Commerce

The government loosely controls commerce in the Everton Imperium. There are three simple laws that govern commercial endeavors: the Proliferation Code, the Subsidiary Edict, and the GDS Act.

The Imperium's monetary unit is the scale. Scales can be broken into halves and quarters for small exchanges and still keep their relative value. Scales can be found in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. Monetary exchanges larger than 100 scales are done electronically.

An 8% tax covers all goods sold and services rendered. This replaced incomprehensible income and property taxes in funding the government. There are specific taxes on controlled substance like narcotics, alcohol, and other intoxicants.

The Proliferation Code states that a business may have offices, retail outlets, or manufacturing plants in only one system of the Everton Imperium. It is intended to sponsor competition in the corporate sector and increase job availability as a result. It also prevents the creation of mega-corporations that could exert influence upon the government.

The Subsidiary Edict forbids a corporation from having business in more than one level of the economy. The economic levels are primary (resource extraction and processing), secondary (manufacturing), tertiary (services like restaurants, retail, and insurance), and quaternary (data processing and finance). This is intended to prevent the growth of mega-corporations that control the economy of an entire star system.

The GDS Act was the specific order that created the Government Distribution Service (GDS). GDS provides the basic necessities of life at lower cost than retail outlets. It can achieve this by government subsidy and by having locations in all of the Everton Imperium's systems.