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09-12-2017, 02:24 AM | #1 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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[Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
Greetings, all!
For cultural (rather than religious) reasons, a setting includes two major approaches to banking. Let's call them, for a lack of a better word, 'Usury-OK' and 'Usury-NO', with the latter resembling the real-world Islamic Banking (but actually has nothing to do with Islam, since the setting has totally different cultures and religions). In some regions, people are heavily inclined towards one approach or the other, and in some there may even be legal reasons why one or the other maintains little or no presence; in others, they coexist to cater to people with different priorities, fears, concerns etc. (Also, a side note: IRL Islamic Banking seems to still be in its infancy, barely a few decades old, while the setting in question is TL9ish and had its usury-no equivalent for a handful of TLs, letting it become more developed / bugs removed / etc.) Now, of course all financial matters are very complex in real life, and usually simplified in games. Me reading a bunch of articles and discussions (which I did) is not enough to understand the intricacies of Islamic Banking IRL, and real-world understanding is recommended when trying to produce a playable simplification of a real thing. So my question is to those who are 'at home' with real-world intricacies of banking, economics, accounting, finance etc.: what should be the game effects of choosing the latter approach over the former? What should be the game-mechanical differences in terms of financing and payment as depicted on SS2:27? Thanks in advance! Last edited by vicky_molokh; 09-12-2017 at 02:28 AM. |
09-12-2017, 03:07 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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09-12-2017, 03:22 AM | #3 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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And the differences are not cosmetic, in terms of client rights and responsibilities and probably not purely cosmetic in terms of numbers, or else there wouldn't be scholarly debates on the benefits and drawbacks, and on what needs improvement and what is better. What I'm looking for is advice on which differences are key and how can they be summarized for gameplay purposes. Compare to how different lending durations are summarized in the same page, or the differences between lending versus buying cheap ships. The differences between those have not been deemed cosmetic on a system level - glossing over them is presented as a strictly optional rule. Last edited by vicky_molokh; 09-12-2017 at 03:26 AM. |
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09-12-2017, 03:29 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
At the resolution of Spaceships, the figure of merit is just "how much does it cost you per month". Now, it's possible that you won't have anything actually corresponding to the financing rules on p27 -- obvious alternatives include the bank as a silent shareholder and the bank as the owner and renting the ship back to the PCs -- but in the end, you can assume that the amount the PCs have to pay is equal to a reasonable ROI for the bank's investment, plus a modifier for how risky the investment is, and there may be different explanations written down on the bills but the overall amount being paid out will be the same.
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09-12-2017, 03:47 AM | #5 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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There's also the fact even though lending-funded and cheap-bought ships result in vaguely similar monthly payments, they're still two distinct methods of approaching the purpose of a ship and the differences are not cosmetic - enough so that they have their separate subsections on the page. |
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09-12-2017, 04:11 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
I've been working on this for one of the factions in a setting of mine (a "post-reformation" Islam a few hundred years in the future).
As far as I can see, and I don't speak Arabic so I know I'm missing things, the prohibition on charging/paying interest is a very lawyerly one. For example: I have an investment with an Islamic bank. According to all the paperwork, it does not pay interest. Instead, they will pay me a certain extra sum when the investment matures based on their profit from using the money, and anything above that extra sum they get to keep. This seems to me a frankly casuistical distinction, in much the same vein as the Kosher Light Switch. The overall model for lending to businesses is that the lender gets a stake in the company - which is often expressed as a percentage of income. Again, there are lots of ways of shading this to make the income stream more predictable. If an Islamic bank lends me money to buy a house, it's effectively a rent-to-own deal: I pay them rent for a set period, during which they own the house, and at the end of that period ownership transfers to me. The distinction between this and a mortgage payment is frankly microscopic. (They can even sell that rent stream + backing asset to another bank, just as a Western bank would sell a mortgage income stream.) The other big factor in Islamic finance, which may or may not be a concern in your culture, is the prohibition on gambling. Again there are lots of ways round this, but it affects the ethos of the financial markets, which (at least nominally) are more about investment than about speculation.
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09-12-2017, 04:52 AM | #7 | |||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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For rental arrangements + piecemeal purchases, it seems like rental cost should normally vary depending on the fraction of the ship owned by the bank and the captain/buyer; wonder what other adjustments are necessary. Quote:
That's probably not gonna intersect with the debt/usury-averse cultures. |
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09-12-2017, 05:23 AM | #8 |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
Here's an example of Islamic "mortgages" in the UK:
https://www.alrayanbank.co.uk/home-f...purchase-plan/ |
09-12-2017, 05:54 AM | #9 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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Podcast: Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice Gaming stuff here: Tekeli-li! Blog; Webcomic Laager and Limehouse Buy things by me on Warehouse 23 |
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09-12-2017, 11:01 AM | #10 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spaceships] Islamic Banking and Financing Spaceships Purchases
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In the end, the big reason for being skeptical about Islamic banking is that they can't repeal economics. Many societies have had prohibitions on usury, and none of them have actually worked except in edge cases (for example, elimination of debt slavery). |
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Tags |
financing, islamic banking, spaceships, usury |
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