Defending Hard Times TL Drop

First a  general question: is "Traveler 3" something that's actually
in the works?

Steve Higginbotham writes:

>came out, as MT made it MUCH harder to build a ship which could have a
>real chance of being an effective pirate)

Actually, I've always wondered who it was that would construct (and finance)
such specialty ships as the pirate corsair: or do governments give them away
to privateers (legal pirates).

Also, there is absolutely no provision for how a scientist is supposed
to meet the operating expenses and payments for his or her Lab Ship.

> It takes more than an army and navy to be a superpower.  Standard of
> living might be nice, too.  ANd they STILL have all those things, as you
> say.   USSR 70+ years and counting / Imperium dead after 5- years???

The USSR lived for its 70 years largely off of the capital it had to
begin with. Once that basicly ran out, (and assorted other problems)
the decline we see now has come pretty quickly. The death of the imperium
starts in 1116, so its actually more like 10 years.


> And I am sure that the number of people who will be willing to move away
> from their homeworlds are not appreciably greater than the number of
> people today who leave their home countries to seek better
> opportunities.  Some do, for sure, but if they all did, then Germany
> would have been depopulated after WW2.  VERY few people can pull up
> their roots and walk away from everything they've ever known for the
> CHANCE of better times elsewhere.  Most will stay and work for better
> times here.

We're dealing with a colonial situation in most cases. Which lends
credence to the one-product mentality. Witness how well colonies
did after the British decided to pack it in, leaving them
with one resource. Now if nobody can ship that one resource...

If the imperial structure is retreating (voluntarily, as in the case of the
vilani megacorps, or involuntarily, as piracy and mayhem increase), I would
think that the best and brightest (and wealthiest) would hightail it to
where their skills could be better rewarded. Of course not all, but more
in tough times.


> of your speeder plummet!).  I doubt that wheeled vehicles would be
> competitive.  Especially given the detail everyone else (GDW included)
> seems to overlook.  NO ROADS!   The wheeled vehicle economy will never
> work without roads for them to drive on (yes, four wheel drive offroad
> vehicles exist - have you ever seen a four-wheel drive off-road
> 18wheeler?)  The roads would cost FAR more (look at how much the USA
> spends on them) than the grav vehicle factory ever could.

I find it hard to accept the non-presence of roads, mostly because
I don't see grav-vehicles totally replacing road transport
except at maybe the highest tech levels. Look at the world today: sure we
have lots of cars, but in china the auto is a rarity, and most folks
travel by low tech bicycles. The market for bikes in the CIS is
expanding, according to recent news. You could keep the grav-vehicle
factory running, but they won't be as affordable.

One should keep in mind, of course, that grav texhnology is not the
only high technology, and that while maybe that one perhaps will
not be readily converted down, other might be more likely.
Also, if these plants ARE so hi-tech, I'm sure they wouln't have as
much difficulty retooling, as hitech robots and computers and so
on are most likely MORE versatile (until they wear out, of course).


>>But our navy isn't undergoing a major financial crunch, and facing
>>a major military threat at the moment. Hard times would be a feedback
>>loop: the markets go down, the technology skips a beat, causing more
>>financial instability and so on.
>
> Neither are most of theirs.  And why didn't this happen in the
> Depression, if it so likely?

Because the depression was fiddlesticks compared to hard times.
Everything is magnified: a bigger economy, more inflated (which seems to
be an assumption of the problems leading up to the rebellion, that
the imperium was already running on inertia maybe for the past 100
years (the 1000 year empire at 1100) as was the rule of man before
the long Night.) There is a bigger war, with worse effects, and so on.
I mean three major megacorporations just up and LEFT most of the imperium.
Sure they'll sell their assets (some), but who can afford to buy them
as they watch their plastic credits become valueless.
Imagine if AT&T, IBM, and general motors all go out of business
at the same time (or say that they are giving up on america to
move to europe, because of some bizzare ideological faith in restoring
the Roman Empire :-)) Most of their employees decide to go with them,
and they pack up a considerable amount of their capital assets
(well, maybe AT&T is bad conceptual example).


> Check out World Builder's Handbook for guidelines on who has the
> High-Tech.  In most TL15 worlds, most people would be living at TL14 (or
> perhaps TL13).  Which is still a whole lot higher than TL10!  Even if
> 90% of it evaporated overnight, they probably could rebuild all of it in
> 5 years.

In the collapse, though, the disparities would become much more
pronounced. Drop tech by one, say, overall, and the magnification
of this drop pulls the middle class level quite possibly down to 10.
(especially if the anti-grav cities (TL14) crash:-) Maybe there's
no computer virus but how bout a superconductor virus per Niven :-))


> And why should you stop being wealthy because the Stock Market crashed?
> As Sam Walton said after losing $500,000,000 in the Stock Market
> collapse a few years ago, "it was paper yesterday, it's still paper
> today."

Not just the Stock Market crashed, the MARKET crashed. That is, the
imperial credit (no doubt inflated anyway) is worthless, so all the
assets measure in it are worthless. I don't know how Hard Times deals
with the imperial monetary system, but if it doesn't foresee its failure,
then I'd have to agree it's a bit whacked.

This brings up a problem I've always had with the kind of interstellar
market and finance conceived of in traveller, in that I find it hard to
believe it exists, when it takes at least two weeks to find out
what's going on the next planet over. But I'm using the assumption in
all of theses discussions. Does anyone have any ideas about
how interstellar fiances could really work?


> If you own a factory, it won't evaporate just because the Stock Market
> does.  If you have a factory, and no cash, BARTER!  Your people will
> work for room and board if times are that bad, and you can provide them
> by trading the products of your factories for the products of other
> people's factories.

Aside from barter being extremely inefficient,
are we assuming that every TL15 world has a grav vehicle factory?
Does every one have a mini-fusion plant factory? does every one
have an anagathics lab? a consumer electronics plant? While the level
of specialization might not be on the "left-handed egg spoon" level
it's still going to be pretty high, I'd guess. Factoring in the amount
of comparative advantage various world-types and government types,
and bizzare cultural factors might produce. ("We selflessly sacrifice
our children for the good of the grav vehicle electrostatic
rain zapping field plant" :-))


> And as I said on a post this past AM, we (Cynthia and I) expect to see a
> LOT of Htlers and Stalins and Roosevelt in the next few years of the
> Imperium.

Right on. (And thanks for including Roosevelt in there :-)) But ultimately
a Stalinist type recovery isn't going to produce long term-growth,
and the imperium's already been running on a flawed base.

Hitler just might very well get everyone making ground cars again.
He was opposed to the International style of architecture (a technical
advance) for ideological reasons. Maybe the scapegoats will be the technology
brought by those evil imperial traders 400 odd years ago (makes as much
sense as blaming Jews for killing somebody 2000 years ago). Another
potentail scapegoat: "those vilani who didn't take off, who are still
running the factories we think we need so much".


> And if it were common, then the lads left behind would just know how to
> do one thing, which WILL NOT BE how to build wheeled vehicles!  They are
> far more likely to have cookbook knowledge of Grav engineering than of
> wheeled vehicle design (which they haven't used in 11,000 years).

You're right of course. But my main problem with this is that the grav
vehicles will be unaffordable to the average person who formerly
could afford them. Poverty is expensive, and the chaos will not just
drive down income, but drive up prices.

> The five Tl drop is ludicrous. The assumption that such a drop would
> last for more than a VERY short period is even more ludicrous.
> HOWEVER, the MOST LUDICROUS THING TRAVELLER (in any incarnation) HAS
> EVER DONE IS TO ASSUME THAT "PEASANTS" WILL BE COMMON IN THE
> IMPERIUM!!!!!!!!

I see alot of justification for your objections to the extreme
tech drop, and I think I agree that it wouldn't be very long lasting,
and maybe not as extreme.
It would take a while to occur, though, but I don't see it as only taking
the five years of hard times.

I disagree very much about the presence of peasants, remembering that
peasant is a relative term. (even not remembering that: in our own
world, the most populous nation i think could still be described as
having a great number of "peasants".) But peasant is relative to the
level of the middle class. Sure you and I have computers, nice cars,
central heating, etc, but there are people in america with only radios,
or outhouses, or have no electricity. They weren't that "common" anyway,
only appearing on a 2 in 36 chance if not mistaken.


paul duggan