Surviving Hard Times

Richard Anderson writes:
>Steve Higgenbotham offers a dissenting view of the "Hard Times" scenario
>presented by GDW.  The following is my rebuttal, with my assertions drawn
>mostly from how we understand international economics to work... (or not
>work, depending upon whom you ask).
>
>>The basic assumption about Hard Times TL loss is that the worlds are trying
>>to become self-sufficient by dropping back 5 TLs and punting.
>
>>Why should this be so?
>
>It is so, mainly because the vast majority of these planets never
>indigenously developed the technological base to support their tech levels.

They must be pretty close with respect to their basic requirements though.
It might have been cheaper for a world to import luxury grav cars instead
of building them themselves, but imagine the trade fleet necessary to
supply a basic runaround floater for every family on Mora. And even if they
import them all, they certainly will do their own maintenance!

>Nevertheless, the vast majority of the worlds have suffered either one of
>two fates:  A) They have been in the way of two or more large battle fleets
>(just take Zarushagar as a prime example); or B) They were backwater regions
>that survived on what limited trade did come through (the Reaver's Deep
>area comes to mind).

If the trade was limited then the reliance on it would be limited too.
You can't have it both ways. Planets in backwaters would be _less_
susceptible to the loss of trade than those in other areas.

>Some places, such as the Trojan Reaches and parts of the Solomani
>Rim, are a victim of both.  Thus the "wilds" described in "Hard Times".  In
>essence, the planets that are reduced to near TL5 were either bombarded or
>starved back into the Stone Age (i.e. the 1950's).

Any society that can maintain an industrial tech level is pretty well
organized. It will have both the industrial support, ressources,
manpower and knowledge to climb the tech levels fast. Level 5
technology isn't very ressource friendly. If you can maintain
that, you can maintain a higher TL, if only you can achieve it.
And even if the know-how isn't there, the basic knowledge is there.
It's bootstrapping yourself up from a pre-industrial tech level
that would be a problem. Any society with TL 5 is more than
halfway to TL 10 :-)

>>                                              So why does it then follow
>>that they would spend lots of money building industries to produce archaic
>>equipment?  If you need to spend the money on new industries anyway, why
>>not build industries producing modern stuff?

>Primarily, they don't have the technological know-how required, nor (even
>more importantly) the capital to do the job.  They may have a lot of
>money, but if they don't have the silicon-etching equipment to make a TL8
>computer, then how are they going to make a TL8 computer?

Some other way. The history of our own planet shows that man (well, some
men :-) are infinitely inventive. And hard times (like wars) seems to
stimulate inventiveness enourmously. Remember, they may not have the
technological know-how, but they will have the theoretical knowledge.
Considering the ability Terran scientists have demonstrated for duplicating
inventions that they just knew existed, any society that already has a
basic textbook about the subject will be able to cope.

[About the bad effect of nuclear bombardments]

>Grav technology requires a well-developed technological/industrial base.
>About the only worlds with that kind of home-grown capacity are exactly
>the ones inside the "safe zones".

I've read enough after-the-holocaust stories to accept the concept of an
Imperial fleet bombing a world back to the stone age (but not, as mentioned
above, back to TL 5 (except very temporarily). What I object to in
Hard Times is the assumption that worlds that does survive the war years
relatively intact will be unable to recover and that the new polities will
inevitably fail after a few years. In the two subsectors detailed in Hard
Times alone there are four planets that IMO would be capable of reestablishing
interstellar trade on a limited basis: Accra (C6877A4-B), Khavle (C334965-B),
Aight (C752A98-A) and Westfir (B326882-B). On the other hand I have my doubts
about the only planet with a surviving class A starport, Medora (A422530-B).
With a population of only 400.000 the amount of starships it can build and/or
maintain will be on the slender side. At the very least it will need to band
together with neighbouring planets. But any high-population world with a
tech level of 11 and above will be a polity (or the core of one) in itself.
"Ah, but..." I hear you say. "Westfir can only maintain starships, not build
them with it's class B starport, and the other three are even worse off with
their miserable class C starports." Ah yes! That brings me to my worst peeve
wrt Hard Times: That there is no provision for any of the numbers
_increasing_. Pre-Rebellion Westfir had a class B starport despite it's tech
level of 13 being more than enough to build jump-drives. Why? Obviously
because other nearby worlds could make starships cheaper than they could
themselves (which nearby worlds are a mystery. All the worlds in the two
subsectors with an A starport (pre-Rebellion) have populations of 5 or less;
it's a mistake to believe that semi-random numbers will make sense without
a bit of judicious tweaking. But I digress). In 1124 Westfir's starport is
still class B and presumably relatively intact (since it still is class B
;-), while most nearby class A starports are history. So what is Westfir's
obvious next move? Why, to convert some of it's extensive spaceship con-
struction and starship maintenance capacity to starship construction.
Bingo, one class A starport. The cases of Accra, Khavle and Aight are perhaps
a little less easy. Khavle's shipyards, for example, propably suffered in the
events that reduced it's starport from class B to C, but in 1128 it still has
a population of 7 billion. Surely they can manage to get a portion of their
shipyards operational, especially if trade really is so all-fired important
to them. Even 10% of their prewar capacity comes to a tidy bit. One obvious
jury-rig is an alliance with Medora wherein Medora switches to producing
jumpdrives exclusively and Khavle makes all the rest of the ships. A very
beneficial arrangement for both sides, I should think.

One danger, that Hard Times does _not_ address, is the possibility that all
these new polities will war with each other over trade planets. I believe
that there would be a lot more new polities in 1128 than Hard Times thinks;
I also believe that a number of them will have succumbed to neighbours
within a decade. But there will also be a lot that survives.

>
>Finally, regarding Steve's point about high TL machinery suddenly
>disappearing, I would have to agree with him.  The whole idea is ludicrous.

Here, at least, we are in complete accord :-)



      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "And now to conclude and to finish my song.
         Let us hope that these hard times, they will not last long.
         I hope soon to have occasion to alter my song;
         and sing: All the good times of the Empire.
              In the Empire are jolly good times."