RE: Why Trade? Or, the Tail Wagging the Dog. From: MKTESWX at GSUVM1
"I'll try to keep this short (ha!). I have a major problem with the people who
keep posting messages telling me why trade won't work in Traveller (or TDR) and
therefore should be dropped. I assume you want to keep the "look and feel" of
Traveller (large interstellar governments, interstellar Travel, etc), and to do
that you *MUST* have trade."
"If interstellar trade in impractical, there is no economic connection between
systems unless one is a captive colony of the other, and there is very little
reason for a system to have these colonies (barring Religious Destiny). There-
fore, no peaceful cooperation, no interstellar government, no passenger
traffic, etc. Traveller is now set in ONE highly developed star system. I
think we have a problem here ;)."
Hmmm, I don't know who you've been listening to, but it must not be me :-}.
I haven't been saying there will *not* be trade. I have been saying that only
certain things will be traded to certain places. Things that are available
locally will not be imported.
"<description of economics of trading metalworking tool kits>"
Unfortunately I don't have a set of books at work, so I can't *really* analyze
this. But basically this does need to be worked out for every type of cargo.
I'd guess that packing is about a third of the volume. For bulk cargo, packing
is negligable.
Tool Kit Cost: 1500cr
Tool Kit Volume: 50l
Tool Kits/Ton: 186 = 14000/50 * 2/3
Tool Kit/Ton: 279Kcr
Shipping Cost: 5.37/kit = 1000cr?/186
Total cost/Kit 1510cr
Obviously shipping tool kits is not going to be a problem, but then I didn't
think that it would be. I expect that metal tool kits are relatively high tech
devices with various alloys. Note, though that this cost is for one jump worth
of shipping. Hopefully this kit wouldn't get shipping at increasing cost
across more then one subsector.
The bigger question about this tool kit is, where is it going to be
manufactured? My point is that it will be manufactured where the materials
required to manufacture it are located. The cost of shipping final products is
negligable, when a ton of them costs 279Kcr, but what about raw materals
including food, water, air, where the cost might be 100cr per ton to 1000cr per
ton on up to 1Kcr per ton. These are the things that I am saying will not
likely be shipped.
Mark Cook, why don't you put me on the Trade and Commerce SIG too?
Jim Baranski