“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[JOE SOAP]

Obviously the Judges have say in the money supply, the banks are just a vessel to store it and give it out just as in Communist Russia.

[The Legendary Shark]

Possibly. The very word "Credit", though, seems to indicate that it it isn't actual money that's used but credit - just like our money today. Money is created by privately owned banks and then lent into society at interest as credit. Does the Justice Department print bonds which it exchanges for money/credits or does it create its own money/credit with no interest to pay?

What a boring Dredd story this would make!

[JOE SOAP]

I doubt it's fractional reserve banking but rather a more 'accounted', 'balanced' method of exchange, there may even be different subsets of 'credit' depending on you status considering a whole group of people -judges- don't use it personally.

[The Legendary Shark]

I've seen Dredd pay street vendors for food (I think) with a voucher and Justice Dept as a whole must use money to purchase goods and services from outside contractors. If Justice Dept creates and controls all the city's money then the welfare that just about all the citizens receive would be interest free and  therefore a lot cheaper than the system we use today. If Justice Dept borrows money from private banks like our governments do, the interest rates would be crippling.

The only way to discover where MC1s money comes from is to discover whether the City has the equivalent of a national debt. National debt = private money; no national debt = social money.

That said, interest on loans etc is a great way to control a population (as we can see every day just by looking around us) so maybe Justice Dept does create and control the money supply but charges interest too purely in order to exert that control. It might be a legal way to control people, but is it just?

Looking at the riots going on in places like Greece at the moment, maybe it wouldn't be such a boring Dredd story after all!

[TordelBack]

An interesting debate, and I reckon there's quite a body of factoids tangentially about MC-1's economy to draw from. 

Some examples:

I seem to recall they bring a selection of various currencies on the Judge Child mission, as well as bullion and trade goods, which may suggest that the Mc-1 Cred is of dubious value beyond the walls. 

Accountant Judge Winslow is certainly concerned about the budget for that mission, and later on for Bonny Crickle's op, so Justice Department presumably audits its own expenditure.

In Bob's Law it's Justice Department that gives out the 100 cred Sector Relocation Bonus, and Justice Department that subsequently taketh away (Bob's Third Law).

[House of Usher]

Hooray! At last we're into the realms of 'space maths' and all that boring stuff about the end of the world and who controls what can take a temporary hike.

The Mega-City economy is neither a closed nor a sustainable system. As for the citizens being welfare-dependent and economically non-productive, that's only possible due to most of Mega-City One's wealth being generated off-planet.

Mega-City One imports huge quantities of minerals, energy and food from off-world, which is why its colonies and interplanetary trade relations are so important. Granted, it tries to resuse and recycle everything it can and we've seen the use the city makes of renewable energy sources, but the whole thing is kept going by a constant input of value by dipping into free interstellar resources the way one might dip into the ocean with a trawler net and just scoop out fish you've put no effort into growing. It's the logical solution when you've all but exhausted your own world's natural resources: start on the natural resources of other worlds.

[TordelBack]

It's the logical solution when you've all but exhausted your own world's natural resources: start on the natural resources of other worlds.

Aye, but there's still a price to pay, and it's Mandroids who bear the cost.

[Peter Wolf]

I think they want to destroy the dollar and replace it with the amero first. Then, down the line, when Africa gets the Afro and Asia the Asio it'll be easier to roll the whole lot up into the Mega City One like Cred.

Isn't the Mega City One cred just for Mega City One though, not a federal or unified currency?

Doesn't matter anyway, all currencies are contracting as are all economies, exponential growth eventually leads to exponential contraction. We live in a finite world and there's only so much the greedy few can extract for themselves without putting any back in.

No matter who's pulling what strings or if the strings are now all tangled as to not even matter anymore, the strings will eventually be cut so the limp puppet falls in a heap- we will be returning to very base level societies unless the magic vacuum-energy-making machine is discovered.

I had to laugh at Africa gets the Afro.

What is going on in the US with the dollar and its economy is the economy is contracting as it is in a depression but the dollar supply is expanding with quantative easing-the reckless and deliberate mass printing of Fedres funny money but a lot of the cash that is being printed is virtual cash.The dollar supply that is expanding isnt going into the economy as its all going offshore and god knows where but at the same time it is driving down the value of the dollar.Its being done to sabotage the dollar and the US economy.

Yet at the same time the US[figuatively speaking] being in a depression is launching wars across the Middle East/North Africa which will cost
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ assisted by NATO of course.Its apparently official now that the US is going to send an occupational force into Libya in October.

It should be very clear by now that this is a serious problem

[JOE SOAP]

That shit's so-last-page Peter, we're into more important shit now like fiscal responsibility in the Meg, back on 'current topic'...I assume saving's not particularly encouraged in the Meg?

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I reckon The Justice Department gets all the money it needs from confiscating all the profits from the crazy fad-merchants. The banking cabals probably don't have enough financial leverage to influence Judicial legislation

[Emperor]

There is definite potential for some stories in the economic history of the mega cities (especially after watching Andrew Marr's series, which makes 2000AD seem awfully prophetic). So, for example, you'd imagine in the early years that all the Mega Cities were heavily mining the asteroid belt, that right there is a chance for some friction and drama, bringing some nice parallels with the Chinese rush to space.

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Asteroid mining also solves the question of How can the SJS afford all those ships in Insurrection?

What Justice Department has to cough up the readies for is initial seed ships with robotic crews & possibly a small number of human overseers.

These target asteroid belts in other star systems (Epsilon Eridani, for example, has at least two that we know of), set up shop & manufacture more robots. When they've a sufficient number then switch to the next phase of production:  hollowing out asteroids & churning out ships.

The SJS fighting forces can be speed cloned in situ using freely available CHON* harvested from comets, ice moons & Kuiper-type objects.

Volia! Instant(ish) space fleet.

Money in the bank!

*Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen & Nitrogen.

[Emperor]

Indeed. As the Justice Department seem to have got to the Moon first you'd have a good base for exploiting the asteroid belt - probably with people first (attracting the tough breed who run oil rigs or go out crab fishing off Alaska) followed later by robots. I can't see how you'd get the materials for MC1 without it and you'd generate some serious income selling metal to the others mega cities (while having a hand on the throttle of their development), plus you could then start building orbital factories to build ships to push out further into the Solar System (to Titan) and then make the jump to the stars.

You'd have to assume the first wave of colonisation of extra solar systems was via Von Neumman probes/seeder ships, punted up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light. The Justice Department can then catch-up with them later when FTL is developed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeder_ship

So you could probably work out a rough timeline that'd parallel that of MC1 -  you'd be looking at say the early to mid-2020s (possibly earlier) for some kind of permanent settlement off planet, probably driven by environmental problems on Earth and dwindling resources (the Helium 3 on the Moon becomes vital as do things like space-based solar arrays). You'd presumably build mass drivers on the Moon and in orbit to shunt people and cargo around, so you could use them to fire out probes and then miners into the asteroid belt, where they'd build them to send material back. This would then be in full-swing by the time MC2 and Texas City start to get built in the later 2030s/early 2040s. The money raised would help fund more ambitious missions to other stars. Then you have the Atomic war in 2070, which would have set everything back and probably resulted in loss of contact with the colonies, the establishment of a proper colony on the Moon in 2088 would be a sign they are getting back to the stars again and probably starting the job of taming what would probably be quite an unruly mess in the rest of the Solar System. I'm not sure when FTL was developed but they had time travel in 2107, so possibly before that but the colonies will have been on their own for decades before then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-City_One#History

Something like that.

Lots of potential for stories there - perhaps an Outland-style tale with early Judges in the Asteroid Belt.

[Hoagy]

What infuriates me is these two jerks thinking 2000ad forum is just another vessel for their useless opinions. Especially Peter. He really grinds my pulses. Dick.

[Mikey]

Don't sit on the fence now Krombasher!

M