Some comments on the economics of the series

Daryl wrote:RFC -"And I might point out, if I were in a snitty mood, that to a significant extent, this is a case of my universe, my governing assumptions."

Damn right.

I (and all others here if they are honest) would love to have earned the right to make that statement.
I'll add that the extraordinary scrutiny that the anal retentive train spotters here have applied to all aspects of the many novels in the Honorverse, has actually illustrated just how well the original universe was designed for the first novels.

No other series set in a future universe with yet to be imagined tech could survive a fraction of the analysis that this has. Many are still good stories but you have to accept an amount of handwavium in them.

dreamrider wrote:

Daryl wrote:RFC -"And I might point out, if I were in a snitty mood, that to a significant extent, this is a case of my universe, my governing assumptions."

Damn right.

I (and all others here if they are honest) would love to have earned the right to make that statement.
I'll add that the extraordinary scrutiny that the anal retentive train spotters here have applied to all aspects of the many novels in the Honorverse, has actually illustrated just how well the original universe was designed for the first novels.

No other series set in a future universe with yet to be imagined tech could survive a fraction of the analysis that this has. Many are still good stories but you have to accept an amount of handwavium in them.

Can you say "Doc" Smith, Mr Piper?

lol


dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Don't misunderstand me.
E.E. Smith and H. Beam Piper were both gods of their SF age, and among the most entertaining SF I have ever read, to this day.
I own dog eared copies of near everything that they ever wrote.

We should cut Smith some slack, though. He was mostly writing before Albert really nailed a few things down, and certainly before anyone but Al and 7 or 8 of his closest friends understood what his doodles meant.

After all, Doc Smith's doctorate was in Chemical Engineering, from 1918, and he spent most of his working life as a food scientist.

Beam Piper was immensely smart and well-read, but he was academically a self-taught railway worker. He also came of age as a writer before Albert Einstein was a household name.

But they both crossed the galaxy, or a couple of galaxies, at the speed of thought. When you are making your mark on the world in all bold-face capitals, you can ignore little things like a small c.

dreamrider

kzt wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:Respectfully, you're wrong.

First, an Honorverse generation is a heck of a lot longer than 20 years or so. This is not going to take a century to fix.

Second, the training schools and facilities to rebuild the labor force still exist, at least in large part. The education system and infrastructure are essentially intact and prepared to train new workers. Most training in Manticore has been done in simulators for at least 80 T-years, and the simulators are either still sitting right where they were or readily replaced. It's more a software issue than anything else in that respect.

Third, the blueprints/plans for every single lost item still exist. There's no mystery about what needs to be built or how it goes together, and there isn't a single part of the destroyed Manticoran infrastructure which cannot be rebuilt/replaced using the tech readily available in Haven and --- especially for the high-end stuff --- Beowulf.

Fourth, you have immediately available the surplus labor force of Beowulf and a huge potential Havenite labor force. You think for one minute a Havenite ex-Dolist wouldn't sell one of his kidneys for the opportunity to train on cutting-edge Manty hardware and be in on the ground floor of rebuilding it? The skill set and experience he would acquire along the way --- courtesy of training in that intact educational infrastructure and the later hands-on experience of the projects themselves --- would be literally priceless when he returned home to a Havenite infrastructure beginning to undo the last century or so of self-inflicted damage.

Fifth, Beowulf and Haven are going to see both the necessity of getting Manticore back on its feet as a key player in the Grand Alliance and (especially in Haven's case) an opportunity to make some really, really good long term financial investments in a sort of reverse Marshall Plan.

Sixth, from where I sit, it seems to me that you are hugely underestimating the rate at which Honorverse industry and construction can complete a given task. Once the rebuilding process begins, it will go far more rapidly than you seem to believe, and the primary sources of the necessary materials --- the orbital extraction yards and refineries --- are still intact.

Seventh, there is an intact core of cutting-edge Manty tech available in the yards around San Martin and in the MWHJ service and repairs yards which can be immediately retasked. By the same token, the captured Grendelsbane personnel being returned by Haven and the skilled workforce orbiting San Martin, working in the Alizon and Zanzibar yards, working in the San Martin and junction yards, and even assigned to Marsh and/or on loan to Grayson will be available to serve as a core of fully trained workers who can oversee and update Havenites, Beowulfers, and Graysons pouring into Manticore to begin the task of rebuilding.

The task will be arduous, demanding, and quite possibly heartbreaking along the way, but it will not take anything remotely like the timeframe you are projecting.

Well, I might be. But maybe I'm not.

Lets take education. My assumption is that the shortage isn't in terms of people willing to work, it's people who can run what was described as the most advanced manufacturing system in the known galaxy.

In a rationally run system, the rate at which the educational system produces trained people is roughly equivalent to the rate at which they can find work. So if you assume a career is 20 years you are going to be set to produce starting workers equal to about 5% of the total workforce every year. (This assumes no insanities like the current grad school issues, where every year you get 5 years worth of new PhDs in English etc.)

If the process is roughly akin to the described RMN training system increasing the input doesn't increase the output for years. And you can't massively increase the output rate without without seriously compromising the quality of the output.

Worse, what this produces are trained but not experienced workers. They understand the theory but "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." People who haven't actually done the work don't know what can go wrong and how to effectively fix it. This is why foremen and leads have significantly more experience than the average guy out the school.

Sane people (and people following the law) don't assign a newly graduated structural engineer as the lead guy doing the engineering for a 80 story building, because they don't know what they don't know. (There is a reason why you are not even eligible to take the PE test without 4 or more years of professional experience.)

The same is true of people building safety critical components, except when you are building weapon systems and spacecraft there isn't very much that isn't safety critical. You really want the guy in charge of ensuring that the wings are firmly attached to the plane to have enough experience to know what can go wrong, how to spot this, how to fix it, and how to NOT "fix" it.



I'm sure they have the blueprints, but that isn't actually enough to build stuff that will work. Even assuming that they have not just blueprints but also the details on how the design was actually changed during production and what you have to do to make the asemply process work (neither of which are part of the official blueprints) that still isn't enough to build it.

For example, most complex weapon systems and safety related systems depend on a cloud of small parts and sub-assemblies made by well known vendors that were carefully selected and specified by the various system designers. I'd expect that these parts are mostly not available because their manufacturers are out of business because their production facility exploded, their workforce died and their customers ceased to exist.

The bluepints might very well specify that you need a Vector model 567A3 pump and a SQV model 67C-option4d valves in the fuel feed, but they are really unlikely to include detailed plans on how to produce the pumps and valves. So you have to substitute. There was a reason why they specified a Vector 567A3 and not a Jones A14D6, as they are rarely identical with a different label. And you'll need to do this everywhere. Now that means you are no longer producing a tested and qualified design, you are producing something that just looks a whole lot like your tested and qualified design.

And you are doing it without the people who really understand exactly how to produce the design you had. And without the QC people who knew what to look for to stop bad products from leaving.

Every part substituted might only have minor chance of causing any issue, but there are a LOT of parts. So the law of large numbers says you have only a minimal likelihood that this will actually work as designed without changes to reflect subtle differences that you inadvertently introduced.

Essentially a missile or radar built like this is a completely new missile or radar and needs to go through the same step by step integration testing and service qualification you do on a completely new missile or radar before you start installing them where they can kill large numbers of people in all sorts of interesting ways.

It's a lot like the problem of trying to build a Saturn 5 today. We have the blueprints, we have lots of other documentation and we have complete examples, but many of the parts needed are no longer available. To quote NASA "There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5 ... The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of parts that are simply not manufactured any more."

runsforcelery wrote:***Snip***

Seventh, there is an intact core of cutting-edge Manty tech available in the yards around San Martin and in the MWHJ service and repairs yards which can be immediately retasked. By the same token, the captured Grendelsbane personnel being returned by Haven and the skilled workforce orbiting San Martin, working in the Alizon and Zanzibar yards, working in the San Martin and junction yards, and even assigned to Marsh and/or on loan to Grayson will be available to serve as a core of fully trained workers who can oversee and update Havenites, Beowulfers, and Graysons pouring into Manticore to begin the task of rebuilding.

***Snip***

runsforcelery wrote:
You and I are going to have to agree to disagree. Among other things, you seem to see the SL as far more monolithic than I do, and you seem to severely overestimate how difficult the RMN will find it to protect any Manty shipping which reenters SL space. Or, for that matter, to provide the coercion/cover to encourage systems outside the Core to reopen their interstellar commerce under the GA's hospices. The League is anything but "monolithic" in terms of the degree of loyalty the vast majority of its non-Core star systems feel to the New Chicago-based bureaucrats or two OFS.

The transstellars whose survival depends on interstellar commerce are at best amoral were anything remotely like "patriotism" is involved. They've been part of an essentially corrupt system of cynical payoffs and bribes for so long that they will readily trade with the enemy — or allow the enemy to provide the necessary shipping to trade with their existing customers — even in time of war.

The League system governments in the Shell and (even more) the ones in the Verge are also going to feel a very limited sense of loyalty to the central non-government in New Chicago. One of the problems that the Mandarins have is that the bureaucracy the League has constructed instead of a participatory, responsive political government does not engender loyalty. It creates clients, and those clients' loyalty to their patrons is dependent on how well it works for the clients. Given an opportunity to become their own masters — or to at least find more generous patrons — they'll take it. And the mechanics of how interstellar trade can be reestablished even during wartime under Grand Alliance auspices and protection are a lot simpler than you seem to be assuming.

Suppose that System A decides to accept an unofficial, unwritten treaty arrangement whereby Manty merchies will undertake to carry its cargoes to destinations in System B, C, D, and E. The authorities in those other star systems have to at least wink at the arrival of Manticoran merchantships. Let's say, however, that they need cover to explain to the Mandarins why they are allowing Manticoran vessels to carry Solarian trade in time of war . . . and paying a portion of the "service fees" which once supported the League's bureaucracy to the Manties. How, you may ask, is that cover to be provided? Answer: you detach a couple of Grand Alliance SD(P)s, possibly with a CLAC for support, to each of the five systems in question. For the investment of 10 ships-of-the-wall out of a fleet of literally hundreds of them, you deploy a force which could readily annihilate any squadron or task force Frontier Fleet or Battle Fleet could realistically concentrate against it and which the local system authorities can claim — very convincingly — represented force majeure which gave them no option but to acquiesce in the no doubt horrible trading relationship.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit. Will it replace the total income stream which has been interrupted by Lacoön One? Certainly not initially or quickly, but it will replace the majority of it a lot sooner than you are allowing for.

As I've said before, Manticore will take a heavy hit out of this, but it will not approach the sort of economic meltdown or Krakatoa you appear to be positing. Not even close.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit.

Alizon wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
You and I are going to have to agree to disagree. Among other things, you seem to see the SL as far more monolithic than I do, and you seem to severely overestimate how difficult the RMN will find it to protect any Manty shipping which reenters SL space. Or, for that matter, to provide the coercion/cover to encourage systems outside the Core to reopen their interstellar commerce under the GA's hospices. The League is anything but "monolithic" in terms of the degree of loyalty the vast majority of its non-Core star systems feel to the New Chicago-based bureaucrats or two OFS.

The transstellars whose survival depends on interstellar commerce are at best amoral were anything remotely like "patriotism" is involved. They've been part of an essentially corrupt system of cynical payoffs and bribes for so long that they will readily trade with the enemy — or allow the enemy to provide the necessary shipping to trade with their existing customers — even in time of war.

The League system governments in the Shell and (even more) the ones in the Verge are also going to feel a very limited sense of loyalty to the central non-government in New Chicago. One of the problems that the Mandarins have is that the bureaucracy the League has constructed instead of a participatory, responsive political government does not engender loyalty. It creates clients, and those clients' loyalty to their patrons is dependent on how well it works for the clients. Given an opportunity to become their own masters — or to at least find more generous patrons — they'll take it. And the mechanics of how interstellar trade can be reestablished even during wartime under Grand Alliance auspices and protection are a lot simpler than you seem to be assuming.

Suppose that System A decides to accept an unofficial, unwritten treaty arrangement whereby Manty merchies will undertake to carry its cargoes to destinations in System B, C, D, and E. The authorities in those other star systems have to at least wink at the arrival of Manticoran merchantships. Let's say, however, that they need cover to explain to the Mandarins why they are allowing Manticoran vessels to carry Solarian trade in time of war . . . and paying a portion of the "service fees" which once supported the League's bureaucracy to the Manties. How, you may ask, is that cover to be provided? Answer: you detach a couple of Grand Alliance SD(P)s, possibly with a CLAC for support, to each of the five systems in question. For the investment of 10 ships-of-the-wall out of a fleet of literally hundreds of them, you deploy a force which could readily annihilate any squadron or task force Frontier Fleet or Battle Fleet could realistically concentrate against it and which the local system authorities can claim — very convincingly — represented force majeure which gave them no option but to acquiesce in the no doubt horrible trading relationship.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit. Will it replace the total income stream which has been interrupted by Lacoön One? Certainly not initially or quickly, but it will replace the majority of it a lot sooner than you are allowing for.

As I've said before, Manticore will take a heavy hit out of this, but it will not approach the sort of economic meltdown or Krakatoa you appear to be positing. Not even close.

Well, I understand your position and it's not like I can argue with you about how the books are going to portray things.

I will however answer this very good question.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit.

If you reconnect 1/3 of the network a lot is going to depend on what 1/3 you reconnect. The majority of the worlds that have the most valuable carrying trade are going to be in the core so if you're reconnection is heavy with Core worlds and the worlds those Core worlds need to trade with, you can actually make a decent dent in things if you move quickly enough. After all, if that 1/3 represents 60% of the carrying trade, you've reestablished about 75% of your carrying trade which is significant.

On the other hand, by other parts of your posts I take it that you're envisaging most of this 1/3 being amongst the Shell and frontier worlds in which case the value of that trade is likely to be less significant, say 17% percent to maybe 20% which isn't going to be very significant at all.

But let's say for simplicity that the 1/3 is equally divided in value between core shell and frontier worlds so that it represents 1/3 in value of all League Trade. In that case you've managed to restore about 41.67% of your trade.

This equates to about 59% of your shipping lines going out of business, a reduction in your merchant sailor employment by about the same amount and this added to whatever degree of unemployment has already been the result of Case Lacoon. This also means that all of the industries which supply your merchant marine needs about half the capacity it once had which creates more unemployment and economic dislocation and this continues throughout the Manticorian economy as layer after layer feels the impact of the lost industry.

Oh, yes, at the same time you're attempting to find that capital to rebuild an industrial infrastructure which took you decades to build in the first place all the while attempting to maintain and operate one of the largest and most sophisticated navies in known space which is operating beyond it's normal base of supply protecting the 33% of whatever worlds they are protecting.

And in the midst of all of this economic woe and uncertainty, you're going to somehow have to try to keep your general population spending their funds at near the rate they were before all of this happened because if they decide that they need to hang on to that extra dime out of each dollar, "just in case" you're going to lose about 50% of your pre-disaster economy.

If you can prevent that from happening, somehow battle human nature in your overall population, that same population that is either not working or watching their friends not work, if you substantially slow or stop that from happening, you'll have an economic hit, like a recession, probably a serious one but if you can expand your trade, simply a recession. If you can't, then by any definition you care to use, you're going to get a deep and powerful Depression.

Now, if you can reestablish the majority of your trade very quickly, it might not be a long and lasting one but it will still be a Depression which will leave lasting scars on the Manticorian economy and population.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion, it's been an enjoyable one.

Alizon wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
You and I are going to have to agree to disagree. Among other things, you seem to see the SL as far more monolithic than I do, and you seem to severely overestimate how difficult the RMN will find it to protect any Manty shipping which reenters SL space. Or, for that matter, to provide the coercion/cover to encourage systems outside the Core to reopen their interstellar commerce under the GA's hospices. The League is anything but "monolithic" in terms of the degree of loyalty the vast majority of its non-Core star systems feel to the New Chicago-based bureaucrats or two OFS.

The transstellars whose survival depends on interstellar commerce are at best amoral were anything remotely like "patriotism" is involved. They've been part of an essentially corrupt system of cynical payoffs and bribes for so long that they will readily trade with the enemy — or allow the enemy to provide the necessary shipping to trade with their existing customers — even in time of war.

The League system governments in the Shell and (even more) the ones in the Verge are also going to feel a very limited sense of loyalty to the central non-government in New Chicago. One of the problems that the Mandarins have is that the bureaucracy the League has constructed instead of a participatory, responsive political government does not engender loyalty. It creates clients, and those clients' loyalty to their patrons is dependent on how well it works for the clients. Given an opportunity to become their own masters — or to at least find more generous patrons — they'll take it. And the mechanics of how interstellar trade can be reestablished even during wartime under Grand Alliance auspices and protection are a lot simpler than you seem to be assuming.

Suppose that System A decides to accept an unofficial, unwritten treaty arrangement whereby Manty merchies will undertake to carry its cargoes to destinations in System B, C, D, and E. The authorities in those other star systems have to at least wink at the arrival of Manticoran merchantships. Let's say, however, that they need cover to explain to the Mandarins why they are allowing Manticoran vessels to carry Solarian trade in time of war . . . and paying a portion of the "service fees" which once supported the League's bureaucracy to the Manties. How, you may ask, is that cover to be provided? Answer: you detach a couple of Grand Alliance SD(P)s, possibly with a CLAC for support, to each of the five systems in question. For the investment of 10 ships-of-the-wall out of a fleet of literally hundreds of them, you deploy a force which could readily annihilate any squadron or task force Frontier Fleet or Battle Fleet could realistically concentrate against it and which the local system authorities can claim — very convincingly — represented force majeure which gave them no option but to acquiesce in the no doubt horrible trading relationship.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit. Will it replace the total income stream which has been interrupted by Lacoön One? Certainly not initially or quickly, but it will replace the majority of it a lot sooner than you are allowing for.

As I've said before, Manticore will take a heavy hit out of this, but it will not approach the sort of economic meltdown or Krakatoa you appear to be positing. Not even close.

Well, I understand your position and it's not like I can argue with you about how the books are going to portray things.

I will however answer this very good question.

There are almost 2,000 star systems in the Solarian League. The vast majority of them are either effectively the property (or at least private preserve) of one or more transstellars, or else have moderately-sized system economies and local governments which feel only a very limited sense of loyalty to the Mandarins. Suppose that Manticore is able, utilizing its control of the warp bridge network, to reconnect a third of those star systems into a trading network whose carrying trade is completely dominated by the Manticoran merchant marine for that trade's total transit.

If you reconnect 1/3 of the network a lot is going to depend on what 1/3 you reconnect. The majority of the worlds that have the most valuable carrying trade are going to be in the core so if you're reconnection is heavy with Core worlds and the worlds those Core worlds need to trade with, you can actually make a decent dent in things if you move quickly enough. After all, if that 1/3 represents 60% of the carrying trade, you've reestablished about 75% of your carrying trade which is significant.

On the other hand, by other parts of your posts I take it that you're envisaging most of this 1/3 being amongst the Shell and frontier worlds in which case the value of that trade is likely to be less significant, say 17% percent to maybe 20% which isn't going to be very significant at all.

But let's say for simplicity that the 1/3 is equally divided in value between core shell and frontier worlds so that it represents 1/3 in value of all League Trade. In that case you've managed to restore about 41.67% of your trade.

This equates to about 59% of your shipping lines going out of business, a reduction in your merchant sailor employment by about the same amount and this added to whatever degree of unemployment has already been the result of Case Lacoon. This also means that all of the industries which supply your merchant marine needs about half the capacity it once had which creates more unemployment and economic dislocation and this continues throughout the Manticorian economy as layer after layer feels the impact of the lost industry.

Oh, yes, at the same time you're attempting to find that capital to rebuild an industrial infrastructure which took you decades to build in the first place all the while attempting to maintain and operate one of the largest and most sophisticated navies in known space which is operating beyond it's normal base of supply protecting the 33% of whatever worlds they are protecting.

And in the midst of all of this economic woe and uncertainty, you're going to somehow have to try to keep your general population spending their funds at near the rate they were before all of this happened because if they decide that they need to hang on to that extra dime out of each dollar, "just in case" you're going to lose about 50% of your pre-disaster economy.

If you can prevent that from happening, somehow battle human nature in your overall population, that same population that is either not working or watching their friends not work, if you substantially slow or stop that from happening, you'll have an economic hit, like a recession, probably a serious one but if you can expand your trade, simply a recession. If you can't, then by any definition you care to use, you're going to get a deep and powerful Depression.

Now, if you can reestablish the majority of your trade very quickly, it might not be a long and lasting one but it will still be a Depression which will leave lasting scars on the Manticorian economy and population.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion, it's been an enjoyable one.