Originally posted by Hal:
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your response. A good percentage of what you wrote makes sense. Here is a question for you...
If you were the leader of a world, and you wanted into the Imperium - what kinds of things do you want in your treaty?
I'd want to be appointed a noble in the new Imperium, with productive land on Capital and at least one other world. I'd want several incentives (large cash payments, fiancial instruments, interstellar yacts, gifts, etc.). I'd want to make sure the Imperium couldn't interfere in my world. I'd want that to be an unlimited right, but would probably realize the Imperium would negotiate several exceptions. I personally would want to minimize those exceptions. However, then I'd probably run into the Imperium's needs, and that it wouldn't want to surrender the basic minimum's it felt it needed to function as a government. At this point, I'd probably either decide not to join (if I were stupid and suicidal or megalomaniacal), or I would try and shake the Imperium down for more "incentives". Given the expense of war, I'm sure the Imperium lavished a whole bunch of "incentives" on the leaders of many of the worlds it eventually admitted.
Originally posted by Hal:
As for Imperial Taxes lets say for the sake of argument, that the Imperium, in recognition of the fact that if you tax an economy too heavily - it either stagnates or dies outright, decides that the taxes of both the local government (your world's government) and the Imperium, may not exceed 40% of the Gross Domestic Product. Unfortunately for you - your citizens expect drinkable water, breathable air, transportation networks that work, etc. And to make matters worse? Your world government is at the moment, an unpopular dictatorship. You NEED to have a reasonably large military force to keep your laws and government in good working order.
How do you determine how much tax of your world belongs to you, and how much are you willing to pay as a geld to the Imperium?
I don't get to decide. At least IMTU. The tax rate is non-negotiable. 2% of GWP during peacetime, 4% of GWP during declared general war, with the MoT determining what my world's GWP was (there is some leeway on this, though not much), with arbitration and Noble Court remedies available should I feel dissatisfied with the MoT judgement (taking the MoT to court is the "leeway" I was speaking of).
The format of
my government and the expense of it in various areas will not be of any concern to the Imperial Government in relation to the tax rate or the assessed GWP (unless taken to court, where the MoJ is unlikely to side with the world, or it makes it to Noble Court, and I've got an "inside track" with that Superior Noble, who will have to think long and hard about adjusting the Assessed GWP down, because that will adjust the Subsector and Sector budgets down; it's more likely the Superior Noble will give me a deal to send me "development" funds, i.e. kick something back; but that only if it was felt I really needed it to avoid world chaos, starvation due to governmental collapse, etc., or to actually improve conditions on world).
Originally posted by Hal:
Now, lets put the shoe on the other foot. You know that you yourself can build a private Navy of your own that would greatly deter piracy and/or other worlds from waging war upon you. You know that the money other Imperium worlds are paying to the Imperium - could be better spent beefing up your own defenses. You also know that you can make arrangements to become a client state to the Imperium such that it makes certain that its member worlds will not attack you. Why would you even consider paying 2% of your Gross Domestic Product knowing that the Imperium will only station 0.5% of your Gross Domestic Product in your system in a defensive manner - and allocate the remaining 1.5% amongst the less producing worlds for their defenses. Why would you even want to join such an alliance when you can remain neutral and keep that extra 2% for your own navy and private use?
The trouble with this is, we're mixing two eras of discussion. The reasons many worlds joined up in the opening of Miliue 0 had more to do with the awesome Tech capabilities of the Imperium, it's enormous wealth (and the then-larger benefits of joining in trade), and its *apparently* superior Human Rights stance, backed up by an equally apparent excellent and relatively free and high standard of living on Capital.
And the later era. Imperial expansion has slowed because most of those worlds that would have readily joined the Imperium have already done so. The remainder are usually border worlds where there are lengthy histories of independence and opposition to outside rule, or foreign powers with interests (even if that interest is only in seeing the Imperium avoid expanding in that direction), and a sea-change in Imperial attitudes toward expansion, conquest, and the naked use of force following the Imperial Civil War. I bet there were wide spread analysis and reanalysis of that for centuries, all of which were pretty unkind to the Barracks Emperors (except for Arbellatra, who actually succeeded).
In the early Milieu 0 era, well, things were probably more open to negotiation, tax rates might have been whatever the Imperium could have secured. It would have been changed to a more Imperium-wide flat rate only many centuries later.
In any event, IMTU's modern era, each world has its Local Noble (Marquis or Baron) in charge of the first 66% of that 2% of Gross World Product. That 66% stays at home on the world for the Local Noble to use on behalf of that world. A big share goes off to the world's military, both ground and space. The rest goes off to various development efforts (infrastructure, disadvantaged spending, etc.) The Subsector Navy will also (except for poor Subsectors, who likley receive Sector support anyway) deploy forces to my system for patrol, more forces than I likely could create (unless I'm a very wealthy world) and of a higher TL, usually TL-12 or TL-13 (which means a lot back around Milieu 0). Further, the Sector Navy will be collecting taxes from across the Sector, and it if its a border Sector, will almost certainly receiving Imperial level funds. These Sector and Imperial funds amount to a great deal more military spending that any single world, even a High-Pop and High-Tech world could hope to produce. The defense benefits of joining the Imperium come at this level. Few are willing to challenge the Imperium when it has so many TL-15 battleship squadrons staring other nations down.
Trade benefits probably had something to do with it, too. Although I've never seen a specific list of what those benefits might be, my main guess is avoiding Imperial Import Duties. Oh, and in Milieu 0, technological uplift was a big selling point. I'm sure many worlds were raised up several TL points, and I'm equally sure that over the centuries, the process wasn't completed on most of them, and that several may have even fallen back.
Originally posted by Hal:
What I'm hammering at is that as the Imperium starts out, it can't act like a 500 lb canary. As it gets bigger, it can act like a 500 lb canary - but will it do so knowing that such behavior might push the worlds towards rebellion? And if it doesn't act like a 500 lb canary - what are the relationships between those worlds?
Think about it. How would the Federal Government justify the right of New Jersey to go to war with New York over the possession of the Statue of Liberty? The Imperium seems content to allow that kind of behavior! What if members of
This falls under the category of, "The Imperium is a Mighty Strange Place To Us 20th Century Folk." The Imperial Government doesn't *not care*, it rather studiously avoids getting involved in such matters because it would cost too much money to interfere, and because they literally have a different mindset about such matters. Standing by and watching people rip each other to pieces over their own disagreements is viewed as
highly humanitarian, and a *good* thing. They literally see getting involved as *worse* than standing off to one side.
IMTU: this is tempered by two issues. One, is where the Imperium itself is assualted.
If the Imperium is acted against, this will not be tolerated. The degree of Imperial response is based on the degree of violation. Due to cost issues, the Imperium will almost always try to go after the guilty parties, if it has a glimmer as to who they are, and feels it can actually get at them. World-wide invasion and supression is going to be quite rare, a last resort, coming only after armed rebellion against the Imperium itself, or massive violations of MTU's Imperial Human Rights Accord.
If the Imperium foresees any of this coming down the pike, it will go out of its way to diffuse the situation. Just because the Imperium can't
force it's ways upon Member World Governments for their strictly internal affairs, doesn't mean it can't send in diplomats to talk to people (especially when the signs are that the affair will go beyond the internal), and doesn't mean Intelligence Agents aren't keeping an eye on things.
Note that IMTU, worlds that have been shown to have violated their Limited Member World Autonomy (which includes violations of the Imperial Human Rights Accord) are placed on a multi-step process path to correct the violations. World invasion by the Imperium is dead last, and a bunch of Imperial Bureaucracts and Intelligence staffers and agents will be losing their jobs if the situation is reduced to this sorry state of affairs.
As for the comparison between New York and New Jersey, well, don't forget, that in the OTU, the Rules of War are unwritten, and that if things got "bad", the Imperium can step in under the RoW and put a stop to it; most warring parties know about this, and most warring parties chose to engage in "limited war" due to this to avoid Imperial entaglements.
MTU only permits this sort of conflict on-world (although it allows for troops to be moved between the stars under certain observed circumstances), it does not, under any circumstances, allow Member Worlds to conduct any type of naval engagements in space (inside or outside the world's Inherent Defense Zone) for the purpose of internal conflict (only for self-defense; an offending Member World Government can get in quite a bit of hot water over this).
The part (immediately below) about New Yorkers rebelling against the state of New York and set up a aristrocratic dynasty . . . New York is a part of the USA, and the state is under the US Constitution, not a Member World Government of the Third Imperium. It's act would be blantantly illegal under the USA Government, but would be totally legal under the Third Imperium.
That is the difference. And if under the Third Imperium, I hope they succeed, because if they don't, they can become convicted criminals and sentenced to death (MTU's Imperial Human Rights Accord does not protect convicted criminals, although the Justice Entitlement might eventually be used to prove a world was falsely convicting people under its own laws, that path is quite difficult to take and prove).
Originally posted by Hal:
New York decide that they HATE having a democratic state constitution, and they decide "Hey, lets revolt against the State Governor and install our own Lord Governor - who must be from either the Rockerfeller Family, the Smith Family, or the Jones Family - the new age Aristocrats"?
The Imperium would seemingly permit governments to change within a world (or does it?) providing that the world remains an Imperial world. But if
More importantly, so long as that government continues to pony up its taxes.
Originally posted by Hal:
there is a treaty between a world and the Imperium - might they not have a provision in the treaty that states "Ok, we want a mutual defense treaty that if our government is ever under attack, that the Imperium will restore it" be a popular provision? If so - the Imperium has just agreed to intevene in local affairs. And because of that - it will require an army to restore those world governments that have been subverted or changed.
Oddly enough? Cleon the First did just THAT - he subverted the Sylean government to that of the Imperial Government. Is he going to make it so that his government can never be subverted? Is he going to make it so that member world governments can never be subverted?
So many possible permutations here!
Where to begin?
First, the Imperium does not guarantee to restore the government of any world should that government fall for any reason. Now, if a Member World Government falls due to outside invasion, and the Imperium rushes in and kicks the invader out, it
may chose to set up the old government again, but then again, it might not.
Hmmm, I'd never really thought it over, though.
My guess is that as long as the Member World Governement was in good standing with the Imperium (was paying its taxes and not generating terrorist activity against the Imperium), rescuing forces would make moves to restore the previous government, as long as it could. It's probably a part of standing Navy orders on retaking lost worlds. If there is nothing of the previous government to restore, then something else will have to be done.
The Imperium probably views internal rebellion differently than external assault. It will interevene only if the RoW are violated, or if taxes stop flowing. Every rebel has got to realize that a sucessful rebellion must involve seizing the bank accounts of the oppressor and continuing payments to the Imperium.
It strikes me that some Red Zone worlds are probably worlds where rebellions occured, the rebels repudiated their Imperial Allegiance, and the Imperium decided there was too little to gain by invading and brining them back into the fold, so instead they cut them off completely. After a few centuries of being isolated, the world is going to likely be highly weakened (as in what happened to most worlds during the Long Night), the original causes of the rebellion will have been forgotten or distorted highly, the Imperium itself may well be a distant memory (especially with Imperial Interstellar Intelligence agents inserted on world going around removing negative historic references whenever possible, and seeding rumors that it was the evil local government that caused contact with the benevolent Imperium to have been cut off).
Later, the world can be reintroduced back into the fold, after centuries of gradual covert psycho-prop conditioning.
As for Cleon I, he elevated himself to Emperor and the Sylean Federation (one whose prime position, occupided by Cleon, was that of
Hereditary President of the Grand Senate, and so was only a little less than Emperor anyway) to Empire. I think it was clear from the beginning that any action against the throne was treasonous inssurrection, punishable by death. The only mitigation that could be had from such a course of action would be to win. I'm sure Cleon I would have acknowledged, could he have been pinned down in coversation, that should someone rebel, and succeed, then his personal objection would likely not matter, since he would be dead (and if he remained alive, the perpetrators of the rebellion might well live to regret such an error).
