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Old 10-03-2019, 12:34 PM   #611
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Low-tech shipping is a chancy business, both in terms of shipwrecks and voyage times. More ships can be built, however, fairly cheaply. What prevents merchants from having ships built that they own themselves?

Land, in contrast, does not go away easily, and it's very hard to make more.
It would have to assume that only grandees can afford to back certain classes of ships. I was thinking more in a space opera universe than in a low-tech one. Where one can adjust the characteristics of ships however.
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Old 10-03-2019, 02:50 PM   #612
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There was a Roman emperor who appointed public officials on the basis on the size of their genitalia. Pubic officials, if you will.
Was that Elagabalus?
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Old 10-03-2019, 07:42 PM   #613
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Low-tech shipping is a chancy business, both in terms of shipwrecks and voyage times. More ships can be built, however, fairly cheaply. What prevents merchants from having ships built that they own themselves?

Land, in contrast, does not go away easily, and it's very hard to make more.
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It would have to assume that only grandees can afford to back certain classes of ships. I was thinking more in a space opera universe than in a low-tech one. Where one can adjust the characteristics of ships however.
Maybe a quirk of laws that aristocrats are immune to. Like commoners can't sail through the water a noble "owns", but nobles can sail through them because they are fellow nobles.
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Old 12-18-2019, 01:16 PM   #614
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

Here is one: there is no fixed party system as we know it. Instead there is a "front runner" a "second" and so on as if they were horses. Each candidate may be backed by a coalition, often the same one in more than one year if he is is felt lucky or likely to carry out the wishes of backers if successful (which wish can be no more than to spite another candidate sometimes).

Probably that is to ordinary and one can see the system being copted anyway.
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Old 12-18-2019, 04:47 PM   #615
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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There is an aristocracy. Either a closely regulated one of the Anglic format. Or a hack-commoners-down-if-they-are-uppity kind (under the circumstances probably closer to the former as it is harder to form subkingdoms).

The twist is, instead of an agrarian aristocracy it is a mercantile one. The second twist is that it is considered unworthy to compete directly with traders. For that reason fiefs consist of ships which are chartered to the actual traders. Many of the same laws that formerly went with land are applied to ships.

Other details can be worked out. The lender and borrower can provide other services for each other such as insurance, political lobbying, sponsor of navigational academies, armed protection (directly or by negotiation with the head of state). The borrower can provide besides a lease or profit share, intelligence, jobs for relations of his sponsor (sometimes under the table if the sponsor wants to keep quiet about that) and so forth.
If it's a space opera sort of setting, this is fairly easy; the aristocracy is composed of navigators, required for FTL transport. Anyone can build a ship, but only an aristocrat can get it from star to star. (Equally, anyone who can navigate is an aristocrat...) By ancient tradition, the aristocrats are forbidden from directly profiting from their power, so they have to work through intermediaries: merchants and mercenaries. You might also have planet-bound aristocrats, who get their power from control of natural resources and huge populations.
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Old 12-19-2019, 02:13 AM   #616
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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If it's a space opera sort of setting, this is fairly easy; the aristocracy is composed of navigators, required for FTL transport. Anyone can build a ship, but only an aristocrat can get it from star to star. (Equally, anyone who can navigate is an aristocrat...) By ancient tradition, the aristocrats are forbidden from directly profiting from their power, so they have to work through intermediaries: merchants and mercenaries. You might also have planet-bound aristocrats, who get their power from control of natural resources and huge populations.
I agree that you need to tinker with the available tech to make this work. One idea (which comes from a book in which the exceptional class of people were flyers, able to keep together a world made of small islands in very stormy oceans) is that the tech part cannot be easily replaced (in the book, the material with which wings could be built was alien lightweight metal). That would be the difference from the correct objection of @johndallman who pointed out non-nobles could always build their own merchant fleets.

Say the ships are legacy devices built by an ancient civilization, and you can't build new ones. The elite is made up by families that keep the traditional know-how that is (barely) able to carry out maintenance work, handing down ancient manuals from father to son. Each ship is unique, and once one of them is lost to unrepairable breakdowns or shipwreck, the total number of ships is irretrievably smaller. And traditionally, a noble family that has lost its last ship... commits collective suicide.
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Old 12-19-2019, 08:31 AM   #617
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Default Re: Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

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Was that Elagabalus?
I don't think so, but I've been wrong before.
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Old 12-19-2019, 11:34 AM   #618
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Say the ships are legacy devices built by an ancient civilization, and you can't build new ones. The elite is made up by families that keep the traditional know-how that is (barely) able to carry out maintenance work, handing down ancient manuals from father to son. Each ship is unique, and once one of them is lost to unrepairable breakdowns or shipwreck, the total number of ships is irretrievably smaller. And traditionally, a noble family that has lost its last ship... commits collective suicide.
I'd have the chance of finding mothballed Ancient bases with ships and parts, or ships drifting in deep space. But it would be a rare event.
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Old 12-19-2019, 01:55 PM   #619
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I don't think so, but I've been wrong before.
Then who was it?
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Old 12-19-2019, 02:07 PM   #620
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I agree that you need to tinker with the available tech to make this work. One idea (which comes from a book in which the exceptional class of people were flyers, able to keep together a world made of small islands in very stormy oceans) is that the tech part cannot be easily replaced (in the book, the material with which wings could be built was alien lightweight metal). That would be the difference from the correct objection of @johndallman who pointed out non-nobles could always build their own merchant fleets.
.
All you have to to is ensure that only a minority possess the mental capacity for hyperspace navigation. Maybe it drives everyone else nuts.
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