Who pays for it all?

[Shadowblayde99]

Who pays for the Imperial Navy?

Come to think of it, how does the Imperium pay for anything and everything that it does e.g. noble estates?

 

[Vormaerin]

It is not clarified anywhere. Given that the Imperium is basically a trade cartel, it is usually assumed that it applies some sort of taxation to interstellar shipping.

The original vision of the Imperium was pretty ramshackle and understaffed, so a lot of this wasn't worried about. It has steadily gotten more and more of a robust government over time, still without explaining the economics of the system.

 

[alex_greene]

Every sovereign nation can generate its own currency. The Imperium is no exception.
I'd surmise that the Imperium sets the value of the Credit to some standard, e.g. the Lanthanum Standard), which keeps its price stable. Most other polities would do the same for their money, even anarchic states such as the Vargr Extents, to avoid inflation (which is the sign that the currency unit is being devalued).
Taxation of the megacorps would have to be rigidly enforced, and the banks and stock markets would have limits on what they can buy and sell - no rampant shorting, especially on the Credit. Capitalism on the large scale would have to be kept on a strong, short leash, and individual corporations could face horrendous sanctions such as loss of lucrative contracts for failure to comply - look at SuSAG during the Psionic Suppressions.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Every member world has to pay taxes to the Imperium.

 

[Condottiere]

I think direct corporate, and regional tax farming.

 

[alex_greene]

Every member world has to pay taxes to the Imperium.

Travellers probably do pay taxes any time they participate in spec trade. It's likely that any cash they get from Patrons is going to be gray market, cash in hand, or cash in kind.
And as for the black market cash, what the Imperium don't know, they can't tax ... yet ...

This doesn't work in the Consulate, by the way.

 

[Saladman]

As I've stopped worrying about canon I've developed the idea that the Emperor especially, and some of the highest old blood nobles also, have very extensive personal holdings, some of which go to fund things we would consider government business. Sort of a combination of the crown estates of England, with the civic obligations of old Rome. So you might see things like a navy squadron funded by one noble (and coincidentally officered by his loyalists), or a large highport constructed by a noble (but also returning profits to him).

I don't think any of that is canon, and it might even contradict canon in places. But its how I make sense of things in my own head.

Then there's taxing megacorps, but also granting them monopolies or other privileges so they have something to tax. And probably still come out ahead compared to competing in a truly free market.

...pay [for] noble estates?

I imagine they grant them, not pay for them. And probably get a tax cut or kickback on anything profitable while they're at it. "For services rendered, you're the new baron of [moon with newly surveyed ore reserves]. Don't forget your taxes, but as long as you get right on things you'll still come out ahead."

But this is another case where "thing that works" runs up against "full and literal reading of canon." If the Imperium only rules the space between worlds, how are they making grants? Autism answer is they aren't. Flexible answer is, only ruling the space between worlds is partly a polite fiction, and they can and do make grants.

 

[ColinD]

The Third Imperium book, which I love, has a few references to taxes. It states that Nobles "rent and tax the land under their purview" (page 49) and that Nobles, "serve as Imperial Administrators, collecting taxes (page 5). "Tax evasion" is noted as a crime against Imperial Law (pg. 7). The Core Rulebook does mention in the Trade Section that corporations can get, "tax breaks".

The science-fiction science of Traveller and the Trade Tables of Free Trade leave lots of room for the Referee and the players, which is fun for me.

 

[Anstett]

I am part of the Make Me Smart Discord (a show by Marketplace.org) and in the economics channels there we often talk about how regular people misunderstand how governments at the National level fundamentally are just different than what most people think of spending money/budgets.

The Imperium (with this line of thinking) is a hyper efficient US Federal Reserve. Yes they take in taxes to remind citizens that they are part of the government. But they could take in zero dollars and still run things efficiently. With the 'magic keyboard' they just create Credits as needed. Inflation is not a thing that the government needs to worry about, that is at a lower level than Planetary budgets. What matters is 'the full faith and credit of the Emperor' to pay the debts incurred by them from citizens.

As long as everyone believes the Imperium is going to pay their bills, it does not matter where the money comes from. It becomes a problem where corruption slips in to skim some from that big pool of Credits. Or someone at a subsector or planetary level tries to put a backing to the Credits. Like an old fashioned gold standard, or saying that you need to have X credits in holding.

For this instance the Imperium is just so vast that it would be impossible to know the difference from the Imperial Reserve Bank of Regina issuing out a payment for the new Tigress battle fleet based on how much 'income' the sector is generating than just clicking PAY on the invoice from the 'magic keyboard'

Economics is fuzzy in the real world, in the Imperium it would be impenetrable.

 

[MonsterX]

Ansett, while you are right that national governments budgets don't have the same hard constraints as individual budgets, this does not mean that the Imperium can just spend what it wants and everything will be fine. If Imperial spending increases too quickly relative to economic growth there will be inflation. The main way to tamp it down is to make sure spending does not exceed taxes by too large a margin. If the inflation is not high, this is usually a good thing, but if it gets too high it could be really bad. Since the Imperium is huge, there could be different inflation in different areas: even if spending overall is under control, if they Imperium spends too much in a certain region, while not taxing there enough, there could be local inflation. On the other hand, if there are too many taxes and not enough Imperial spending in a region, deflation is possible, which tend to lead to recessions and depressions, and underutilization of economic capacity (because people and machines are unemployed). (These local inflations and deflations could be reduced by local currencies, but this looses the advantages of a single currency, which I won't go into here)

The Imperium is set up like a weak federation, or the EU, with a single currency, but many sub-units who (apparently) make their own fiscal policy, but have a unified monetary policy (the Credit). There are feudal lords, but they don't seem to control that much of the total production (of course, as individuals they seem to be pretty rich). So planetary populations have most of the wealth and planetary governments seem to have their own tax systems. The potential revenue streams for the Imperium are: Imperial possessions, taxes on planets, taxes on nobles, corporate taxes, taxes on interstellar trade (requiring an infrastructure which we don't usually see in Traveller play), and of course seigniorage, which is what Ansett refers to. There are lots of other potential minor revenue streams, like selling mining rights, or fines for legal violations. Some interstellar polities might make their money by conquest and plunder instead, but this requires continual expansion, and comes with its own problems. It doesn't seem to be significant for the Imperium.

Getting all this sorted out would require a lot of work, so I think we all just have to assume that something of this sort if going on behind the scenes, and only go into the details when it affects our adventurers.

 

[Condottiere]

Faith and trust works on the believe that the authorities know what they're doing, and will balance their ambition to screw over the electorate with the need not to kill the golden goose.

 

[Condottiere]

It probably goes like this, at the regional level.

The sector duke tells the subsector dukes how much he expects in taxation, based on past performance, and who gets hand outs and for what.

The subsector dukes look at the micro scale, and give detailed instructions to the planets in their bailiwick how much they have to pony up, and probably from what activities, so that they don't squeeze the wrong industries or engage in too much crony capitalism.

The sector dukes probably send back to the Capitol a treasure fleet every decade.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Sector dukes have no actual authority over subsector dukes.
In point of fact the status of sector duke is a first among equals thing.

 

[Condottiere]

The sector duke coordinates imperial activities. in the sector.

What's more important than finances?

 

[Vormaerin]

Obviously, nothing is actually defined in the system. So it can be anything. But I am not fond of tax farming regimes as an analogy. That's a pretty corrupt and ineffective system, which is why they got replaced as fast as possible. They are basically an inferior government bond market. "You pay me X in exchange for permission to tax people for "X+whatever you can get".

It also doesn't really gel with me that the nobility would be involved in taxation since most of them are not involved in governing. But, again, who knows.

 

[Jame Rowe]

It also doesn't really gel with me that the nobility would be involved in taxation since most of them are not involved in governing. But, again, who knows.

I figure that a lot of noble aren't, but enough are to keep the system, whatever it is, going.

 

[Vormaerin]

I figure that a lot of noble aren't, but enough are to keep the system, whatever it is, going.

Sure, anything is possible. All we "know" is that Imperial government starts at the subsector level with the Dukes. Obviously, a lot of Imperial officials are going to be nobles, whether because the Imperium likes to appoint nobles to positions or because getting appointed to those positions tends to get you made a noble.

There's no consensus on what other nobles *do* beside exist. So there's a variety of different examples in different sources all trying to thread the needle of having Imperial Nobles and their fiefs be important while keeping the "Imperium doesn't govern planets" dictum intact. But it is hard to make them important without them actually having power.

 

[NOLATrav]

99% percent of the rank and file nobles IMTU are Starport administrators. Their landgrants usually encompass Startown and its environs. Of course many are involved in developing whatever trade ”their” world offers, usually by making it easy for locals to trade at the port, or getting into local production of goods and services. Middlemen, not rulers.

 

[Vormaerin]

That's similar to what I do, though most of my nobles have money fiefs in the form of stocks and whatnot.

 

[Condottiere]

It takes many forms.

As I understand it, telemarketers pay cop associations a flat fee to use their "charity" organizations as a way to emotionally blackmail residents to contribute and pay the telemarketers directly, in exchange for an identifiable sticker, colour coded for the amount donated.