A Darker Imperium... Freelance Traveller (17 Aug 2014 23:20 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Evyn MacDude (18 Aug 2014 05:58 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Jeffrey Schwartz (18 Aug 2014 14:20 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Phil Pugliese (18 Aug 2014 15:48 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Bruce Johnson (18 Aug 2014 16:37 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Jeffrey Schwartz (18 Aug 2014 16:44 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Bruce Johnson (18 Aug 2014 19:14 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Jeffrey Schwartz (18 Aug 2014 19:46 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Craig Berry (18 Aug 2014 19:53 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Phil Pugliese (18 Aug 2014 16:50 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Phil Pugliese (18 Aug 2014 17:02 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Craig Berry (18 Aug 2014 17:57 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Phil Pugliese (18 Aug 2014 18:15 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Craig Berry (18 Aug 2014 18:24 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Evyn MacDude (18 Aug 2014 21:22 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Craig Berry (18 Aug 2014 21:56 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Bruce Johnson (18 Aug 2014 22:17 UTC)
Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Ian Whitchurch (18 Aug 2014 22:22 UTC)

Re: [TML] A Darker Imperium... Bruce Johnson 18 Aug 2014 16:37 UTC

On Aug 18, 2014, at 8:45 AM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <nobody@simplelists.com> wrote:

> I often look at historical
> precedent here, what did the Romans do? Or
> better yet the East Indian Company.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> The way the USSR 'managed' it's various 'clients' & potential ones could also be instructive.
>
> Of course they generally, relatively speaking, of course & w/ some exceptions (see Afghanistan, for example) wielded a lighter 'touch' outside the Warsaw Pact, but even w/i the 'Pact there were varying degrees of heavy-handedness.

The old USSR was very much a centralized state. This just doesn’t work in an empire where information travels at the speed of transport. Evyn gets it right; the East India Company is a better model.

T4 laid bare the origins of the 3I as a mercantile empire in the ‘Zhunastu School of Contact’. See also “World Bank” and “Shock Doctrine”. Also see entire US foreign policy vis-a-vis central America for most of the 20th century.

If the planet isn’t ready and willing to become a “trade partner”, ie: sell you it’s resources at a loss and pay inflated prices for your goods, then find, arm and encourage a few leaders  willing to ‘liberate’ their world, supply high tech weapons lavishly, and extract as much value as possible for these goods. Rinse and repeat, until the factions have ground down to the carefully orchestrated standstill, offer the ‘war ravaged’ world an out: Join the Imperium, ‘bringer of peace’. Some local family will be promoted as the local nobility, carefully merged into a mainline Imperial family through strategic marriages and tragic deaths, so that within few generations the entire local royal family are ‘hapsburgs’ , I mean sylean.

Offer to help rebuild the infrastructure brought about by the wars, with the generous loans provided by the imperium,, with just a *few* strings attached, maiunly allowing megacorps in to “compete" with local firms.

Did you know that once upon a time, Jamaica was actually a net *exporter* of food? Until the world bank intervened to ‘save them’ that is, now they import tons of food. Yaaay ConAgra!

Once the planet is scraped bare of resources, the 3I can move on. This is where all those low-tech, NI, PO hellholes come from.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs