Why the long night?
- Thread starter DangerousThing
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Dangerous is quite correct.
Banks and other financial institutions have been using an equation for years in order to select the options they take in trading in futures. This is where the imaginary money comes from.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And this is where a lot of the imaginary money ended up - is was loaned in very large amounts to people who couldn't afford to pay it back unless properly prices continued to rise - which is based on people getting pay rises ultimately funded by taxing the imaginary money being made by the banks and the imaginary profits funding private enterprise .
One day someone woke up and realised there is more imaginary money in circulation today than the entire output of real human wealth generation through the whole of recorded history and that the whole system is in reality a house of cards.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nope, what we are facing in Europe now is many times wose than the events of the great depression.
If things are not handled correctly and the Euro collapses and the EU starts to unravel you will see a meltdown of financial institutions worldwide. There will be massive civil unrest, territorial disputes, war, famine disease - all in mainland Europe.
Now imagine that the Euro collapse destroys confidence in the US dollar and its value become that of a peanut, what happens when states refuse to pay their federal taxes, military units desert en mass because their pay is worthless and they can make more of a living in the local community.
Aren't doomsday scenarios fun =)
The Long Night brought an end to the Imperium (call it the Second Imperium or Rule of Man if you like but in reality it was still the Vilani Imperium under new management) - it did not cause empire wide strife on the scale third Imperial historians imply.
REMEMBER: Real World Politics post 1950 are definitely OFF LIMITS -Due to the civility of the discussion so far, and only looking at the economics, no one's in trouble. But it's important not to go there.
Mind you - I am posting this warning because my initial desired response to a several of the last 10 posts would be political. So, I'm putting the warning out there. A forseen fall of the EU would be pretty much political discussion, so it's important not to further pursue that line.
Mind you - I am posting this warning because my initial desired response to a several of the last 10 posts would be political. So, I'm putting the warning out there. A forseen fall of the EU would be pretty much political discussion, so it's important not to further pursue that line.
The X-Boat service was created (IIRC) in the wake of the Civil War sometime in the mid 600s
Gray Pennell
SOC-12
Actually if you throw in some of the pre WWII conflicts and we might be getting closer to the truth. Though its not OTU.
The OTU is differently more dark ages. But common knowledge of the Dark Ages has grown tremendously in the last 40 years. We all know that the "Dark Ages" didnt begin with the Fall of Roman Empire but really began at the end of the Justinian I Westen Empire. We know there were many renaissance like periods through out 520-1100. I would even say that the Dark Ages ended with the Holy Roman Empire. But you still have the Frankish Kingdoms and residue kingdoms. So the Dark Ages is not a total singel collapse but a series of them with multiple periods of renaissances.
So OTU would probably have a collapse that occurred slowly at first. The first step is the abolishing of the Ziru's cast and government system. This would lead to some post colonial type conflicts not talked about in OTU but it helps to suck up funds.
As paying for the Nth Insteller wars, and the chaos of the new system a finical crisses occur. Getting a great depression. A finical crisses means a lot but most of all the disruption of supply chains and colony funding.
This endangers KEY small colonies (vacum worlds with less than 1,000,000 people, connecting mains) along jump 2/3 routes. The outlaying ones would go first but eventually all but a handful of these would survive. This leads to territory getting cut off. In this image its not a lost of technology but the colony collapse that causes the breakdown.
About 4 different types of governments appear. Single systems, multi system, Pocket Empires which separate the two regional powers made up remnants of the Terrain Confederation and Ziur Sirka. The largest pocket empires appear on the trade routes connecting the two regional powers.
We then get the OTU version of Muslim and Viking raids in the form of Aslan and Vargr attacks and anyone else who smells blood.
Though there is no mention of it we can assume with some safety that for every pocket empire mentioned there is a renaissances of some sort.
I think the key to end the Long Night was The Sylean Federation joining with the Vilani Culture World. This gives the Federation the power to face the Rim ward Pocket Empires like the Chanestin Kingdon, Intersteller Confederacy
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There was no x-boat service.
The best vilani couriers were jump 2, the standard civilian ship was jump 1.
It didn't exist until the middle of the 3I...
G. Kashkanun Anderson
SOC-13
The X-boat Service was launched by then-Imperial Regent Arbellatra in 624. It was in fact a direct response to the Civil War (604-622), which in turn was largely the result of centrifugal frictions exposed by the First Frontier War (589-604). The poor communication times of the old ad hoc network (4 years from Regina to the Core!) rendered the Spinward Marches an exposed, beseiged and effectively independent fiefdom, a fact which no doubt served as both a 'grievance' of -- and an advantage to -- Grand Admiral haut-Plankwell and his followers.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
No, it's literally impossible to exhaustively test a lot of software - there are too many potential combinations of input etc. You test what you can, then fix what you missed with service packs.
Ohhhhhh, temptation ... urge to ...
Dang it!! Ah well.
I think DangerousThing made a good point (although I'm reasonably certain that it was some other financial instrument involved, not stocks, but that's a quibble). The nature of the Traveller universe no doubt shaped the collapse - week-long delays for information to flow one or two parsecs. Confidence is an important part of a healthy economy, and with a combination of long delays, potential for abuse, and - likely - rumors and speculation taking the place of fact in the absence of more timely information, confidence would go rather quickly once something happened to make people worry.
The real question is why it took so long to rebuild - and I think the answer to that is more political than economic. Canon dates the end of the long night to the rise of a single grand empire. That's the kind of view that would be held by proponents of said empire, not by those who were on the wrong end of that rise. It would be like Spain conquering Elizabethan England and then going on to absorb the rest of Europe and someone announcing, "Yay, the Dark Ages is over!" An English or German merchant would likely respond, "What Dark Ages? We were doing just fine until your troops showed up!"
the 1920's/30's Depression was a combination stock bubble (US) and wartime reparations (Deutschland, maybe others), plus post-war fatigue and industrial losses (Italy, UK, France). It was also quite uneven. In the US, it was massive damage; in Deutschland, it lead to violent agitation and a "peaceful" (yet not entirely non-violent) change of state from the Weimar Republic to the NaZi 3rd Reich (and attendent pulling out of depression). For the Ottomans, it marked the end of their empire.
War is both political and economic, and in the end, so was the Western Civilization "downturn & depression" set of the 1920's and 30's.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Long Night was triggered by a banking crisis - that's economic.
The politics come from the state of the Vilani Imperium and the Terrans attempts to prop up an interstellar government that had had its day.
Basically, within the Ziru Sirka there were many minor races that were beginning to want their autonomy back. When the upstart Terrans actually started to not lose the Interstellar Wars the Vilani faced a very unsettled and increasingly unruly home front.
The Ziru Sirka fell apart as much as the Terrans won the war.
The Terrans then did what we do best - think we will be seen as liberators and set up utopian governmental systems for people who want to rule themselves. It's amazing the Rule of Man lasted so long.
When the financial systems of the Imperium fell apart the Terrans could have held the Imperium together by force, but their military resources were stretched to breaking point and the Imperium was just too big.
So the Terrans withdrew back to their own pocket empire, while the Imperium disintegrated into pocket empires and the like.
To a high tech, self sufficient world or pocket empire there was no Long Night, just 2000 years of not having to pay taxes to Imperial overlords ;-)
The politics come from the state of the Vilani Imperium and the Terrans attempts to prop up an interstellar government that had had its day.
Basically, within the Ziru Sirka there were many minor races that were beginning to want their autonomy back. When the upstart Terrans actually started to not lose the Interstellar Wars the Vilani faced a very unsettled and increasingly unruly home front.
The Ziru Sirka fell apart as much as the Terrans won the war.
The Terrans then did what we do best - think we will be seen as liberators and set up utopian governmental systems for people who want to rule themselves. It's amazing the Rule of Man lasted so long.
When the financial systems of the Imperium fell apart the Terrans could have held the Imperium together by force, but their military resources were stretched to breaking point and the Imperium was just too big.
So the Terrans withdrew back to their own pocket empire, while the Imperium disintegrated into pocket empires and the like.
To a high tech, self sufficient world or pocket empire there was no Long Night, just 2000 years of not having to pay taxes to Imperial overlords ;-)
G. Kashkanun Anderson
SOC-13
The Antares Crisis of -1776 would not have happened if the political institutions surrounding it had been capable of deliberating with the authority with which they had been originally set up to do. The event was less a trigger than a signpost -- the proof that interregional frictions within the old Ziru Sirka/RoM had taken local interstellar culture beyond the event horizon.
The Old Order had been in steady decline for a millennium or more before the official date given for the collapse. It was the buildup of sand in the political gears that propelled the concomitant economic decline -- and also allowed the Terrans and Vargr (it was a joint effort, no matter what human histories say) to overthrow it. Terran social interference may have sped up the process of political disintegration, but it also revitalized many regions of space economically, perhaps allowing the Long Night to be less dark in some regions than others.
Demographically, the Ziru Sirka was pretty overwhelmingly Vilani in population. And some of the most widespread alien races (human or otherwise) were such because of how naturally they fit into the Vilani Order. Bwaps, Yileans, Anakundu and Answerin (for example) were all perfectly satisfied with their lot in the Ziru Sirka, and would have had little incentive to either throw their lot in with the Terrans or go off on their own.
Races who weren't so compliant (such as the Geonee) were brought to the brink of extermination and ultimately confined to reservations of a few worlds at most. And for all we know they were the lucky ones -- there's no reason to believe that some intransigent races weren't entirely exterminated.
The 'Terrans' never seemed too enthusiastic about the whole Rule of Man project to begin with; remember that the Second Imperium was founded as a 'Solomani' rebellion or coup against Terran authority. The original Terran plan was to rule the Vilani directly, as conquered subjects.
Terra has always been much more restive about protecting its place in the universe than Vland. The Third Imperium was only inviting trouble by drawing it into their domains, even if it is the most irresistible jewel in all Human Space.
Those worlds still had to contest with other ambitious high-tech neighbors, piracy or petty wars over scraps of necessary resources (critical raw materials, high-tech caches, breadbasket worlds, etc.). Worlds near the old borders also had to deal with encroachments by alien newcomers like the Aslan, Vargr and the occasional ambitious minor race.
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DangerousThing
SOC-13
I agree, but I was pointing out that too many managers devalue the importance of testing before release. Without this testing, we're releasing a beta product as a full release.
There are ways to write programs that increases their testability, but you're right - there are too many combinations of user input and program state that have to be tested for.
I could be wrong, but as far as I can remember, Bill's picture of the Vilani deliberately engineering member worlds that were not self-sufficient is not actual canon. I believe it is fanon, perhaps canon-compatible, but that's all.
Persoanlly I find it difficult to imagine worlds with sizable populations (10 million+) that aren't self-sufficient in all the important basics. Not I-refuse-to-believe-it-if-canon-actually-says-so difficult, but certainly I-wouldn't-introduce-it-myself difficult.
Hans
Four years from Regina to Capital with a jump-4 courier is completely unbelievable. Mora to Capital is 153 parsecs. Assuming a route exists that allows an average jump of 3.5 parsecs, we're talking about 44 jumps. Further assuming a courier has to spend an average of 24 hours in each system refuelling, such a cvourier could get from Regina to Capital in 352 days.
The 4 year figure seems to be based on the assumption that ordinary traffic averages 1.5 parsecs per jump maximum and takes 14 days per jump. And, of course, ignores the possibility that someone might have the bright idea of using couriers.
Hans
