<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=157975.msg7259483#msg7259483">Quote from: Sel Nar on 22-11-2012, 00:31:02</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Battletech Economics would make any real economist's head explode. Don't look too deeply into it.<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">I introduce to you... The Hole Economy of Battletech<br/><br/>The first thing you must realize is that roughly 90% of all economic activity, all GDP in Battletech is hole-related.  Understand that GDP is roughly the market value of all final goods and services produced in a place in a year.<br/><br/>It just so happens that 90% of those involve the products and services required by the hole industry, nearly evenly split between hole digging and hole filling.  (These activities are not evenly split due to some environmental factors that result in self-filling holes in some areas)  This hole digging and hole filling process is remarkably inefficient due to the need to do it by hand... bare-handed.  Gloves, tools, and especially mechanical assistance are not possible for reasons to be explained below.  Another thing you must realize is that economic output is quite low per capita as well.  It is not well known, but many worlds, and many settlements are not on prime hole-digging ground.  Many areas are toxic, rocky, frozen, or marshy.  Holes either don't get dug, or never get filled, resulting in holes dug outnumbering holes filled.  In order to resolve this paradox, bodies of water are often filled as an acceptable substitute.<br/><br/>Now, 9% of ecnomic activity is spent feeding everyone and supplying the necessities of life - hovels, nutrient paste, and tepid water recycled from things you don't want to know about.  Similarly, almost all of this activity is done by hand.  No power machinery, no draft animals, many times, not even tools or simple muscle-powered machines.  You haven't seen inefficient until you've seen a flour mill powered by peasants running in a giant hamster wheel, and realizing that half the peasants are running in the wrong direction.<br/><br/>0.9% are allocated to nobles.  This is used to do normal noble-like stuff... things like paying people to dig your holes for you, building palaces in inaccessible locations, paying for expensive prostitutes that they will never be able to satisfy, and importing dirt from exotic places to fill their noble holes with.<br/><br/>0.1% is actually spent on government administration.  ALL of it.  I mean, intelligence, political bodies, administration, taxation, policing, welfare, pensions, expense accounts... all of it is 0.1%, and of that the military gets umm... 10% since they're the ones with the pointy sticks.<br/><br/>Military spending?  Roughly 0.01% of GDP so far.  And even that is further diluted.<br/><br/>Once you discount graft, corruption, outright theft, leakage, and accidents, the effective amount the military receives... requires scientific notation to properly express.  The militaristic Draconis Combine's edge is statistically insignificant.  150% of crap-all is still rounded down to crap-all.  And you must remember, 90% of economic activity is in the form of holes.  People are paid in holes, and their selection of goods mostly comprises of holes.  Imagine one hole-digger recieving his wages...<br/><br/>"Why, I seem to have received a payment today! I think I will buy some holes.  Perhaps a square one for my dear son to fill.  And maybe a deep one for my wife.  Lord knows she's needed a new hole for a while now!"<br/><br/>SO, that's the economy wrapped up, what about the population?  I mean, there are enough people on mosth planets to physically carry away a typical invading force!  What's the deal there?<br/><br/>Well... the inhabitants of the Battletech setting are not quite like you and I (I hope).  For one thing, they are incredibly, irredeemably dense.  We're talking depleted-uranium levels here.  Autocannon shells made out of their skulls are able to penetrate adamandium IIC faster than a sailor on shore leave... never mind.<br/><br/>Now, it just so happens that 90% of the population consists of born and bred hole-diggers and hole-fillers.  This is what their ma and pa did before them, and this is what their mas and pas did before too.  These people are an amazing testament to the powers of natural and artificial selection... and not in a good way. Day in, day out, you can rely on these folks to dig and fill holes... with their hands.  Frankly, they cannot be trusted with pointy sticks, or even sticks in general, let alone proper shovels.  One ambitious Word of Blake governor hoped to revolutionize hole digging by introducing the lostech of shovels.  The resulting carnage was...horrific enough that no one dares speak the planet's name anymore.  These folks are not ones you voluntarily put in your armed forces.  They have devolved to the point where they cannot be trusted with pointy sticks, and they are a constant menace to themselves and all around them.  Due to necessity, these are unfortunately the bulk of your troops, but only because you have no choice.  On the bright side, since hole digging is wholesome, healthy, character-building exercise, you can expect your hole-digging peons to live long, productive lives, digging many, many holes on your behalf, which you will sell in order to pay them their pension in terms of sweet, filthy fill lucre.<br/><br/>The next largest group at 9% are the farmers. They are barely able to keep everyone fed, and as a consequence, everyone is perpetually riding on the cusp of a Malthusian trap.  You can't spare any farmers for the armed forces because if you did, you'd starve.  If these guys were smart enough to demand tractors of solid germanium, you'd have to try and find them because they keep the hole diggers fed, and if they don't keep digging and filling holes, your hole economy would collapse like a man with a shovel through his heart.<br/><br/>0.9% are middle-class professionals and merchants.  These guys got to where they are because they realized that the pointy end of the stick faces away from you, meaning that they're generally bright enough to avoid military service, and most of them are too important to the existance of your realm to draft them.  However, some with have delusions of glory, fantasies of grandeur, or are otherwise foolish or stupid enough to think that joining the military will be a grand old time.  These guys make up about 1% of your serving military.<br/><br/>0.1% of the population are the nobility and assorted high-and-mighty folks.  99% of them are too smart, too stupid, too inbred, too drunk, or too important to be of any use.  1% of them (0.001% of total population) are smart enough to tell which end of the stick is pointy, but not smart enough to do something productive, and jusssst inbred enough to fantasize about being mounted knights encased in bipedal war machines, perpetuating a new age of heraldic chivalry.  They make up all of your mechwarriors, pilots, and senior officers, and actually outnumber the middle-class recruits.<br/><br/>The military is not only tiny, but 99.9% of its personnel are also staggeringly inept, stupid, corrupt, and delusional.<br/><br/>The last 0.1% are capable, honest, hardworking folks who hold everything together.  100% of them regret ever enlisting and are watching the calender as their discharge date slowly gets closer.<br/><br/>No matter how you slice it, life is nasty, brutish, and short because people happen to be mean, inept, and stupid.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the numbers can all be true without contradicting each other.<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div></div></div>