On 17 Jan 2013 at 10:03, DEREK STANLEY wrote:
> I had pondered this but what occurs when you run out of cash? Your
> brick and mortar is 2 months away how do you get more cash on the
> stick? (Lets pretend you're a free trader on razor thin margins so
> you haven't had anything beyond 3 hots and a cot for a long time.
> How does you employer put money on the stick? Because putting it in
> a bank thats 2 months away makes no sense.
> If we assume that financial records are transferred around via the
> xboat whats to stop a less than scrupulous crew from figuring out the
> xboat web and pulling the same cash out of an institution, turning it
> into liquid assets like gold, and then with drawing the same cash in
> 3 or 4 other star systems before the records can be updated?
> The accounting has to be a nightmare.
Only really workable method is to use what got used on Earth when we
had that sort of comm lag.
You either carry cash, or you use "letters of credit".
Cash can include the equivalent of traveller's cheques.
Letters of credit are a document (probably at least somewhat
electronic in the 3I) issued by a bank *to* another bank.
You get one from a nank. When you arrive at your destonation, you go
to another bank (possibly one specified by the originating bank)
which will validate the LOC *and* your ID.
If they check out, you get cash or open a local account. If they
don't you get held for the authorities.
Before you leave the planet, you get another LOC containing your new
balance (or a portion of it if you want to leave some money there to
keep the account open).
The validation of the LOC will involve various "shared secret" type
things between the banks involved. Possibly public key cryptoography
if that is still hard to break in the 3I.
You *can't* make credit or debit cards work *safely* even at a mere
one jump distance. At several jumps, it's even worse.
LOCs are, in effect, a special form of money used only between banks.
And rely on the banks being able to trust each other *and* on forgery
being difficult.
For ship crews, it's likely that you get paid from the ship's
account. If it's on a regular route, then they'll have working
accounts in each port. But fund transfer between them will still be
LOCs or something that amounts to the same thing.
Ships not running a fixed route will use LOCs and (for example) Free
Traders will be carrying a lot of their money in the form of cargo.
A crewmember *could* arrange to send money "home", but it'd be some
form of interbank transfer. And be a real pain in a lot of ways
because that money is going to be essentially inaccessible to him
until he returns home.
If he wants money from his home bank, he's going to have to request
it as a bank transfer and either wait for the requesyt to get there
and the transfer to get back, or he's going to have to try to request
that the transfer go to a bank where he expects to be when it
arrives.
Do note that even *inside* a solar system transactions between
planets will have *huge* lags as they wait for approval between
planets. 15 minutes to the better part of an hour for an Earth-Mars
message exchange, for example. 10 or more *hours* for an Earth-Pluto
exchange.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com
> I had pondered this but what occurs when you run out of cash? Your
> brick and mortar is 2 months away how do you get more cash on the
> stick? (Lets pretend you're a free trader on razor thin margins so
> you haven't had anything beyond 3 hots and a cot for a long time.
> How does you employer put money on the stick? Because putting it in
> a bank thats 2 months away makes no sense.
> If we assume that financial records are transferred around via the
> xboat whats to stop a less than scrupulous crew from figuring out the
> xboat web and pulling the same cash out of an institution, turning it
> into liquid assets like gold, and then with drawing the same cash in
> 3 or 4 other star systems before the records can be updated?
> The accounting has to be a nightmare.
Only really workable method is to use what got used on Earth when we
had that sort of comm lag.
You either carry cash, or you use "letters of credit".
Cash can include the equivalent of traveller's cheques.
Letters of credit are a document (probably at least somewhat
electronic in the 3I) issued by a bank *to* another bank.
You get one from a nank. When you arrive at your destonation, you go
to another bank (possibly one specified by the originating bank)
which will validate the LOC *and* your ID.
If they check out, you get cash or open a local account. If they
don't you get held for the authorities.
Before you leave the planet, you get another LOC containing your new
balance (or a portion of it if you want to leave some money there to
keep the account open).
The validation of the LOC will involve various "shared secret" type
things between the banks involved. Possibly public key cryptoography
if that is still hard to break in the 3I.
You *can't* make credit or debit cards work *safely* even at a mere
one jump distance. At several jumps, it's even worse.
LOCs are, in effect, a special form of money used only between banks.
And rely on the banks being able to trust each other *and* on forgery
being difficult.
For ship crews, it's likely that you get paid from the ship's
account. If it's on a regular route, then they'll have working
accounts in each port. But fund transfer between them will still be
LOCs or something that amounts to the same thing.
Ships not running a fixed route will use LOCs and (for example) Free
Traders will be carrying a lot of their money in the form of cargo.
A crewmember *could* arrange to send money "home", but it'd be some
form of interbank transfer. And be a real pain in a lot of ways
because that money is going to be essentially inaccessible to him
until he returns home.
If he wants money from his home bank, he's going to have to request
it as a bank transfer and either wait for the requesyt to get there
and the transfer to get back, or he's going to have to try to request
that the transfer go to a bank where he expects to be when it
arrives.
Do note that even *inside* a solar system transactions between
planets will have *huge* lags as they wait for approval between
planets. 15 minutes to the better part of an hour for an Earth-Mars
message exchange, for example. 10 or more *hours* for an Earth-Pluto
exchange.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com