Firefly - Breaking the Verse

[The Colonel]

If you have two seats of government, have them both start issuing currency ... that alone could have significant economic implications. If they also start refusing one another's jurisdiction - especially in civil matters - that could also lead to massive issues with debt backed securities and all kinds of investments. Either or both of these failures could then lead to a race to commodities and economic stagnation - and in heavily urbanised areas, problems with the money supply mean more or less immediate problems with the food supply. Better hope you've paid the police.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

...

The Core doesn't need the Rim, ...

Does the Core grow enough food to meet its needs? (Honest question; I don't know the answer.)

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Unless you put something out there the Core worlds need. There has to be some reason they bothered terraforming and settling them in the first place.

Having spare land tends to deflate local discontent.

Alternatively it defuses tensions at the top; a large part of what causes empires to warp is the time when conquest slows and the top people cease cooperating to expand the pie and start competing for slices of a pie of limited size.

[davidtmoore]

You have a universal official currency, but several worlds; if issuing banks are planetary rather than Verse-wide, you have all the tools you need for economic instability, following the Euro model.

The issuing banks at Londinium, Sihnon and Ariel issue credits internally and to smaller worlds; standing agreements, overseen by a central credit agency in Parliament, limit the ability of any of the three banks to issue money too fast, since there's a single currency, and loss of confidence in any of the banks affects all three of them. Periodically, if one of the banks is out-lending the others, they drop bonds on the Exchanges on Londinium and Sihnon to rebalance the books; that hits the issuing bank's lending power relative to the others, but stabilises the lot.

So corporate interests on all three worlds play the system off each other, pushing local and Alliance legislatures to ease regulation and putting their people in the central credit agency (and why wouldn't you hire bankers to run the banking system?) to weaken what regulation there is. All three banks lend and issue faster and faster, off the back of a thriving market. A considerable amount of development, especially on the middle-to-outer worlds like Persephone, happened on the back of Central Planet loans.

The Londinium Exchange closes in the aftermath of the Parliament attack, and the Londinium legislature orders their Reserve Bank stops all trading, locking existing accounts so that people don't pull out. That causes a run on the other two banks and the Alliance Credit crashes. People whose wealth was in money - ie. disproportionately Central Planets people - are now broke, while people whose wealth was in property weather it better. But then businesses close down and people are laid off, and the banks can't provide relief because they're crippled.

Basically you got all the resources and all the people still there, but money, the tool for getting work from people and goods to people, has broken, and it takes a long time to fix. A strong government can introduce measures to correct the problems until the monetary system corrects, but you don't have a strong government, so people further out start to operate more on (pseudolegal) cash and barter, while the Central Planets start to suffer. But since the outer worlds depend on the Central Planets for goods and trade (as mentioned above, the Core grows its own food), that impacts the Rim.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

A strong government can introduce measures to correct the problems until the monetary system corrects, but you don't have a strong government, so people further out start to operate more on (pseudolegal) cash and barter, while the Central Planets start to suffer. But since the outer worlds depend on the Central Planets for goods and trade (as mentioned above, the Core grows its own food), that impacts the Rim.

At least in the Firefly RPG (well, the one I own), and with support from setting canon, there are Alliance Credits and there's "platinum" coin, which is untraceable and exchanged on the rim. I think Alliance credits are only good in the core. The RPG had all transactions with credits - even paper ones - traceable, too.

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

At least in the Firefly RPG (well, the one I own), and with support from setting canon, there are Alliance Credits and there's "platinum" coin, which is untraceable and exchanged on the rim. I think Alliance credits are only good in the core. The RPG had all transactions with credits - even paper ones - traceable, too.

Yeah, but in theory, coin is even illegal on the Rim; it's just not a closely observed law. So in the status quo, credit dominates out to worlds like Persephone and maybe a bit further, where Coretex connections are ubiquitous, then paper's used for legitimate transactions out to the Rim, and then coin's used on the black market and in the most lawless/backwater regions where the Law's not likely to pick it up.

There's a tendency in RPGs and SF to have this idea that the official currency's "no good" outside the pampered high-tech worlds, while specie dominates out in the lawless areas. And it's evocative, but not accurate; money's good based mostly on its reliability, and lots of specie currencies are actually pretty unstable, especially ones issued by poorly managed dictatorships, criminal gangs, or no-one at all. That was one of the things that really bothered me about The Phantom Menace (one of them...). Hell, people spend US dollars in Afghanistan.

Realistically, Alliance Credits would be tricky to handle where you don't have a reliable Coretex connection (although people seem to be able to connect without difficulty quite a long way out) and with people trading on the black market, but incredibly attractive nonetheless; it wouldn't be worthless (or even worth less!), but you would probably rely a great deal on grey-market moneychangers and launderers charging exhorbitant fees.

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Does the Core grow enough food to meet its needs? (Honest question; I don't know the answer.)

I don't know if there's a canon answer, but logic says yes. It's tempting to see Core/Rim as a City/Country dichotomy, where the crowded core worlds need the spacious outer worlds to grow its food, but the fact is, the core worlds have lots of land area - they're mostly Earth-sized - and good atmospheric/ecological conditions, while the rim worlds tend to be much smaller, with largely pretty marginal environmental conditions. The likelihood is that the Core is a net exporter of food and goods as well as technology and services.

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by Brass Bricks

It's the economics I am interested in. I don't need a detailed Traveller-style model of Verse Economics, though I did just reacquire a copy of GDW's "Hard Times" as a reference. I just want a PC's eye view of an economic collapse... such as "Month 1, stuff starts getting oddly expensive if not made locally. Month 2, it gets really hard to get a loan. Month 3, prices get stupid high, and the shelves in stores start getting scarce. Month 4, food items start getting scarce." Something very general like that. One big difference, is that unlike all the Earth-historical models, the Verse has no outside influences. Once things go pear-shaped, there is no Great Power to loan money for recovery. A collapse would be bad, even if it didn't immediately turn the Core into Mad Max with starships.

Okay, so, middle-to-outer worlds:

Initially, no real impact, although the media frenzies about it all. People keep buying and selling stuff at the prices they expect to, and there's still stuff to buy and sell.

If you have a currency collapse, you have a rapid crisis after a few days. Credit collapses, prices to buy and sell to and from the Core skyrocket, and the Rim rapidly goes across to coin and barter. (As a possible adventure hook, you have feds being dispatched in large numbers to the Rim to crack down on black market activity and illegal currencies.)

In a few weeks, the outer worlds start to suffer. Routine aid/development contributions to worlds like Persephone from the core worlds continue, but don't go up to match spiralling inflation, so effectively support vanishes. Prices start to go up steeply even in coin/barter for anything from the core, which tends to raise prices for local produce/goods as well.

Companies, especially those with headquarters in the core by facilities in the outer worlds, close down. Jobs are lost, and the newly impoverished fail to meet the spiralling costs of food and goods; humanitarian crises start to emerge, and the Core is unable to help.

In a few months, you either have the Great Depression, or you have widespread revolt, as middling-to-outer worlds used to support and leadership from the Core start to manage their own affairs and the Rim just knuckle down and try to support themselves. Prices for almost everything, almost everywhere, are through the roof, smugglers and black marketeers are profiting off the misery, pirates and privateers are living off them, unemployment is universal, and the feds are wildly overstretched trying to keep the peace.

Something like that.

Core worlds:

Initially, no immediate effects, although there's a media frenzy and panic, and shortages and people buy up stocks of fuel and food. Governments crack down and impose soft rationing ("no more than x litres of fuel per customer"), and appeal for calm.

The Credit collapses. The government tries to impose a set value, but is unable to control the market effectively; and they lack the poilitical will to impose an Emergency Credit currency to manage the crisis. Companies start to close and widespread layoffs are common; welfare is available, but there is concern that the governments will be able to afford it long term.

Over the next few weeks, as the divided parliament debates, the crisis spreads without a clear strategy, and local and planetary governments impose curfews, hard rationing, and directly assume control of factories and farms. There are protests and riots, and crackdowns; regional and Alliance parliaments clash over use of force. Controls are uneven, and people move between worlds for the promise of an easier/safer life. The cost of travel, already high like eveything else, spirals, and government cracks down. People smuggling picks up.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

There's a tendency in RPGs and SF to have this idea that the official currency's "no good" outside the pampered high-tech worlds, while specie dominates out in the lawless areas. And it's evocative, but not accurate; money's good based mostly on its reliability, .

I would not say this. I'd call it based on the other party's willingness to accept the currency as payment. If Alliance credits (electronic or even paper) are traceable they are useless to naughty persons and some other "currency" will have to be used regardless if whatever imperfections it has.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I would not say this. I'd call it based on the other party's willingness to accept the currency as payment. If Alliance credits (electronic or even paper) are traceable they are useless to naughty persons and some other "currency" will have to be used regardless if whatever imperfections it has.

What might be the case is that Alliance Credits require hardware that is rare in the outworlds - consider the reliance of modern electronic payments on relatively high tech chip and pin readers. If even the Alliance's "cash" is in the form of electronic bearer currency, or requires to be officially transferred to a named individual then it becomes useless wherever the currency cannot be read or the transfer notarised.