I was going to post this under the Taxes thread, but it's a bit of a drift so I figured I'd post separately.
One of the points that got raised there was the time effect for information flow across the Imperium in regards to how the government would set policies and collect things like taxes. The Imperium is huge, and is similar to how long messages would take to flow during the early ages of sail when ships made 6-10kts on a good day sailing across the oceans. In actual history there have been a number of scams done taking advantage of the inability to verify something and quickly communicate a yea/nay answer back to people prior to them parting with their money.
I don't recall all the specifics, but there was this Scottish guy who created a fictional nation in Brazil called Poynas (Sp?) and he suckered hundreds of investors in the early 1820s. He even got a few hundred settlers who showed up to wilderness (most died before they were rescued). Since it was sail it took many months for the people to get there, and for news to get back. This guy did a pretty elaborate scam - set up an "embassy" in London, etc.
Similar frauds were done, even in the age of the early telegraph, with banks in the early US (especially in the West) that printed their own money and had their own check system. While new tech, blockchain and encryption being part of them, would make it harder to do simpler forms of fraud as they were done in the past (i.e. forgery), new ways to do that would also crop up. And because messages only travel at the speed of ships, time and distance once again become factors in detecting and minimizing frauds.
With the time delay inherent in communications, you know similar things will regularly be attempted across sectors. Something to quicken the hearts of PC's everywhere!
One of the points that got raised there was the time effect for information flow across the Imperium in regards to how the government would set policies and collect things like taxes. The Imperium is huge, and is similar to how long messages would take to flow during the early ages of sail when ships made 6-10kts on a good day sailing across the oceans. In actual history there have been a number of scams done taking advantage of the inability to verify something and quickly communicate a yea/nay answer back to people prior to them parting with their money.
I don't recall all the specifics, but there was this Scottish guy who created a fictional nation in Brazil called Poynas (Sp?) and he suckered hundreds of investors in the early 1820s. He even got a few hundred settlers who showed up to wilderness (most died before they were rescued). Since it was sail it took many months for the people to get there, and for news to get back. This guy did a pretty elaborate scam - set up an "embassy" in London, etc.
Similar frauds were done, even in the age of the early telegraph, with banks in the early US (especially in the West) that printed their own money and had their own check system. While new tech, blockchain and encryption being part of them, would make it harder to do simpler forms of fraud as they were done in the past (i.e. forgery), new ways to do that would also crop up. And because messages only travel at the speed of ships, time and distance once again become factors in detecting and minimizing frauds.
With the time delay inherent in communications, you know similar things will regularly be attempted across sectors. Something to quicken the hearts of PC's everywhere!
