Manticore Plague Years

Dafmeister wrote:Firstly, thanks to RFC for clearing up my misunderstanding of the situation

Hanuman, you seem to be assuming that all of the colonists are going to be developing their own patch of 'land' themselves. I don't think that's terribly likely.

Say I'm one of the original colonists, a doctor by training. I'm not going to suddenly want to become a farmer or a prospector or a lumberjack just because I've taken position of a slice of Manticore's surface. I'm still going to be a doctor, I'll set up home in one of the new population centres and I'll fund the beginning of my practice by leasing the grazing rights to my land to another colonist who's setting up as a rancher, or the mineral exploration rights to a group of colonists starting a mining company, or the fishing rights to my bit of coastline to a colonist who's running a trawler (or whatever the Honorverse equivalent is). If I've been given a slice of the EM spectrum as my 'lands', I'll lease the use of those frequencies to the newly-established Manticore Communications Network, Ltd. I now have the seed money I need to set up in my own chosen field, and a backup income stream to supplement my professional fees.

Pre-zaktly!

(Look, Michael! A one-word response!)

BobfromSydney wrote:Your cold sleep suggestion might be workable, although it seems more likely that a lottery or vote system would have been used to select which colonists had that responsibility. Since this all occurred pre-prolong, it would have been a multi-generational endeavour to keep the trust profitable (without cold sleep). Even with cold sleep the people who were chosen to stay on Earth would have been quite old by the time the ship made it to Manticore. The MCT was also a big gamble that safe FTL travel would be available by the time the colony ship landed.

Detouring back to this point; I don't think it was all that big a gamble. Manticore had been surveyed by FTL scouts (admittedly it was quite dangerous and slow in that pre-impeller and pre-warshawski detector days)

Even if FTL travel had never gotten any safer the Manticore Trust could still arrange to pay the occasional FTL survey ship to detour by the Manticore system; where they could drop off new technology (or at least data dumps on new tech). Even getting one initial update of a few centuries of Earth's tech advances is probably enough of an advantage to make the Trust pay off for the colonists; and add in even once a decade updates thereafter and it looks even better.



Yes, they could reasonably expect hyper travel to get better over the centuries; but unless it actually got worse they still be able to take some advantage of a well funded Trust back on Earth.

And all of those ranches had a horse with accompaniments, a steer, a bale of straw in the back of the running pickup along with a gun rack mounted in the back window complete with cowboy wearing hat and boots...right?

Don

hanuman wrote:Your post DID raise one very intriguing question, though.
What IS it with sci-fi/fantasy authors and rutabaga farmers?

Anyone familiar with the Belgariad would recognize a "shout-out" to the late David Eddings.

runsforcelery wrote:Pre-zaktly!

(Look, Michael! A one-word response!)

Not even that -- I can't find "Pre-zaktly" in a dictionary, so it's not even a word.

Dafmeister wrote:Firstly, thanks to RFC for clearing up my misunderstanding of the situation

Hanuman, you seem to be assuming that all of the colonists are going to be developing their own patch of 'land' themselves. I don't think that's terribly likely.

Say I'm one of the original colonists, a doctor by training. I'm not going to suddenly want to become a farmer or a prospector or a lumberjack just because I've taken position of a slice of Manticore's surface. I'm still going to be a doctor, I'll set up home in one of the new population centres and I'll fund the beginning of my practice by leasing the grazing rights to my land to another colonist who's setting up as a rancher, or the mineral exploration rights to a group of colonists starting a mining company, or the fishing rights to my bit of coastline to a colonist who's running a trawler (or whatever the Honorverse equivalent is). If I've been given a slice of the EM spectrum as my 'lands', I'll lease the use of those frequencies to the newly-established Manticore Communications Network, Ltd. I now have the seed money I need to set up in my own chosen field, and a backup income stream to supplement my professional fees.

I suppose that undertakings like extracting minerals would be tailor-made for joint ventures, with a number of people or families pooling their shares and then working together under some kind of charter to develop their collective mineral rights. And there were obviously other industries that could be developed in the same manner.

But that still leaves us with the fact that, in order to join the colony expedition, each colonist or family of colonists had to make a substantial investment in the expedition (remember that there were several billion Eurodollars left after purchasing the colonisation rights, a ship AND outfitting the expedition, with only about 20-30 000 investors contributing).

That'd leave the expedition with a whole lot of shareholders who'd each receive a substantial share at arrival, and almost no one at all to fill the new society's 'working class' niche. And there would have been a need for workers, and not just owners or joint entrepreneurs - there always is, even in a technologically highly-advanced society.

Btw, how big was Roger Winton's initial investment? I mean, after the change to a monarchy, all the 'land' that wasn't awarded as shares became Crown property, right? But as I understand things, Crown property does not necessarily mean PERSONAL property of the monarch, or does it?

Weird Harold wrote:

hanuman wrote:Your post DID raise one very intriguing question, though.
What IS it with sci-fi/fantasy authors and rutabaga farmers?

Anyone familiar with the Belgariad would recognize a "shout-out" to the late David Eddings.

The Belgariad is where my love of fantasy and sci-fi began. Hah, I was nine years old at the time!

But Eddings wasn't the only author who had a hate on for rutabaga farmers! I think Mr Flint used it too, in one of his books.

hanuman wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Anyone familiar with the Belgariad would recognize a "shout-out" to the late David Eddings.

The Belgariad is where my love of fantasy and sci-fi began. Hah, I was nine years old at the time!

But Eddings wasn't the only author who had a hate on for rutabaga farmers! I think Mr Flint used it too, in one of his books.

Probably also a shout-out to Eddings, given how old the series is. The hatred of rutabegas in fantasy/sci-fi has a long and storied history.

hanuman wrote:But Eddings wasn't the only author who had a hate on for rutabaga farmers! I think Mr Flint used it too, in one of his books.

I haven't researched the exact dates, but I'm pretty sure that Fulrach, King of Sendaria, is the prototypical Rutabaga Farmer in all of Fantasy; As far as I'm concerned, every rutabaga farmer reference since then is a pop-culture reference to King Fulrach.

Because, like you, so many of the younger generations discovered Fantasy and SF through the Belgariad. (My generation, otoh, found Fantasy via the Wizard of OZ and SF through Heinlein's juveniles like Podkayne of Mars.

hanuman wrote:<snippity snip>

Btw, how big was Roger Winton's initial investment? I mean, after the change to a monarchy, all the 'land' that wasn't awarded as shares became Crown property, right? But as I understand things, Crown property does not necessarily mean PERSONAL property of the monarch, or does it?

I think it must have been quite large, perhaps as much as half or more. I think also that the Crown Lands are mostly the lands held in trust by the Crown, rather than the personal property of the monarch him or herself. I imagine quite a few of the lands are developed, but given the vastness of an entire solar system, it'd be much too difficult for one person to try and develop it all.

While they probably are held under the name of the Monarchy, what they probably really represent is basically a vast reserve of untapped capital that can be generated if the government gets into a pinch, by leasing the rights or selling them outright if the situation is dire enough. As well, they also represent something else Manticore will be needing later on: Living space. The three planets are by no means filled up, and they'll need places to expand as the population grows.