IMT Policy

Note: all Franchises are expected to follow this at all times. There will be consequences for non-compliance.

Revision 1.1 - text adopted at the Conclave of Franchises, 2611 CE.

"To produce goods, and to import only food.

"To sell metals and so to build ships.

"Hence to dominate space and control commerce.

"To claim matter that has no owner and so to bring legality to chaos.

"To make friends by contract and to destroy enemies by war.

"To encourage, by various means, friends to become franchisees and enemies to become slaves.

Revision 1.0 - adapted from The National System of Political Economy, Friedrich List, 1841, in which he described the British Empire of the time.

"Always to favour the importation of productive power, in preference to the importation of goods.

"Carefully to cherish and to protect the development of the productive power.

"To import only raw materials and agricultural products, and to export nothing but manufactured goods.

"To direct any surplus of productive power to franchise colonisation, and the subjugation of barborous nations.

"To reserve exclusively to the mother corporation the supply of the colonies and subject planets with manufactured goods, but in return to receive on preferential terms their raw materials and their franchise produce.

"To devote especial care to spatial navigation; to the trade between the mother corporation and the franchises; to encourage space mining by means of boundaries; and to take an active part as possible in interstellar navigation.

"By these means to found a naval supremacy, and by means of it to expend galactic commerce, and continually to increase her franchise possessions.

"To grant freedom in trade with the colonies and in navigation only as far as she can gain more than she loses.

"To grant reciprocal navigation privileges only if the advantage is on the side of IMT, or if foreign races can by that means be restrained from introducing restrictions on navigation in their own favour.

"To grant concessions to foreign independent races in respect of the import of agricultural products, only in case concessions in respect of her own manufactured products can be gained thereby.

"In cases where such concessions cannot be obtained by treaty, to attain the object of them by means of contraband trade.

"To make wars and to contract alliances with exclusive regard to her manufacturing, commercial, spatial and franchise interests. To gain these alike from friends and foes: from the latter by interrupting their commerce in space; from the former by ruining their manufactures through subsidies which are paid in the shape of IMT manufactured goods."