Rifts and Money
From Chronicles
This document will give some detail and flavor when it comes to money and its forms on Rifts Earth. This document will be focused mostly on North America, but the rough ideas should exist in other places in the world ICly.
Contents |
The Measure of Wealth
There is one universal measure of money that has emerged in the wake of the cataclysm. The 'credit'. Where the measure of money emerged from is unknown, though may have been a concept that was drawn from one of the off world visitors, given that places beyond Earth tend to use the same general measure of wealth.
A single credit doesn't fully conform to any current denomination precisely The scale of what things cost, therefore, is hard to reconcile with past measure of how much a thing should cost in relation to another.
- Sums of 1-10 credits tend to be enough for meals, drinks. Expensive or large meals for many people can cost a few hundred credits.
- Sums of 50-100 credits are often good for simple equipment, clothing and other such items.
- Sums of 1000-9000 credits are often the cost for expensive equipment, miniaturized electronics(hand held devices, high end portable computers). There are exceptions to this, as noted in the books.
- 10,000 to 100,000 credits is often the sum required for weapons, armor and other personal arms.
- Vehicles can cost as much as millions of credits for powerful commercial or military vehicles, while smaller transport craft can cost as little as a few tens of thousands. Even less for simpler SDC ground vehicles. The range of craft makes for a broad range of credit values.
The values above are rough estimates. The costs in the books override these and all strict costs are base values that are effected by FLUX.
The Form of Wealth
Wealth in North America comes in a variety of forms.
The Universal Credit
Universal credits come in two forms. physical and electronic. Both are common and many carry both. The electronic to carry large sums easily, the physical for those places that can't or won't accept electronic payments. Rare, but not uncommon in bazaars where the sellers are transient.
Physical credits come in varying denominations. 'Chits' or 'chips', which are thin, rugged plastic discs, come in denominations of 1, 10 and 50. They tend to be red, green and blue in color, respectively. Each one is a millimeter thick and a half, two third and inch in diameter respectively.
'Bills' are paper credit units that come in values of 100, 500, 1,000 and 10,000 credit values. The bills are Brown, green, blue and violet in overall coloring and all are the same physical side. They're constructed in the same way that paper money was before the cataclysm, which is to say out of fabric rather than paper, though the weave used now is far stronger and more resilient than before. The bills can often last upwards of fifty years of steady use before needing to be replaced.
Credit Cards and Sticks are two forms of electronic credit use. There is little difference between them, save for shape and form. Both are pressed over a reader to add or subtract from the current balance on them and they work much like debit cards before the cataclysm, only the amount on the card or stick is limited to a balance on the physical medium. But it can be added to by going to a bank to have a sum withdrawn from their account or by use of machines to insert physical credits, the balance transferred to the card or stick.
Credit Cards are about the size of a business card and just as thin, with a small chip at the center of it holding the data for its current worth. The plastic used is a modern MDC composite. Credit cards can't be damaged by most SDC weapons. And anyone attempting to extract the chip with a MDC knife or other weapon will have difficulty doing so without destroying the chip. Which is by design.
Credit sticks are much the same as cards. An internal chip in a slender cylinder that's about the width and length of a lipstick. It has a loop on one end, allowing one to attach it to a lanyard, key-chain or anything else that fits the small loop. The main difference between them, besides form factor, is that credit sticks have a small readout long the length of them, which lets you see the current value on the stick. Cards don't have the same thing.
Barter
Barter is a very common means of trade, especially away from the larger cities. But even within the cities, trading items and services for items and services isn't at all uncommon. Someone can barter anything for anything else, assuming you can provide enough of one thing for someone to think it is worth the something they have that you want.
Some items, such as gems, precious metals, weapons, equipment and other such things that have a strict credit value and can give them a more stable barter value, especially for other items with a set price. Though in places supply and demand can inflate or deflate the worth of something if it's either too common or rare.
Services are even more hazy and dependent on the who is offering and who is accepting and what is being traded for. Anyone with a marketable skill can attempt to trade service for goods, but it is up to them to convince the seller that their services are worth the cost of the item. Despite the very fluid nature of barter, it has been a viable means of commerce since the fall of civilization and has continue to last as a means of commerce despite the rise of the Universal Credit.
