[draft] Gazetteer proposal - Finance in Fenspace

[robkelk]

I was going to work on chapter two of Legend of Galactic Girls over lunch, but everything hit the
fan at once... By the time that was over, I was too tired to do much in the way of creative work. Instead, I pulled together some scattered notes from various
threads and added a couple of bits of my own to them... What did I get wrong, and what did I leave out?

Finance in Fenspace

"Can you imagine the bragging rights? That's the real Fen
currency, you know that."

- Eric Zhu (owner of The Island), in Disturbing Implications of Land Rising into the Sky

Bragging rights may be the real currency of Fenspace, but you can't (usually) buy a tank of fuel with them.

Money

Currencies naturally divide into two groups - those from the 'Danelaw and those native to Fenspace.

'Danelaw currencies - in decreasing order of popularity, Australian dollars, US dollars, Euros, Pounds sterling, and others - are used by Fendanes and Fen
who have a great deal of business with Earth (such as Stellvia). They have the advantage of being
well-known and having established rates of exchange, but are disliked by Fen who left Earth to get away from the 'Danelaw.

Currencies native to Fenspace are based on goodwill, assets, or both. Most are officially pegged to the Bank of Sol's "solar credit". In
actuality, some privately-issued currencies are more valued than others (just like in the American old west):

* "A-list" currencies are backed by both goodwill and assets, and issued by reputable known groups - which limits them to the Mars and Venus
Terraforming Projects, The Island, and Hephaestus.

* "B-list" currencies, such as the one issued by the Hidden Asteroid, are backed by goodwill or
assets.

* "C-list" currencies are not backed at all, and thus are strictly novelty items outside of the issuing group - the equivalent of the old west's
"wooden nickels". If Candy Apple Red's issued its own money, this is where it would be
ranked.

The most common asset used to back Fenspace currency is biomass - it's the one thing not easily available in the greater Solar System. Seeds, plants,
animals, soil... even sewage has a high intrinsic worth, especially in the terraforming projects. On
the biomass standard, the several hundred acres the Grover's Corners lifted gives those hardy
pioneers a net worth higher than Hephaestus and Stellvia
put together. The only reason this didn't cause a noticeable economic dislocation was that Operation GREAT JUSTICE began a couple
of weeks after the Grover's Corners launch.

Currency trading on Earth determines the exchange rate between the baseline "solar credit" and major 'Daneside currencies. As of the beginning of
Operation GREAT JUSTICE, the Solar Credit was close enough to parity with the U.S. Dollar to not matter.

Balance transfers between Fenspace banks, or between Fenspace and the 'Danelaw, are handled by bonded AIs that were specially programmed and 'waved to
be as incorruptable as possible.

Physical Currency

There's not much paper money in Fenspace, mainly because the paper is worth more as stock for Martian fertilizer than as money. But like so many other
things these days, money can be reduced to electronic transactions. For practicality if nothing else, Fenspace is a "cashless" society.

Thus, any institution that issues its own currency also issues its own credit card. These vary greatly depending on the issuer - the "Venus Express"
card is valuable in its own right because of the Venusian-diamond inlays in the card, while the Hephaestus
"Steel Credit" routinely sets off metal detectors. (Both are pegged to the Bank of Sol's "solar credit" at a
1:1 exchange rate.) On the other hand, little distinguishes Stellvia's "Visa" cards
(based on the Australian Dollar) from those issued by Earth-side banks.

The credit card has become Fenspace's de facto identification card, since everybody needs to
have one in order to do business with anyone else without resorting to barter. Libertarian and anarchic factions tend to make it easy to obtain cards issued to
"John Smith", "Jiro Yamada", or other cultures' equivalents; other factions tend to require, if not a real name, at least a false name
that isn't blatantly obvious.



-Rob Kelk




"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

---

On the biomass standard, the several hundred acres the Grover's Corners lifted gives those hardy pioneers a net worth higher than Hephaestus and Stellvia put together.

---

Wow. I never even thought of that. Wow.
Hey guys! We're rich!

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[robkelk]

Yeah, but just try to get Gaia to let you spend any of it...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Ebony]

---

Wow. I never even thought of that. Wow.

---

Two words: Fresh vegetables.
Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, yeah, we were planning on a produce stand near one of the airlocks, but we weren't expecting it to be, well, a gold mine. So to speak.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[Ebony]

And now I have this image of a line of signs floating in tandem with Grover's Corners that read "Fresh Peaches - 5,000 km." Ebony the Black Dragon
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[ECSNorway]

Well, Fen /do/ have to eat, and pay for that load of doritos and Dew somehow...
Rockhounds, Inc deals - on paper - primarily in American dollars, and all paperwork related to its transactions uses that as its primary currency reference. Other currencies are accepted, however. Any currency listed on the Bank of Sol exchange is accepted, especially the three primaries and Hidden Asteroid. (Most of the more unusual currencies go right back out the door as payment to the various asteroid-mining groups.)
One source of frequent injections of US dollars into the orbital community is the Benjamin Franklin space station, which buys (universally in American currency) odd items of 'wavetech from fen for the TSAB research program. While this constitutes a relatively minor source of Fenspace's overall trade with Earth (which is, of course, dominated by tourism, export of asteroid ore, and import of foodstuffs, electronic gadgetry of all sorts, and entertainment media), it is a welcome infusion of ready cash for the occasional spacer in need - and a handy way to dispose of 'waved gadgets that didn't quite work out the way you wanted them to.
And, since I don't think anyone's brought it up yet, rumor has it that Rockhounds is currently in negotiation with the United States Government to open a new branch dealing in disposal of toxic and nuclear waste by means of solar dumping. The scheme as currently imagined would involve using mined-out rocks too small or of too-inconvenient internal shape to convert into habitations, filling them with barrels of waste, sealing them up, and using a long-burn, low-thrust rocket to lob them into the sun along a carefully-calculated polar orbital path (so as to avoid the risk of having spacers wander into their path, graviational capture by inner planets, collisions with random asteroids, etc).--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[M Fnord]

Actually, this brings up something that's been bugging me for a while now. Rockhounds primary industry is mining asteroids and selling the metal to Earth, right? Running a few numbers, it looks like the first Space Rock would've contained enough metal to keep terrestrial production going through to 2015. And Rockhounds has done seven of these things.
So the question is either a) how in the hell did the metal market not crash, or b) where the hell is all that metal?
(Not a slam on Rockhounds as a concept, mind, just a "wait, what?" moment on my part.)---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Valles]

a.) Quite possibly it did, but that workforce and capital just went on to do other things.
b.) Would you want your supply of, say, dirt-cheap steel, to be at the mercy of a foreign government? Plus, a giant space whatsit is useful for other things - there are current-day marketed pharmaceuticals, I understand, that have to be cooked up in freefall.
c.) Gundam's answer. They're going into space habitats. Maybe I was wrong about what the understructure of the Venusian Castles is made out of - maybe they're constructed from conventional steel girderwork techniques.
d.) If the difference in shipping costs between low orbit and the moon is enough to cover Rockhounds' bill, then they could be scraping their surfaces for He-3. Even with the Castles, by my estimate, shipping between 25 and 50 GW each, they're still only meeting a tiny fraction of Earthside civilization's energy needs. Fusion power is definitely a market where a tiny pinch of carefully-monitored 'wave would make a disproportionate amount of difference.

===============================================
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."

[M Fnord]

---

a.) Quite possibly it did, but that workforce and capital just went on to do other things.

---

Yeeah, somehow I don't think the global steel market is just going to fold up and walk away without some sort of obvious consequences.

---

b.) Would you want your supply of, say, dirt-cheap steel, to be at the mercy of a foreign government?

---

Not really the point. If we take Rockhounds' setup at face value, then the supply for metal has outsripped demand by an order of magnitude at least. If it's on the market, then it's devalued the metals in question to almost nothing. If it's not on the market... where is it?

---

c.) Gundam's answer. They're going into space habitats.

---

Which is probably the most logical answer - the source says that mined-out Space Rocks are converted into habitats and sold to various buyers. It actually makes a bit more sense if Rockhounds cut out the mining middlemen and just converted the rocks into Cole habitats or whatever. Not my call, though.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[ECSNorway]

I expect a large chunk /does/ get used in FenSpace, given the massive construction projects various people have posited and the growth of colonies on various planets.
Also, we're not going to be mining out Ceres or Vesta anytime soon; we're talking smaller rocks that are fairly easy to drag into Earth orbit where all the refining takes place. Given the existence of Speed Drives, it's easier to drag the rocks back here, mine them out, and ship them back where they came from, than to try to set up and supply a refining operation in the Belt itself. I doubt any of the Rocks is more than a few kilometers across.
Finally, yes, it would be fairly easy to saturate the market for iron with a few rocks... but there's a lot more out in the Belt than iron. World iron production is ~ 1 billion metric tons per year; the average nickel-iron Rock (as mined by Rockhounds) would produce something like 3-4 times this much. (While this might kill the iron mining industry on Earth, a) a lot of those workers would be moving over to the asteroid work, and b) environmentalists would love it...)
One of the biggest necessities in maintaining any sort of biosphere off-earth is fresh water, and there's a good amount of ice, as far as is currently theorized, among the asteroids (and Saturn's rings, comets, etc, etc, etc).
A large portion contain large quantities of carbon and silicon (very valuable for the Terraforming efforts and other programs).
And, of course, the reason why you get prospectors and the like, rather than big consortiums: precious metals. Small deposits, hard to find, but once found... very valuable.
ETA: Remember that the 2015 figure involves reducing an asteroid completely. Rockhounds doesn't do that; it leaves a big hole with internal subdivisions, suitable for converting into habitations - and the external shell is going to have to be thick enough to keep out radiation, given the lack of a Van Allen belt, so it's going to be, probably, several tens of meters thick...--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

---

Yeeah, somehow I don't think the global steel market is just going to fold up and walk away without some sort of obvious consequences.

---

It wouldn't, of course, but would our level of detail necessarily have shown the effects of that in the posted stories?
Ja, -n
(brainstorming, yo.)

===============================================
"I'm terribly sorry, but I have to kill you quite horribly now."

[M Fnord]

---

Also, we're not going to be mining out Ceres or Vesta anytime soon; we're talking smaller rocks that are fairly easy to drag into Earth orbit where all the refining takes place. Given the existence of Speed Drives, it's easier to drag the rocks back here, mine them out, and ship them back where they came from, than to try to set up and supply a refining operation in the Belt itself. I doubt any of the Rocks is more than a few kilometers across.

---

A 1km M-type asteroid has roughly 2 billion metric tons of metal in it. The Rocks as you've described 'em (between 5-7km across) would easily have 5-10 billion tons of metal each.

---

Finally, yes, it would be fairly easy to saturate the market for iron with a few rocks... but there's a lot more out in the Belt than iron. World iron production is ~ 1 billion metric tons per year; the average nickel-iron Rock (as mined by Rockhounds) would produce something like 3-4 times this much. (While this might kill the iron mining industry on Earth, a) a lot of those workers would be moving over to the asteroid work, and b) environmentalists would love it...)

---

Right, but that's the problem. You're selling directly to Earth, and with seven Space Rocks in five years you've produced enough high-quality iron and nickel to last the mundane market until 2050 at a minimum. Unless you're stockpiling or otherwise not selling on the mundane market, by flooding the market like that you're not just killing the metal mining industry on Earth, you're killing it in Fenspace.
I mean, hell, mine out Greenwood and selling that metal piecemeal over ten years puts you on the same playing ground as USX or Krupp. More Rocks like that just screws you and everybody else.
Suggestion (take it as you will): Modify the Rockhounds timeline a bit to let the company diversify. They're selling the metal from Greenwood, but at the same time they're converting smaller (~50-100m asteroids) Rocks into habitats (ex: Hidden Asteroid and Franklin Station), doing nitrogen & raw organics mining in the outer system for the terraforming projects, precious metals prospecting, etc.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[ECSNorway]

Actually, I stand by my remark about radiation shielding above. Which means the outer shell of J. Random Rockhounds Pre-Fabricated Space Habitat may well be over a hundred meters thick.
Hidden Asteroid is probably one of the 2-3km rocks; they're going to need space if they're going to be a "village".
Finally, something like 75%+ of asteroids are mostly carbon, not useful metals - I could see that being where most of the Habitat conversions come from, with the spoils being converted through 'waved refinery processing into diamondoid structural members for construction, etc... (Crystal Cities, anyone? --
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[M Fnord]

---

Actually, I stand by my remark about radiation shielding above. Which means the outer shell of J. Random Rockhounds Pre-Fabricated Space Habitat may well be over a hundred meters thick.

---

Overkill, man. Two meters will protect against anything short of the Sun going nova. Make it five on the safe side, but still...---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

---

c.) Gundam's answer. They're going into space habitats.

---

Yep. You didn't think that the "many years of steady construction" that Stellvia's been going through was all made from Venusian diamondoid, did you?

---

Overkill, man. Two meters will protect against anything short of the Sun going nova. Make it five on the safe side, but still...

---

Hey, there's plenty of paranoid Fen out there...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Kokuten]

---

Hephaestus "Steel Credit" routinely sets off metal detectors.

---

I so approve of this. I snorted beer through my nose!

---

Hey, there's plenty of paranoid Fen out there...

---

I would have to confess that the additional layers on the bottom and sides of Hephaestus tend to be 5 meters thick on a minimum...Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Thinking on this a while leads me to think that there are several people carrying enough credit cards to make a sizable and weighty lump. How do they manage all those accounts? Some sort of Semi-A.I. Agent that acts as a personal financial manager?

[robkelk]

Probably.
My take is that only the compulsive or the collector will have cards from all the issuers - the Bank of Sol would spend quite a few processing cycles on keeping exchange rates up-to-date for these folks.
Most folks have a small collection of cards from their preferred big and/or local issuers, and a few oddballs only have one card.
Noah Scott carries one of only three Stellvia Gold Visa cards ever issued (the other two are held by Yayoi Fujisawa and Lisa Vanette), and sees no reason to carry anything else (except when he's travelling incognito, when he also carries the Stellvia Visa card made out to "D. Quincy Sangnoir"). At the other extreme, Yoriko Nikaido has cards from all six major factions, the Pirates, the Ninja, the Supers, the Watch, Hephaestus, Stellvia, and the Dorsai. (God only knows how she got that last one, since it's usually only issued to Dorsai Irregulars...)

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Cobalt Greywalker]

A.C. however has a large bundle of cards for various identities, from various factions.
This includes the one "Eternal Venus Express" card ever issued (a specially manufactured Venusian-diamond card with a pink-diamond/iso-linier smart chip made out to Sailor Mars. This only got to her when a Senshi with Watch training managed to put-pocket it into her posession. A.C. does actually use it, but mainly to buy unimportant stuff from the Venus Terraforming Project and only if the senshi in question has behaved themselves. Which she doesn't do very often.).
A.C. mainly has Libbie deal with those sorts of things, which means she has a fair chunk of money invested in the various projects.
Given the gardens and greenhouses she has back at Prometheus Forge, she could technically issue her own card.

[Norgarth]

Here's another thing to keep in mind about the amount of iron/ect that gets mined out of asteroids. A lot of the metal goes back into the asteroids in the form of walls, floors, doors, ect.
Besides unless these asteroids are made of pure iron, then by the time you smelt the ore, the resulting volume of metal is a fair bit less than the volume removed.
More of the metal goes to custom made fenships, non-spacerock stations, the colonies on Mars and the various moons and so on. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what is actually sold to Dane companies isn't so much iron as less common elements and precious metals.
********
On the subject of biomass, when I first wrote up the description of Babylon .5, I stated that they have some agracultureal sections, more recently I decided that at least one of those areas is set for tropical conditions and grows Bananas (the APE units like them) and maybe some sugarcane.
************
finally, something that occured to me reading the DU based thread. I'm sure that if you look hard enough, you could find uranium ore scattered around. Can anyone else picture some boskonians trying to refine some uranium for use in bombs? __________________
666-HELL The phone number of the Beast
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bob Schroeck]

---

One of the biggest necessities in maintaining any sort of biosphere off-earth is fresh water, and there's a good amount of ice, as far as is currently theorized, among the asteroids (and Saturn's rings, comets, etc, etc, etc).

---

Oh, right! I remember thinking that the GC folks might do a "Martian Way" job and grab an ice chunk from Saturn's rings (if there's a big enough one) or from the Oort Cloud, bring it to L3, and sell it off in hundredweights for pennies to anyone who needs water. If Rockhounds is going to go into that business, though, that would predate our arrival -- no problem there.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[robkelk]

---

more recently I decided that at least one of those areas is set for tropical conditions and grows Bananas (the APE units like them)

---

If you've got any to spare, Noah would like to speak with you regarding easing his banana-split cravings...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Kokuten]

Yah think about it, anyone carrying fresh meat 'n' veg to Hephaestus can damn near name his price - groceries would probably be our prime import, including basic foodstuffs and luxury items, fresh media, gaming systems.. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979