by Max Barry

Latest Forum Topics

Advertisement

8

DispatchFactbookOverview

by The City-State of Rho Ophiuchi. . 333 reads.

An Overview of Rho Ophiuchi

The City-State of Rho Ophiuchi



Flag


Motto: Efficiency is the Precursor to Success


Population: 185.1 million
-Density: 21,596 per km²


Official Language: Standard Arembian



National Language: Standard Arembian


Demonym: Rho Ophiuchian

Government: Plutocratic Oligarchy


Legislature:
- Upper House: Board of Corporate Representation
- Lower House: Board of Economic Representation


Establishment: from Unincorporated territory
Independence: 1963


Land Area: 10080 km² claimed, 8571 km² possessing

Water Area: 19 km²
Water %: 0.22%


GDP (nominal): 44.424 Trillion kgFeEq.
GDP (nominal) per capita: 240,000 kgFeEq.


Human Development Index (NS Version): 86.91 (high)


Currency: Kilogram of Iron equivalent


Time Zone: UTC-5:00


Drives on the: Right


Calling code: +589


Internet TLD: Non-applicable


National Animal: Rotifer
National Sport: Automobile Racing
National Fruit: Blueberry
National Colours: Blue, Yellow, Black
National Liquid: Chromyl Chloride
National Appliance: Toaster
National Mineral: Hematite


Rho Ophiuchi

Rho Ophiuchi is a small, efficient nation, with a population of 107.7 million, and notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, extremely low taxes, and complete absence of social welfare. The country is a plutocratic autocracy, where the government mostly runs itself without input from the people, save those wealthy enough to be politically influential. It has next-to-zero international influence due to its lack of internal unity and stability, but is used as a tax haven and industrial center by many multinational corporations and wealthy individuals.

History

The history of Rho Ophiuchi, compared with most countries, is quite short. The city was established in 1963 by a number of oil corporations that had realized that the region had massive oil reserves. This created a massive demand for workers in the region, and a city then sprang up in the center of the area, housing the workers needed for extracting and refining the oil, and then their support services. This caused a massive economic boom, the repercussions of which are still felt today. In this period, called by many the "golden age" of Rho Ophiuchi, the country was more or less stateless, being ruled directly and unofficially by a group of large corporations in an anarcho-capitalist system. During most of the 1960s the oil industry in the region grew and grew, causing the city to reach upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand residents by 1970, remarkable growth for such a small city. Although the il industry began to stagnate in the 1970s, the abundance of the resource in Rho Ophiuchi caused a boom in automobile manufacturing, which was noted by many to have caused another massive boost to the number of workers required. As there were jobs available, people moved to Rho Ophiuchi, and the city grew to a population of four million by the end of the 1970s. This growth continued well into the 1980s, but abruptly came to an end at 9 million in 1987 during a failed revolution. During the late 1970s and the earty-to-mid 1980s, there had been a steadily increasing number of strikes among the workers of the nation, which came to an abrupt head in 1987 when many of the workers declared a communist revolution. As almost everyone had multiple firearms (usually automatic), most of the workers already had their hands on weapons, but little did they consider that everyone else also had firearms. This was a fatal miscalculation for the revolution, because while the revolting workers all had automatic weapons, the defending corporations and security agents also had firearms. This, in effect, lead to one of the bloodiest civil wars ever known, with the entire city being turned into a war zone for eight years. By 1993, most of the corporations were getting tired of the increasingly sporadic victories they were receiving, and began consolidating their forces, realizing that to combat this problem an actual government would be needed to provide centralized control to their forces. However, still trying to follow anarcho-capitalistic ideals as closely as they could, they structured the government so that it was still very dependent on the cooperation of the corporations to do much of anything, and would have very little power after the war was over. With the new centralised coordination for their forces, the corporations finally managed to gain the upper hand, subduing the revolt by 1995. However, the country was dramatically changed after this, with an existent (although extremely small) government, and much higher unemployment levels, due to the unappealing nature of doing business somewhere that was recently wracked by civil war, and though the country continued to grow, this was now mainly due to the high birth rate.

However, on July 13th, 2021, this status quo was destroyed by the rebellion of the highest levels of government, lead by President Ned Gardner, and supported by both the department of law enforcement and the military (which, although small by any external standards, was drastically more powerful than any individual corporation, militia, or criminal organization. Gardner was not content with just being president, so he had decided to attempt to seize control of the entire country in a more permanent way - and so not be subject to the whims of corporations. He wanted a new state where he could control all - a totalitarian regime characterized by socialism, social conservatism, and the funneling of most of the country's wealth into his own pockets. As Gardner had been planning this takeover since his original rise to power, the military and law enforcement had been gaining both funding and control, and bunkers were being built underneath the various government buildings near Gardner's complex. Throughout this period between Gardner's rise to power and the war that would erupt, Gardner was thus preparing his forces for the war. July 13th, 2021 was when the war formerly began, but the months prior were, in hindsight, just a prelude. The actual war began as a small-scale urban conflict, one which, if the corporations actually banded together, they could probably win, but the entire thing started to go off the rails on July 18th, 5 days later, when foreign assistance from the nation of Honourbound began. This assistance was provided to the so-called "corporate" faction, composed of corporation, militias, and other paramilitary forces that had temporarily decided to put aside their differences and petty squabbles and agree that Gardner was bad. Honourbound helped establish actual lines in the war, and also helped the corporate faction push those lines forward, but the situation would quickly spiral out of control in early August, when True Europa State declared its support for Gardner's regime. As both sides began to command more troops to go to the front lines, the situation in Rho Ophiuchi was quickly becoming a proxy war - one which threatened to destroy the entire nation if something was not done. Thus, on August 13th, a month after the war began, the corporate faction decided to cut their losses by declaring that they would cede the fifth of the nation that Gardner and his regime had already captured, and recognize Gardner's regime as a new nation, if only the war would end. After heated negotiations, a peace was finally reached, and a twenty-meter steel wall was erected to separate the new state of West Rho Ophiuchi from the east.

Geography

The nation is a city-state, with borders in the shape of a square, one hundred kilometers on a side. This makes the population density extremely high, but the prevalence of urban farming in the city allows the population to largely grow their own food. This, and the city's large automobile manufacturing and chemical industries, contribute toward the nation's extremely high power consumption, which is supplied through a combination of nuclear fission, petroleum-based combustion, and geothermal energy. The weather in the area is relatively constant, with daytime temperatures artificially raised through the release of waste heat from industrial processes, sometimes up to well above fifty degrees Celsius. Together with the perpetual cloud of thick smog over the nation, this makes life difficult for the nation's residents.

The nation's landscape depends on the part of the nation itself. There is a core in the central city which contains two or three million people, which is almost as prosperous as a developed nation, but the rest of the country is covered with massive slums of various kinds. Unemployment is at extremely high numbers, with more than a fifth of the workforce unemployed. This contributes greatly to the nation's extremely high crime rate, which, combined with the passive-aggressive attitude of most of those who do follow the rules, and the inhospitablity of the climate, makes the nation one of the most avoided nations in the world.

Rho Ophiuchi's geography can be divided into several vague regions, delineated by factors such as property values, pollution levels, and the amount of large corporate presences in the area. In the areas with the lowest property values exist extremely large mining firms, which create an extremely hazardous, albeit extremely productive environment. In these areas also exist oil wells and geothermal power plants, all of which contribute to the acidic air and extremely bad pollution levels. While these areas are dangerous, they also have extremely low property values, and are not generally patrolled, leading to massive slums sometimes cropping up in-between mines.

The areas with low, but not extremely low property values tend to get covered with a pretty even mixture of industrial plants and slums as well, but these industrial plants are usually manufacturing-based, instead of extraction-based. As the automobile manufacturing and chemical industries are the nation's largest income source, most factories in this area are automobile manufacturing plants, petroleum refineries, chemical plants, or the like, with other types of manufacturing being prevalent as well. These factories turn on at six AM, turn off at six PM, and this timekeeping keeps time of almost the entire nation. Workers generally either squat in cobbled-together slums made from trash and materials rejected by factories and mining facilities, and pasted together with dried clay and mud, or live in cramped, but decently sanitary, apartment complexes build on factory premises, and paying for them with company currency.

The areas with medium property values tend to be full of mid-sized apartment buildings, most with hydroponics going on inside, run partially by the tenants. It is common in this region to offer someone a hydroponic-capable apartment at a low price, on the condition that the tenant forfeits all the surplus hydroponically-grown produce to the apartment building, which can then supplement its income by selling it to supermarkets. This leads to a lot of extremely-small apartments being occupied by people that not only have jobs outside of the apartment building, but have to spend several hours a day tending to the hydroponics inside their apartment. 14-hour workdays are therefore extremely common.

The few areas with high property values are part of the central core mentioned earlier, which actually is almost as wealthy as some developed countries, however much of its populace is only able to maintain this level of wealth with extremely long workdays as well. High-rise apartments, commercial towers, and extremely large multi-story shopping centers make up the landscape in this area.

Demographics

Demographically, Rho Ophiuchi has rapid growth and rapid emigration patterns. While contraceptives exist in Rho Ophiuchi, they are generally unproven, expensive, and in a development phase. This makes the average birth rate quite high, at 5.8 children per woman. Although Rho Ophiuchi is relatively densely-packed, the country has not existed for that long, and between inherent governmental instabilities and high levels of emigration, no one in power is too concerned about a population crisis. What those in power are concerned about is life expectancy. The life expectancy of Rho Ophiuchi has been abysmally low for most of its history, bouncing around 55 to 65. As such, raising life expectancy has been a major concern for those in power for quite a while, and this trend will likely continue into the future. Luckily, substantial progress on that front has been made, especially after Gardner left, and average Rho Ophiuchian life expectancy is currently at 86.00 years - a massive win for the corporations in power.

Population

The population of Rho Ophiuchi can be divided into two distinct groups, depending on the reason that the people are there. The first group is the group of people who moved to Rho Ophiuchi so they would not have to pay taxes. This group comprises most of the well-off in the country. The second group mainly consists of people who were either exiled from another country, born in Rho Ophiuchi and could not move out, or the like. They tend to be notably less happy about their situation than the first group, and are usually very poor, working in factory jobs or the like. Interestingly, though there are two distinct socioeconomic classes, there are people from all over the world in each one, partly due to the recent establishment of Rho Ophiuchi by corporate, not national, interests.

Language

Rho Ophiuchi's population has no real cultural heritage or language, as the country was founded in the late 20th century, and has thus not existed for long enough for a real identity to form. The population mainly speaks Standard Arembian, although those coming from other countries will usually identify more strongly with their native language.

Religion

Rho Ophiuchi has a relatively even set of religions operating under it, with no single one being favoured by the government, but no religions being repressed either. As Rho Ophiuchi is relatively new, it does not contain any important locations for mainstream religions, though more recent and sketchy religions such as the cult of the Purple Plutonium Pizza have some religious sites in the city.

Someplace being declared a religious site does not mean that it automatically is given to the religion claiming it, though, which has lead to such ridiculous incidents such as the thirty-year series of lawsuits the cult of the Purple Plutonium Pizza filed against Rho Ophiuchian Steel & Oil Company for ownership of their “pizza reactor,” officially named Reactor #7 by Rho Ophiuchian Steel & Oil Company.

The four largest religions in Rho Ophiuchi are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism, at 39.1%, 21.4%, 15.2%, and 3.3%. About 5% of the population follow other established religions, 2% follow nontraditional religions, and about 14% are atheist or agnostic.

Race

Rho Ophiuchi is an extremely multiethnic society, with no single group having a large share of the population. This is due to the nation being founded by a group of corporations sharing economic interests rather than by any group with a national identity. However, ethnicities from nations that are more populous are more common, as are ethnicities from countries that trade consistently with Rho Ophiuchi. As one would expect from such a state, racial discrimination is largely nonexistent, at least within major corporations.

However, none of this applies at the local level. Several percent of the city’s population live in small, extremely racist ethnic communities, which are usually tied to a particular ethnicity, distrustful of outsiders, and extremely distrustful of individuals of different races. These communities can have small, locally-run businesses as well, which can also be quite racist. However, these areas are by no means the majority, and most of the city operates on principles of multiculturalism, as it is not profitable to discriminate against massive sections of potential employees and customers.

Government

The minute, corrupt, pro-business, and well-organized Rho Ophiuchan government, or what there is of one, juggles the competing demands of Industry and Education, which, together, make up the vast majority of its budget. The most abnormal part of the Rho Ophiuchan government are its extremely low taxes - the tax rate is a mere 0%, one of the lowest rates in the pacific. In fact, many have hypothesized that this low tax rate may be the only thing keeping the nation together - the conditions may be bad, but there is almost no where else with taxes as low. This low tax rate can only be achieved due to the abnormal frugality of the Rho Ophiuchan government, which does not have programs, as many other nations do, in welfare, spirituality, environment, social policy, defense, or public transport, and has extremely streamlined administration, law and order, and healthcare departments.

The Rho Ophiuchan government is notorious for arresting anyone who disagrees with them loudly enough, and then doing almost nothing else. In general, dissidents who make themselves known, whether through protest, media, or "contempt of cop," (the last one being a term commonly used in reference to the implicit crime of disagreeing with any sort of government official), tend to either leave the country quickly, have their house "struck by lightning", or merely disappear, presumably abducted by a group of teenagers who were paid a few hundred kgFeEq. to be secret agents for a few hours and abduct them (Which, as it turns out, is a highly effective strategy due to the number of teenagers who are wannabe-spies and also want to be on the good side of the government.). However, contrary to some rumors, this sort of thing is quite rare, with this happening to only a dozen or two people per year, and is mostly confined to lower-level officials, as higher-level ones tend not to care. No one is really quite sure where these people go, but most assume they are shoved into boxes, labeled as canned goods, and mailed to Johannesburg or something.

The Rho Ophiuchan government is theoretically composed of three major branches - the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Of these three, the legislative branch is by far the most powerful, but the executive and judicial branches can sometimes exert their relatively small power for a long time to bring changes that would be impossible for the rapidly changing legislative branch to accomplish. The executive branch, which used to be led by President Ned Gardner, before his rebellion and the formation of West rho ophiuchi, is supposedly by far the simplest of the three, previously having a president who is never actually elected, but rather is either appointed (if the old one dies, or when the executive branch was being formed in the first place), which has happened exactly once, on April 7th, 1993, or is overthrown in a military coup, which also happened exactly once, during the takeover of the current incumbent between November 20th and November 22nd, 2020. However, in recent months the position of president has been abolished, and the executive branch is now controlled by a special committee of the legislative branch, essentially making it a puppet and not worthy of separate political consideration. The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the law and keeping a copy of official government records (which are also kept by the other two branches), making it relevant, but not overbearing to the function of the government. A president can only be removed by death or coup. The legislative branch is composed of two bodies, the Board of Corporate Representation and the Board of Economic Representation. The Board of Corporate Representation is made of the chief executive officers of the largest 500 corporations in Rho Ophiuchi by revenue, which are granted their positions by being appointed by their respective corporations, and then represent the interests of their corporations in the board. The Board of Economic Representation is similar, but instead it allows the CEOs of the largest 500 corporations by revenue to appoint a number of representatives proportional to the revenues of their respective corporations, with the 500th largest corporation in Rho Ophiuchi normalized to 0.5, and the numbers rounded up. The Board of Economic Representation has the power to propose laws, which are voted on, and then given to the Board of Corporate Representation to verify. If the laws are passed with a 50% majority in both administrations, they are then put into effect. While the president cannot explicitly veto these, they can use their discretion on enforcement, meaning that a good portion of the laws are simply not enforced by police. They can still be enforced in court, but only in civil cases, meaning the offender will sometimes declare bankruptcy and move on. The judicial branch is the most traditional of the three, with two hundred and fifty-six district courts that can appeal to sixteen circuit courts, that can then appeal to a supreme court. The judges on these courts are appointed for ten years, twenty years, and life, respectively. Interestingly, the judicial system is widely regarded as the least corrupt and most democratic part of the Rho Ophiuchan government.

The actual people with power in Rho Ophiuchi are, more than anything else, the owners of large, private, corporations. Many of these people keep to the shadows, and very few ever really show their faces, for fear of assassination, or even of discovery, for some. However, public corporations so hold a significant amount of political power as well, and there does therefore exist a roundabout way for random citizens to influence the government, though it does depend directly on wealth to do so. By buying stock in large corporations, citizens can then participate in board member elections, most notably the CEO, who, in corporations large enough, is immediately admitted to the Board of Corporate Representation, and gets to appoint a number of members proportional to the corporation's size in the Board of Economic Representation. To this end, there are niche political parties, but they support competing business interests; it would be impossible for a party advocating civil rights (or its opposite), political freedoms, socialism, or anything that was not directly beneficial to large corporations and wealthy individuals to get off of the ground due to the extremely privatized, plutocratic, and byzantine political system.

Foreign Relations and Military

Rho Ophiuchi is a protectorate of The United Clans of Honourbound, with limited economic autonomy and protection in exchange for preferential trading agreements on goods produced by cheap Rho Ophiuchian labour, the ability of Honourbound to conscript soldiers from Rho Ophiuchi in the event of an emergency, and Honourbound being able to overrule anything done by Rho Ophiuchi’s government.

Formally, Rho Ophiuchi has no military, and ranks extremely low on indices of national defensive forces. However, these rating are because the country actually is locked in a state of “militant hyperpluralism,” where organizations such as corporations, militias, criminal organizations, and even private individuals of enough wealth wield reasonably-sized (in some cases, even a few thousand troops) private militaries, but these are almost entirely dedicated to self-defense, protection rackets of various kinds, and opposing each other.

In all, the nation is wholly incapable of presenting any sort of unified defense, even if it was attacked, without outside help. While there would be large pockets of resistance in the event of an invasion, an intelligent opponent would allow all of the city’s corporations time to move their assets outside of the country by dragging out the city’s siege, and could easily capture the city afterwards. At the moment, the only thing stopping this from happening is Honourbound’s protection, with Rho Ophiuchi’s extensive trading playing a helpful, yet secondary role.

Economy

Economic Indicators

Currency: Kilogram of Iron Equivalent
Fiscal Year: 2022


GDP (nominal): 44.424 Trillion kgFeEq.
GDP (nominal) per capita: 240,000 kgFeEq.
Labor Force: 150.4 Million
Unemployment: 18.76%

The Rho Ophiuchan economy is currently facing an unemployment crisis due to the nearly 19% unemployment level, which is wreaking havoc on the economy in multiple ways. Although this number was down from 26% a year ago, this still remains a major crisis and strain on the political system. The economy, composed almost entirely of private industry, is fiercely capitalistic, with most of the influential viewing the government as completely incompetent (which by most unbiased accounts is true), and find the proposal of socialism in Rho Ophiuchi abhorrent. The largest sectors in Rho Ophiuchi are the chemical, automobile manufacturing, retail, information technology, and agricultural sectors, making the nation mostly self-sufficient in regards to most industrial products, and partially self-sufficient in food.

The currency of Rho Ophiuchi is the Rho Ophiuchan Kilograms of Iron, or kgFeEq., with the average income being an impressive 445,223.50 Standard Monetary Units, that being the kgFeEq. in this case, but there is an enormous disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 3,064,347 Standard Monetary Units per year while the poor average 23,036.44 Standard Monetary Units, a ratio of 133.02 Rich To Poor Income Ratio. The Kilogram of Iron is based on the value of one kilogram of iron, and so runs at about 0.094 american dollars, or 0.078 euros in value.

The well-off in Rho Ophiuchi usually occupy equipment maintenance or low-level managerial positions in the many industrial plants nearly covering the region, while the poor are usually either working 12-hour days in these factories, or unemployed and working odd jobs. Due to the lack of a social safety net, many of the impoverished turn to crime, but carrying a firearm can act as a good deterrent for petty thieves. The top 10% or so of Rho Ophiuchi, in contrast, lead relatively prosperous lives, and either own a lot of stock in various businesses, own a medium-to-large corporation, or are one of the senior directors at such corporations. However, a good portion of them reside outside of Rho Ophiuchi, and only use Rho Ophiuchan citizenship as a tax-dodging strategy.

However, the Rho Ophiuchan economy is above all dirty. As there are almost no environmental regulations in Rho Ophiuchi, the factories, power plants, and chemical facilities all emit their own types of waste, the most notable of which are waste heat, carbon dioxide, sulfur trioxide, ozone, and dinitrogen tetroxide. Although particulate matter and nuclear waste are also present in small amounts in the skies, these five are the most important. First of all, Rho Ophiuchi has no shortage of electricity, due to sizable oil and uranium reserves and loose regulation. However, the downside of this is that the per capita energy consumption of Rho Ophiuchi is one of the highest in the world, leading to the loss of several terawatts of waste heat, mainly in industrial ventures. This heats the country by around twenty-five degrees Celsius above the average, which can lead to daytime temperatures of fifty degrees Celsius, and nighttime temperatures of thirty-five Celsius. While this is a problem, several corporations have recently created centralized air conditioning plants, and provide cold air as a utility to the population to combat the problem.

Carbon dioxide is one of the banes of the existence of factory owners, but not for the reasons most would expect. Rho Ophiuchi goes through roughly fifty billion barrels of oil per year, and while only a third of that is burned for electricity directly, the rest is manufactured into random chemical products, plastics, and who knows what else. This, combined with frequent fires from the high temperatures, frequently lead to local carbon dioxide concentrations above one percent. While no one cares about global warming in Rho Ophiuchi, mainly due to local waste heat issues, the high carbon dioxide concentrations can impede the mental judgement of many on particularly bad days, making it an impairment to productivity, and a major nuisance for factory owners. Sulfur trioxide is released by mishandling of sulfuric acid and combustion of fossil fuels, and can recombine with sulfuric acid in particularly poor circumstances to create acid rain, which all buildings must therefore be hardened against - usually done with sacrificial anodes that must be replaced every month. Ozone, and to a lesser extent particulate matter, can combine with water vapor in the perpetually cloudy atmosphere, and form a thick blanket of smog which covers the entire nation. Although this problem is mostly cosmetic, many still complain about it nonetheless. Lastly, dinitrogen tetroxide, a hexatomic acid, is sometimes also found in the atmosphere, and will sometimes create a weird "red rain" under particularly bad circumstances, perhaps once quarterly. The red rain is considered a symbol of bad luck, possibly due to the tendency of dinitrogen tetroxide to be hypergolic with almost every material imaginable, and consequently start fires everywhere.

Culture

There also exists an interesting contrast between the government of the nation and the citizens of the nation in terms of armament. While Rho Ophiuchi possesses no military to speak of, the citizens are usually well-armed, tending to have at least two firearms on them at all times. This has lead to an interesting case of the nation largely being patrolled by corporations, especially due to the lack of public property - most of the roads are corporate-owned, and are either paved with advertisements or have constant tolls, but these roads are usually considerably safer than public roads.

Infrastructure

Rho Ophiuchi's city infrastructure is one of the less clear aspects of the city. While the generalities are widely-known, and many corporations make their contributions to it public, the infrastructure itself has so many secret components, proprietary designs, and is interlinked between so many corporations that mutually dislike each other, that no person or organization fully understands it. Every part of the city's infrastructure is linked with every other part, and random homeless people routinely build homes and communities in the insides of mechanical systems dedicated to maintaining the city, leading to even more confusion. This is because, unlike most cities of its comparatively low technology level, Rho Ophiuchi uses the technology it has to the maximum possible degree.

Electricity

The city's electrical system is perhaps the simplest part of its infrastructure. This system is composed of about thirty interlinked power grids, each run by a different corporation, and all selling energy to consumers and each other. The electricity is produced primarily by a combination of uranium fission, the combustion of oil and coal, and geothermal energy, with uranium fission being the source of a plurality of the city's energy. Each power plant is usually connected to most, if not all, of the different electrical grids, and generally supplies all of the power they produce to the corporation that will pay the most for it. This means that the various power grids all have extremely similar prices for purchasing electricity form power plants. On the consumer end, most commercial, industrial, and large residential buildings are also connected to most or all of the grids, and generally purchase power from whoever is selling it least expensively, meaning that the consumer prices are all more or less the same as well, at least for large entities. The small businesses and condominiums in the city usually have access to a smaller amount of electricity providers, and their prices are therefore higher. The city's numerous slums, on the other hand, usually just tap the power lines and steal small amounts of energy that way. This situation of multiple power companies competing persists due to the problem of energy losses in the copper wires used to transport the electricity, and energy losses due to impoverished people tapping the wires to power their slums, which causes energy in some parts of the city to be significantly more expensive than in others. This, in turn, means that the main part of the competition happens in the most complicated part of the electrical system, the wires themselves.

For each of the thirty-something companies involved, their corporate sections of the electrical system are so convoluted and complex that they are impossible to properly maintain. However, most of these corporations do put significant effort into maintaining connections, and removing sources of loss. The former approach usually consists of cutting the old connections, and running new ones through unused underground tunnels and abandoned buildings (as none of the corporations involved want to pay for permits), and can even consist of building small tunnels in random places without notifying anyone, for the sole purpose of running electrical wires. The latter approach usually consists of sending small "security forces" to loot and pillage random parts of the slums under the guise of collecting payments for stolen electricity. While these forces usually do destroy any electrical taps they find, they go to great lengths to miss any potential hints that something suspicious is actually going on, since if they actually convinced the slumdwellers to stop tapping electricity, they themselves would likely lose their jobs.

Finally, these random inefficiencies, though rarely amounting to over 50% of the cost of electricity, mean that the prices of electricity from different electrical grids are constantly fluctuating. To keep the consumer prices equivalent, sometimes when two of the grids intersect there is a station with a low-level representative from each company who sell energy to each other based on the current local prices, in order to exploit the quickly varying differences in efficiency between the different power grids for a slight additional profit. This, in effect, makes the entire network of corporate power grids one gigantic, overly redundant electrical system.

Water

The Rho Ophiuchian water and sewage systems are usually considered to be significantly more complicated than the electrical system, for the simple reason that many of the pipes being used for the transport of these fluids are large enough to walk and build in, and so these pipes tend to accumulate scavengers who live off of the city's food waste and sewage.

First, it should be noted that on the surface, this system is similar in many ways to the electrical system. Water is piped in from the rivers entering the city-state, filtered, and pumped into a number of competing pipe networks, which deal with constant problems of leakage and tapping, and tend to favor building new pies over repairing old ones. However, unlike the electrical system, an abandoned water pipe immediately becomes prime real estate for squatters, criminal organizations, and smugglers of all types, due to their unique combination of proximity to civilization, and relative inaccessibility. In addition to this, the sewers have the dubious real estate advantage of not being completely full, even while still being used, as they are not pressurized, but derive their flow from the usage of water of the city's population, which fluctuates over time. This means that the sides of sewer lines are commonly dug into, and commonly function as underground riverways with their banks filled with various slums, shady institutions, and scavengers who pick through the sewage.

Finally, the sewage is commonly filtered, with the reclaimed water typically being combined with the fresh water to help supply the city, and the solid component of the sewage being sold as fuel, dirt, or "assorted biomass" for conversion into fertilizer. In some instances, the oil-soluble component of the sewage is also extracted separately, and used either as a lubricant, as an additive to diesel fuel to reduce operating costs, or even as a cooking oil after sterilization.

Template by The Free Republic of Ponderosa
Template may be found here.

RawReport