Alliance Economy
The Alliance as a whole is a heavily regulated capitalist economy, guided by committee and administered by a vast bureaucracy. Individual planets can have their own local economic models that better suit their conditions, but all members must uphold a series of standards set by the Alliance as a whole: they have to guarantee provision of food, shelter and healthcare for their citizens to ensure a baseline quality of life, and they must actively work to prevent mass poverty, starvation and illness.
Resource management and scarcity
The Alliance is considered to be self-sufficient – agricultural and industrial planets provide resources to their allies across the galaxy, and fabrication/replication (FABREP) technology allows for mass provision of food, water and basic construction elements. There is, however, a growing pressure to source rare and strategic resources to keep up with technological advances.
True poverty is something the Alliance works tirelessly against, and aid is freely given to planets experiencing economic or environmental perils. This doesn’t mean every planet has an easy time – many only just get by, and are heavily reliant on trade routes and fragile agreements to provide all the amenities their citizens need.
Emergency provisions provided by the Alliance are designed to prevent mass casualties and the collapse of planetary governments, and are not intended to be long-term solutions. The right to provisions extends to all Alliance spaceships, no matter where they are in the galaxy, and is discretionary but encouraged for non-Alliance spaceships within Alliance territory. Whenever the Alliance calls upon a planet or spaceship to freely provide emergency provisions to another, this can only be refused if it would cause undue risk or duress to the body providing the help.
Is the Alliance expanding, stagnating, or declining?
The Alliance is in a state of unstable expansion as it leaves the Orion arm. By the standards of the known galactic superpowers, it is gaining new territory at a rapid pace, either onboarding a planet or creating a new colony every year.
According to a recent census of all Alliance member states, approximately one quarter of the Alliance’s population are spaceborne – i.e. they are currently aboard trade, colony, or terraforming vessels aiming to expand the Alliance’s borders.
