Maybe there's a Star Wars book that explains this that I haven't read, but in my head it works like this:

In Episode 1 Qui Gon says that he has "twenty thousand Republic daltarits (?)", which Watto calls "Republic Credits" and dismisses, saying he needs "something more real." This clearly communicates to me that the Republic officially uses a digital currency that merchants on planets like Tatooine don't trust. It being a digital currency also tracks with the fact that we know Qui Gon isn't carrying more than can fit in his robe pockets/tool belt, so it's probably some kind of credit chip that gets loaded with operational funds and given to Jedi who are on assignment, secured by some cryptographic measure that can only be decrypted at an officially sanctioned Republic bank.

now I'm imagining a Jedi Master having to fill out an expenditure form when they get back from a mission, lmao.

But what about the physical currency in Andor and The Mandolorian? Well, the distrust for Republican digital currency in the Outer Rim might be more materialistic than it initially seems. Hyperspace Travel is known in-universe to be somewhat unreliable, with ships needing to calculate their travel vectors right before launch and hyperspace lanes needing to be trailblazed in highly dangerous scouting missions. Those barriers form the physical limits of the Star Wars universe and make a centralized galactic banking system impossible to establish.

So how does a galaxy-spanning economy do business when banks on different planets can't reliably synchronize their books? Specie. At the end of A New Hope, we see Han Solo loading metal boxes onto a cart to take to his ship, boxes which the conversation implies to be his payment for helping to rescue Princess Leia. Someone like Han Solo, who travels from planet to planet and mostly in the Outer Rim, probably doesn't trust Republic/Imperial digital credits any more than Watto does, and both he and the Rebellion also have a preference for transactions that don't get logged in any digital ledger, so a payment in specie was the obvious way to go.

We see multiple kinds of hard currency in The Mandolorian's first episode, there's bricks of precious metal and squishy blocks of alien gelatin, and then there are Imperial credits. Imperial credits "still spend", but Mando clearly doesn't trust them, implying that their value has plummeted. What could account for this? Perhaps the Empire was trying to unite the specie-based outer rim economy with the digital core worlds economy by issuing its own physical currency that was directly tied to the digital currency's value.

Presumably, Imperial credits derived a certain amount of their value by fiat, likely because the Empire accepted them as payment for taxes, but with the Empire's collapse the value of Imperial credits dropped to their floor, the value of the metal that they were made from. We also know that the Empire minted multiple kinds of metal into currency, since Mando is paid for one of his jobs with imperial credits made from beskar which are clearly much more valuable than the normal ones, so some people left holding the Imperial Credits bag got shafted harder than others, further contributing to their reputation for volatility and unreliability.

Of course there's also the vault of physical currency in Andor Season 1, which is the payroll for every Imperial soldier and official in the sector. Since this planet's in the outer rim it fits with the model I've constructed, because Imperial workers stationed outside of the core worlds would prefer to be paid in a currency that they can spend on the local economy, and it's the height of the Empire so the credits have their full fiat value and not just their metal value. Another major plot in Andor is Mon Mothma's difficulty moving her money without attracting Imperial attention, a subplot which also fits in perfectly with my model of transactions in the core worlds being mostly done via digital ledgers.

All of this eventually leads to the New Republic which... we don't see. The only economy we see clearly depicted in the Sequel trilogy is on Jakku where salvagers like Rey are paid in "portions" by their boss. There's what looks like a marketplace near where Rey gets paid, so it's possible that the "portions" have a cash or commodity value and can be traded. It's also possible that the marketplace is owned by the same people reselling the salvage and it's essentially a company store. It definitely gives "third world workers doing shipbreaking for pennies" vibes, whatever the details are.

OK they've got to stop making Mamdani look so cool. https://xcancel.com/AGHamilton29/status/1939519248797204519

Do it Zohran seize the means.

it is july 2 and stalin saved the world from fascism

Find someone who loves you as much as Lenin hated Kautsky

Kind of enjoy my job sometimes. On the mornings I work it just feels like I leave home to go down the street to another one. Its a shitty dive bar kitchen and yesterday I was blasting Italian mob movie music on my boom box while whipping shit up by myself. I love a job so much more when I'm the only one on aux, I can't stand working and having to hear like really bad autotune rap r&b or white people approved hip-hop or pop country or pop emo or radio rock or corporate playlists. At night time I'm playing mostly reggae, cumbia, samba, bossa nova, flamenco, salsa, merengue, and edm to fill the silence and everybody is fine with it.

The Avengers 4: Antman shrinks down to live inside the Hulk's ass and control him with wires and buttons and levers

"You shouldn't pop poison ivy blisters" words uttered by people who have never had their skin create what is essentially bubble wrap that regenerates hourly. It would almost be enjoyable if it weren't for the obvious downsides.

some kind of rat or mouse knawed a hole in my bathroom ceiling

Growing older is mandatory, growing up is optional

Why the hell would anyone spend more than a 100-200 dollars on a phone these days.

In 2018 I bought an Iphone 5c for a hundo and then I bought an Iphone 6 for a hundo in 2020. Then I bought an Iphone X in 2022 for 200 and it got smashed a month after which traumatized me into never spending 200 again. I bought an Iphone SE 2020 for a hundo 3 times since then because Im a clutz. Now I just bought a Galaxy A42 for a 120 and Im enjoying having a phone with good battery life

The Cha-Cha Slide: a Marxist Analysis

We need a Chinese rizzler

Distinguished megathread denizens,

I have acquired a Mageblood in Path of Exile

Hi

Stop procrastinating reading, me...

Is Joe Biden still dying of butthole cancer?

What if SaaS was socialism as a service instead

whatever man Bo Burnham told me yuor'e a virgin

I posted here about being hired at UPS, but I got screwed. The job posting and every email I got said it was a permanent position. When I show up for orientation they tell me it's not permanent, it's seasonal.

Since I only wanted the job because it was union with good benefits, I left. Seasonal work doesn't count towards seniority or the probationary period before you join the union.

I talked to a UPS employee who pointed out that they aren't allowed to hire non-union positions except during the holiday season. But I'd basically have to take the job and hope I get my 30 days before the holiday, then file a grievance and hope it's possible, since I wouldn't be union yet and the contract doesn't make clear if you can grieve that.

Sucks, but I'm making much more money doing gig work now, so I guess I can keep doing it and try again when a position opens. They're really overstaffed at UPS because they closed a bunch of locations so people are transferring.

Welp the old jerb has finally jumped on the LLM bandwagon and now I gotta learn how to use these models. The basic models still seem laughably easy to break:

Looks like my job at the letter counting factory is still safe.

Edit: even when it gets it right, it's still wrong.

Wandered across a part of the internet that thought Andor was bad because it lacks aliens and Jedi.

Find someone who loves you like white people love guitars

How are there still two days of the work week left man… I’m so tired

Nearly having a mental breakdown just because my brothers won’t clean their goddamn dishes. I fucking hate my brain lmao

i don't really even know what this stuff is but i've been smearing big globs of it on bread and eating it and holy FUCK it's addictingly delicious wtf

You claim to not believe in electoralism yet you upvote your own posts? Smdh

If pooping were a crime I'd be public enemy number #1

I always check the APY on my bank account and for months it hasn't changed and it makes me feel silly... Until today.

Capital One thought they could sneak a 0.10% decrease past me the fuckers. I will become back my money (aka probably do nothing)

do you think morrowind could be "remastered"? i don't think i could accept an unreal engine version of vanilla morrowind, even if it 'modernized' everything. morrowind is the game you get to go from Anvil to Necrom, its not a game about vvardenfel anymore

Fiji: 'we're not worried about China's military presence in the SCS'

Australia: 'yes you are'

im sick, probably with the new covid variant given my symptoms

i get to spend the afternoon reading losurdo's book on stalin and then getting stoned instead of working

also do we have emojis of this meme? that's what i was looking for but couldn't find it