Money and the Sixth World, A question and answer thread for some issues that arrise in Shadowrun Options

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

I'm an economics nerd and I was thinking about the way money works in Shadowrun and the variety of currencies and different methods of payment that are supposed to exist in the world and it gave me some questions.

1. What is the benifit of using corp scripts, alternate currency, and the like over New Yen? I understand the utility of bartering, but what purpose does the alternate currencies serve exactly? Is it like the scrip mining towns used to use to make sure that the workers were only able to spend money for their corp?

2. How does resale on lifestyles work? For example, I'm wanting to upgrade my character's lifestyle from low to medium with my first paycheck (after all my dog needs a better place to live), can i sell my old lifestyle? What is actually involved in that sale if I can? Do I seel my P.O.S. car and get a lease on a new one, what actually happens?

3. How do escro services and the like work in Shadowrun? Do they work like they do in real life? Do you have to have an account with a great deal of registered information in order for even a Shadow MSP to provide escrow service? If that's not the case does it work more like modern Zurich vaults were all you need is an access code and some particular bit of prioritzed information?