Duck’s Pond
For once every seat, booth and barstool at Duck’s is full. Jacques sits on a folding chair by the back door, turning an odd-shaped piece of cloth in his hands as the other captains shout, vent and strategize. Except for one captain, who just keeps screaming “Nilaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” at regular intervals when not drinking.
Jacques waits for a pause in the discussion, stands, and begins to speak: “My fellow capitains….”, but someone else starts talking. He does this ten more times, until finally, with the room beginning to clear out, he is heard.
“My fellow capitains, I think…”
“Nilaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“…I think it is likely that the rumors are true: Unizone intends to replace us completely with a drone delivery fleet. In fact, I even believe the prototype drone was here earlier, but has left, making me more comfortable to discuss things.
“The sole mission Unizone offers is a suicide run: even if you survive, the costs incurred will all but dictate death or retirement when the next missions become available, and we all know that Unizone doesn’t allow retirement. One might be inclined to try to take advantage of their new low cost hull repair, but that will not significantly mitigate the expected damage, even assuming it works as advertised. The communications package débâcle must be remembered.
“But only some of us can afford to transition to Ella’s fleet, and doing that has further costs, as many of us who can cannot then afford to maintain our ships with her meager profit to costs ratio. Moreover, while Ella promises to free our ships from Unizone’s nefarious remote control systems, what guarantee do we have that her engineers will not simply rig us up the same for her? Not that we have a significant choice in the matter.
“The Community Bank idea is indeed a sound one, but many questions remain, and we have little time to sort them out. It would be most optimal if all of us could switch allegiance. Even if this hard news out of Unizone changes, and they begin to offer proper opportunities, in this case they would be required to drop their monopolistic front. But I worry that even with all of the money being offered in private or Community Bank loans, we will not be able to liberate all ships.
“My questions about the Community Bank are these:
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The Community Bank will have to make many decisions, some very hard. This requires governance: what is our strategy here? Will all donors have a vote in decisions? Will they vote for a board who makes decisions? Will votes be weighted against money put into the bank? What of people who contribute or have contributed, but also wish to take out loans? My suggestion would be to not weight votes, but that any contributor who wishes to apply for a loan must abstain from voting in that round of disbursements. Also, tabled votes should be tallied after a cutoff period, to prevent them from being hung by incommunicative members.
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How will the Community Bank choose who to disburse loans to, and what will they expect in return? Unless the Community Bank is to just be a charity, they must require some kind of fee on loans to make up for circumstances where loans cannot be repaid. Missions can be failed, either by loss of cargo or even by loss of ship. Some sort of fee based an expected risk could be used to offset this, but another idea would be if the cost of unrepaid loans was divided amongst those who had taken loans for that mission and could repay. Capitains who simply failed their missions would still be expected to repay their debts, but the bank would be more likely to remain solvent. However, we would likely want to add some percentage fee to reward those who have contributed into the bank as well. Also, how will members withdraw their contributions?
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Will the Bank support some missions but not others? It might be tempting to require capitains seeking loans to apply for Mission 4 with its lower cost and greater certainty of returns. But these returns are meager, and between interest (however we calculate that) and damages, this will result in overall diminishing the usefulness of the ship of the capitain taking out the loan. Mission 2 might allow all to profit, but carries a risk of failure that would have to be eaten by the Bank.
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How will the Bank respond to becoming a new political entity in Charibdys? Certainly if the Bank’s initial purpose is to rob Unizone of slaves, Unizone will not take kindly to it. Ella will perhaps be more friendly, if it seems that the Bank overall is beneficial to her, but she might begin to place demands of fealty on it as Unizone has on us. And, of course, it will naturally become a target for…”
“Nilaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Anyway, my dear capitains who have remained, and remained awake, long enough to listen to this: here is my offer. I shall put the remainder of my money (b23.00000) into the Bank. I shall request a loan to transfer to Ella and undertake one of her missions. I would prefer Mission 2, but will accept Mission 4 (or even 3 if the Bank governors decide). If it there is not enough money, then I will accept Mission 1, and my money will be the Bank’s should I not survive.”
@patrace This is to say, if Jacques receives a loan before the cutoff, he will take the Mission he is offered, otherwise he gives his money to the Bank and accepts Mission 1.
Jacques tips his hat to the assembly, hands a large package wrapped in brown paper to Duck, and leaves. The package is the framed copy of the Frontier Times.
"Captain" Jacques Malchance The Entropy
