How the economy works in a fictional world, large and small scale, has a lot to do with the story. Of course, it doesn’t mean you should commit the cardinal sin of lecturing the reader. The economy is like the floor. No one pays attention to it, but it supports a lot of things.
Pirates and smugglers are a staple of adventure. Whether your characters are them, are running from them, or are chasing them, there needs to be a good floor of economics to support the story.
Piracy and smuggling require trade. What is valuable enough to be worth hauling from A to B? This gets tricky when you are dealing with advanced technologies. If everyone has advanced 3D printers that can make everything from a car to a set of silverware, given only the materials, cheaply, then there is no incentive to haul manufactured goods from one place to another. There could be a trade in refined raw materials as feedstock for said printers.
Fuel for whatever power source drives your civilization can be an issue, too. In an advanced society, energy may be very cheap, but even at a small fraction of a cent per kw/hr a shipload of Helium 3 would be well worth the attention of pirates or hijackers.
Traffic in slaves has been an ugly reality throughout history. In modern advanced societies it has been driven underground, but it still persists as human trafficking. Classical slavery provided cheap labour for dirty jobs such as picking cotton and working in mines, plus forced prostitution, which is a constant through history. Human trafficking is one of the more widespread and profitable of illegal enterprises in today’s world and throughout history.
Smuggling illegal drugs is a very current problem, but not a new one. The staples, heroin and cocaine, are both agricultural products. The economics here are driven by the desirability of the good and the risk of getting it. Current drug laws, not to mention the lawless violence of the criminal underworld, make that price very high.
The short version is that there will be someone to supply a demand, and if that demand is illegal then you get a black market and everything that goes with it.
Trade routes can be a source of wealth, and conflict. Pirates prey on them, navies protect them, fences deal the stolen goods, smugglers use them to deal their illegal goods, seedy cantina bars spring up for them to meet and cut deals in …
Piracy is very much driven by economics. Pirates have to make a profit. They have costs. There will, almost always, be ostensibly legitimate businessmen who are quite happy to close their eyes to the source of the bargain and take the profits.
The history of trade is a lot more rough-and-tumble than the current reasonably well-mannered global network (which still has its rough edges).
Trade doesn’t only spread goods. Ideas travel, too, and often have more disruptive effects than goods. Historians credit the rapid spread of Islam to diffusion by way of Arab traders, who were running trade routes all through the Indian Ocean when Europeans were still figuring out the whole thing of hanging sails on their ships.
It’s easy to talk in generalities, though, so here is an example of a scene driven by economics. I don’t think it can be accused of being dull.
The setting: Port cities have been turbulent places since the Phoenicians, and probably before. Wealth rubbing shoulders with poverty, profits to be had by fair means and foul.
Information: Can also be a good, and a valuable one in a volatile market.
Economic warfare: If you’re going to kill a business, make it unprofitable.
Incentives: If you want to get people to do something, make it profitable.
So, let’s get down on the rough and tumble streets next to the spaceport docks …
Jon d’Harven kept a half step behind Master Arden Halobi, as befit an apprentice, well aware that his presence in attendance on his Master in the crowded noisy exotic streets of Jandari City was a test on multiple levels.
The first was whether he could be trusted to watch the Master’s back in streets where cutpurses were the least of the hazards a League merchant, automatically assumed to be rich, might encounter.
As they detoured around a fire eater and street vendors selling skewers of grilled meat they passed close to a street magician.
“Master, let me read your fate with the Revonian cards.” With a single smooth movement he fanned the cards out on the small wooden folding stand.
“Impress me.” Master Arden replied.
Jon tuned out the gaudily dressed man’s patter while he kept his head on a swivel for threats and his left hand close to his Arvon 35 automatic pistol while his right hand was on his staff, ready to use either at need. He almost missed the conversation in Lojban salted in among the patter.
“Cofort.” The magician fingered out a card, the Dark Rogue.
“What of him?” The Master’s face went intent.
The magician smiled and slid out another card, this one the Three of Coins, accompanied by a raised eyebrow.
The Master’s hand reached out and slid out the Two of Coins. He tapped on it, once.
The street magician paused, then gave a barely noticeable nod. “Cofort is in the Drunken Dragon, drinking Havalorian ale. He made port at 05:37, after a long haul from Avalon Sector.”
“Alone?” The Master replied evenly.
“He was, half a bell ago.”
The Master’s hand moved, and a League credit token spun in the air. The magician’s hand moved and it vanished.
Jon stretched his legs to keep up with the Master’s longer stride as he turned into a side street. The Master’s sidelong glance and raised eyebrow set Jon another test.
Jon ran over in his mind the lists of drinking establishments, from the ones to be avoided by those who wished to keep their purses and throats uncut to the very much shorter list of ones the League considered clean and safe. The Drunken Dragon was not on any of them.
“I must confess, Master, I do not know who Cofort may be or why his presence at a drinking place I have never heard of should be significant.” Jon considered admitting ignorance to the Master to be the lesser evil to being unprepared.
Master Arden’s smile was brief and humourless. “Cofort was once an apprentice of mine, but discipline always chafed on him and we parted company. Nowadays he is a Free Trader.”
Jon did not show the astonishment he felt. Master Jalobi was a careful and conservative man, whose company showed steady but unspectacular growth. That he should have dealings with a Free Trader, one of those daring, nay, reckless, souls who operated out beyond the League’s routes and protection was wholly unexpected. His being on any sort of speaking terms with a lapsed former apprentice was almost as startling.
Master Arden had no difficulty threading his way through the narrow crowded noisy streets to a small drinking place whose sign showed an inebriated dragon among ale kegs. Jon scanned the room as he entered. More prosperous on the inside than on the outside.
He recognized furniture of Fylorian fire oak, and the bottles behind the bar came from a half dozen worlds. He eliminated three candidates before he settled on the thin lanky man man alone at a corner table with a beer glass in front of him.
Jon’s identification was confirmed when Master Jalobi seated himself across the table from the lanky man, and spoke in Lojban, the common language of the League. “It has been a long time, Cofort.”
“It has. This, I think, will be worth your time. The old Imperial troop transport Fiery Eye will be running a load of slaves to Halfort, probably for the assil-silk fields there.”
Master Arden stayed seated and raised an eyebrow fractionally, to which Jon responded with increased vigilance. This sort of information, anywhere, could see men murdered out of hand to gain or deny access to it. An Imperial troop transport could hold thousands if they were packed in tightly enough, which would be a given with slavers. Multiply that by the head money the League paid for freed slaves, plus whatever value the ship itself might retain, and there was motive for a very large number of murders.
Jon had heard rumours attributing to Master Jalobi a personal hatred for slavers beyond the normal distaste any decent person might feel for traffickers in death and misery. He now thought it likely those rumours were true.
Evil bastards. Stupid ones, too. If one such as Cofort gets the scent of them, it is not a question of whether there will be a wolf pack on the trail, but how soon and how many. Leaving aside the risk, the League has means to see such operations as those plantations bankrupt and ruined. Financial instruments and spreadsheets are effective weapons in skilled hands.
The front door of the Drunken Dragon swung open, and another Master Trader entered. Theron d’Gingford Jon only knew slightly, as a well respected Master of good reputation, though like Master Jalobi a conservative man – normally, at any rate.
Jon now had the distinct feeling normal had headed on down the street for its bunk on the ship. Master Jalobi was flanked by two of his apprentices, the woman tougher-looking than the man, but both of them hard bargains.
A short conversation among the three of them divided up their arcs to cover the room and both its entrances.
The woman took a seat where she could cover her arc and draw at an instant’s notice. She jerked her head toward the table with Cofort and the two Master Traders. “Asa Windrider. What’s on the table?”
“Jon d’Harven. Slave ship. Big one. The Free Trader is Cofort.” Jon kept his eyes on the side door and his hand close to his gun, staff ready to hand.
She bared her teeth. “Head money. Killing slavers. Salvage. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”
Be First to Comment