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PeZook wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Just a side question. At present, Constantinople Shipping is insured by a local insurance company Venetian Banking. Is ICSA strictly a design hub for freighters and such, or do we want to include ship insurance?

Right now, the ISCA is a management/design bureau like NASA is for space: that is, we distribute construction and R&D contracts and oversee the work.

It's entirely possible we could diversify into ship insurance in some way, if only by making it easier to insure ships for their purchasers

Well yeah. The only trouble would be the diverse political systems and how some of the.. more socialist countries are going to underwrite their insurance. I'm not too familiar with how insurance would work in a non-capitalist society.

My humble take:

Well yeah. The only trouble would be the diverse political systems and how some of the.. more socialist countries are going to underwrite their insurance. I'm not too familiar with how insurance would work in a non-capitalist society.

Exactly the same as anywhere else, I'd guess. Socialists countries still use money

EDIT: Stas wins at graphics

PeZook wrote:

Well yeah. The only trouble would be the diverse political systems and how some of the.. more socialist countries are going to underwrite their insurance. I'm not too familiar with how insurance would work in a non-capitalist society.

Exactly the same as anywhere else, I'd guess. Socialists countries still use money

Well, the difference is that in capitalist systems, insurance companies take the money to invest. Since some nations adopt the extreme end of socialism, which is communism, well.... what is there to invest in?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote: Well, the difference is that in capitalist systems, insurance companies take the money to invest. Since some nations adopt the extreme end of socialism, which is communism, well.... what is there to invest in?

Commodities and state-owned industries. The only socialist country on Nova Terra is the Red Technocracy, and they are not communist. They actually have a private sector, and probably a stock exchange.

I'm not sure how the USSR handled that, but the PRL had a state-owned insurer (PZU) which invested the money just fine.

PeZook wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote: Well, the difference is that in capitalist systems, insurance companies take the money to invest. Since some nations adopt the extreme end of socialism, which is communism, well.... what is there to invest in?

Commodities and state-owned industries. The only socialist country on Nova Terra is the Red Technocracy, and they are not communist. They actually have a private sector, and probably a stock exchange.

I'm not sure how the USSR handled that, but the PRL had a state-owned insurer (PZU) which invested the money just fine.

Hm.. Ok. Then we will let the respective nations handle the business and raise funds to pay off claims.

Thus far, this world hasn't actually had global spanning operations, in part because i think we just let the companies do what they want, with the exception of the military companies of course.

Stas, you are a wonderful man.

YES. Aside from being honored in history for founding the FUNGAL AXIS and the FUN, Prime Minister Shroom will also be a renowned acronym maker! Forever!

EDIT:

Who wants an AWACS A380?

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Stas, you are a wonderful man.

YES. Aside from being honored in history for founding the FUNGAL AXIS and the FUN, Prime Minister Shroom will also be a renowned acronym maker! Forever!

EDIT:

Who wants an AWACS A380?

And then the UKB slaps FUN with silly tax.

Also: Goddamn!

If Boeing's 737 AEW costs practically $500 million... imagine how much our AWACS A380 will cost!

Stas! We need Red Technocracy engineers to provide us awesome and el-cheapo Soviet Engineering!

EDIT:

FASTA's motto: Going Faster!

(bad pun)

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Also: Goddamn!

If Boeing's 737 AEW costs practically $500 billion... imagine how much our AWACS A380 will cost!

Stas! We need Red Technocracy engineers to provide us awesome and el-cheapo Soviet Engineering!

EDIT:

FASTA's motto: Going Faster!

(bad pun)

Woah woah. Back it up. No one in this world can possibly afford a 0.5 trillion dollar aircraft.

At best if you want cheap, then fit the whole package in the An-225 airframe. It's the electronics that will cost a lot more. But what did you expect with an aircraft that serves as JSTAR as well? Probably hitting close to a billion I guess.

No! We can do this! WE CAN DO THIS!

Say it with me!

Also, isn't a big chunk of the A380's cost made up of all its bullshit luxuries - like spas and swimming pools and brothel boats?

If we make a utilitarian A380 and shove radar shit into it, I guess we can go with a $400 mil plane. If the Aussies can do it, SO CAN WE!

EDIT:

FUCK! That was a typo! It was 500 MILLION!

Goddamn...me!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Also: Goddamn!

If Boeing's 737 AEW costs practically $500 billion... imagine how much our AWACS A380 will cost!

Stas! We need Red Technocracy engineers to provide us awesome and el-cheapo Soviet Engineering!

EDIT:

FASTA's motto: Going Faster!

(bad pun)

Three zeros too much there, shroom. It's 500 million

And...The Idiots Have Spoken! All right people, we can pack up, a moon landing is impossible, the astronauts will get fried by the Van Allen Belts. And we know it because The Rag wrote about that.

Cue massive protests against the space program.

Goddamn Satan's Stargate.

That youtube fucker deleted my (AWESOME) comments. He broke my heart

Shroom Man 777 wrote:No! We can do this! WE CAN DO THIS!

Say it with me!

Also, isn't a big chunk of the A380's cost made up of all its bullshit luxuries - like spas and swimming pools and brothel boats?

If we make a utilitarian A380 and shove radar shit into it, I guess we can go with a $400 mil plane. If the Aussies can do it, SO CAN WE!

EDIT:

FUCK! That was a typo! It was 500 MILLION!

Goddamn...me!

What?! That means dumbing down the radar. I want my ground survelliance and air survelliance radar and all that fancy equipment! It will probably hit like 800million-1 billion?

800 million. Goddamn runaway defense budgets!

We're gonna be poor!

That thing better be able to cover 500 miles!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:800 million. Goddamn runaway defense budgets!

We're gonna be poor!

That thing better be able to cover 500 miles!

That thing has a range of 15.2 thousand km on full load. Even considering the whole load and say shave off 1/3 of the range, it's still enough to travel 5000 miles.

P.S. Stop missing the zeros!

I meant its radar.

And this is why I'll leave the numbers to PeZook and the technology to Stas.

I shall merely make loud noises in the political spectrum while tempting people with naughty things. It worked for all those Duchies!

Also: How the hell am I supposed to tour Sultan Ibrahim around Shroomania without him exploding (out of anger) and killing me with a blast of pure rage?

Do I call him 'Your Eminence'?

Shroom Man 777 wrote: Also: How the hell am I supposed to tour Sultan Ibrahim around Shroomania without him exploding (out of anger) and killing me with a blast of pure rage? Laughing

Do I call him 'Your Eminence'? Confused

Just make sure you don't start hitting on him during the tour. And, uh, leave your belt buckle GroinPager at home

Okay, I have a different question!

Massive protests against funding the space program will happen shortly in PeZookia ; And I am perplexed!

Should I realize my lifelong fantasy and have the police beat the idiots with sticks, or do I show statesmanly restrain, let them protest all they want and wait untill they forget about it in favor of a new Issue Of The Week?

You are a kind and compassionate leader. Shouldn't your nation be proud that PeZookia is, desite its small size, a respected world power? I mean, unless economic hardships are THAT bad, your people ought to be super-proud at what their nation has achieved together with the FUN.

I mean their king, their leader is The Man Who Saves The World!

Sorry for jumping in late.

Since the space program is a FUN/MESS joint project, I guess I can shell out 500M from my MESS special budget.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:You are a kind and compassionate leader. Shouldn't your nation be proud that PeZookia is, desite its small size, a respected world power? I mean, unless economic hardships are THAT bad, your people ought to be super-proud at what their nation has achieved together with the FUN.

Well, my people are a bit fickly. They see all those prosperous nations all around the place and want to be like them ; But dragging ourselves up from II world living standards is hard.

At the same time, the many threats all around the place mean that lots of military spending is necessary (for our size). AND there are plenty of various special interest groups which just hate the government and think Libertopia is the way it should all be.

Now...you are a PeZookian. You work every day, and international adventures mean little. So far, the most they brought you is the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation. Unless you're an engineer, a shipyard worker, an aerospace worker or electronics tech, you live a meager existence, probably with below 900-dollar pay.

While education and health care spending is on the rise, you are still one of the 13% of dirt-poor PeZookians. And then you hear the government will spend 500 million dollars on the space program, rather than giving them to you.

Then you read in your favorite newspaper (the Daily Rag) that it's impossible to fly to the moons anyway. People with Dr. before their names say that, so it must be true.

And you get pissed. So, so pissed.

@ Yenchin:

You can do awesome biotech experiments in the space station and send it back to Earth. Then the space capsule ends up landing in a quiet Shroomanian town and your experiment breaks out and starts eating people and growing bigger!

@ PeZook:

Aw, man! Maybe we could cut down on the military spending, or leave it to the big guys - so your folks won't go mad and try to kill you and turn your country to Shadow Empire Civil War Mk. 2!

So...I take it we use Stas's logo for the FASTA?

If so, I will make an introductory post...and a crapload of money will start flowing everywhere in R&D contracts and studies and construction contracts and booster orders and tracking stations and...

Anyway, where should FASTA be based? Comona Island?

Aw, man! Maybe we could cut down on the military spending, or leave it to the big guys - so your folks won't go mad and try to kill you and turn your country to Shadow Empire Civil War Mk. 2! Sad

Oh,don't worry. Poland has protests of various interest groups like, every day and we're doing fine

I will be cutting procurement in FY2012 anyway ; I intend to deploy an S-300 batallion and that's it. The rest of the money will bump up health care and education some more (I want 3.5% GDP on both), and do some infrastructure investment. And, of course, the electronics industry is really starting to take off now after three years of continous subsidies and development. There will be some really cool PeZookian products soon on the market.

We're at 14 thousand GDP per capita, too. I'll just do some more income redistribution, fiddle with spending and hike taxes on luxuries.

And if the anti-moon guys turn violent, well...we beat them with sticks

Comona Island and Stas' cosmodrome?

Well, Comona Island is pretty cool since it's in Shroomania - you won't get Loinstars or Wilkonians freaking out from Goddamn Commies fluoridinating their waters. All they have to worry about are the Goddamn Queers.

Everyone loves Shroomania.

Also, Comona Island is just like... a dozen kilometers away from Vulpesia! So after a successful launch, our FASTA guys can just fly or float over to WesFox' place for some debriefings and cocktails

EDIT:

We can keep our military space projects in Stas' place. Civilian stuff goes to Comona. It will be the new Atlantis!

By the way...Stas, how are my cool MIG-29s doing?

BTW, the Mig-29 is called the "Falcon Killer"