hiro said:
OK, I am gonna thread drift (OK, not such much drift, more quantum leap) this but as we've kinda gone round the houses with the OP, I kinda feel OK about that...
If the 3rd Imperium is nominally TL14, 2 "steps" past TL12 at which point it became post scarcity, how come the Imperial Credit is still in circulation?
It's a bit of a deal/Imperium breaker if you're gonna throw post/scarcity into the equation isn't it?
Not at all. How many of those worlds are TL12+ not many, and those that are, seem to punch below their weight economically. What do people do for a living there? They can supervise the machines building the dreadnaughts, but even the lowest laborer has been replaced by machines; so in the end, the average citizen there is functionally a consumer, that is their "job". I can see a guaranteed minimum income, and then large bonuses for rewarding beneficial behaviors. A lot of idle luxury, to Malthusian over-population (look at Mora). All this facilitates the fall of the 3I, where petty men with petty dreams are able to tear it down, or maybe it is just fin de siècle. Humans breed to a critical mass population which leads to a various series of disasters or crises, where then a exodus or diaspora occurs. That's why I have the exodus map, it was supported in earlier editions, such as mega-traveller, that there was a refugee situation; it makes sense that the various factions wouldn't advertise that people are fleeing from the wilds and not into their "safes". Plus, historically, we see it from the dawn of history, disasters such as war, famine, etc. drive refugee populations on to the road.
That said, the credit, the CrImp served not only as a facilitator of trade, but on the post-scarcity worlds, as a unit of measure for tracking consumption and production resources. Much of it already in a sort of command situation run by computers (we do it today, using market algorithms in a "cybernetic economy" - interesting stuff if you like economics). There are some current economic principles to be figured out, such as banks creating money by lending it, or the Friedman-esque policy of trading small amounts of inflation for lower unemployment, which is something the Imperium might not care about with it's trillions of citizens. The criticism and satiation I don't necessarily think is all that valid, I think people do have a drive to do something, being useful is the best of all; however, people still go out and ride bicycles even though they could just lay about on the couch and watch TV. So there is something there, some people will just lay about though, they do it now. I don't run a bean counting game though, I get enough of that in real life.
