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Insurance and Traveller

Note that starship loans are REALLY low interest rates; including insurance in the payment drops them to a level where there's almost no inflation, or loans are below inflation levels.
 
Zho claim adjusters find out the truth, then adjust the claimants and responsible parties so they are all happy with the just outcome.

No lawyers.
Note that starship loans are REALLY low interest rates; including insurance in the payment drops them to a level where there's almost no inflation, or loans are below inflation levels.
My guess is the Imperium via megacorps and banks has enough psychohistory tech to manage currency supply and largely eliminate inflation for the CrIMP. All that localized nasty can whipsaw though the local currency.
 
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Energy should cost practically nothing.

That leaves food, housing, transportation, electronics. entertainment, clothing, education, dependents, insurance, pensions, taxation.
 
Note that starship loans are REALLY low interest rates; including insurance in the payment drops them to a level where there's almost no inflation, or loans are below inflation levels.
I guess there's some kind of subsides by the Imperium, who knows it owns its very existence to the interstellar commerce.

After all, it rules the space between stars, so without it it's nothing...
 
Obviously, there are a gamut of issues the insurance company has to cover. It could, for example refuse to cover the loss of a ship that is not documented as always using refined fuel.
I would expect that using unrefined fuel would result in the insurer refusing to pay unless it was an explicit part of the insurance. Yes, they should pay if using unrefined fuel was had nothing to do with the loss. You're welcome to travel to the world of filing (which probably isn't the world you actually took out the policy on, but whatever world the insurance company finds it most profitable to have as their subsector office) and prove that they should pay up. Hopefully your bank sees this as the best way of them getting your debt to them covered and supports you.

Insurance for normal operations should be fairly cheap. Insurance covering things like piracy, not so much, depending on how bad the piracy is, and what habits the pirates have - if they're 'stand and deliver' types it might not be too bad, whereas if they're the sort that shots into their victims until they lose all thrust and power and then strip the wreck, it'll be a lot more expensive. Of course serious pirates probably try to capture the ship (generally worth more than the cargo) and space any crew or passengers that don't look like they're worth big ransoms, so insurance payouts will generally be to your bank and heirs.

I would expect flying without sufficient insurance would be grounds for your bank to foreclose on you, and if shippers/travellers find out on worlds that don't depend upon your service also a penalty to picking up freight and passengers.
 
Note that starship loans are REALLY low interest rates; including insurance in the payment drops them to a level where there's almost no inflation, or loans are below inflation levels.
Could the Imperial Credit be on the equivalent of the GOLD STANDARD ... there was no inflation when the Dollar was tied to a specific, fixed reference and only inflation in the GOLD standard when Spain dumped Gold from the New World on the Market pre-USA (or Rome started shaving the coins). Bring on the "Gold Pressed Latinium"!
 
Could the Imperial Credit be on the equivalent of the GOLD STANDARD ... there was no inflation when the Dollar was tied to a specific, fixed reference and only inflation in the GOLD standard when Spain dumped Gold from the New World on the Market pre-USA (or Rome started shaving the coins). Bring on the "Gold Pressed Latinium"!

Possibly. But what would the standard be? Iridium? Lanthanum? Many of the "precious metals" like gold, platinum, iridium, and palladium are actually not all that uncommon (especially in space); they are just hard to get to on Earth because gravitational sorting by density has placed most of ours down in the mantle and left it rarer up in the crust. A particular rare but useful isotope?

What was the old "Red Seal" United States Note tied to, as opposed to the "Green Seal" Federal Reserve Note?
 
What was the old "Red Seal" United States Note tied to, as opposed to the "Green Seal" Federal Reserve Note?
The United States Note issued during the 'fiat money' era (i.e., after the dollar was no longer defined as a fixed amount of gold or silver) was really no different in backing from the Federal Reserve Note; both were backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States. From the point of view of the consumer (you and me), there was no difference; from the point of view of the government, banks, and other high-finance institutions, the United States Notes were directly-issued 'notes of credit' and thus neither accrued interest nor contributed to the United States' national debt.

 
Could the Imperial Credit be on the equivalent of the GOLD STANDARD ... there was no inflation when the Dollar was tied to a specific, fixed reference and only inflation in the GOLD standard when Spain dumped Gold from the New World on the Market pre-USA (or Rome started shaving the coins). Bring on the "Gold Pressed Latinium"!
I had to come up with something that would work in that way. That came about because a ship crew (players) operating mostly outside the 3I couldn't rely on Imperial credits to be accepted. The item had to be something difficult or impossible to forge, portable, recognized for its value, making it usable pretty much everywhere so long as the planet was either high enough TL, about a 5 or 6 in this case assuming importation of a test / checking device that itself was readily available, or knew about this form of currency.

I called it a "Sliver." It was a small gold bar sort of like a Krugerrand or something similar. Inside was placed a known amount of a super-rare, island of stability, long-lived, super-heavy, radioactive element named Organisesium. Since this element is rare and hard to obtain, usually only larger governments and the biggest corporations can afford to hire ships and crews to go and obtain the raw material. Finding a recoverable cache of it would make you rich for several lifetimes.

The sliver is marked with the date of manufacture, etc., and the amount of Organisesium inside. Since this decays at a known rate, you can use a common test device to check that the sliver is the real thing. By entering the date, the device determines the remaining amount of Organisesium from the original amount put in it. Higher quality (TL) devices also can determine if the decay elements present are correct for it. This way the sliver is validated as genuine.

I set each sliver at 5000 Icr. There is a "light" version worth 1000 Icr as well. This way you could carry around a few of these and have access to a viable currency anywhere you go. The norm for these is to exchange them at a bank or government office for local currency rather than do direct exchanges at some local merchant's store, unless that store is like say the equivalent of a pawn shop, or coin dealer.

Orgainsesium is only found near neutron stars or from super nova's as it is very difficult for it to form anywhere there aren't very heavy elements in relative abundance that are bombarded by neutrons under intense pressure. That makes it a rarity and difficult and very expensive to artificially manufacture. Thus, its relative inability to be forged. The half-life of Organisesium is hundreds of thousands of years so there will always be some present in a sliver.
 
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Possibly. But what would the standard be? Iridium? Lanthanum? Many of the "precious metals" like gold, platinum, iridium, and palladium are actually not all that uncommon (especially in space); they are just hard to get to on Earth because gravitational sorting by density has placed most of ours down in the mantle and left it rarer up in the crust. A particular rare but useful isotope?
As long as the choice is MINE ... :cool:

There is an element essential to the manufacture of Jump Drives capable of greater than J1 performance (UNOBTAINIUM). This element does not naturally occur ... ever (like the man-made elements). However, this vital element was discovered as a side effect of ferrous alloys being exposed to Jumpspace. Thus old Starship hulls are not salvaged because of the value of the IRON HULL (even Superdense), but in order to refine out the trace quantities of "UNOBTANIUM" created during its lifetime of passage through Jumpspace. Each 100 tonnes of HULL can yield about 0.1 grams of UNOBTAINIUM after 40 years of service (1000 weeks of exposure to radiation of Jumpspace).

Thus the reason that J1 occurs at TL 9 but J2+ must wait until TL 11 to be discovered ... it took time IN JUMPSPACE to acquire the UNOBTANIUM vital to build J2+ drives.
 
Insurance for normal operations should be fairly cheap.
You're insuring a vessel worth ~40MCr. At 1/10th of 1% that's 40K per year, 3300/month. That's almost a crewman all its own. Perhaps "cheap" for a 40MCr asset, but its still impactful on the bottom live of a scrappy trader.
 
Could the Imperial Credit be on the equivalent of the GOLD STANDARD ... there was no inflation when the Dollar was tied to a specific, fixed reference and only inflation in the GOLD standard when Spain dumped Gold from the New World on the Market pre-USA (or Rome started shaving the coins). Bring on the "Gold Pressed Latinium"!
Technically too few gold backed dollars chased too much expansion of the western US and railroads, and the finding of vast silver deposits caused interested parties to change the laws that were bimetallic exchange backing from revolutionary times to go exclusively gold.

Then a few decades later new techniques for leaching of low grade ore allowed the gold supply to expand to meet the demand.

Relevant points for game credit backing-
* laws and regulations for exotic materials based currency backing can change due to surprise new raw resource sources,

* agendas supporting politics and law that favor existing holders of the hard currency and not matching currency to actual economic activity can distort and destabilize, and

* new technology can artificially alter the resource base of any said currency.

That’s why I think something like the exotic materials based as portable verifiable trade currency would be a thing, but the management of the actual currency on a sector plus scale would be virtual supply management matching carefully to actual economic activity.
 
Apparently, the Ming Dynasty did have the silver standard, and fell, because supply dried up.

The following Manchu Dynasty insisted that all exports were paid by silver, and fell because the British in trying to find a way to balance the trade deficit, unbalanced Chinese society.
 
Possibly. But what would the standard be? Iridium? Lanthanum? Many of the "precious metals" like gold, platinum, iridium, and palladium are actually not all that uncommon (especially in space); they are just hard to get to on Earth because gravitational sorting by density has placed most of ours down in the mantle and left it rarer up in the crust. A particular rare but useful isotope?

What was the old "Red Seal" United States Note tied to, as opposed to the "Green Seal" Federal Reserve Note?
Silver, FR notes to 1964; in 1968, existing silver certs were no longer redeemable save for Federal Reserve fiat notes.
Silver coins to 1965. All later are fiat; mostly copper. Note that the penny actually costs more than 1¢ to mint
The older bills (Pre 1932) were gold backed.

Note that during WWII, retaining gold coins was temporarily banned. All bank acquired gold US coin was to be sent back the federal reserve for returning to bar stock... hence the now rarity of 19th C gold eagles ($10) and double eagles ($20)...
 
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Silver coins to 1965. All later are fiat; mostly copper.

An interesting minor detail: Dimes, Quarters and Half-Dollars were 90% Silver until 1964, after which Dimes and Quarters went to copper-nickel clad fiat. But Kennedy Half-Dollars retained a 40% Silver alloy from 1965-1970 before becoming copper-nickel clad fiat in 1971.

Note that during WWII, retaining gold coins was temporarily banned. All bank acquired gold US coin was to be sent back the federal reserve for returning to bar stock... hence the now rarity of 19th C gold eagles ($10) and double eagles ($20)...

Many people don't realize that the basis of the American decimal currency system that was established in the 1790s had officially named tiers at each level (using the Spanish Dollar as the standard unit of account):
  • Mill (x0.001 Dollar)
  • Cent (x0.01 Dollar)
  • Disme (x0.1 Dollar)
  • Dollar (x1) (- based upon the Spanish Dollar)
  • Eagle (x10 Dollar)
Mills were primarily used for accounting; no coin was ever minted with a value of less than a half-cent (5 mills) that I am aware of.
 
An interesting minor detail: Dimes, Quarters and Half-Dollars were 90% Silver until 1964, after which Dimes and Quarters went to copper-nickel clad fiat. But Kennedy Half-Dollars retained a 40% Silver alloy from 1965-1970 before becoming copper-nickel clad fiat in 1971.



Many people don't realize that the basis of the American decimal currency system that was established in the 1790s had officially named tiers at each level (using the Spanish Dollar as the standard unit of account):
  • Mill (x0.001 Dollar)
  • Cent (x0.01 Dollar)
  • Disme (x0.1 Dollar)
  • Dollar (x1) (- based upon the Spanish Dollar)
  • Eagle (x10 Dollar)
Mills were primarily used for accounting; no coin was ever minted with a value of less than a half-cent (5 mills) that I am aware of.
This division persists to this day; the dollar is legally divided into ten dimes, or one hundred cents. This is why the ten-cent piece is labelled for a value of "one dime" rather than "ten cents"; the twenty-five-cent piece is an anomaly in that it is labelled "quarter dollar" rather than "twenty-five cents". The fifty-cent piece was similarly labelled "half dollar" - but note in both of the latter cases, it's explicitly "«fraction» dollar", not "one quarter" or "one half".
 
This division persists to this day; the dollar is legally divided into ten dimes, or one hundred cents. This is why the ten-cent piece is labelled for a value of "one dime" rather than "ten cents"; the twenty-five-cent piece is an anomaly in that it is labelled "quarter dollar" rather than "twenty-five cents". The fifty-cent piece was similarly labelled "half dollar" - but note in both of the latter cases, it's explicitly "«fraction» dollar", not "one quarter" or "one half".

Yes, just as the gold coins were quarter-eagle, half-eagle, eagle, and double-eagle before 1933.

And before the 5-cent piece was made of nickel in the mid-19th Cent., it was a small silver coin called a "half-dime". When they went to nickel, there were 3-cent and 5-cent nickel pieces.
 
An interesting minor detail: Dimes, Quarters and Half-Dollars were 90% Silver until 1964, after which Dimes and Quarters went to copper-nickel clad fiat. But Kennedy Half-Dollars retained a 40% Silver alloy from 1965-1970 before becoming copper-nickel clad fiat in 1971.



Many people don't realize that the basis of the American decimal currency system that was established in the 1790s had officially named tiers at each level (using the Spanish Dollar as the standard unit of account):
  • Mill (x0.001 Dollar)
  • Cent (x0.01 Dollar)
  • Disme (x0.1 Dollar)
  • Dollar (x1) (- based upon the Spanish Dollar)
  • Eagle (x10 Dollar)
Mills were primarily used for accounting; no coin was ever minted with a value of less than a half-cent (5 mills) that I am aware of.
A couple states minted mill coins... but never the feds.
Circulated cent-denominated coins in 1870's (from research I did for a deadlands campaign) 1/2¢, 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, 5¢, 10¢, 20¢, 25¢, 50¢
The Nickel was originally the "Half-dime"...
Circulated dollar coinage: $1, $2.5, $5, $10, $20.
They had names, too:
$1 Silver Dollar
$1 Gold Dollar
$2.5 Quarter Eagle
$5 Half-Eagle
$10 Eagle
$20 Double Eagle.
 
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