Hey Everyone,
So I read everyone’s comments last week and thought that it might be time to explain the Liability Balance System, because at first blush it looks absolutely insane and I really don’t have space to explain this in the comic proper. Or, at least, I don’t have space to explain this without it turning into a Neal Stephenson-esque ‘fictional textbook’ thing.
LIMB pilots for security companies handle a tremendous amount of Utils in equipment and that equipment is often in danger. To discourage unnecessary risk taking, pilots are budgeted a certain ‘liability balance’ which is refreshed every deployment. Every time a pilot loses or damages company property, a fraction of that cost is deducted from their balance. Once the balance is depleted, that cost becomes money owed. Your contract doesn’t expire until the owed money is paid back or the company chooses to let you go.
Does this system make sense for a security contractor securing company assets against bandits? Yes. If your pilots got overzealous then they could cost the company more utils than the company is making on their contract, which is an absolute no-go.
Does this system make sense for a security contractor in a war? No. In security, losses are incurred when somebody fails to do their job. In a war, losses are unavoidable, and sometimes a necessity. The Free Market has never fought a war, though independent mercenaries have signed up with various outsider countries during their conflicts when the signing bonuses were good (most notably the famous ‘Glow-Boys’ of the Impossible Wars).
As for Dizzee… Dizzee is a poor security contractor. He gets plenty of kills but he’s too aggressive and loses too much equipment, probably because he’s 19 and that’s what 19 year olds are like. That’s a problem with Security. War is different.
Thanks for reading,
- Luther out
PS: Click on the Top Webcomics Vote Button (blue and white button that’s up and to the left under ‘Follow Us’) and follow the instructions there to get a preview of the first Official ‘My Life at War’ t-shirt! Tell us what you think in the comments!
As usual, your background info / explanations make sense and are appreciated, Mr Patenge. Also: I would totally wear a T-shirt like that. Whether I’d be able to convince myself to pay for one priced in USD any time soon is a different question, but still, I’d totally wear it.
I like the design. Pretty bitchin’. What range of sizes are you looking into?
Poor Dizzee. The system owned you.
nicely explained, i am now 100% unconfused
Dizzy would make a good soldier, too bad that’s not his line of work.
This makes more sense to me. The Free Marketers aren’t set up for high intensity combat. Their system makes some sense for security/counter insurgency work. Not so much for what amounts to main battle tanks going head to head.
I wonder if Dizzy will get another shot to at least clear his debt faster if they reform the incentives system.
He’s still in debt to the company.
My bet is they put him in some job where he doesn’t have the chance to cost the company more money by destroying more equipment,
say, put him on the janitorial staff or something, if they don’t have some kind of manufacturing subsidiary to drop him into.
That would make sense considering the position he’s in.
If the company’s sufficiently evil, it’ll be something that pays way less than combat, so it will indeed take him the rest of his life to pay it off.
That way, the company gets a nice safe free employee for a good long time.
They make some sort of crappy junk food, don’t they? Well then, chained to some big machine on the crappy junk food production line…
For the rest of his life.
Negative, the food company is their employer/sponsor. A completely separate entity.
Also unless they can manage to recruit and train a new batch of pilots easily and cheaply, it’d be a waste to let a trained pilot shuffled into some shitty McJob.