Colonization Loan

Found in many polities across the Starweb, colonization loans are a form of financial instrument used to enable emigration for those unable to afford all the costs up front. They have a long history, but are often criticized as laying the foundation for new worlds and habitats to start off with an entrenched elite/underclass divide.

Details

Colonization loans are most commonly contracted to provide funds for housing, supplies, and the cost of passage itself. In this regard they are quite similar to mortgages for houses since they enable one to afford large purchases at a young age instead of first saving up for years or even decades. Many large banks offer colonization loans, and in some cases corporations will include them as part of employee relocation packages. The loan itself is usually digital, sometimes with a vanity printed certificate being given out.

These loans, particularly ones considered to have high interest rates, have been critized as disadvantaging new immigrants by keeping them in something approaching tenant status, diverting large portions of their incomes to loan payments instead of becoming better established in their new homes. If abused in this way, colonization loans facilitate the emergence of a rentier class which becomes established as the colony grows.

History

Pre-spaceflight Terra had the concept of the indentured servant, a person whose passage to a new location would be paid if they agreed to work for a certain employer for a given period of time. The modern notion of loans to finance interplanetary/interstellar migration dates back to the Wormhole Rush and the establishment of the first off-Terran colonies in the twenty-first century. While some experts with needed skills were given free passage, most ordinary citizens had to raise the necessary funds some other way and then pay their debt back with the proceeds of work in their new home. The expense of spaceflight at this time made this difficult and left many colonists deep in debt, at least until the End of Earth relieved the burden. (But gave far more pressing concerns than overdue bank bills.) In the present they are seen in multiple polities, including the Third Republic of Columbia (where colonization loans are somewhat notorious for high interest rates) and the Guadalupe Commonwealth.

Commonly Seen In

Independent American States
Guadalupe Commonwealth