Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

Your talking about more than one approch or reason for fee levels.
Beowulf is getting a percentage of fees paid on the transits using the Sigma Draconis terminus Just the one they have a share a partnership in. That's an ownership deal and NOT a fee discount

Beowulf as an allied (even if not under obligation to be involved with the Haven War) Star Nation and Treaty Partner is getting a fee break)s) for it System Flagged ships. Exactly what rates for what type of transits I'm not sure about but the diplomatic, military for Beowulf are going to be different than for other Star Nations of commercial operations. Treaty and what is termed "favored nation" standing will have differnt leveles of fees.

The SL and Beowulf are NOT the same thing. Beowulf is (well, was) a member of the SLl but it's merchant marine is flagged in the home system.
It's NOT CLEAR exactly what the differences are between a "SL" flagged ship and a ship flagged by it's home system vs flagging as an SL vessel.
***** Flagging is just saying that the ship is REGISTERED by a certain Star Nation and there are usualy cost and tax advantages plus other regulations breaks for where vessels are registered. Taxes is the largest. Which is why on present day Earth, ships are registered in Liberia or Panama or Bermuda etc. In many cases there are restrictions on where and what a ship flagged in various places can and can not do in various countries.
BUT.....we do NOT know the details though I can offer speculation

Speculation #1 Any vessell flagged by a SL MEMBER SYSTEM may operate in any other SL MEMBER SYSTEM subject ONLY to SL requirements for operatons of such vessels. Common regulations. That does NOT INCLUDE any abilty to overide any prohibited materials of the system you are entering.

Speculation #2 SL flagged (or SL MEMBER flagged) ships may call upon League support in case of needs. The buracracy is supposed to help (there will be fees in any case) but you are using the SLN/OFS and League legal systems.

Speculation # 3 Entities like Technodyne and other Transtellars may use the League like current Earth seagoing merchant trade use Liberia for tax reasons.

Star Nations will make treaty arrangements or commerical agreements for their nations military, commerical and private vessels with other Star Nations. If your "home stagnation" doesnt have a specific discount (one or more) with Manticore, they you pay according to the Regular Published Rate schedule. If your in the shithouse with Manticore - like say Erwhon in the High Ridge period- then you pay a lot more. If you are Haven -you can't use the Junction at all

Transshipment- even using bonded warehouses and pure pass-through handling to cross load goods between ships isn't the greatest way of avoiding paying full rate on junction fees. The largest part of that is a combination of the amount of time spent making the transfer and actual cost of of materials handling. It's the delay in amount of time both ships have to spend dropping and picking up cargo plus equipment and personal costs of the serivce. And insurance.

Transshipmente and warehousing makes a lot of sence when your routing goods and you HAVE to make connections to ships going in differnt diectons---logistics of when shipping will be going where your stuff has to go. So you park the shipment in a warhouse to be picked up by the next (and you have scheduled it) ship comming through that location which is going in the directon of X.
Dealing with Manticor's embargo of ANY SL flagged shipping using the junction (vs any goods produced or owned or shipped by an entity or company of a SL Member System) is another discussion. Lacoon II was not as bad as it might have been.....going to a Hypothetical LACOON III for which ANY SL goods or product -either made in an SL (or Protectorate) System or owned by -or shipped by- an SL entity or citizen be prohibited from transiting the Juncton and treated as contraband....and the resulting need to do full customs inspections......oh-my-god.

Humm..
How about---the SL is a very large, well, LEAGUE.
It is a collection of sovereign nations (Star Nations) which each have their own individual laws, traditions and regulations which has gotten together and created a way to regularized and enforce a body of law dealing with the way the MEMBERS deal with each other. It has also created a bureaucracy which oversees and manages that- and charges fees etc. They also manage the military.

Beowulf is ONE of many Star Nations in the League.

Manticore and Beowulf deal with each other under a seperate set of agreements although many of the "normal" things such as rules of navigation overlap with what the League sets out for operations withing the League.

Manticore also deals with the LEAGUE Beowulf and the League are not the same.

What the Harrington Plan proposed to do is shatter the ability of the League to continue to exist as the abortion of corrupt and unacountable buracracy it has become by dealing with EACH (or small groups of League Member Star Nations) as seperate entites from the league and tell the LEAGUE buracracy to ....blow it out your ear.

In _Honor Among Enemies_, chapter 6, it is stated that the Manticoran merchant marine was the 4th largest in human space; the three merchant marines that were larger all belonged to members of the Solarian League (not the League itself).

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:In _Honor Among Enemies_, chapter 6, it is stated that the Manticoran merchant marine was the 4th largest in human space; the three merchant marines that were larger all belonged to members of the Solarian League (not the League itself).

The League is more of a Confederacy of States than a true united government. Under the original US Articles of Confederation, the states had all the power, and the "federal" government had virtually none. So we're looking at a situation like that, where the League government (as intended) provides a framework as to how the members get along, but provides little beyond that.

The whole "form a League navy, but not able to tax the league members to pay for it" is just a symptom of that type of weak government - not funding a federal program is essentially retaining that power at the state level, merely by excluding the power of the central govt to pay to achieve it. Of course the Bureaucrats found loopholes and exploited them to pay for federal programs, without direct taxation.

I see my huge mistake in looking at the League as a single entity in this discussion. Being that it isn't, the SK would have had to give everybody in the galaxy (League) Beowulf's perks. And they would see their profit margin go down the drain. What was I thinking.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:In _Honor Among Enemies_, chapter 6, it is stated that the Manticoran merchant marine was the 4th largest in human space; the three merchant marines that were larger all belonged to members of the Solarian League (not the League itself).

That is probably one of the things that has sort of slipped though in the whole League discussion. Lacoon II barred League shipping from using the Junction but not Beowulf. Or, perhaps that was just ignored in the conversation.

By default, I have considered Leage "flagged" shipping as being registered with the League but that is because I have not seen any mention of each Star Nation in the League maintaining it's own registry. Perhaps it it should have been : All vessles of Solarian League Member Systems and Protectorates (except as noted in sub section B) and then list places like Beowulf.
Not clear if the SL maintains a ship's registry in that manner. What may be happening is that the League pubulishes (and enforces) a set of rules and regulation affecting the operation and procedures on shipping which ends up being the minimum a vessel must meet to operate within the System territories of SL Members, Protectorates etc. That kind of thing is certainly what the Buracracy is using to manage trade- regulations and rules, with the ultimate enforcemenet on the SLN.

Do forgive me for rebooting this thread.

I just want to know the cost of a John Brown loaf of bread.

Does anyone know what the cost of a loaf of bread is in the MBS? On Haven? In the SL? Out in the Verge? On Grayson? It has always nagged at me.

What the heck is the cost of a loaf of bread? Especially on Grayson, where there is so much contaminated land. What am I talking about, ALL of Grayson's land is contaminated. Graysons are never going to seek out products with the label "locally grown and locally sourced."

Everything is grown in space. I can not imagine the absolute cost of getting a loaf of bread on the table on Grayson. The cost of the "farmers," the pilots, the crew, the Stevedores, taxes, fuel, insurance, the harvester, etc.

If a loaf of bread today followed the same path of an HV loaf of bread, it would cost what? Hundreds? Thousands?

Maybe the effect of the SEM and the Andermani branching out into the Verge is the availability of some never before seen products. Or rarely seen. Products that are delicacies on some planets. Myths on others.

Did Grayson know what milk and eggs were before the Star Kingdom wandered into their system? Are animals raised on space stations? How does a permanent life in space affect livestock?

What is the equivalent of minimum wage to what it is on Earth now? And what is the difference of minimum wage throughout the galaxy?

What is the cost of a good criminal lawyer? His costs must be astronomical having to chase down leads and evidence all over the galaxy. Matlock must cost a million dollars a case in the HV.

Just how poor is poor in the Verge? Has the average citizen ever left the planet, let alone the system? ...

"The price of airfare to the MBS costs what!!!? ... ... That ain't first class?"

... 'pat pat pat' ...

... 'pat pat pat' ...

"Get him! He's got a pulser!"

cthia wrote:What the heck is the cost of a loaf of bread? Especially on Grayson, where there is so much contaminated land. What am I talking about, ALL of Grayson's land is contaminated. Graysons are never going to seek out products with the label "locally grown and locally sourced."

Everything is grown in space. I can not imagine the absolute cost of getting a loaf of bread on the table on Grayson. The cost of the "farmers," the pilots, the crew, the Stevedores, taxes, fuel, insurance, the harvester, etc.

My recollection is that one of the benefit of the domes was that the soil inside could have the heavy metals removed and it would stay that way. This would allow farms that were cheaper than the orbital kind. This probably means that the domes need a floor, so that underlying chemicals do not percolate upwards.

I do not know how to answer your question. One scene in Trading Places stuck out to me when I watched the movie: early on when the brothers first pick Eddie Murphy, Eddie is talking about the price of a specific commodity and how it changes seasonably. But he has no knowledge whether the price in the market already reflects that change, because he has no knowledge of what the true cost of the commodity is.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:What the heck is the cost of a loaf of bread? Especially on Grayson, where there is so much contaminated land. What am I talking about, ALL of Grayson's land is contaminated. Graysons are never going to seek out products with the label "locally grown and locally sourced."

Everything is grown in space. I can not imagine the absolute cost of getting a loaf of bread on the table on Grayson. The cost of the "farmers," the pilots, the crew, the Stevedores, taxes, fuel, insurance, the harvester, etc.

My recollection is that one of the benefit of the domes was that the soil inside could have the heavy metals removed and it would stay that way. This would allow farms that were cheaper than the orbital kind. This probably means that the domes need a floor, so that underlying chemicals do not percolate upwards.

I do not know how to answer your question. One scene in Trading Places stuck out to me when I watched the movie: early on when the brothers first pick Eddie Murphy, Eddie is talking about the price of a specific commodity and how it changes seasonably. But he has no knowledge whether the price in the market already reflects that change, because he has no knowledge of what the true cost of the commodity is.

Yes, the heavy metals can be removed, but at an exorbitant cost in money, time and materials. I worked as a Lab Manager for an Environmental Company for over a decade. We had a client that spilled countless gallons of hydrocarbons into the groundwater for years. Tens of thousands of gallons had been recovered by the time I left the company, and a projected twenty plus years remained. The top several inches of topsoil were removed. But in severe cases of contamination like that the contamination continues on down to the groundwater. How much do you remove? How much can be feasibly removed? Most contamination sites only remove the top six to twelve inches of soil. It is simply so expensive. And this contaminated soil has to be treated like hazardous materials and has to be properly disposed of.

In fact, there are environmental groups lobbying around the country because many contaminated sites are turned into Parks, with contaminated soil less than a foot below where your child is playing. Beware of parks and playgrounds that say NO DIGGING ALLOWED. And, if you dig in your yard and find the soil is a puce green, it is contaminated.

Grayson has had decades to clean things up, but still, life must go on. The HV undoubtedly has technologies that may speed the process up quite a bit. And I can accept some kind of barrier could be fashioned to prevent contamination of the topsoil by groundwater. But that raises many more questions and doubts.

There is an ecosystem on planets. Even if the soil is cleaned, what about the water on Grayson, which is infected as well. The rain that falls on Grayson will be contaminated too. There is the dome, but it has to be shut off from the rain. So where does the non contaminated water come from for drinking, cooking, bathing and watering plants? Clean water has to be at a premium on Grayson. Also, plants have to have a certain type of soil and moisture. And, if there is some type of layer installed as protection against contaminated groundwater, it will also prevent proper drainage.

We know there isn't a surplus of water on the planet because Honor's Armsmen, iinm, were shocked that Manticorans would fill a pool with water simply to swim in.

So, locally grown and sourced food doesn't sound like it will be so affordable either, or desirable. I wouldn't want to eat anything grown on planet. The rich can afford the food grown in space, but the citizens of steadings?

cthia wrote:There is an ecosystem on planets. Even if the soil is cleaned, what about the water on Grayson, which is infected as well. The rain that falls on Grayson will be contaminated too. There is the dome, but it has to be shut off from the rain. So where does the non contaminated water come from for drinking, cooking, bathing and watering plants? Clean water has to be at a premium on Grayson. Also, plants have to have a certain type of soil and moisture. And, if there is some type of layer installed as protection against contaminated groundwater, it will also prevent proper drainage.

We know there isn't a surplus of water on the planet because Honor's Armsmen, iinm, were shocked that Manticorans would fill a pool with water simply to swim in.

So, locally grown and sourced food doesn't sound like it will be so affordable either, or desirable. I wouldn't want to eat anything grown on planet. The rich can afford the food grown in space, but the citizens of steadings?

We know that even before the alliance with Manticore that the economy functioned well enough that Grayson was not at subsistence level. Water purification is a problem that has been solved, no more difficult than making fresh water from seawater for us. Once you have fresh water, then hydroponics can provide ample vegetables and aquaculture can provide fish that the people can eat.

Yes, Grayson did not have swimming pools, but they were not lacking in drinkable water.