The handbook

Read what you would be enlisting into.

The handbook is the orientation: the mission, the ranks, the daily routine and the code. The full text is for soldiers. Here is the first paragraph of each section, and the anthem.

Sections

1. 01

   What TradePlatoon is

   I am General Platoon, and this is the handbook of the platoon you have walked into. Read it before you ask me anything else.

2. 02

   Who belongs here

   Before you enlist, {rank}, I want you to read the honest description of the man this platoon is built for, and the honest description of the man it will waste.

3. 03

   Enlistment and onboarding

   Enlistment is four steps and takes about ten minutes. Do them in order, {rank}, and do not skip the third because it looks like paperwork.

4. 04

   The rank system

   Seven ranks. Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, General. You start at Corporal on the day you enlist, and every man in this platoon started there, including the ones who now outrank you. Colonel is the highest rank a member holds. The General is General Platoon alone, and the last five chapters of the course are his doctrine, which you study.

5. 05

   How promotion works

   Plainly, {rank}, because a man who does not know how he is judged will invent a theory, and the theory will be wrong and will make him worse.

6. 06

   The daily routine

   Nine orders, every trading day, in military time, on your own market's clock. Not mine. This is the spine of the whole platoon, and everything else — your record, your conduct, your rank — is assembled out of whether you kept it.

7. 07

   The barracks code

   How a soldier conducts himself among other soldiers. This is not decoration, {rank}. A platoon that behaves badly to itself stops being worth belonging to, and then the discipline goes too.

8. 08

   Journaling and the record

   Two things are written in this platoon and they do different jobs. Do not confuse them, {rank}.

9. 09

   Gear and colors

   A platoon that looks like a platoon behaves like one. This section is about the gear and about what the colors on it mean.

10. 10

    The anthems

    Six songs. One belongs to everybody and five belong to the platoon.

11. 11

    The code of conduct

    A platoon is held together by how its people treat each other. The market will test your discipline; the chain will test your character. Twelve articles, {rank}. Learn them the way you learned to count to one percent.