much more like the despots of Earth history than like aristocrats ruined by the power of the middle class. There are differences, of course, but there's no impotency here. The land belongs to the Imperium and has been given in fief to the viscount, who would presumably be backed by the full power of the Imperium. There's no overthrowing him, there's no pressuring him to ease up on his peasants. The only constraint would be not to mismanage the fief badly enough for the Emperor to decide to step in. Or, I suppose, provoke his subjects to vote with their feet. But that just makes the money he can make comparable to the money the rest of the planet's governments make. Which was all I was comparing it to in the first place, since I was comparing with generic countries.


Hans

 

[GrayPennell]

I would have to agree with Hans for the most part. The milieu is much like Dune, you can rule your subjects anyway you want as long as the Emperor gets his taxes...the taxes must flow.

That being said I think it would be truly impossible to model the economics down to the fiefdom. I also dont believe you can model the system economies. Just too many variables at play and we lack true data. Heck we dont even have interest rates which are key to all develop modeling in Advance Macro Economics. On the political science side we dont have all the laws. The only real one we have is weapons control. On the culture level we have a only a vague interstellar view. We cannot say let alone model whats going on in a system or a hex.

This means that everything is on a case by case campaign by campaign bases. If you want a leader who is benevolent great if you want a Harkonnen well there is a revolution and at least an Amber Zone adventure in the making. If your PC is the ruler well everything will depend on you and what your referee decide on.

Netflix has Monarch of he Glen a great show about a modern Scottish Lord trying to rebuild an estate. Great stories for a noble campaign. As you can see I am not one to do Pocket Empires but rather a story telling noble game hmmm a Fiasco Traveller Playset or maybe a I ll write one

 

[Drakon]

But the description of what 'economic control' entails shows that Imperial nobles_T5 are much more like the despots of Earth history than like aristocrats ruined by the power of the middle class. There are differences, of course, but there's no impotency here. The land belongs to the Imperium and has been given in fief to the viscount, who would presumably be backed by the full power of the Imperium. There's no overthrowing him, there's no pressuring him to ease up on his peasants. The only constraint would be not to mismanage the fief badly enough for the Emperor to decide to step in. Or, I suppose, provoke his subjects to vote with their feet. But that just makes the money he can make comparable to the money the rest of the planet's governments make. Which was all I was comparing it to in the first place, since I was comparing with generic countries.

One's personal honor, and desire to be revered by history as something other than a greedy tyrant should provide a sufficient stop. And where that tipping point is before the Emperor sends a troubleshooter, one can never be really sure. While ideally direct imperial interference should be rare, that does not leave the Imperium helpless.

Assuming I am reading this correctly, the US gov spent 3.8 trillion dollars from a 16.62 trillion dollar GDP in fiscal 2013. The president's paycheck is 400,000 USDollars. Of course no matter how many dollars you have, you cannot by a jump drive, yet.

 

[rancke]

One's personal honor, and desire to be revered by history as something other than a greedy tyrant should provide a sufficient stop. And where that tipping point is before the Emperor sends a troubleshooter, one can never be really sure. While ideally direct imperial interference should be rare, that does not leave the Imperium helpless.

So you keep telling me and I don't contradict you. But I keep telling you that the point where an Imperial noble_T5 would begin to be seen as a greedy tyrant would lie a good deal higher than the sums implied by the rules[*].

[*] Always assuming his fief has a reasonable population density. But since the fiefs of every noble_T5 seem to have much the same population density, we really can't fall back on the assumption that those fiefs are all howling wildernesses.​

Assuming I am reading this correctly, the US gov spent 3.8 trillion dollars from a 16.62 trillion dollar GDP in fiscal 2013. The president's paycheck is 400,000 USDollars.

The president of the US is a salaried functionary, albeit an exceptionally powerful one. An Imperial noble_T5 appears to be the Lord of the Manor for his personal estates and the Lord of the Land for the rest of his fief. What's your point? Surely not that the two are comparable? If you'd been talking about European kings or Indian princes now...

BTW, just for the record: I don't think Imperial nobles_T5 are directly comparable to absolute monarchs. There's no mention of executive, legislative, or judicial powers. But the power to grant or deny businesses license to exist alone should provide all the power needed to extract a decent fee from every business in his fief.

EDIT: I was partly mistaken. There is very explicit mention of Imperial fiefholders having legislative powers.


Hans

 

[rancke]

That being said I think it would be truly impossible to model the economics down to the fiefdom. I also dont believe you can model the system economies.

I don't want to model the economics. I just want the game rules to simplify the economics down to something plausible instead of down to something starkly implausible.


Hans

 

[esampson]

I think part of the problem is that, like starship maintenance, the system for income from noble land grants is highly abstracted. There is a basic assumption that most players don't want to deal with the minutiae of managing their land grants and the ones that do are not a large enough body to justify several more pages added to an already extremely large book.

This doesn't mean there is no place for such rules. It sounds like excellent supplementary material. It is just that trying to place every rule to model every system in full detail is not something that can be done with your core rules.

As for the rules straining disbelief, there's probably an awful lot of stuff going on with them if you want to try and work up a more detailed model. There's questions of resource rights that can be sold (does the land contain valuable materials that can be mined? Is it good land for growing food or poor?), proximity to other land with similar resources (if your neighbor has the same resources or even better that's going to push down the amount you can sell those rights), extant leases that must be honored (you may now be viscount but if your grandfather granted a 500 year lease to some corporation you might not be able to just raise their rates), and available population who can work the land/be taxed.

Contrast this with starship maintenance costs in CT. You had a flat cost of 2000 cr per stateroom per week in space and an annual cost of .01% of the ship. It didn't matter if there were people in the staterooms or not, if those people had metabolisms higher or lower than average, or even if they were high or middle passengers (which would probably have at least some impact as one would imagine that high passengers get better food than middle passengers). The annual maintenance was the same whether the ship sat on the ground the entire year or made 50 jump-6 jumps followed by high G maneuvers before skimming a gas giant to refuel.

So instead what the rules do is abstract a number that is 'safe'. There will be occasions where the number is too low (or in the case of land grants where it is too high) but for the majority of the time they will give reasonable approximations for people who want to play it absolutely safe and exert no energy.

You want to cut maintenance cost by doing some of it yourself? That's possible, but not covered by the basic rules. Similarly you want to reduce maintenance cost by not paying 100% of the annual maintenance, that should be possible, though it would come with drawbacks of its own (higher risk of mishaps, perhaps loss of certifications that could impact the rates the ship could charge and in more extreme cases the legality of the ship). However the demand for that kind of specificity isn't enough to justify placing all those rules into the core rulebook.

Is the paltry 10,000 cr per trade class/hex absurd for a noble who is taking a very 'hands off' approach while playing it completely safe? I'm not so sure. It doesn't appear that in the Third Imperium that anyone really fills the role of serfs, so if you start to tax people they can simply pick up and move. That's going to limit your ability to tax. It appears that there are lots and lots of planets where there are sections unowned by Imperial nobility, so it is very possible for people to 'vote with their feet'.

Additionally it has to be remembered that 10,000 cr per trade class/hex is what the noble earns after expenses. It is entirely plausible, even likely, that Imperial nobles have taxes of their own that they have to pay (this may in fact actually be the real demarcation between 'completely owned' land and 'economically controlled' land). The money for the Imperial Navy has to come from somewhere, after all. And we know that nobles are able to war with one another (otherwise why are there Imperial rules of war?), so that means that the land you have has to be defended. Obviously a neighboring noble couldn't just sweep in because you've got no men and take your land at a whim but it has historically proven not too difficult for people to manufacture a casus belli and since trained troops don't just magically appear when you wish to pay for them nobles probably have to maintain at least some standing force to defend their territories.

And of course there's the question of infrastructure. I would imagine that an area designated by an Imperial land grant would not receive any infrastructure from the local government. After all, it's not their land, so the noble will be responsible for police, fire departments, sanitation, health, education, roadways, etc. and all of that costs money.

So in the end what you are looking at is 10,000 cr per trade code/hex profit for land that is totally 'safe' (no danger of tenants leaving, invasions by neighboring nobles, outbreaks of crime/poverty/fire/disease) for a noble that is completely 'absent' as far as the tenants are concerned. Is that probably a bit low? Yeah, just like annual starship maintenance is probably a 'bit high'. In 90% of the cases the amount is probably too conservative while in about 10% of the cases it is not conservative enough. On the other hand is it completely beyond suspension of disbelief? I don't think so.

Certainly the system could be fleshed out more to deal with things such as the noble taking a more active role to secure treaties with neighboring nobles (allowing a reduction in their standing armies) and to court tenants (not necessarily one at a time but just by making public appearances, hosting festivals, etc.) and more detail could be written for the management of the land (what resources it holds and how much, how much the noble taxes people, how much the noble invests in infrastructure, etc.) but that all seems to be fodder for a supplement to cover a specific style of campaign rather than stuff for the core rules.

 

[GrayPennell]

I don't want to model the economics. I just want the game rules to simplify the economics down to something plausible instead of down to something starkly implausible.


Hans

In a universe set 5000 years in the future with 11,000 worlds, jump drives, aliens, robotics, advance genetics, Grandfather etc etc anything is plausible

 

[rancke]

I think part of the problem is that, like starship maintenance, the system for income from noble land grants is highly abstracted.

No, the problem is that the abstraction seems wrong (to me). It's like having a rule for how fast a party can travel from one place to another. Obviously it depends on a host of factors that we don't want to bother with. So we just say, for example, "30 miles per day". Perhaps we go so far as to have a table with half a dozen terrain types and have different distances for each terrain type, but that's as far as we usually go. And that's fine, because we don't want to go into details like the quality of the horses and the available forage and other stuff that'll really only mean a difference of a few miles per day. But what if the rule said "0.3 miles per day"? Would you say that the problem was that the movement system was highly abstracted? Or would you say that the problem was that it was blatantly wrong?

There is a basic assumption that most players don't want to deal with the minutiae of managing their land grants and the ones that do are not a large enough body to justify several more pages added to an already extremely large book.

I agree completely. I'd be perfectly happy with an abstraction level that just said "so-and-so-many credits per hex". Provided "so-and-so" was a plausible figure.

As for the rules straining disbelief, there's probably an awful lot of stuff going on with them if you want to try and work up a more detailed model. There's questions of resource rights that can be sold (does the land contain valuable materials that can be mined? Is it good land for growing food or poor?), proximity to other land with similar resources (if your neighbor has the same resources or even better that's going to push down the amount you can sell those rights), extant leases that must be honored (you may now be viscount but if your grandfather granted a 500 year lease to some corporation you might not be able to just raise their rates), and available population who can work the land/be taxed.

The thing is, these are generic rules. If you have to fall back on the noble's ancestors having been incompetent to explain the figures, you're not being generic any more. Unless you think that every single noble in the Imperium having had incompetent ancestors is plausible.

Contrast this with starship maintenance costs in CT. You had a flat cost of 2000 cr per stateroom per week in space and an annual cost of .01% of the ship. It didn't matter if there were people in the staterooms or not, if those people had metabolisms higher or lower than average, or even if they were high or middle passengers (which would probably have at least some impact as one would imagine that high passengers get better food than middle passengers).

Actually, it makes a great deal of difference to me if the stateroom was occupied or not. Paying that much money for life support for someone who isn't being life supported is IMO a Bad Game Rule. Ignoring the metabolism issue is OK because it has a much lesser impact and would be a much greater nuisance to work with than "if there's no passenger, there's no life support cost" (a pretty simple rule and easily administered, no?). But if I knew how much of the life support cost that went into maintaining a passenger's life functions, I might be tempted to have Virushi cost double or something.

The annual maintenance was the same whether the ship sat on the ground the entire year or made 50 jump-6 jumps followed by high G maneuvers before skimming a gas giant to refuel.

Funny, I've just been toying with a variant rule that didn't impose the negative jump DMs until after X jumps and how free traders exploiting that had to stay away from starports that enforced the legal requirement of having maintenance at least once per calendar year.

You want to cut maintenance cost by doing some of it yourself?

I want the overlord of a territory to get more than 1.5 centicredit per subject for his own personal income. I want trade classifications to affect the noble's income the same way they affect the planet's GWP. I want overlords of medium-sized countries who have inherited their title and estates from a long line of ancestors to have a fortune and a long string of assets. The current rule might work if every single Imperial noble had just been given howling wildernesses as fiefs (well... the trade classification rule is wrong any way you slice it, but the basic sums might work).

Is the paltry 10,000 cr per trade class/hex absurd for a noble who is taking a very 'hands off' approach while playing it completely safe? I'm not so sure. It doesn't appear that in the Third Imperium that anyone really fills the role of serfs, so if you start to tax people they can simply pick up and move.

But they won't do so if you're only taxing them what your neighbors would be taxing them too.

[String of quibbles]

I could refute them all, and if you want, I'll do it in PM, but I think it best to trim a little of the fat from the discussion.


Hans

 

[rancke]

In a universe set 5000 years in the future with 11,000 worlds, jump drives, aliens, robotics, advance genetics, Grandfather etc etc anything is plausible

No it isn't. It really isn't. This is a fact, not an opinion.


Hans

 

[esampson]

No, the problem is that the abstraction seems wrong (to me). It's like having a rule for how fast a party can travel from one place to another. Obviously it depends on a host of factors that we don't want to bother with. So we just say, for example, "30 miles per day". Perhaps we go so far as to have a table with half a dozen terrain types and have different distances for each terrain type, but that's as far as we usually go. And that's fine, because we don't want to go into details like the quality of the horses and the available forage and other stuff that'll really only mean a difference of a few miles per day. But what if the rule said "0.3 miles per day"? Would you say that the problem was that the movement system was highly abstracted? Or would you say that the problem was that it was blatantly wrong?


I agree completely. I'd be perfectly happy with an abstraction level that just said "so-and-so-many credits per hex". Provided "so-and-so" was a plausible figure.

Yes, but as I attempt to point out further down, I'm not so sure that 'so-and-so' in this case is a completely improbably figure.

The thing is, these are generic rules. If you have to fall back on the noble's ancestors having been incompetent to explain the figures, you're not being generic any more. Unless you think that every single noble in the Imperium having had incompetent ancestors is plausible.

What makes you think your ancestor was incompetent? Megacorporations may want leases like that in order to justify the expense of building the necessary infrastructure for what they are doing. You see deals like that done today with companies leasing certain rights that they are able to hold onto for a long time. Nearly all movie deals are done this way. Is every single person who signs a multi-picture deal with a movie studio incompetent?

Actually, it makes a great deal of difference to me if the stateroom was occupied or not. Paying that much money for life support for someone who isn't being life supported is IMO a Bad Game Rule. Ignoring the metabolism issue is OK because it has a much lesser impact and would be a much greater nuisance to work with than "if there's no passenger, there's no life support cost" (a pretty simple rule and easily administered, no?). But if I knew how much of the life support cost that went into maintaining a passenger's life functions, I might be tempted to have Virushi cost double or something.


Funny, I've just been toying with a variant rule that didn't impose the negative jump DMs until after X jumps and how free traders exploiting that had to stay away from starports that enforced the legal requirement of having maintenance at least once per calendar year.

Yes, but now you're looking at a case of apples to 'somethings-that-are-closer-than-oranges-but-which-still-aren't-an-apples'. You want to compare a basic rule that was written to deal with generic cases with your own variation of the rule which is written to allow for more depth and complexity.

I want the overlord of a territory to get more than 1.5 centicredit per subject for his own personal income. . .

Already happens a decent amount of the time. On average a planet has a population of 1,714,674,211.25 (based on 1/36th of planets having an average population of 5 people, 1/18th planets having an average population of 50 people, etc.) and an average of 310.28 world hexes. This works out to under 75,000 people per terrain hex. If you have no trade codes at all the hex still generates 1/15th of a credit per person, an order of magnitude more than 1.5 centicred per person. Assuming you have any trade codes (and you should have at least 1 assuming you are higher than a knight) and the number of credits per person goes up to 30-60 centicreds per person (or even more, assuming you have a third or fourth trade code).

Is it possible to have a land grant that earns less than 1.5 centicreds per person? Sure. It's also possible to have land grants that earn a lot more. It's not a perfect system but as an abstraction it doesn't seem to be wholly unreasonable.

. . .But they won't do so if you're only taxing them what your neighbors would be taxing them too. . .

So you are taxing them the same amount as your neighbor, which is not an Imperial holding, and providing the same services and infrastructure (after all, why should they stay and pay the same amount for worse living conditions?) You tax them the same, you spend the same money on them, where does the extra money to pay you more than the democratically elected governor of the neighboring territory come from?

And even if all of that is equal you might still see a drain since people would probably migrate from your territory of 'hereditary rule' to a territory where 'anyone can become president'.

 

[rancke]

What makes you think your ancestor was incompetent?

That I'm getting an implausible low income from my territory.

Already happens a decent amount of the time. On average a planet has a population of 1,714,674,211.25 (based on 1/36th of planets having an average population of 5 people, 1/18th planets having an average population of 50 people, etc.) and an average of 310.28 world hexes. This works out to under 75,000 people per terrain hex. If you have no trade codes at all the hex still generates 1/15th of a credit per person, an order of magnitude more than 1.5 centicred per person. Assuming you have any trade codes (and you should have at least 1 assuming you are higher than a knight) and the number of credits per person goes up to 30-60 centicreds per person (or even more, assuming you have a third or fourth trade code).

60 centicreds per subject is not all that much more.

Is it possible to have a land grant that earns less than 1.5 centicreds per person? Sure. It's also possible to have land grants that earn a lot more. It's not a perfect system but as an abstraction it doesn't seem to be wholly unreasonable.

It seems wholly unreasonable to me that the population of a noble's territory depends on the trade classes alone.

So you are taxing them the same amount as your neighbor, which is not an Imperial holding, and providing the same services and infrastructure (after all, why should they stay and pay the same amount for worse living conditions?) You tax them the same, you spend the same money on them, where does the extra money to pay you more than the democratically elected governor of the neighboring territory come from?

Because we're only talking about the bit of the taxes that goes to the ruler personally. Whether someone who earns, say, Cr10,000 a year, gets taxed 3,000 credits or 3,001 credits makes no appreciable difference to him, but it makes a difference of 75,000 credits per hex to our average ruler. A difference of a mere 1% (30 credits) would mean 2.25 million credits per hex.

And what makes you think a neighboring democracy will not impose similar taxes and just spend the money that doesn't go to a ruler on the favorite pork barrel projects of legislators and prestige projects instead?

Also, people don't usually vote with their feet unless the conditions in their home country are really bad. For every person that emigrated from Europe to the New World, scores of people stayed behind. A few credits one way or the other simply doesn't matter enough for most people (And I'm using the weasel word 'most' just to avoid diverting the discussion to whether anyone at all would be provoked by how big a difference in taxes into moving).


Hans

 

[esampson]

That I'm getting an implausible low income from my territory.

Well, I think we are in disagreement about 'implausible'. I think it is more in the neighborhood of 'lower than people would normally expect' but hardly 'implausible'. For example, the President of the United States doesn't see an annual paycheck of $.60 per person. In fact if you total the entire 'ruling elite' of America (the President, Vice President, and all the members of the Legislative and Judicial branches) the total comes to $.30 per person.

So no, the amount seems low but not implausible since the noble is not absolute monarch of the land (i.e. the people have the option to up and leave).

60 centicreds per subject is not all that much more.

It's 40x what you were quoting and it seems considerably higher than what America pays its 'ruling elite'. (there's always arguments about how to convert dollars to credits).

It seems wholly unreasonable to me that the population of a noble's territory depends on the trade classes alone.

I wouldn't say unreasonable. More like inaccurate. If you wanted a more accurate system the size of the grant would probably be tied to how valuable the land is (in feudal Japan the basic unit of land was in fact measured not in square surface area but in how much rice it could grow).

However that would probably result in a system that is way more complicated for assigning lands to nobles. You would need to figure the values of individual hexes which would depend on the number of people in them, the terrain conditions, mineral resources, wealth and efficiency and then add up the individual hexes until you had a proper total. It would be a complete nightmare for many people.

Because we're only talking about the bit of the taxes that goes to the ruler personally. Whether someone who earns, say, Cr10,000 a year, gets taxed 3,000 credits or 3,001 credits makes no appreciable difference to him, but it makes a difference of 75,000 credits per hex to our average ruler. A difference of a mere 1% (30 credits) would mean 2.25 million credits per hex.

Actually, I bet you it would make an enormous difference. It isn't that the people would directly resent that extra 1% that they are paying. It is that they would look at the noble and just see him raking in money off of them. Especially a noble to doesn't even bother to put in an appearance every now and then (back to the argument of the numbers being completely safe for characters who invest no energy).

Will the citizens immediately revolt because of this resentment? Probably not, but then again a ship isn't likely to spontaneously explode just because you only spent 95% of the annual maintenance cost, either, and those cut-rate parts could save tens of thousands of credits.

Your extra 1% doesn't move you from 'safe' to 'immediate meltdown' but it has shifted you from 'completely safe' to 'slightly less safe'.

And what makes you think a neighboring democracy will not impose similar taxes and just spend the money that doesn't go to a ruler on the favorite pork barrel projects of legislators and prestige projects instead?

Oh, I'm sure they will, but they have an advantage in that their system says that anyone can rise to power. People living in your country can't, and like the old joke goes;

I don't have to run faster than the bear. I only have to run faster than you.

 

[rancke]

Well, I think we are in disagreement about 'implausible'. I think it is more in the neighborhood of 'lower than people would normally expect' but hardly 'implausible'. For example, the President of the United States doesn't see an annual paycheck of $.60 per person. In fact if you total the entire 'ruling elite' of America (the President, Vice President, and all the members of the Legislative and Judicial branches) the total comes to $.30 per person.

We've already had the argument about the American president and I don't buy it. The two positions are fundamentally different. As I've already pointed out, someone with the governmental powers -- the hereditary governmental powers -- described in the rules are much closer to that of an absolute monarch than that of a democratically elected leader. Perhaps not a straight analogy, but fairly close. So take a look at the sort of personal spending Age of Sail rulers did historically while still being able to salt away huge fortunes that still place their present-day descendants among the richest people on Earth.

For that matter, take a look at relatively moderate nobles (relative to kings, that is) such as English peers and the sort of boodle they managed to extract from their personal estates alone, never mind tax-like incomes.

So no, the amount seems low but not implausible since the noble is not absolute monarch of the land (i.e. the people have the option to up and leave).

And that one I've refuted as well. People in many kingdoms had the option to up and leave. Some did up and leave, true. But most of them were the poor (who didn't contribute much to the taxes); the upper lower, middle and upper classes mostly stayed put and paid their taxes.

It's 40x what you were quoting and it seems considerably higher than what America pays its 'ruling elite'. (there's always arguments about how to convert dollars to credits).

Yes, it is 40 times more and it is still implausibly low.

And something that I missed before: Taking an average of a range of figures tha spans ten orders of magnitude and using that to represent everything is unreasonable in the first place. A noble with 750,000 subjects per hex being treated as if he only had 75,000 per hex is fundamentally unreasonable. As is treating someone with 7,500 or 750 or 75 subjects per hex as if they had 750,000 per hex.

I wouldn't say unreasonable. More like inaccurate.

It's as inaccurate as making daily travel cover a third of a mile. And that sort of inaccuracy is unreasonable.

If you wanted a more accurate system the size of the grant would probably be tied to how valuable the land is (in feudal Japan the basic unit of land was in fact measured not in square surface area but in how much rice it could grow).

Basing the income on the population of the fief would probably be accurate enough.

However that would probably result in a system that is way more complicated for assigning lands to nobles.

I don't see why it should.

You would need to figure the values of individual hexes which would depend on the number of people in them, the terrain conditions, mineral resources, wealth and efficiency and then add up the individual hexes until you had a proper total. It would be a complete nightmare for many people.

It is also a straw man. It's at least one level of complexity more than necessary to come up with a ballpark figure.

Actually, I bet you it would make an enormous difference. It isn't that the people would directly resent that extra 1% that they are paying. It is that they would look at the noble and just see him raking in money off of them. Especially a noble to doesn't even bother to put in an appearance every now and then (back to the argument of the numbers being completely safe for characters who invest no energy).

And what are they going to do about it? He's the overlord, appointed by the Emperor and backed by the full might of the Imperium. There's no hardship involved to provoke emigration and any resentment will be expressed in letters to the editor.

Your extra 1% doesn't move you from 'safe' to 'immediate meltdown' but it has shifted you from 'completely safe' to 'slightly less safe'.

I see no reason to suppose any such thing.

Oh, I'm sure they will, but they have an advantage in that their system says that anyone can rise to power. People living in your country can't, and like the old joke goes;

I don't have to run faster than the bear. I only have to run faster than you.

Already refuted by history. It didn't happen under similar conditions in real life and I see no reason why it should happen in the Third Imperium either.

And I really doubt than anyone moves to America[*] for the chance to become president.

[*] Make that a republic where immigrants can become president :devil:.​

Hans

 

[aramis]

In a universe set 5000 years in the future with 11,000 worlds, jump drives, aliens, robotics, advance genetics, Grandfather etc etc anything is plausible

No it isn't. It really isn't. This is a fact, not an opinion.


Hans

I'm forced to agree with Hans, here - quite a few things are highly implausible, if not outright impossible.

There are baseline breaks from known present reality built into the Traveller universe. Within that framework, a lot is plausible, but not everything is plausible.

An alcubierre warp drive might be plausible, but a world with negative gravity isn't.

A full dyson sphere is dubious; a TL 12 dyson sphere is not possible within the OTU nor within the Rules as Written. The Niven Known Space's Ringworld isn't plausible for the very reason it wasn't plausible in the novel - it requires stupendously high materials tech, and is essentially a single molecule hull. There might be one in the OTU, left by the ancients.

Moving stars around is implausible.

Tax rates of less than 0.01% GDP are implausible, too.

 

[esampson]

. . .Tax rates of less than 0.01% GDP are implausible, too.

The tax rate isn't .01%. We are talking about the percentage of the taxes that go straight into the nobles pocket. Completely different thing.

 

[esampson]

We've already had the argument about the American president and I don't buy it. . .

I didn't say the President. I said the President, Vice-President, 9 Chief Justices, 100 Senators, and 432 Representatives. And that is still about half of what you are saying is completely implausible. True, they are not identical but they do provide at least some point of reference. That the 543 people 'running the country' have a combined income of half of what you are declaring to be implausible should indicate something.

For that matter, take a look at relatively moderate nobles (relative to kings, that is) such as English peers and the sort of boodle they managed to extract from their personal estates alone, never mind tax-like incomes.

I think that may be part of the reason for our disagreement. I don't think Imperial nobles have nearly the power of historical nobles. I believe they are much closer to modern elected figures with the advantage that the don't actually have to worry about being elected (they still need to worry about doing a good job, however, because otherwise they may find themselves assigned to the armpit of the universe)

And that one I've refuted as well. People in many kingdoms had the option to up and leave. Some did up and leave, true. But most of them were the poor (who didn't contribute much to the taxes); the upper lower, middle and upper classes mostly stayed put and paid their taxes.

. . .And what are they going to do about it? He's the overlord, appointed by the Emperor and backed by the full might of the Imperium. There's no hardship involved to provoke emigration and any resentment will be expressed in letters to the editor.

. . .Already refuted by history. It didn't happen under similar conditions in real life and I see no reason why it should happen in the Third Imperium either.

Yes. You are correct. The American pilgrims were all poor and impoverished people who only moved to America because they were starving.

Sorry, but historically you did have people who moved away from governments they were unhappy with, so the idea isn't refuted by history but supported by it. You also had people revolt, not just because they were starving (although admittedly in the majority of cases that was the reason).

And in the case of those pilgrims? They had to get onto ships and spend months travelling in conditions we would regard as horrific. Many of them died during the voyage. The reason they took the trip was because Europe was relatively densely populated and countries weren't really looking for more mouths to feed.

Compare and contrast that to most planets having significantly lower population densities, so there is reason to believe that the different governments would be actively competing for qualified people and the fact that moving would largely amount to piling everyone into a car and driving for a few hours, or in more extreme cases a series of 1 week jumps in starships.

 

[rancke]

I don't think Imperial nobles have nearly the power of historical nobles.

No, they have a good deal more power than historical nobles[*]:

"Economic Control is similar to governmental control: the ability (within reason) to create law and behavioral expectations; the ability to control who can occupy the land (and pay rent or taxes). " [quote from T5] (emphasis mine)​

Now that's more akin to rulers than nobles, so they're most definitiely not less powerful than historical nobles.

[*] By which I'm thinking more of nobles of the Age of Sail, not medieval nobles.​

I believe they are much closer to modern elected figures...

I don't understand where you get that notion from. They given their fiefs by the Emperor himself. They're pretty much the opposite of elected figures.

...with the advantage that the don't actually have to worry about being elected...

That's a pretty fundamental advantage.

(they still need to worry about doing a good job, however, because otherwise they may find themselves assigned to the armpit of the universe)

As far as I can tell, this is a theory of yours, unsupported by any evidence, not a fact. I think all they have to worry about is not botching it up. But be that as it may, throughout this discussion I've assumed that our average noble or his deputy did a reasonably good job.

Yes. You are correct. The American pilgrims were all poor and impoverished people who only moved to America because they were starving.

Sorry, but historically you did have people who moved away from governments they were unhappy with, so the idea isn't refuted by history but supported by it.

I said most of them, not all of them. Do me the favor of arguing against what I actually say.

And in the case of those pilgrims? They had to get onto ships and spend months travelling in conditions we would regard as horrific. Many of them died during the voyage. The reason they took the trip was because Europe was relatively densely populated and countries weren't really looking for more mouths to feed.

As I said before, most of them (not all) left because they were not doing so well at home. In other words, they were poor and jobless and with no prospects.

Compare and contrast that to most planets having significantly lower population densities, so there is reason to believe that the different governments would be actively competing for qualified people...

That assumes facts not in evidence. From what scanty evidence we have, the populations of Traveller worlds do not seem to attract many immigrants. Not enough for their populations to grow significantly, anyway.

...and the fact that moving would largely amount to piling everyone into a car and driving for a few hours, or in more extreme cases a series of 1 week jumps in starships.

I don't believe that most people will want to move from their home county if living conditions at home are tolerable. What makes you think I'll believe in them spending their life savings on moving to another star system?!?


Hans

 

[esampson]

. . .I don't understand where you get that notion from. They given their fiefs by the Emperor himself. They're pretty much the opposite of elected figures.

Mostly from the 'within reason' section.

As far as I can tell, this is a theory of yours, unsupported by any evidence, not a fact. I think all they have to worry about is not botching it up. But be that as it may, throughout this discussion I've assumed that our average noble or his deputy did a reasonably good job.

Sorry. When I say 'do a good job' all I really mean is 'don't botch it up'. I agree that nobles don't have to live in fear of being reassigned. I'm just saying that they do have to have at least some concern as to how they are doing.

I said most of them, not all of them. Do me the favor of arguing against what I actually say.

As I said before, most of them (not all) left because they were not doing so well at home. In other words, they were poor and jobless and with no prospects.

You're right. I misinterpreted what you had said. Sorry about that.

That assumes facts not in evidence. From what scanty evidence we have, the populations of Traveller worlds do not seem to attract many immigrants. Not enough for their populations to grow significantly, anyway.

I don't believe that most people will want to move from their home county if living conditions at home are tolerable. What makes you think I'll believe in them spending their life savings on moving to another star system?!?

I'm not really advocating that there would be lots of emigration between planets. I think in the majority of cases people would just pack up the car and move, and you're right that it wouldn't happen instantly, either. But what you probably would see is a slow drain.

The main reason I mentioned starship travel is because it would be the most extreme case of people deciding to get away from you and even at its cost and difficulty it would be easier than what people historically did to get away from leaders they disliked.

 

[david.wendelken]

And in the case of those pilgrims? They had to get onto ships and spend months travelling in conditions we would regard as horrific. Many of them died during the voyage. The reason they took the trip was because Europe was relatively densely populated and countries weren't really looking for more mouths to feed.

The reason the pilgrims left Europe for North America is because none of their neighbors could stand the self-righteous twits.

That and, being self-styled victims of religious oppression, they wanted to run a place where they could do the oppressing. No slur against the Pilgrims on that point, it's basic human nature.

 

[Dagrill]

Anyway, there's a puzzling discrepancy between the authority as Lord of The Land and the benefit the lord reaps from that authority. And that's before looking at the income from the land that is owned outright.
Hans

Hi Hans,

but aforementioned Viscount has to maintain a small personal army (Huscarles) and have sufficient spaceships to transfer them off world to serve the Imperium if needed and sundry Escort vessels, which are not cheap,
plus presumably some of the taxes go to maintaining the various Imperium ministries

Regards

David