Just a kind of idle thought on a slow day, but does anyone else think the Imperium of man is in the grip of a 10,000 year credit crunch?

The Horus Heresy was a true galactic civil war, nearly destroying humanity in one go, and leaving the Imperium shattered and practically leaderless. The first High Lords of Terra were broadly speaking military leaders, meaning that the Imperium was, during its formative years, more or less a military junta. These guys were not necessarily economic experts, and their whole ethos seems to have been on holding the Imperium together militarily rather than econmically.

The Imperium as a whole seems to be trapped in a kind of post-war austerity, like Britain in the early '50s. The Amalthians are desperate to maintain the status quo, which could be trapping the Imperium in an irreversible decline...

The Calixis Sector, of course, is waaay post Heresy, but it's interesting how many of the Hive worlds and imperial worlds are expressed to be in steep economic decline. I'm starting to wonder if the writers are consciously (or subconsciously) echoing the current economic climate in their work... Good sci-fi echoes the time it was created in (hence the apocalyptic "cold war" feel of early 40k) .

Whaddaya reckon? Am I onto somethig here, or (as usual!) reading too much into things ?

I think you might be on to something. I mean, as you're stating; it does seem as though the economic decline has begun in earnest in the Calixis Sector upon many worlds. Hrm. Good or bad?

I think it's a side effect of the tithes. Most hive worlds are designated Exactus Extremis, and with so many resources going off world, it probably does put a perpetual drain on the economy. Either that, or it's just another facet of the Grim Darkness of The Future™.

Lightbringer said:

I agree with every other thing you said, bro.

But the last thing the 40K world has is a Cold War... The war in the year 40.000 is very much burning and active, on hundreds of thousands of Battlefronts.

As you said, the Imperium is struggling to keep itself together, since it is besieged on all sides by enemies it insists on making and maintaining. There is no need to dig deep to find the reason for strife (most of all in economy and life quality) in the worlds of the far future. After all, they've been in War for MILENIA.

My 2 pence.

Lightbringer said:

Very true, but one of the major players in the whole reorganisation was Roboute Guilliman (i can never spell his surname) who showed himself to be a master of all aspects of ruling a society, including economic. That is the main reason why Ultramar is supposedly an example of a model society within the Imperium. Or at least, it was until the 'nids arrived.

I hadn't really thought of it like that Lightbringer. You may well be on to something.

@zethliss: you got it right that time. It is Roboute Guilliman.

Is there anything like "imperial economy" at all?

For sure, there are lots of ships travelling the void... but are they really enough private merchants around to make all these worlds so interlinked that they are effecting each other similiar then todays nations are effecting each other?

For sure, hive worlds are 100% dependendt on "food from outside", but is this food really SOLD (which would mean outrageous prices due to the cost of travell) or would it be more in-game to assume that the majority of food is given by the imperium out of the tithe it demands from all of igs (agri-)worlds?

What I try to point at is the idea (since in this setting, there is not to much logic) of a system that isn´t that depending on "free market" as our own but a system with a feudal order more similiar to old kingdoms. Where your Lord (Terra) does provide you with thinks in exchange for your service (tithe, loyality).

Just remember, the imperium did not really PAY for the goods it gathers... and they will surly get a lot of the tithe in goods (not coin), so where do this megatons of wares and foods go?

• To the military, of course!
• into the "tithe system", to keep itself going, of course!
• ...but is it so far fetched to imagine that a lot of it is although used to support local governeurs?

In that case, an economic depression (or things that would cause one) would not hitting that hard. After all, economy is about money, in the end. And money isn´t involved that much here. It is more of a "benevolent looter" who takes things there, keeps to itself and brings something somewhere else...

Good points, Gregorius...I would argue that there is some evidence of interdependence between worlds: after all, Hive worlds can't feed themselves, agri worlds just produce food...clearly there is some form of trading going on here...OK, maybe that's just the Administratum ordering this to happen, but there does seem to be a lucrative trade in luxury goods and the like.

I'd argue that where there are traders, there's an economy...and we know there are traders, even if they're rogue ones!

It's worth noting that our present situation really isn't sustainable in real life. Even if we solve the energy problem with say nuclear fusion, there's still the fact that we're burning through the Earth's stock of rare earth metals, fossil fuels, uranium etc, which will make mantaining civilisation as we currently have it extremely difficult over the next couple of hundred years, let alone the next 38 millenia. However, I doubt that this really is what the writers were thinking about. It's probably as people have earlier mentioned justified in terms of the tithes needed to keep the entire system and the Imperial warmachine operating and employed by the writers to emphasis the grim-war torn feel, as wars occur when resources are scarce and of course, result in scarcer resources due to their wasteful nature and their tendency to blow up large pieces of expensive infrastructure. In addition, it adds to the whole "fallen from grace" feel, when you consider that humanity rose to incredible heights of power during the Dark Age of Technology.