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Making a fortune during The Fall?

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Tue, 2014-10-21 00:48
#1
doublethink doublethink's picture
Making a fortune during The Fall?
Something that puzzles me while reading Sunward:
Sunward,pg47 wrote:
In many cases, especially in the last few panicked days, those responsible for evacuating people went completely mercenary, rescuing only those who could pay exorbitant sums. How many criminal cartels made their first fortune this way, ghoulishly choosing who would live and who would die?
What kind of "sums" would they be? Defunct, old-earth currencies? I'd imagine the value of printed money during those days would be nothing. Suitcases filled with dollars? It can't be "credit" as that was created after The Fall:
EPCore4th,pg125 wrote:
The Fall devastated the global economies and currencies of the past. In the years of reconsolidation that followed, the hypercorps and governments inaugurated a new system-wide electronic monetary system. Called credit,this currency is backed by all of the large capitalist-oriented factions and is used to trade for goods and services as well for other financial transactions.
So that leaves me puzzled, in the panic and the rush of The Fall, how then does one pay an "exorbitant sum"? Gold? Precious stones? I'm assuming "information" wouldn't work - there's no time to decide on the value of intel. Infomorphs? But isn't that what they're being "paid" to evacuate? Indentured servitude of some type? Thoughts?
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Tue, 2014-10-21 04:40
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Even if the old currencies
Even if the old currencies were "devastated", I think they'd still be used. Most money is fiat money anyway, and just because people go to space, they still need to trade, and aren't they going to use the currency that people already use until someone else comes along? A lot of that money is still going to be tied to actual claims that are valuable after the Fall - stakes in offworld assets, patent rights, knowledge bases, etc. And then there's cryptocurrencies, whose value is tied to the computational resources needed to generate the secure keys for it.
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Wed, 2014-10-22 03:34
ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture
I would imagine that during
I would imagine that during the post-Fall period, people who had bank accounts that could be verified were allowed to convert their money into credits, to maintain some form of economic continuity.
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Wed, 2014-10-22 03:49
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:I
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:
I would imagine that during the post-Fall period, people who had bank accounts that could be verified were allowed to convert their money into credits, to maintain some form of economic continuity.
Yeah. And on top of economic continuity, the guys designing the credit system are likely to be those with fat bank accounts and/or they're being approached by guys with fat bank account who simply bribe them to include a favorable conversion ratio.
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