The Hiver economy . . . is very difficult for non-Federation members to understand, though it seems to work admirably for them. Basically, Hivers have a strong desire for material comforts and, hence, the wealth that makes these things possible. But they rely on a system of credit in which an individual has a positive or negative credit balance with a particular nest. . . . Just how this system is regulated is a matter of some uncertainty to Humans; it seems to be largely a combination of honor and ambition on the part of the Hiver nest-member which limits unrestrained tapping of resources. . . . The rest of the Federation use the same monetary units as the Hiver (biyzihn, literally “hourly exchange-value notation,” worth about Cr15), but the Gurvin insist on a system closer to Imperial norms than that of the Hivers.