Heat sinks as money? Did I miss something?

Maybe it is local phenomenon, but this is the third time over last month (alone!) that I had a turian custumer who wanted to pay me in heat sinks. As in, giving me a bag of it to trade in for block of armor piercing ammo.
The custumer in question was a turian private. In fact, all three were from the turian military.

Normally I do not keep track of how much of what I sale aside from basic book-keeping and ordering new stuff once I start to run out, but now that I backtrack my logs, there has been a trend of rising heat sink sales since I set up my shop.
A trend of turians (disporpotionally the active military types) coming in and buying value packs of heat sinks. Usually that wouldn't strike me as odd, giving that I run a shop that also sells the guns to go with them, but my sales of heat sinks have breached out of standard deviation zone over the last three months.
I mean, shouldn't they like, keep their credits together since they are on bread-and-bunk pay? And why heat sinks, shouldn't they get those issued whenever they deploy?
Something does not fit together here. Why trade in credits for heat sinks? Why wanting to use them as money?

Anyway, I am currently making inquries with my suppliers, try to ask around with my regulars and poke the extranet about it, but so far I am stumped.

They're not being paid.

You don't want to see what my turian neighbour's been up to, exploring the sales. I've never seen anything so convoluted yet earnest. I think he's paying in favours or something.

Oh this is ... interesting. Can someone from C-Sec or otherwise in the know confirm that heatsinks are a free trade item on the Citadel? Not restricted to licenses or anything?

Since, if they are, I might think about accepting tips in heatsinks from hierarchy turians!

They are certainly not as tightly regulated. There are a number of device who use them and aren't guns.
One of my custom omni-tool mods uses a heat sink to cool an overclocked omnitool processor. Popular with combat engineers, it lower thier tools cooldown timers for a short time.

Yeah, that is what it boils down to, isn't it?
I wonder if there is a black marked in the turian military operting on a heat sink based currency. Like a strip of sinks for the latest Fornax issue or something like that. Or a bag for an extra ration.
In that case I feel bad for taking the last bit of credits the sailors and grunts have for the heat sinks I sell.
There has already been a case of corruption in the news media from a mid-to-highlevel turian hierarchy official.
I think the hierarchy should start paying its people sooner that later or there will be more of this.

But back to the heat sinks. I understand why the would make good currency, they are standardized, there are plenty to around, everyone in the military has a use for them (some more, some less) and there is a steady supply of fresh ones from whenever some gets them issued.
Still I wouldn't want to be in the place where I have to wonder how much shots I have left and what they are worth in candy bars. Or having plenty of candy, but no shots in my gun.

...I admit, I am somewhat confused by this whole thing. I thought part of the point of being a government was that occasionally you got to print money.

And yes, that's inflationary and that can be disruptive, but it seems less so than people using ammunition as barter. Certainly this is very difficult to tax.

Are they afraid that people will like, buy a lot of imports from the Union, since their factories didn't get flattened? And all the money would get sucked out? Or maybe it would end up in the hands of like, Turian colonies at the periphery, which again, didn't get so flattened, when they're really trying to build up center?

I don't get it.

Governments do not print money, Central Banks print money. Central Banks are overseen by the government, but are not controlled by them. CB traditionally do not give newly printed money directly to the Government, instead they 'give it' to banks so that banks can lend it to people who want build a house, by goods, start a business. The government can tax that. Or the CB use it to buy certain financial assets from banks to perform quantitative easing.

This mostly happens automatically, with the Central Bank using the interest rates for the money they give out as a way to increase or decrease the fluidity of the system. You do not want the system to be too fluid or it overheats.



Now, the reason why the Hierarchy is not paying their soldiers is interesting, it has a lot of assets and investments but almost no liquidity to spare. That is to say; it has food, weapons, housing even a weak but recovering industrial base, but they do not have the money to connect all this.

They spend most of their money on the war and the rebuilding. So they have a choice either they could lend money from a third party (the volus who are for all intends and purposes responsible for the Hierarchies economy.) in exchange for the assets they have worked hard to maintain. Or they went with rationing. This internalizes the economy, so the money that is freed-up allows for more liquidity when dealing with external partners without it endangers their progress for no good reason.

So that's why for the moment they do not pay their citizens. It will change and probably sooner than later, once they start to produce more than the essentials, from that moment they can export goods, money comes in and they could either wait until their coffers are full again OR they can get money from the volus for cheap.

Obviously it's a bit more complicated, but I didn't feel like going in to much detail.

Alright, I'm just going to ask: shouldn't there a lot of...dead people money?

Like, and this is probably admitting to things we shouldn't admit to, but I know irregulars who picked up a lot of dead people jewelry. It didn't turn out to be that valuable because...market kind of flooded. I live in a dead person apartment. Hadas was able to get it at way below its pre-market value because there were so many apartments who's owners no longer needed them.

Shouldn't there be a lot of dead people cash and bank accounts going to heirs or that the government could appropriate? Why are they so short on money?

...I am so glad I don't have to deal with this.

That is a valid question, but there are two problems:

* What would happen if a family member appears and requests the money they have inherited back; due to how inheritance works a single person could easily inherent from over half-a-dozen dead people. Especially considering the average turian family size.

* The Reapers did wreck a lot critical banking infrastructure, if a central computers and its backups get slagged than those accounts are at best out of sync and requires a long database rebuild and validation, and probably totally lost.

Not to mention that if anyone is going to receive the money, then wills and family members have to be found before it can be handed off, which takes time with so many databases and records destroyed.

It took me a far while to recover my money from my Arcturus Bank account and I still haven't recieved all my inheritance.

Not that I could get all of it, considering my parents' house got crushed to dust.

The problem the hierarchy faces with not paying is rising corruption and the emerging of a shadow economy. For every case that made it to the headlines I bet there are two more in the making.
I don't know how universal the heat sink is, I made a few inqueries with my suppliers and at least in the sol cluster it has become an accepted substitute currency among the hierarchy armed forces.
I didn't rise my prices for heat sinks yet, I feel bad enough for the turians who come here and trade in thier credits for sinks and taking thier actual money from them, but I have bills that need to be payed. There are probably more unscrupulous traders out there who would glady rip off the sorry privates and sailors who go to them. Maybe if thier hierarchy would issue more sinks, but that wouldn't that be like, printing money?
Ot maybe I should raise my prices so high it becomes a deterrent, but even then I imagine there are people desperate enough.
Dammit, now I feel like a bankster.

You do realise that Hierarchy-issued heatsinks are Hierarchy property, not the individual sailor or soldier's and using them to barter for goods is theft?

If they want to use their own privately-owned heatsinks, okaaaaay. You'll still need to declare those transactions involving bartering on your income tax returns.

Now I have to worry about military grade heatsinks floating around. Thanks.

...Appropriating the abandoned money, that would screw some people over...but they haven't PAID anyone in like two years!

It must be infuriating to see that someone like me gets paid actual money and they don't.

That may be that the heat sinks the hierarchy issues are technically hierarchy property, yet it seems to me that it doesn't prevent the grunts from swapping them around when no one is looking. Unlike credits they don't have a serial numbers or digital signatures.
Also, what one declares in their tax returns and what actually happened can be a wildly different thing.
Maybe someone should applaud the turians for finding a feasible untracable currency.
ALso, I am not familiar with turian tax laws, if you have no income do they still require you to file a tax return?

Because it was difficult getting those in the past? I have to file more paper work involving ammo blocks with C-Sec every month than about heat sinks.

I don't understand this. It's been two YEARS and I haven't heard anything from home or if it's even a thing that exists anymore, and I hear about this sort of crazy shit and I don't even know where I should be right now. From what I've heard mercenaries have it better than citizens right now. And you don't HEAR anything, not a word from anybody about anything. Maybe everyone's all dead, who even knows!

Should just run off and be a fucking pirate, just ignore everything and maybe starve to death in the middle of the fucking Terminus, that sounds sane right now.

I was talking about you. If you do end up accepting heatsinks, you have to declare it.

And it's not 'technically' it's legally government property. And taking them is still theft.

I'll admit my knowledge is mainly of Serrican and Citadel law.


Most hunting and hobby gun shops don't sell military grade. And while they're not as concerning as ammo blocks they can be used for higher powered weaponry which would not be feasible with civilian grade.

What kind of self-respecting military wouldn't notice heatsinks going missing en masse?

I personally ensure all company property-including heatsinks are kept in the company armoury and only taken out as needed. Like, you do realise we keep track of these sort of things for logistical reasons? We have records!

Fucking records.

Point taken, I didn't want to suggest that happens on a large scale.
Still, somehow the turians are able to use them as currency of sorts.

I am flattered that you do care about my taxes. And for the record, no I don't.
Which form would I have to use anyway?

From how I get it, they are mainly traded among turians until now so it kind of stays in the family, the same unit even? I have to say, my mouth curves with a slight grin imagining a group of turians playing cards over a bag of heatsinks.

Trying to trade them on the Citadel seems pretty desperate though. Stuff like this is a warning sign, the hierarchy should begin to consider a step by step plan to enable their citizens to be or remain part of the regular economy again in greater C-Space. This is beginning to have really negative effects and this is only the beginning.

I am grateful to the two handful of volus who managed to maneuver the Nimbus banking system through the crisis of the lockdown although an extra pair of gloves was buying more fish than the credit towards the end. But I never heard anyone mentioning the idea of heatsinks being used.

You could maybe take a few here and there if your quartermaster is lazy, but not enough to make it feasible as a currency. It'd be more profitable if you can get them out of the armoury in the first place, to just sell the packs.


Okaaaaay. So the problem with heatsinks as a currency is that there's no demand for them? Like seriously, if you need them enough just go to the armoury and request some. No military is going to make heatsinks scarce enough you need to exchange goods for them because you're fucking screwed when you actually need to use them. Trade means that not everyone has the same amount which is a bit stupid in combat.

I've seen turians bartering and there was a bit of a system on my ship during the Reaper War but it was for 'luxuries' such as omnigel, insta coffee packets and the 'good' MREs.


Um.

You're kinda implying that the Hierarchy is in recession. In a galactic economy where each Council nation is heavily integrated into the other, there is either a recession or there isn't. The Hierarchy is a large part of the galactic economy, they haven't just somehow managed to withdraw.

Citadel space is an economic block as well as a political block.

Also, I'd honestly be more concerned about the Alliance having an economic collapse than the H. If it weren't for the rest of Citadel space and the Alliance' Terminus trade, we'd probably be in deeper shit right now. But you know, if we went down we'd send the rest of CSpace into a spin and that's the smallest Council race economy.

And how did I miss this darling little gem of a thread? Oh don't worry Mr. Schmidt your emotional anus is safe from reamage today, I'm trying to cut the sodium out of my diet and you Germans get so very high in salt content when you're upset.

Yes whyever would one of the most heavily policed urban centers in the galaxy take issue with the things that make military grade hardware work being a free trade item?


Because who wouldn't want to get pelted with these babies? Or have them tucked in their lingerie. I mean I suppose anything's a dildo if you're brave enough (or just unlucky enough) but that's hardly a salient argument in this context.

That stinging sensation you're feeling right now is my hand. Specifically the hand I bring out for special occasions and have just used to reach across the void from space and time and slap the taste from your mouth. Also if you're wondering why you can't taste anything well, as it turns out, that expression is startling literal.

But no, really. There are a great many people in the Hierarchy not exactly loving life right now. There are lot of people missing, a lot of people dead, a lot of mass graves that're being exhumed and Census records being reconstructed. There are a lot of people in shitty situations while a ambiguously large number of mercenaries of dubious reputation and existence who, for some fucking reason, are faffing about on the Hierarchy credit.

But there are equally large chunks of the Hierarchy, huge swathes of the population that are, in and of themselves, billions strong who are doing fine. They have hot food. They have utilities. They have medical care. They have living space. They have access to some luxuries because as it turns out the Hierarchy is not a gang of cryptoalienfascistcommies and actually get that good morale and having something to ease the day is important.

Military, who knew right?

But the point is calm right the fuck down and put your plans for piracy on hold.

Unless you have a ship, a crew, knowhow and Letters of Marque in which case by all means, show us that can do attitude!

A. As the always lovely First Sergeant said the Hierarchy is probably one of the most stable of the lot of us outside the Unions what with having a, frankly, freakishly massive industrial base plus enough public goodwill and morale to give every elected official in human history a collective orgasm. People have faith in the state and that's part of why this works at all.

B. Why, exactly, don't you have any faith that the Hierarchy actually has a vague inkling of what they're doing?

That would be because it's kind of a stupid idea to implement on anything but the small scale and between people who have them and people want/need them.

This. When people trade things it's going to be for something they actually need and want. Little luxuries like hackix sticks or the non-shit MREs. Purified omnigel's generally a good one because a. it's value is in being used for repairs or fabrication so there's none of this "hoard of heat sinks" nonsense and b. everyone with a working military grade omnitool can make all the omnigel they need but actually high grade stuff takes time, effort, and some know how to make. But none of the options are generally something they actually need because, as it turns out, using the stuff you need to actually shoot your guns as money encourages a less than ideal outlook on the whole "combat" thing.

It's less a recession and more a "Let's Just Try Not to Think About our Collective and Ongoing Assfuckery" for all of Citadel space.

Though of course that's not nearly pretentious enough to be included in an economic report so really it's probably more something like "The Deliberately Unacknowledged Aftereffects of the Reaper War's Energetic and Unlubricated Intercourse with Our Economic Bloc".

What's with this "we", I'm bailing the fuck out if that happens. Set up shop in the Traverse, finally put my hard won "sensual lounging" skills to good use. You could come! It would be great.