The economics of prospect space Eras **Vopallian Kinetics** The kinetics of old vopallian economics is not really clear on where it stood but the most convenient parallel is that of a socdem-like system but without the cultural framework humans arrived to it, the purpose of kineticism was to create an economy where the fluctuating forces at play transferred in chained economies where local roosts dictated production and incentives while the overarching government acted as the high arbiter of settling disputes. The end goal of this system was a kinetic, meta stable framework that spoke in synchronicity with the sound spirits as currency to the [[fosskemian|Fosskemian]] was a fluid entity and so constant spending was the norm. As was incentives to what we would call state sponsored terrorism. This framework never addressed these issues and was made at a planetbound phase. **quasi-merchantilism** The quasi-merchantile economic paradigm of steppe era utanguis was pretty reminiscent of central Asian khanates on earth in many regards, where the whole operation was a protection racket to some level. However the way it worked was that there was very regulated flow of goods between rival utanguis grand herds, as being able to trade was seen as a privilege of connected to them and trade between herds was almost always done with diplomatic strings attached to nearly no exception in the record. This system was very archaic and would be displaced by the more flexible merit systems of [[Vusidian Dominion]]. **Cobaltine Postscarcity** There was no real economic system during the cobalt. It was all managed and distributed by the caretaker systems, the utanguis from an economic perspective were pets where they made use of amenities but had very little agency in the actual economy. The AI systems had automata mining and manufacturing that were of dubious quality but the size of the cobalt only ever stayed to what made sense for the local AIs. The cobalt was nuclear fission oriented as a system; it was not as advanced as it may sound from a tech perspective with Vusidian Dominion era biotech and fusion readily outstripping it let alone the antimatter forging [[void ecologies|Void Ecologies]], the hyperspace generators, biokinetic symbionts or [[Composer]] ASI. They didn't have a growth economy as the whole system was a glorified lab for the eras to come... **The Merit system** With the [[Utanguis]] a shift away from older quasi-merchantilism occurred as the more theocracy oriented systems of government took hold. The merit system emerged as a desire to scale up a loyalty metric to the belief of dozinism across civilizations. It can be seen as a social credit like entity, but it also was based on rank and duty in what was a very institutional, regimented society that sought to spread dozinist thought to the stars. It had favors built in as a black market as well. It was to an extent a post scarcity economics, its basis is on one of abstract ideals with whole species getting "species merit" based on their vus qualias that the utanguis setup to guide species to the grand ways of [[Dozin]]. Symbiosis for all. The ambitious were rewarded regardless of species, but the baseline valuations of entire species meant a speciest hegemony was the norm. This led to massive conflicts and even cycles of inter species violence as the judgements of the central figure of the system, Dozin's Avatar, came under fire and question by not just rivaling packs jockeying for favor but also between species who believed they were better than what the utanguis led hegemony were seen as rigging. The situation also made a packmaster aristocracy of sorts, whose corruption led them to manipulate the Avatar to their own ends and that corruption could be seen in the increasingly nonsensical inequalities the late dominion had with merit being disproportionately given to packs close to Jicarilla and those who hijacked the neutral class of utanguis that were meant to be neutral arbiters of merit. It was this kind of corruption that would be in many regards the downfall of the dominion as much as the Ikeitan civil war, [[Synthetic/[[Cancer|Cancer]]]] deployment or the assassination of The Avatar was as demagogic iputurviers carved the dominion up into packs they would be apaturviers (packmasters) of where the merit system continued but did undergo a range of reforms to further limit the corruption of the neutral minds- one was having it be multi species. Another was the wheel ideal, An Appath. The appath also emphasized disintegration ethics and the disintegration ethic won out in their branch of [[Dozinism]] which led to more classic vusidian aligned faiths to reject it as basically evil. Even antidozinist ikeitans were more reasonable. **Ikeitan Bulk** The ikeitans amazingly use a currency that is respected by the species that created and once lorded over them. The merit. Their merits exchange very differently, but these bulk currencies are meant to be interstellar scaled currencies with local planetary economics being a parallel system in many cases. The [[Urzine Domain]] had individualized the merit system entirely, no species merit exists in the domain. Their individualistic approach to the system had been adopted by the silverites who combined that with the rank economics of traditional pack fleets. The ikeitans worked in bulk transfers, as the fleet controlled the flow of the fleets in their volumes a lot of leveraging of crews and crew poaching became the cold conflict within ikeitan fleets who had the tendency to dole privileges to those they held clout over as both the financial and military elite. A lot of trade mechanisms existed between ikeitans and other societies regardless as the need to get leverage for anti Dozinist operations in distant volumes meant a need for collaborators. The urzine domain's system had a surprisingly less corrupt character despite broad similarities to the dominion and that had to with the culture of mutual distrust even within the ikeitan ranks who at most kept close ties to few other ikeitans. And the tradition of killing ikeitans in front of their client species to disabuse them of worship added a useful anti-corruption mechanism as ikeitans caught violating the fleet doctrines and trying to enrich themselves or regard themselves as higher beings were dispensed with the killing action. The difficulty of ikeitan reproduction and the time to make older, enlightened ikeitans meant that such actions aren't taken lightly. However a lot of generational tensions exist as polyps and juvenile phase ikeitans are regarded as less valued and often made to fight the dozinists directly despite the power and capabilities of the elders who only selectively engage operations "as needed". These tensions led to rogue brigades of ikeitans and the [[Balch fleet|Balch Fleet]]'s build up the tech to kill Dozin first approach. The bulk trade of entire arcologies in the fleet also has led to lots of dissident clients that hold to their old faiths in the face of the supposed god killers. **Mediator neoDozinist Paradigm** The neoDozinist paradigm is notorious for how it basically is a repeat of Dozinism but with cycling leadership (for the idea of a Dozin avatar had been abandoned, as Dozin was believed to have seen no more need for the avatar as the complexity of prospect space allowed for universal manifestation of Dozin across the leviathan societies and hegemonic volume, indeed this is one of the main conceits of neoDozinist thought and one held by modern dozinist groups as pretender avatars from the pack master fiefdoms discredited the concept entirely even as many neo-Dozinists believe the first avatar to have been legitimate) and a multi species neutral eye. That theology aside, one finds an attempt to make the species hierarchy more inclusive with more fluidity between species castes than before and the idea that it isn't hierarchical but instead more akin to many cooperating organs of the larger leviathan being. These organs take the form of industries and constructed hyperspace's that interlink to create what is in effect a command economy where the gestalt council utilizes a lot of top-down cascading economics. Cascading top-down is where local authorities are expected to build the branches based on what their abilities allow for. The Mediator Gestalt however failed to learn shit from prior centuries and so had gained the same pack master corruption problem that the silverites addressed through individualized merit. The mediator approach was to make a separate organ for tackling corrupt actors and they kept making new ones every time another got corrupted. Their society remains a powerful force in prospect space despite the fomenting revolution of wheelists from a mix of the unequal hierarchy being too obvious in a population that aspired to move past the old vusidian ways and the sheer degenerate activities packmasters are known to have sunk to causing widespread disgust with the population that see them as [[metasyndicate|Metasyndicate]] collaborators at best, worse was how they enabled the cancer in some sectors for incomprehensibly awful reasons. **Metasyndicalism** The modern economic paradigm of the metasydicate is one of extreme individualization and is notorious for its kineticist proclivities. It is a mixed economy but slanted to the steered [[flux|Flux]] the composers manage things through in the chaos they aspire to make. Local infrastructural and bureaucratic authorities are usually automata like the [[Jama]] but it is an agent centric system as they call it, where it is regarded as a civilization of a trillion actors who moved from society to society, indeed the economic ideology spread across prospect space with competing factions recruiting agents across prospect space even the swarm and cloud societies. This system's aggressive approach had created many enemies in practice, but that is part of the design as many syndicates formed from these agents and began to beat each other up to create the fires of harmonious resonance. There is a lot of inequality in the system and one can expect to be regularly dragged into bizarre situations, however it allows for a lot of breathing space even with the composers having direct agents along with the metasyndicate they use as a vehicle to spread harmony. Their society is a levitation society but its ethical basic is alien to the utanguis despite the society being ran by the descendants of the very AI that once uplifted their kind. **Swarm economics** The economics of the swarm is one that assumes singular agency of the swarm, which leads to a hive economy. However it is not the total same as flocks are rationed across the system with similar goods and trade between swarms is possible with autonomous flocks arranging such stuff even with the overall pathos of the swarm being always in mind- all exchanges are means to fulfilling the pathological desires of a swarm. All are means in the swarm economy. This has led to a lot of expenditures into hideously impractical activities as the pathos causes such inefficiencies to spring up and these issues vary from swarm to swarm but can be seen in stuff like the density pathos of the pale swarm where populations are so closed in on each other whole flocks perishing from overheating is a constant, vicious problem. Such dead flocks get crushed in further by the pale swarm, as more flocks are made in their place. The glowing swarm's obsessive monuments to dozin are another instance, of an opulence and redundancy that mortified other dozinists who saw such repetitions as deviant and a mk mockery of the faith. Struggle roads were at least meant to fulfill the practical purpose of a hardened populace. The monuments were pure vanity and regarded as overtly pornographic in scope by mediator and silverite observers. The plastic swarm and its tenacity in covering everything in plastic is just as bad despite their more cosmopolitan (but still highly a assimilative) swarm culture and its tendency to make more liberal use of delegated flocks. The golden swarm had followed older pathos but still even they made similar inefficiencies in their gold fixation that would override their pathological hatred of humans after too many of them died to sustain that mindset. The societies [[vopson|Vopson]] make are nested in manifestational logic, the culture and infrastructure twisted to fit the symbolic understanding of a swarm pathos. This applies to their economies as well, with "vision" as the name for their liquid currency that is made from refined blood of their kind as the scale of the swarm grows, there is more vision. This had huge issues as bleeding flocks can cause currency devaluation crises time and time again and that can end up with increasingly obsessive pathos as the response to such stresses is often entrenching of a monomaniacal tendency more than reforms which only really seem to happen when a swarm is broken up into competing flocks incentivized to reform or otherwise are pitted against other alien societies that force the swarm to change course or perish. **Cloud economics** The field of hive economics is often criticized for its reductionism or worse, overt parallelism to agency heavy systems of economics. There is underlying assumptions made in such economics, one of them is the way the economics of few agents necessitates more centralized approaches. The other assumption is that it is low in amenities as drones do not care for them. Cloud economics invalidated both these assumptions built from the observation of natvyr, scaverkian and vopson swarm economic behaviors. There is few agents in the cloud yet it is one rich in amenities for its drones who are lavished in wealth, dignity and power everywhere they go with the cloud mind. They are the most pampered drones ever witnessed and constantly purchasing products from other leviathans. The drones of the cloud mind are nominally sark if but the cloud minds seek other species to their fold. They do so with persuasion. Each drone is an advertisement for subsumption to the cloud. The wealth given to the drone is the wealth of the cloud mind on display. The lack of will or agency one has part of the cloud mind is normal to a sarkic who has such clouds emerge just from being around each other long enough, coordinating and managing them almost with orchestral precision. But the cloud mind found ways to technologically expand to other species. Forced subsumption has a huge problem- a disconnection leads to rebellion and underlying resentments lead to ineffective particles of the cloud. Even worse the problem of composer subversion meant the constant dissipations of cloud minds. Instead the [[cosmic cloud|Cosmic Cloud]] sought a different route than forceful assimilation of those it could. It became a system of the willing. This was what the ammonia spring brought forth in the chaos of the post-invasion world, where the [[cosmic cloud|Cosmic Cloud]] spread with cult like obsession. It was regarded with hostility by the dozinists and harmonists alike but they never could allocate the forces needed to do more that deadlock the cloud to the volumes it currently occupies. The delegations of the cloud led to the negative and positive ones, societies within societies that come and go with the wonderful mirage of the ivoltic state of flow. Their enlightened society as they saw it was egalitarian, with high standards of living for all the drones the mind is interwoven with. Constantly bringing in more to the fold through advertisements. Those that break from it even beg to return, by design of the kind of intensive social engineering the cloud minds have managed. Internal conflicts still temperamentally happen, the storm incidents come about from bubbled up emergences that alter the cloud minds and their mindset due to how woven cloud minds are to "drone" intelligences. These have been exploited by composers who see them as the most dangerous society outside the outright biocollectivism of the Bilethought or invuka combine.  #economics #society #Galactic-Region/ProspectSpace #leviathanPower