Gamba economics....

Rob Dean:

>This is a reasonable way of thinking about things, in my opinion, and
>one which is more or less consistent with what we've actually seen from
>GDW on the subject.  The only really detailed world description they
>published, the Tarsus boxed module, shows the inhabitants of Tarsus
>with ready access to higher tech imported goods, at an increased cost,
>of course.

Alas, but I never got ahold of Tarsus.  My picture is something Cynthia
and I have been trying to make consistent for some time...


>As this applies to the Gamba subsector, how do you view the "standard
>of  living" tech levels on most of the planets?  I'd suppose that the
>Madrigalans import high tech production machinery from the small high
>tech planets (and/or Weelkes) and export lower tech machinery to the
>TL3 and TL4 planets, as well as cheap semi-bulk goods back to the high
>tech worlds.  If you take the MegaTraveller (or Merchant Prince) trade
>goods system as providing a general indication of the potential traffic
>flows, I think that you'll find that Madrigal goods can be sold at a
>profit on places like Lassus and Forqueray.  I haven't actually checked
>it, but the situation looks much the same as the situation in the
>Spinward Marches, where TL9 industrial Aki can sell at a profit on TL15
>industrial Glisten, which would probably make Aki (or Madrigal) a sort
>of Korea to Glisten's (or Lassus') Japan.

	This sounds moderately reasonable.  Using my house mods, Madrigal
would be functional TL10 plus or minus, with a LARGE lower class.  The
upper crust would be living at TL14, or maybe 15 in a few areas.  Public
education would be non-existant (since it would presumably educate
people to TL10 standards, and the indicated poverty level could not,
IMHO, exist with proper education of the masses.
	Most of the "low TL" planets would be functioning at TL7-9, with
imports in the TL14 range for the upper crust.  Except for the world
with the native sophonts.  They probably should follow this pattern, but
they could be anything that struck your fancy without bending reality
too far.
	One obvious place that high TL items should be seen:  fusion
plants.  TL15 fusion plants can be imported from Terra if necessary, and
still cost less than the locally produced TL14 stuff.  The lowered cost
at TL15 even makes importation of spares from as far away as Terra
reasonable.  (ASIDE:  I plugged fusion plants into the T&C program, and
found that they could be profitably sold anywhere within 2500 parsecs of
their point of origin, if there are no other TL15 worlds closer to the
point of sale.  So if there is even one TL15 world left in teh Imperium,
look for TL15 fusion plants all over.)


>How do shipping costs in Traveller affect the trade situation?  It has
>always looked to me like interstellar shipping in Traveller is somewhat
>less expensive than international air freight currently, but more
>expensive than international sea transport.  Is that in accordance with
>other people's views?

	Traveller shipping costs are lower than they look.  After all, when
they talk about a ton, they mean 13.5 Kl, not 1000Kg.  They are still
much higher than international ocean freight charges, but not as much as
you might think.  The real problem is that Traveller, in all its
incarnations has set prices for bulk goods too low.  Back in the good
ol' days, a ton (displacement) of gems went for MCr1.  Face it, at $1000
plus per carat, diamonds are worth a lot more than MCr1 per 13.5 Kl.  In
fact, if you use a dollar = credit (which was a good approximation when
Traveller originally came out), a million in diamonds could be carried
in a small briefcase.  Similiar cases can be made for most of the high
value items on the original list.
	In MT, nothing is worth much more than KCr10 per ton, which just
exacerbates the problem.  Cynthia and I have used Merchant Prince and
its descendants (with our own mods, some of which were posted here once)
as a good indicator of overall trade patterns.  But it is next to
useless as a trade system, since it assumes that interstellar trade uses
AVERAGE cargo value as an approximation to any specific deal.  But
average is not good enough, when most of the products of ANY world are
not worth exporting.  So they should be left out of the averaging
process, and the actual value of goods shipped should be in the range of
ten times as valuable (and costly) as MT indicates.
	This has been a major digression.  Oh well, I'm losing my grip while
the Braves are getting their heads beat in by the Pirates.

					---Steve
^Z