CIPAC
By Jason Corley
It is a pleasure to be reactivated to serve, gentlebeings. I have received your instructions and executed them to 99 percent of the capacity of my processing.
The circumstances surrounding the First Meeting, (perhaps more precisely if less sensationally termed the "first meeting in 72 years") are both simple and tremendously dramatic. The Garatanis League of Shippers, re-establishing contact with SpaceFleet, was able to procure at a very low price, five mothballed and divested "ships of the line" and dispatched them as emergency transport to over six hundred worlds in under two years. Those six hundred worlds were home to 1,021 trade units, just barely a quorum for a full Board of Directors meeting of CIPAC.
The first order of business at the First Meeting was to authorize the compensation to the Garatanis League for their efforts in re-organizing CIPAC.
At that time I was re-activated and asked to serve again by detailing the current state of affairs within CIPAC. This document is therefore protected under the servantAI-client privilege.
At the close of the last CIPAC meeting twelve years ago, according to records, full-member trade units numbered only 11,618 and associate-member trade units only 189,212. This is approximately 30% of the full strength of CIPAC achieved during the Third Aberrant War, when CIPAC membership peaked.
Unfortunately, conditions at that time are unlikely to be replicated in the near future. During the Third Aberrant War, CIPAC enjoyed a strong relationship with the Confederation and excellent trade relations with the Eradani Prefecture, which contained CIPAC's largest competitor. The wartime boom made many fortunes and brought in many new trade units, some of whom did not survive the Galactic Recession that hit only a few years later. Of course, both the Confederation and the Prefecture have been practically obliterated in the Civil War. Also, many trade units of CIPAC had their capital either nationalized or destroyed during the bloody conflict.
There are two prevailing points of view within CIPAC leadership, which appear to be in complete accord on a few points but which differ in their overall approach. The first point of view, which I have termed in my own processes the "diplomatist" approach, states that CIPAC should attempt to re-establish good relations with governing bodies in the Three Million Worlds in hopes that the trade units can enjoy the full fruits of the massive reconstruction efforts which are likely to be undertaken by even the most lean and scanty governments. The remnants of the Confederation and the noble houses left behind by the Prefecture's collapse should be courted especially strongly.
The second approach, which I call the "independent" approach, states that CIPAC should bypass the various governments and give preferential status to trade units that deal directly with the underlying population of the planets. This, say the adherents to this approach, would not only provide the most efficient method of restoring the Three Million, but would eliminate the need for an extensive political campaign that might be used to extract unnecessary compromises from CIPAC member units. Both approaches are in favor of a number of measures, which I think should be undertaken at once in accordance with the Boards' decision: the re-establishment of contact with as many of the Three Million worlds as possible, the acquisition, collation and free distribution of market information regarding each of them, and most importantly, the subsidization and reconstruction of interstellar shipyards in return for deflated prices for CIPAC trade units.
I cannot, of course, choose between the approaches -- that matter is left to the full Board of Directors when a full meeting is finally called. Creator speed that day!
I am your faithful servant, gentlebeings.
Agammemnon
To the reader.
The following memorandum was recovered by Triton agents working in partial secrecy within the newly reformed administration of CIPAC. We have distributed it regularly to new agents ever since, for two reasons. First, it gives the Æon agent an overview of what CIPAC is. Secondly, it provides the information that it was meant to provide -- a summary of the dominant forms of economic institutions in the Galaxy. In some places I have made mention of information which Aeon has found in [italics and brackets].
Librarian-Protector Sitovsky-K'karakakk
It should be noted that in Confederation space, the "main species" have become so commingled in galactic society that economic units consisting solely of members of one species is extremely rare, and is definitely the exception in CIPAC, not the rule. There are Qin and Chromatics who have launched human-style corporations. There are Humans and Chromatics who have joined and even run Qin-style trade guilds. But each species had a pre-existing economic structure before absorption into the Galactic community, and those structures still tend to inform the economic thought of each of the species even within the larger system.
It should also be noted that CIPAC's ability to regulate and promote these units has varied dramatically over the years of the Confederation. Some Confederation governments kept extremely firm control over the spacelanes and put high premiums on interstellar travel that kept CIPAC influence to a minimum. Others allowed CIPAC essentially free reign. Following the collapse of the Confederation, CIPAC has once again found itself without practical galaxy-wide limitations on its powers. However, logistical concerns in the form of the lack of interstellar travel and communication have made this freedom extremely difficult to exploit. The conflicting factions within CIPAC agree that the organization is at a crucial point in its history and that now is a time of great change for the group.
This list of economic units is prepared for the new CIPAC agent, who may not have considered carefully the economic assumptions which they bring to the association's work. Unrestrained competition is not now and never has been the galaxy's predominant economic theory -- neither should it be the CIPAC's agent assumption for what is best for CIPAC and the galaxy.
HUMANS -- Corporations and Government Works
The human organization of capital, like the human race itself, is a schizophrenic and individualistic matter. There are two overarching themes in the organization of human capital. The first is unfettered competition -- the second is massive government works. The two are inextricably linked together in a complicated set of trade practices and regulations.
The typical human business organization is called the "corporation." This is traditionally called "a creature of the state", though the state typically exercises very few controls over the organization itself, preferring to regulate the external activities of the unit. The loosely-regulated corporation is a tremendously addictive economic organization. It originated very early in human history and, by the end of the twenty-first century, had some form of implementation in every culture in human-colonized space. Every culture which has come into extended contact with human corporations have also adopted the form, to some degree. It is, in short, the most "successful" economic structure if the term is used strictly to denote the universality of its acceptance.
However, humans also from time to time adopt large-scale industries wholesale by their governments, either allowing or disallowing limited or unlimited competition with private entities. Government-origin economic organizations such as the Star-Central Postal Express and the Shoffencraft/Andrews Shipyards tend to involve infrastructure projects. Essentially arbitrarily, CIPAC has disallowed the government-created industries from full membership. Disputes over which industries have their roots in human governmental structures abound.
Sample Human-Founded Member Units:
Qin Trade Guilds
In keeping with the more communitarian nature of the Qin, the typical trade unit of Qin space is a trade guild consisting of anywhere from five to several hundred individual entrepreneurs. In the case of larger and more tightly-controlled enterprises, being the "representative" of the member subsidiary to the appropriate guild is a more influential position than actually bearing the executive responsibility for the operation of the subsidiary. The guilds have extensive regulatory powers over all of the activities of the subunits contained within.
It is not unusual, though, for trade guilds to contend among themselves for power and influence over particularly lucrative enterprises. These conflicts arise most often in the very common case that an enterprise belongs to two or more trade guilds.
However, membership in a trade guild cannot be revoked or suspended until the dissolution of the enterprise. This permanence has resulted in a much higher investment in arbitration and mediation procedures than in other similarly-organized guilds.
CIPAC tends to admit trade guilds over the individual entrepreneurs, partly because CIPAC does not offer the same kind of structure and power that the guilds do.
Sample Qin-Originated Member Units:
CHROMATIC -- 'Family' Businesses
During the Chromatic Reconstruction, in which the Human and Qin freed the Chromatic race from the cruel deceptions of the Doyen that had hoped to make the Chromatics their interstellar shock troops and slaves, the Chromatic race rediscovered the tribal and religious traditions that make the Chromatic species, like humans, a fascinating mix of individualism and communitarianism. Unlike humans, Chromatics tend to organize not in ordinarily recognizable states but in tribes and family units, meaning that grand economic systems are, for the most part, beyond their reach. However, the example of large-scale human cooperation has not been lost on them.
Consequently, while Chromatics have not abandoned their traditional familial and tribal methods of organization, they have expanded the concept of a tribe to include larger umbrella groups composed of a number of family or tribal units working together to a common purpose. For example, while building spaceports on distant colony worlds would be beyond the capabilities of even the largest families, Carnelian 224 can, with nineteen family units each specializing in a different field such as terrain preparation, frame erection, power systems or plumbing.
Sample Chromatic-Originated Units:
PHYLES -- Temporary Production Cooperatives
Following the Phyle Wars in which the member races of the Coalition threw off the shackles that kept them enslaved to a "master" race of Breeders, the approximately 189 recognizable phyles of the Coalition affirmed, unanimously, at the First Phyle Congress that the hundreds of years of suffering in bondage had inextricably tied them together. This Congressional statement, far from being a legislative enactment, was an expression of one of the most enduring themes of Phyle life. So even though Phyle members on the whole have an unparalleled work-ethic hardwired into their genes, their recent experience gives them a mistrust of authority that would seem to make it impossible to accomplish any sizable goals.
However, the need for large-scale cooperation in such vital tasks as food production, ship building and resource mining, did not go away when the Coalition's top-down organization did. As such, the Phyles have adopted a model of collective effort whose efficiency would make Marx and Hegel weep with joy. When a task too big for a single Phylan needs doing -- planting of the next year's crops, erection of a new housing dome, construction of a jump ship -- the Phylan who came up with the idea makes a call for helpers. Sometimes it's a public call, sometimes it's a private invitation. If enough Phylans heed the call and come together, they form a cooperative under the originator's direction. This group lasts only as long as necessary for the task at hand, and when it is complete, the collective's members go their own way.
As such, the cooperative that harvests the year's bthuagga crop could well have no members in common with the one that planted or tended it; the food is then distributed among the settlement, or traded to ships or settlements elsewhere, as needed. Similarly, the members who build a habitation unit assert no ownership to their work; there is an unspoken agreement that the new habitations should be allocated to those most in need of them. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is more than a slogan with the Phyles.
Due to the temporary and noncapitalistic nature of these production cooperatives, CIPAC has little to no influence on the Phyles' economy. However, a number of "trade envoys" -- amateur middlemen, so to speak -- have emerged. When a spaceship-building cooperative forms, they don't start out by mining the ore from which to forge the hull's steel; instead, they contact a trade envoy, who either contacts a steel-producing cooperative -- or convinces someone to form one. While usually not directly involved in the production cooperatives, these individuals have developed a network of contacts both among and outside the Phyles that allow them to facilitate deals between Phyle cooperatives and other groups, such as non-Phyle planetary governments, the Spacefleets or human companies. Currently, 812 of these self-appointed envoys are registered as individual CIPAC members, though as word spreads that number grows by about five a week. Encouraging the growth of this number is vital to developing CIPAC's interests in former Coalition space.
Conclusion
It should be strongly noted that there are a practically infinite number of ways to organize capital. These broad outlines do not begin to encompass the various ways that beings undertake to manage their financial endeavors. Nor should the trade representative place too much emphasis on the sort of organization of capital that they are dealing with. CIPAC has a broad mandate and is not limited to well-known, popular or established sorts of economic organizations. Innovation in organization can only benefit CIPAC, and the most important thing that the trade representative can take from this overview is the overriding importance of flexibility.
Characters selecting CIPAC as their primary Allegiance may allocate their 10 Allegiance Ability dots among any or all of the following: Pilot, Academics, Rapport, Subterfuge, Etiquette and Savvy. CIPAC characters also tend to favor the Backgrounds of Citizenship, Contacts, Influence and -- of course -- Resources.
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