Bassoe
Well-known member
“I notice that you leave out the economic side of things.” Tarkin continued. “Especially as from what I can tell based on various reports, the Federation appears to have adopted some kind of…communal, system, in place of a proper economy.”
“With all due respect, sir,” I began. “I’m not an economist. I do think the Empire will have to build a proper economy from scratch…”
Kriffing Communists…whether it’s in this life or the previous one…they always make trouble where there should be none…
“…but the details will have to be left to economic experts, perhaps with assistance from major, and previously-vetted, corporate interests.” I continued. “Though I suppose we could start by nationalizing key industries, such as metallurgy, shipbuilding, the public utilities, the aerospace industries, and armaments production, and then form new corporations, with shares split between the regional governments and private shareholders. I…I might be able to come up with some more ideas, but…again, with all due respect, sir, I’m a soldier, not an economist. I never really thought much about this, beyond privately cursing the Federation for not having a proper economy in the first place.”
As I see it, the Federation economy works by controlling access to replicators. Every Federation citizen is entitled to replicate things from a public database for free. The Federation operates this system at a loss since it gives them control of society, said database lacks templates for making replicators, manifestos of anti-Federation ideologies or particularly effective weaponry, automatically records people's download history for specific forbidden items and can be remotely cut off.I have no idea what sort of an economic system the Federation truly has. Like, are there markets in real estate? Is ownership of more than one house allowed? Is renting real estate allowed? Is buying and selling land allowed? Is private trade allowed? If land ownership exist, is there a land value tax regime? No idea.
I'm not sure how many economic differences betwee the Empire and the Federation are social, and how many are technological in nature.
It's possible that with the Federation production techniques market prices of some things tend to 0.
This is in fact observable even at our level, if we compare with medieval times. Our prices of clothes, glass and metals are absurdly low. Oh, if you buy new clothes or books that can be still costly, but a 15 year old car, still full of high-quality steel even if with some rust, costs maybe 2000$. The much higher price of the new car is not because of steel or glass! While new books cost 15$, used books cost 1$, and that is the case only because selling used books is WORK - otherwise many would be free, as many old books and papers are thrown away like trash. Likewise clothes. Likewise empty glass bottles, something that would be worth gold at medieval tech level. A medieval person accustomed to high price of any usable piece of cloth, or glass, or steel - would be amazed.
"Transportation and storage" costs is why many among our early XXI century charities drown in enormous amounts of usable but often useless used clothes, that were given to the charity for free, but then are costly if we want to give these to the poor (storage space, transport to destination, sorting, cleaning, etc) instead of throwing these at the landfill (landfill disposal of trash also generate cost: land, transportation).
Now, in the Federation there are replicators. What such a technology change technologically in prices of goods, regardless of whether system is market-based or not?
It seems to reduce costs of new items to costs of used items, and to reduce main obstacle to 0 prices of many used items, transportation and distribution costs? Humph.
The most importantly, it seems to also lower prices of food to 0. Well, strictly speaking to cost of electricity used and cost of labor needed to operate the replicator, but these costs looks comparable to a cost of picking up an empty glass bottle that is nearby, not 0 but close to 0 even if you clean the bottle afterwards.
(Well, it could be very costly if you would need to pick up, clean and move somewhere 1000 bottles; but if you need only one and one lies nearby, or if you have a replicator in your home...)
While the Empire has essentially won the war, whether they'll lose the peace is mostly dependent upon how they treat this system.
- Turn it off, you antagonize every single otherwise-apolitical Federation NEET* into a rebel against the Empire.
- Remove the restrictions, occupying Federation territory by any means short of genocide via orbital bombardment becomes impossible, every single rebel will have untraceable ghost phasers and entirely self-sustaining hidden militia compounds from jailbroken replicators so even a tiny rebel cell of true believers can become practically impossible to root out. At a minimum. Worst case scenario, von neumann killbot apocalypse. And in any case, not even the Federation higher-ups wanted this, they didn't derestrict all replicator templates as soon as they lost earth to create the ultimate unwinnable guerrilla war** because they knew if they did, they'd never be able to reassert control even if they somehow drove off the Imperials.
- Leave it mostly the same and propagate it back to their own galaxy. Everyone dependent upon the system is someone who will never rebel against it and resist any attempt at destroying it out of self interest.
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