Merchant Marine

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   This article discusses a subject with undecided "Canon".  The Swarm Cycle writers need to discuss this on the email list, come to a decision, and then update this article to let readers know what Swarm Cycle "true canon" is.

Merchant Marine is a somewhat vague catch-all term to describe all ships engaging in transportation, commerce and trade not dedicated to Fleet operations, which would fall under the Fleet Auxiliary, as there few established Merchant Marine organizations as one might refer to the personnel of the United States Military Sealift Command. In THE Harem Tales 4 We Gotta Get Outta This Place! by Omachuck there is a Merchant Marine academy established by the Harrad colony on Pern in the Rukbat system, established with personnel extracted from Earth that had previously operated these academies on Earth, but no reference has yet been made to the actual establishment of a Merchant Marine service in any current stories.

That story refers to a training facility belonging solely to the Harrad colony. It has several purposes: 1) train professionals for trade 2) train professionals in aquatics to support colonies located on 'water' planets 3) provide training and support for the efforts to build underwater fighting redoubts on Earth - and maybe other planets as needed. Maybe for the Fleet Auxiliary, much as the US Merchant Marine Academy serves as a training facility for the US Military Sealift Command. 

What A Merchant Marine Service Might Be

There is nothing to prevent a writer from having such services established at the colonial level as a service that would handle the non-military transportation of commerce of trade goods such as raw materials, finished goods and personnel, and every reason why a writer should do so. The Confederacy has many references to active trading being done between human worlds, between non-human Confederacy worlds, and there is a possibility for very limited, controlled interaction between humans and non-humans, perhaps using the Darjee as intermediators, with an AI actually handling the communication between them.

It would be nonsensical to make the assumption that every colony has the entirety of raw materials and finished goods that would fully satisfy every human desire, and very good reason to believe that not all planets are blessed with the same relative abundance of raw materials resources as the Earth is. Merchant Marine operations would help fill this gap, and as it would operate outside of the military structure, a civilian Merchant Marine would be very reasonable. If there were no such operation, one might expect that it would be done on a for-profit basis by individuals and groups, but the economic design of the Swarm Cycle Universe makes this almost impossible. Without any sort of actual economic system (currency, banking, finance, etc.) there is no opportunity to satisfy a profit motive unless entities operated entirely on an unwieldy and thoroughly inefficient barter system. A barter system breaks down quickly when one is dealing in bulk goods, such as raw materials in shipload quantities. Secondly, volunteers are assigned to a branch of service upon extraction, leaving no one with the freedom to engage in non-military pursuits as a full-time enterprise.

Thus, the only authority with the power to actually establish a non-military operation for the transport of goods would be a planetary governor. It is quite logical that a governor would identify needs that cannot be domestically fulfilled, have the desire to establish operations that can fulfill those needs, and establish such an operation under his own authority using the resources he has at his disposal in terms of construction facilities, resources and personnel to fulfill those needs. He would also have the authority and ability to establish a monetary system for exchange, a banking system and all other legal and financial mechanisms needed to actually facilitate some reasonably effective trading system.

What A Merchant Marine Service Cannot Be

A Merchant Marine service cannot operate without restriction over the full expanse of interstellar space, as the AI would generally not allow travel by humans to another Confederacy world. Canon seems to indicate that limited human-to-Darjee contact is permitted with an AI as intercessor, but outside of that humans are not permitted to have any contact with other Confederacy races. Omachuck has written sevreral stories that bend this rule somewhat, He plays upon previous descriptions of the Tu'ull and posits that they can handle an experimental and carefully managed exposure to humans. The stories are designed so that human contact is limited and confined to Tu'll only. At this point, no human outside the Harrad colony is aware of the direct human contact with the Tu'ull. He describes the scenario as follows:

"By and large, the concept of trade between species works only if 1) AIs are the interface for many/most of the species and/or 2) the Darjee are lying that the entire Confederacy are monolithically xenophobic to the point of suicide. We do know that the Darjee AIs can and have lied to humans."

A Merchant Marine service cannot operate as a commercial enterprise without the establishment of an economic system conducive to the free exchange of goods and services, and a legal system that would allow for the establishment of commercial activities. No stories currently are published that discuss the establishment of such outside of Earth, and Earth has no authority outside of the Earthat system.

A Merchant Marine service is not an adjunct to the Fleet Auxiliary, as the Auxiliary has a mission to support Naval operations and this is outside of the core mission of the Auxiliary. Purely economic, non-military transportation operations would be seen as a distraction and a misuse of highly valuable and limited assets.

A Merchant marine could not be a private entity operated by a corporation or other group of individuals outside the direct control of a planetary governor or an executive agency under a governor's authority. No legal authority exists (outside of a governor's decision) to allow such private groups to operate, and all Confederacy humans are under the control and direction of either the Confederacy military or a planetary governor.

References

• THE Harem Tales 4 We Gotta Get Outta This Place! by Omachuck
• It's a Helluva Job by Anne N. Mouse
• The Librarian by deGaffer

See Also

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