The things I do for writing
Apr. 8th, 2014 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm currently mulling different structures for the governance of the 200 person offworld colony I keep planning. Democracy is good and dramatic, with the speeches and trying to gain the popular vote. Having representatives keeps the character pool small, but really, with 200 people and modern technology, how hard can it be for them to all turn up together and vote for stuff? But if they're voting, do I want to keep it one person one vote? And does anyone have a veto?
State systems of government don't seem to scale down real well. I mean, I could declare myself Queen and have two houses of people making up rules for me to approve or not, but I don't see 200 people thinking that's a good and efficient way to run things.
So I've ended up on wikipedia trying to learn the words about stocks and shares.
How they work I would also like to know, but thus far what I'm mostly learning is they've got their own language, and it is one which I do not as yet speak.
If you're stuck on a planet light years from anywhere trying to build an independent colony, you probably just want to decide things among yourselves. The kind of people who want instructions from back home are unlikely to sign up. But the financial investment in any of the colony configurations I've pondered so far is immense, far larger than 200 ordinary people could cover by selling their houses. Mining equipment, refineries, factories, med bays and labs, they really add up. Plus whatever else they think they need to build a comfortable life. Prefab houses? Many many sheeps?
So, they'd need a ton of money to get started, and that money could come from investors. So then if more money came from outsiders than colonists, you get the situation where the outsiders think they've bought a majority say in things, yet do not have the experience or the real time communications to deal with much.
Dramatic.
Also, I keep wanting to combine it with building a mutant homeworld. ... homeland did not work so good, but maybe if they were further away and nobody knew the address it could work better. So then whatever the plan is that's sold to the US government running the Stargate, it is secretly to build an escape route for hok'taur. And there could be many more of them needing an escape than the colony needs to establish itself and expand at a manageable rate.
So then you could get the corporate approved wave, with voting shares, and the refugees, with none.
Only if the one planning the colony was the one who wanted to make it for mutants or witches or hok'taur or however they phrase it then they would have a plan to make sure the newbies wouldn't be disenfranchised. So maybe they'd have a big block of shares ready to give to them. Their people could be the financial backers, and they know they can't pass the US security checks to get out there the easy way, so they're paying partly to have a sneaky way arranged.
... I'm wondering what the passenger capacity of one of them goa'uld pyramid ships is, and how many might be floating around in what condition after what SG1 did to the galaxy...
But major financial backers would be checked out just as thoroughly as colonists, yesno? So they'd have to have a pretty solid cover.
... ooooooor she could have a kickstarter for her offworld reality show...
... would the SGC check out everyone who funds a big kickstarter? That sounds tricky.
... but the people funding it could appear to have nothing in common except thinking it sounded cool.
If the likes of Tony Stark decide to build an offworld colony, then it would be easy to make it a Stark corporate enterprise. With employees, not voters. And then they'd get super fed up super quickly, because who would want to go to another planet for a paycheck, and still have to do like performance reviews and accounting and all that for Earth?
There's a lot of SF set in some corporate future, and it's usually about being screwed over on minimum wage, but I don't know how it would work for the shareholders.
The planet could own a minority share of itself. Then day to day they could do voting but Earth could decide to overrule them, and they'd be paying, like, giant taxes, because someone else owns half of what they're doing.
... I'd need to understand tax law, wouldn't I? Because they probably can't make their company be on their own planet under their own laws and still be funded from Earth, so it would be on Earth somewhere for tax purposes, and I haven't the first clue how that would work. I've never earned money so tax is mysterious. Well, VAT on lots of things, that's tax. But income tax and that, and whatever corporations do about taxes, that's... that's a really big topic I know nowt about.
I can't just throw people at another planet and leave them to it, I have to figure out some kind of functional economy.
... I maybe need another degree?
... I need knowing where to start.
*wanders off looking for 'for dummies' stuff*
State systems of government don't seem to scale down real well. I mean, I could declare myself Queen and have two houses of people making up rules for me to approve or not, but I don't see 200 people thinking that's a good and efficient way to run things.
So I've ended up on wikipedia trying to learn the words about stocks and shares.
How they work I would also like to know, but thus far what I'm mostly learning is they've got their own language, and it is one which I do not as yet speak.
If you're stuck on a planet light years from anywhere trying to build an independent colony, you probably just want to decide things among yourselves. The kind of people who want instructions from back home are unlikely to sign up. But the financial investment in any of the colony configurations I've pondered so far is immense, far larger than 200 ordinary people could cover by selling their houses. Mining equipment, refineries, factories, med bays and labs, they really add up. Plus whatever else they think they need to build a comfortable life. Prefab houses? Many many sheeps?
So, they'd need a ton of money to get started, and that money could come from investors. So then if more money came from outsiders than colonists, you get the situation where the outsiders think they've bought a majority say in things, yet do not have the experience or the real time communications to deal with much.
Dramatic.
Also, I keep wanting to combine it with building a mutant homeworld. ... homeland did not work so good, but maybe if they were further away and nobody knew the address it could work better. So then whatever the plan is that's sold to the US government running the Stargate, it is secretly to build an escape route for hok'taur. And there could be many more of them needing an escape than the colony needs to establish itself and expand at a manageable rate.
So then you could get the corporate approved wave, with voting shares, and the refugees, with none.
Only if the one planning the colony was the one who wanted to make it for mutants or witches or hok'taur or however they phrase it then they would have a plan to make sure the newbies wouldn't be disenfranchised. So maybe they'd have a big block of shares ready to give to them. Their people could be the financial backers, and they know they can't pass the US security checks to get out there the easy way, so they're paying partly to have a sneaky way arranged.
... I'm wondering what the passenger capacity of one of them goa'uld pyramid ships is, and how many might be floating around in what condition after what SG1 did to the galaxy...
But major financial backers would be checked out just as thoroughly as colonists, yesno? So they'd have to have a pretty solid cover.
... ooooooor she could have a kickstarter for her offworld reality show...
... would the SGC check out everyone who funds a big kickstarter? That sounds tricky.
... but the people funding it could appear to have nothing in common except thinking it sounded cool.
If the likes of Tony Stark decide to build an offworld colony, then it would be easy to make it a Stark corporate enterprise. With employees, not voters. And then they'd get super fed up super quickly, because who would want to go to another planet for a paycheck, and still have to do like performance reviews and accounting and all that for Earth?
There's a lot of SF set in some corporate future, and it's usually about being screwed over on minimum wage, but I don't know how it would work for the shareholders.
The planet could own a minority share of itself. Then day to day they could do voting but Earth could decide to overrule them, and they'd be paying, like, giant taxes, because someone else owns half of what they're doing.
... I'd need to understand tax law, wouldn't I? Because they probably can't make their company be on their own planet under their own laws and still be funded from Earth, so it would be on Earth somewhere for tax purposes, and I haven't the first clue how that would work. I've never earned money so tax is mysterious. Well, VAT on lots of things, that's tax. But income tax and that, and whatever corporations do about taxes, that's... that's a really big topic I know nowt about.
I can't just throw people at another planet and leave them to it, I have to figure out some kind of functional economy.
... I maybe need another degree?
... I need knowing where to start.
*wanders off looking for 'for dummies' stuff*
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Date: 2014-04-08 04:12 pm (UTC)