[Space] Economics of a space empire

[Tyneras]

I have used GURPS Space primarily for system and planet building, but this is the first time I am trying to use the rules for economics and population (it wasn’t important before). I will be using this in conjunction with GURPS Spaceships 2.

What I am trying to model is a space empire where the core planets have fallen into the grip of a “bread and circuses” mindset. I am not sure how to manipulate the equations given to make worlds that are consuming more resources than they are producing. A lack of checks and balances have resulted in programs designed to prevent people from starving to death or dying of exposure from homelessness to mutate into ever growing “Universal Luxury Stipends” that are eating the economy alive, but keeping the politicians in office. The home worlds have begun targeting the colonies with specific taxes to make up for their economic shortfall.

These sorts of problems would have a big effect on where a tramp freighter goes and what business is available when it gets there, cargo, passengers, and so forth. I only looked at the equations in GURPS Space last night, so any advice would be appreciated.

The general theme is the PCs are going to trade, exploit, swindle and rob the empire blind and then skip town when the whole situation implodes down the line (civil war and/or they get caught).

[Astromancer]

If you want realism, then some mineral needed to keep the power generators or the robots running should be the key. I'd say somekind of Gosh-Darn-Hard-to-Obtainium needed for batteries and robot brains. In order to keep the supplies of Gosh-Darn-Hard-to-Obtainium headed toward the Core Worlds, high taxes and brutal trade restrictions are placed on the outer worlds. Your frieghter becomes a smuggler, much like Firefly!

[Pragmatic]

Heck, just operating most of the trader lines, and having all the trade routes going through the home planets, would do much to control the outer planets.

[David Johnston2]

Well one consequence of that set-up is that new colonization wouldn't happen. Give the poor a guaranteed comfortable standard of living and reasonable physical safety and they have no reason to brave the unknown dangers of an extra-terrestrial frontier, or take on the hard labour of building the infrastructure of a undeveloped planet. Wait, there would be one alternative. Use penal colonization. Set transportation as the penalty for even quite minor offenses (being "unsocial), and you could still manage to scrape up seed populations to to start up some new colonies. The intensive policing of the unemployed looking for excuses to transport them can also act as an incentive to emigrate just to avoid the risk of being sent to the actual penal colonies. That would probably indicate that worlds with low affinity or very low populations would have a higher than standard chance of being classed as penal.

Then again the welfare statism isn't really necessary. Mother countries can and have ended up at odds with colonies because of discriminatory policies and mercantilism without need for it. The perception that the colonies exist not as equal members of the society but as means to ensure the prosperity of the real society (the core) is quite enough to ensure that.

But really how the core worlds are run is irrelevant. The player characters won't be living there. What we need are what policies affect the jerkwater small ports and somewhat larger developed colonies where the players will be spending most of their time. I'll get back to that with my next post.

[Voren]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

What I am trying to model is a space empire where the core planets have fallen into the grip of a “bread and circuses” mindset. I am not sure how to manipulate the equations given to make worlds that are consuming more resources than they are producing.

The simple version: Make up a number. Insert it into the equation. Tweak until you have something you like.

I think you'll want to tweak the carrying capacity and per capita income numbers. I'd need to play with it a bit more, but you want a population greater than your carrying capacity. I'm not sure if you should just cover the luxury payments under the per capita income.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

These sorts of problems would have a big effect on where a tramp freighter goes and what business is available when it gets there, cargo, passengers, and so forth. I only looked at the equations in GURPS Space last night, so any advice would be appreciated.

The general theme is the PCs are going to trade, exploit, swindle and rob the empire blind and then skip town when the whole situation implodes down the line (civil war and/or they get caught).

Assume for the sake of this example that the homeworld is Britain; assume the colonies are India, Gibraltar, Australia, Barbados, Hong Kong, and America. Britain buys a lot of goods from each colony; it sends those goods directly to the homeland. It then resells those goods to its other colonies. It buys tea from India and it buys sugar from Barbados, and it sells them in America. Britain pockets the profit.

In order for this to work, Britain must wield its navy to blockade any direct sales between America and Barbados and India, or to require some kind of certification that the goods are authorized. Unauthorized goods (which Britain didn't get its middleman cut on) must pay a punitive import fee.

Occasionally, Britain will have a colony that's too big and too self-sufficient, like Hong Kong; Britain finds that it buys many things from Hong Kong but there just isn't anything that Britain can sell there. Hong Kong has everything it needs. What to do? All of Britain's economic power is being drained away into Hong Kong.

It can force Hong Kong to buy products, especially products that Britain itself doesn't want, to restore the balance of trade. Hong Kong may rebel as a result, but Britain's got the navy, and it'll force that product down the throat of the buyers. Now if that product is something like beer — or opium — that makes the Hong Kongers more docile, so much the better.

So it seems that the players would spend a great deal of time running between the colonies, selling sugar from Barbados directly to America (which America buys anyway, at inflated prices) and forging the "authorized sugar" documents to avoid the taxes.

[Tyneras]

To take Fish's example, my original plan was to have Britain, instead of forcing Hong Kong to buy anything, would just start putting larger and larger taxes and/or tithes on Hong Kong until Britain is effectively buying Honk Kong's goods with Hong Kong's money.

However, I am liking the idea of draconian trade route control that has bee brought up several times. This sounds like it would make my jobs a bit easier.

Thank you all for your input, I shall think on this while I watch The Room with rifftrax with my players tonight.

[David Johnston2]

One model for discriminatory policies is the "National Energy Program" Canada had in the 70s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program. Essentially, they levied a new tax on petroleum and used the proceeds of that tax to subsidize the price of it at the pumps. The result was that Canada really did have lower gas prices than the rest of the world at the time, but the actual oil and gas producing areas took a substantial financial hit.

So the point is that rather than actually taxing planets differently, all that is necessary is to tax commodities differently. If raw or semi-processed materials are taxed in order to subsidize their purchase on the far end, then the result is that you can knock a good 10 or 20 percent off the average income of resource producing planets..

[dcarson]

Traditional second gotcha to the trade having to go through the home country is restricting manufacturing, either directly through forbidding building factories or indirectly through not loaning money or experts.

So you sell the core raw material and buy finished goods. A strong ban on shipyards might be expected since if you can't build ships you can't use them to smuggle.

[hari]

Here's a link to something that you may or may not know of, The Archdruid Report. This particular weekly post touches on bread and circus economies a fair bit. It's likely more abstract than what you're looking for, but there's a chance it might be quite helpful.