' Wrote:Knjaz, you're vastly underestimating the perilous situation Rheinland's economy is in, even before the IC fiasco. If you read the event news articles, you'll also see IC's shipping fleet withdrawing isn't what's causing the problems.
The problems are derived from the looming threat of financial services being withdrawn, which would cripple the house. That's loans as well as insurance. Currently the price adjustments are being caused by investor uncertainty on the stock markets and panic buying of goods.
Not to mention the fact that this situation was written in by the devs, specifically because there's a lore news article that details what would happen based specifically on this particular scenario. Looking at it that way, your 'nope' doesn't really work.
Well, first of all - there's common sense/logic, and there's storyline. Latter comes first, former comes latter. There're multiple ways for story-writers to get Rheinland out of it, without using Deus Ex Machina.
Country, that consists of multiple star systems, definitely has access to all materials it might require, or their substitution. This, or lack of proper technologies, may result in a lower quality of certain goods , but it IS absolutely possible to create a closed cycle economy in a "market" of such scale. Especially with Rheinland being traditional exporter of many basic resources, and is relying on heavy industry and refining.
What does that mean? that means, that in times of big war like the one with liberty, or other emergencies, there's always a possibility to put economy on war tracks, possibly even completely removing currency and financial sphere out of it. Hell, even USSR was capable of going into this "mode" for quite a long period of time - and that was a mere part of a small planet. No more then 1/6 of it.
Stock market, debts and many other things do not mean anything when it comes down to survival of the country. Resource (material, not financial) base and production capabilities is what matters.
Money are just means, not the end in itself.
Well, I'm not saying Rheinland should go into full mobilization, I'm just showing one of many possibilities for Rheinland to survive.
But imho, as practice (at least Russian one) shows, kickin' out a foreign dominant company from a vital sphere of the market or severely restricting it - when or if it is required, is a good thing to do for domestic economy, in the end (just, it's important not to kill competition). There's a reason why economic wars happen from time to time, and barriers being established, despite all the talking about teh free market and liberal economy. (especially a hundred + years ago)
So Rheinland would do fine, more or less.
