An odd thought occured to me while
contemplating Aliens(TM)-like environment
where troops get shipped around as Troopsicles(TM).
Do you get paid for downtime? Time dilation would surely wreck your life back
on any planet, so you'd think there would be some sort of premium, but paying
the troopie for every minute of their sleep makes for a high cost per active
minute....
Now, the canon GZGverse may not have this
bug quite as bad - jump drives seem to
suggest that cold sleep, though used, isn't used for protracted journeys. A
week here and there isn't bad. I'm thinking of a universe in which you lose
years sometimes. It'd mean you'd fall out of temporal sync with friends,
classmates, etc. Correspondingly, you'd think it would make you VERY close
with your comrades on ship.
Also, what useful way is there to pay soldiers like this? You don't load the
ship up with money, but presumably you need enough if they get liberty
anywhere to let them spend some. Soldiers like to get paid. Maybe it is all
electronic... but if speed of money movement is limited to speed of ship
movement, then interesting issues arise.
Just something that struck me, driving home and trying to clear my head of
Java code.....
Tomb.
This was mentioned in Haldeman's Forever War, but darned if I can remember the
details. They all ended up pretty wealthy, though.
> Thomas Barclay wrote:
1/10 pay for "downtime" seems reasonable to me. It does not sound like
a
lot, but who else gets paid for sleeping. :-D
Scott The Grumbling Grognard
> From: Edward Lipsett <translation@intercomltd.com>
> Do you get paid for downtime? Time dilation
Well, if you're paying them the full 4Cr per hour as if they were
awake, then yes. If you're paying them .04Cr/hr, it's not as bad.
> Correspondingly, you'd think it would make you
Why? You're all frozen. You're only bonding if you're doing things together.
> Also, what useful way is there to pay soldiers
It's paper. A million dollars in $100 bills takes up something like 3.5 cubic
feet, if I recall correctly (not that I've had the chance to verify that
empirically). $1M is going to be at least 300 months'
worth of salary--say 50 guys for six months. If you've got a cruiser
that 50 guys can live in for 6 months, presumably it'll have an extra 3.5
cubic feet to spare. And that's assuming their full salary is payable as cash.
I'd only
pay them 10-20% during the cruise.
That's also assuming you keep it in hundreds. If the ship keeps it as
thousands and makes change wholesale at a local bank, then you can keep it in
a shoebox. A well guarded shoebox, of course.
> but presumably you need enough if
If for some reason you need this (eg you're not paying for trifles like
salaries, but something expensive), you make a deposit with Han
Bank of Alarish and they give you a one-time-only key. Use that key
to withdraw your funds at any branch of Han Bank, or any other bank that has
agreements in place. If you don't withdraw the full amount,
they give you another one-time-only key for the amount that's left.
You could also use a stored-value card but that might be a little
too easy to hack.
> Do you get paid for downtime? Time dilation
In a travelleresque RPG, at one point we got stuck in marine coldsleep for 7
years (ship got blown-away around us), the backpay really screwed up
their budget for a while. Even at 10% pay for coldsleep, sleeping long enough
makes you moderately wealthy. When they do thaw you out though, you have to
live long enough to enjoy it. The time dilation would need to scale with the
pay. If you spend 100 years in coldsleep during an average tour of duty,
inflation would need to be factored into your base pay for planetfall.
Neath Southern Skies -http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/
[Firestorm] Battletech PBeM GM
[Dawn Patrol] World Cup 2001 - "Australia II"
On Tue, 2 Oct 2001 21:20:32 -0400, "Thomas Barclay"
<kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca> wrote:
> Also, what useful way is there to pay soldiers
Digital cash.
A friend of mine has been working for quite a few years on digital cash for
the Royal Bank of Canada (via Mondex). There are issues, but mostly cultural.
The technical issues are mostly (I repeat, "mostly") worked out.
In the future, it would make sense for it all to be digital, particularly
since you're talking about long distances in terms of time to travel. So, the
funds would probably be moved to the ship's "vault", which is probably just a
portion of the computer network. The interesting thing is that if the ship is
destroyed, the electronic funds could be returned to the bank issuing them.
There are ways of doing this now with Mondex.
On Tue, 2 Oct 2001 21:54:52 -0400, "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
wrote:
> That's also assuming you keep it in hundreds. If the ship keeps it as
Are the Alarishi still using paper money? How... quaint! *duck and
cover*...
On Wed, 3 Oct 2001 12:37:17 +1000 , "Robertson, Brendan"
> <Brendan.Robertson@dva.gov.au> wrote:
> In a travelleresque RPG, at one point we got stuck in marine coldsleep
This is funny, as yearly interest should easily cover any change in inflation.
In fact, your economy has serious problems if your inflation rate is higher
than your rate of interest.
So, you put the money aside for the fellows and let the money work for you
while they are off. Done correctly, you'll make a small profit even while they
are in cold sleep. In fact, you may hope they stay in there indefinitely.
On the other hand, imagine waking up from cold sleep to find out that the
interstellar economy went belly up and you have no money. Or that your bank
was destroyed (along with the planet and all backups) during a Kra'Vak
invasion.
Hmmm. I don't know if anyone would go for it. The military is actually SAVING
money by having the soldiers go into hybernation at full salary for the full
trip when compaired to having them on a normal duty cycle. They do not have to
provide life support, food, water, waste facilities, or exercise areas. They
also do not have to supply as large a sleeping area.
"Son, do I have a bargin for you! Instead of staying on base near family and
friends collecting full pay, we will send you to the stars! Of course it will
take you 100 years before you return and you will only be on 10% pay for most
of the time, but what do you say? Hmmm?"
I would think that they would be on a normal salary for the full trip (in
hybernation or out), calculated using ship time (to account for time
dilation). It is also possible that the military would have to provide
hybernation facilities for spouses).
As for pay, electronic pay or promisary notes (paper money) only works if they
are easily exchanged. If space travel requires hybernation, then the exchange
is likely to be difficult. I would think that the pay would be split between
electronic pay at home and something of real value (gold) that would go with
the troops for when they get liberty.
---
Brian Bell bbell1@insight.rr.com ICQ: 12848051 AIM: Rlyehable YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
---
[quoted original message omitted]
I said:
> >That's also assuming you keep it in hundreds. If the ship keeps it
Allan
> Are the Alarishi still using paper money? How... quaint! *duck and
You mean you're using a means of exchange that the government can easily
trace? How...exhibitionist!
Was mentioned in the comedy/sci-fi series "Red Dwarf" too. The main
character (Lister) left a few pounds in a bank account and then got lost
for a million-odd years. The compound interest eventually collapsed the
global economy, etc etc etc. (rather Douglas Adams-ish, actually).
In "Forever War" they kept paying the soldiers their "standard" pay while on
deployments that lasted hundreds of years in relative "Earth time". It meant
that those, like the main character, who lived through several missions, were
hugely rich.
To try to deal with this, the military created a "resort world", the location
of which was more secret than that of Earth, where the fleet could have R&R,
refitting, etc. That place was scaled to the
super-rich-soldiers-on-leave, so everything was fantastically expensive.
People would go get a menial job there (civilians) for a few years, and then
head back to their original world wealthy. They recognized that it would be
very unbalancing to the economy if all of a sudden the war ended,
and they had a large number of super-wealthy ex-soldiers descend on the
regular economy.
The main character's girlfriend and a few friends of hers use their backpay
to purchase a starship from the navy - so they must have been getting a
big
pile of money saved up - though Haldeman doesn't mention specifics.
> Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 10:28:35 +0900
********************************************
> Scott Clinton wrote:
> 1/10 pay for "downtime" seems reasonable to me. It does not sound
The problem with only paying a reduced rate for downtime is that you only know
the active/passive ratio when they get back. It is much easier to pay
your
> adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca wrote:
> To try to deal with this, the military created a "resort world", the
This is only a problem if the returning soldiers can spend their money outside
of the economy, or if the paymasters have insufficient liquidity. To insure
this, returning troops are issued bonds that amortise their backpay over their
remaining expected lifespan. The NAC does not need to fleece its troopers, it
need only make it difficult for the troopers to spend the money outside of the
> The problem with only paying a reduced rate for downtime is that you
Why worry about a ratio? For every week they're up, pay full rate;
for every week they're cold, pay 1/10 rate (or whatever you decide)
> On Wed, 03 Oct 2001 16:23:24 -0400 adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca wrote:
> In "Forever War" they kept paying the soldiers their "standard" pay
Against that, enlistments, etc., were measured in "subjective" time, so that
regardless of how long you served in terms of the calendar, a
five-year hitch _felt_ like five years to you. This wouldn't be a bad
idea for cold-sleep troopers: when they're paid, they're paid for the
subjective time that's lapsed since their last payday, presumably at the
current rate for their rank, position, etc.
This is open to all sorts of nasty economic tricks, but what isn't? <g>
And it has an historical counterpart -- paying off seamen in Napoleonic
times, for instance.
> The main character's girlfriend and a few friends of hers use their
Alternatively, they were allowed to purchase it, or were given it,
because they had a reasonable, non-violent purpose for it, and because
they were anachronistic non-clones, and Man was looking for a way to
get rid of them.
Of course, that whole timeship bit strikes me as the author being desperate
for a way to reunite the hero and his girl, and not being able to come up with
a more sensible method...
Phil
----
On Wed, 3 Oct 2001 07:52:22 -0400, "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net>
wrote:
> You mean you're using a means of exchange that the government can
But the government is our friend! (I believe that's a NAC "Heritage Ministry"
slogan...).
On Wed, 03 Oct 2001 17:41:41 -0400, Richard and Emily Bell
> <rlbell@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Re-investing their uncollected pay is good for the economy, but you
Well, inflation can happen. Prices will increase if they spend the money in a
localized area. Think of what the dot-com industry did to real estate
values in San Francisco.
The way the government can do it is set taxes such that you get taxed up the
wazoo if you withdraw huge amounts of money at once. There are taxation rules
you can use in order to encourage the soldiers to invest it without
liquidating their wealth and disappearing. It seems to me a much more sane,
easier, but not as "sexy", an answer as building a secret, overly priced
resort planet.
I said:
> >You mean you're using a means of exchange that the government can
Allan said:
> But the government is our friend! (I believe that's a NAC "Heritage
"The computer is your friend. Trust the computer. Please turn in your personal
effects and report to processing vat #23. Have a nice
Don't forget that relativly, even a near-lightspeed trip of 28 light
years
distance is only a couple of weeks real-time. So if the marines stay
awake (doing training etc) during FTL travel, then just pay them at their
normal subjective rates, adjusted for inflation.
Don't forget though that this system is really not all that practical if you
don't have FTL, as by the time the marines arrive at the combat zone,
everything is long over and the kra'vak have probably blown it all away.
Of course, thats the nice thing about point-to-point style FTL drives:
Its all zero time, subjectivly and objectivly. So at a rate of one jump per
couple of days, and the jumps are about 1-2 light-years long, in about a
month you get there (pretty good for about 30 light-years), you just pay
at normal rates for the length of the trip, or maybe a bit less if they
hypersleep the trip.
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[quoted original message omitted]