The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 22, 2006

Official News - page 5

THE GALACTIC TRADING GUILD'S STRANGLEHOLD ON COMMERCE

by Hally Godarkly

Have you ever wondered exactly how important the Galactic Trading Guild is? At first sight, you might think it's just a way for Merchants, Traders and so on to band together and ensure standards are kept up. But, readers, it's much more complicated than that, and I'm here to lift the lid on the somewhat murky business of the way the Trading Guild keeps tight control on all commercial activities in today's Galaxy.

Trade. It's what keeps the Galaxy the prosperous place it is today. Without trade between planets, every single world would have to be self-sufficient. Trade is the life-blood that flows between the planets and keeps the entity that is the Galaxy alive. The means by which the trade is carried out - the blood vessels, if you will - is the independent ship owners who ply the spaceways buying and selling goods for their own personal profit.

Talk to any of these merchant princes or trading supremos and they will come across as fiercely independant, beholden to no-one, going where they choose to buy and sell on the exchanges at their whim. But they all, each and every one of them, have to be members of the Guild or they can't operate. And the Guild controls their activities in a much more important way than that, although it's one that most people aren't even aware of.

The Guild determines which planets they can trade on.

That's right, readers. Guild official Arnold Puckleberry confirmed this when I spoke to him at their HQ building on Earth. Here's a recording of what he told me.

"Well, Ms Godarkly - or may I call you Hally? Thank you, yes, Hally. It is true that all trading exchanges need to have the trading screens that display prices and the controls that allow individuals to buy and sell. That equipment has to be Guild-approved; we can't just let anything get linked up to the trading network, that would be far too dangerous.

"Unauthorized equipment can contain second-rate components that cause energy discharges which could overload the routing protocols or cause other damage to our central controllers. This puts the trading equipment on other planets at risk, not to mention the potential for bringing down the whole trading network should our controllers be affected too greatly. No, Hally, we just can't allow that kind of things.

"Then of course there is always the problem of unauthorized use of the network - hackers, if you get my drift - attempting to influence prices in their favor or just make mischief. Unauthorized equipment makes it much harder to keep such nefarious individuals off the network."

"So the Guild will not allow our approved equipment to be installed on planets that don't have our approval, and if POs choose to install third-party screens and consoles then we just won't hook them up to the Galactic network."

I expressed surprise that the Guild had such power, particularly outside the Solar System, where the influence of Earth and the Galactic Administration is not so great as it is in Sol. Puckleberry confirmed that the Guild's approval can mean economic life or death for any planet, wherever they are in the Galaxy. "There's really little point in any star system liaising with the chaps at Magellan to get an interstellar link installed, if they don't have Guild approval. After all, why does hyperspace travel matter unless you can trade with the rest of the Galaxy?" Clearly Puckleberry and the Guild don't think anything can be as important as trade!

Inside the Solar System, there are of course hundreds of colonies on the smaller moons, the asteroids, on space stations and all kinds of floating objects, which don't have trading exchanges because they've never gained that all-important approval. In some cases, they are happy to be isolated and have never applied to join the Guild's network of trading planets, although from time to time a change in regime on these tiny independent world's means they become more interested in integrating with the rest of Sol and do eventually seek approval.

So what happens when a planet applies to the Guild? The process is not exactly shrouded with secrecy, but I can tell you that I had a great deal of difficulty getting anyone to talk about it - Puckleberry wouldn't say a word. Inside the Guild, they keep their procedures close to their chests; and those who have been turned down by the Guild often have secrets of their own so don't want to talk to the press, not even to reputable prize-winning journalists like me.

Eventually, I found my way to a former under-secretary who used to work in the Guild's approvals department, until he was fired for using his work computer to view pictures of scantily-clad aliens. He was reluctant to talk to me and only agreed after I promised not to give his name, so we'll call him Brad.

Brad told me that potential applicants to the trading network have to submit detailed figures about the planet's economy, including their predicted imports and exports and the prices the exchange intends to set. This is all in the form of a multitude of complicated forms, of course - where would we be without all this red tape?

"Guild accountants look over all this huge mountain of paperwork," explained Brad, "which can take a great deal of time. Then they either approve the application or recommend further investigation. Either way, it's an incredibly slow process, although of course it can be sped up in the usual fashion." By which, of course, he meant the judicious application of some bribery, which will come as no surprise to readers of the Fed2 Star!

I pressed Brad on just what would cause an application to raise enough alarm bells to merit further investigation (other than a failure to bribe the right person, of course!) but he wouldn't give me any detail of what would make it deficient, no matter how much I probed. He did tell me what happens when investigation is merited.

"It's a rare occurrence, you understand - most applications are approved - but should that rare occurrence... erm... occur, then it was my department that despatched an accountant to the planet to investigate its economy and report back. Hir recommendations have the force of a final and binding decision so these accountants have a great deal of power. They are supposedly incorruptible, but who knows?"

I asked about the possibility of appeal, and Brad just laughed. "When I said final and binding, I meant it. Oh, there is an appeal process in place but no PO has ever managed to get a negative judgement overturned, not in all the time since the Guild started to have this kind of power."

I wanted Brad to introduce me to one of these special investigation accounts so I could get some more information about exactly how they go about things, but he seemed appalled at the very suggestion. Even as an ex-employee who left the Guild under a cloud, his loyalties remain with his former colleagues. He explained that the identity of the roving accountants was kept strictly confidential because their work was generally carried out undercover. I have to say I found the idea of undercover accountants very amusing - I can just picture spies with briefcases.

Having got all I could out of the helpful Brad, I resolved to continue to probe the way the Guild operates. Readers, next week I will bring you some background information about just how the Guild became so powerful.


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