The Liberty Exchange

Emblem of the Liberty Exchange

## Overview

The Liberty Exchange is a loose confederation of independent moons and asteroids dedicated towards maintaining a free and neutral trade alliance. Unlike the United Sol Trade Alliance (USTA), which is an entity formed out of political ties rather than economic ties, the Liberty Exchange are actually a trade alliance.

It is composed of hundreds of major and minor corporations. The Liberty Exchange have been around for a long time as a loose collective of scattered firms, but have only recently considered themselves an official coalition.

With an almost fanatical devotion to capitalism, and a profound indifference to military warfare, they have managed to stay neutral in every conflict since the Cataclysm. However, critics are quick to point out that they have had a crucial role in funding and supplying arms to any and all sides of every conflict indiscriminately. For the sake of capitalism, of course.

Others have also observed that they try to avoid helping out one side too heavily in a bid to prolong conflicts. Conflicts which end too rapidly are not as profitable to them. They also have a pointed dislike of nuclear weapons, and have always voiced opposition against treaties that allow them to be used on terrestial bodies, likely because they end conflicts too quickly.

Interestingly enough, they were the first faction to outright reject a centralized currency, opting to only recognize cryptocurrencies: only offshoots of old Earth's Bitcoins would be accepted as legal tender. Using their tremendous economic leverage, their early adoption of all of these cryptocurrencies forced out government-backed currencies from the solar markets.

In keeping with their strong dislike of centralization, the Liberty Exchange has set up a sort of checks-and-balances between corporations, where the majority of member corporations will gradually weaken any other member corporation which grows too powerful. In this way, no single corporation has been able to achieve a monopoly on any market in the solar system, despite the lack of any central government oversight. It's an unstable equilibrium, where power is carefully shared between a smattering of corporations, but it has been in place for decades without failure.

The Liberty Exchange tend to traffic in all possible commerce, though their primary focus is on construction of terrestial cities and space stations. Arguably, their eagerness to delve in all manner of commerce, or at least refuse to restrict any types of commerce, has led them to being the primary trafficker of slavery and prostitution in the solar system.

'Here for the cash, not the cargo' is their motto, reflecting their so called capitalistic neutrality.

Their presence is scattered across the entire solar system, occupying mostly small moons and asteroids, as well as jointly controlling many smaller 'neutral zones' on many of the larger moons and planets. They have no central headquarters, being a confederation of corporations, although their largest claim is the center of commerce of the Jovian system, Memphis Facula City, on Ganymede.

## Ship Names

* Whispering Sun
* Galatic Ghost
* Solar Memory
* Cosmic Fingerprint
* Magnetic East
* Photon Web
* Impulse Shock
* Neutronic Rain
* Void Ripple
* Ishiman

### Flagship Names

* Rand
* Demosthenes
* Locke