Book 2 economics, again! Beating the dead horse...

[aramis]

Hans:

Al-morai carrying passengers is a public relations issue. Specifically it allows for stockholders to be able to buy passage and "See for themselves" how the ships operate. By not restricting to shareholders, it gives the crews a potential chance of recruiting new crew and/or shareholders. It doesn't make much sense given the Bk 2 trade system, but it makes plenty of sense by just stepping back a bit.

as to "trader", nothing in TTB references it to be a vehicle, either, nor does it require that the cargo be loaded immediately upon a vehicle. the term trader:

trad·er
n.
1 One that trades; a dealer: a gold trader; a trader in bonds.
2 Nautical. A ship employed in foreign trade.

New American Heritage Dictionary

To me, Trader has always meant a person. I doubt the broker cares, either, if the goods are loaded immediately or moved warehouse to warehouse in anticipation of shipping.

Likewise, the JTAS article "Speculation Without a Starship" puts the lie to your narrow, pedantic interpretation, otherwise one would not be able to ship purchased goods as freight on other persons ships.

Stuff in a warehouse waiting for its ship certain is "cargo" to the ship arriving to carry it.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />trad·er
n.
1 One that trades; a dealer: a gold trader; a trader in bonds.
2 Nautical. A ship employed in foreign trade.

New American Heritage Dictionary

To me, Trader has always meant a person. I doubt the broker cares, either, if the goods are loaded immediately or moved warehouse to warehouse in anticipation of shipping.</font>[/QUOTE]I likewise doubt that he cares. You're either woefully ignorant of ordinary debating methods or being deliberately obtuse. I was using a type of argument called 'reductio ad absurdum', which involves assuming a claim for the sake of argument and arriving at an absurd result, which leads to the conclusion that the original assumption must have been wrong, since it led to this absurd result. Also known as proof by contradiction. Specifically, I was trying to demonstrate that it was not a good idea to take the Book 2 trade system completely literally, as you were insisting that we absolutely had to. You see, the moment you allow for interpretation of the text in the light of common sense, you lose the argument "canon says so" that you've been clinging to.

Likewise, the JTAS article "Speculation Without a Starship" puts the lie to your narrow, pedantic interpretation, otherwise one would not be able to ship purchased goods as freight on other persons ships.

Precisely my point. If I'm not allowed to rely on narrow, pedantic interpretations, why should you be?

Stuff in a warehouse waiting for its ship certain is "cargo" to the ship arriving to carry it.

Not really. I don't think normal debating rules allow you to make a word mean anything you want it to mean, just because its real meaning is inconvenient to your position.


Hans

 

[TheEngineer]

Originally posted by robject:
...
But no, Oberlindes et al are too far up the food chain to have our free trader rules apply; their operations probably have nothing to do with role-playing.

Just nitpicking

Isnt it the other way around ?
Using free trader rules is a bit like a classical trade subgame and roleplaying starts beyond things explicitly covered by rules (like running Oberlindes) ?

Just a thought...

 

[robject]

Originally posted by TheEngineer:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by robject:
...
But no, Oberlindes et al are too far up the food chain to have our free trader rules apply; their operations probably have nothing to do with role-playing.

Just nitpicking

Isnt it the other way around ?
Using free trader rules is a bit like a classical trade subgame and roleplaying starts beyond things explicitly covered by rules (like running Oberlindes) ?

Just a thought... </font>[/QUOTE]Well, that's a clever and thoughtful view. Add another adventure background to the list!

I think, at least for CT, that the referee running such a campaign would have to really know what he's doing. The rules don't give me any guidelines at all for running those kinds of large-scale operations.

 

[TheEngineer]

Yep. No guidelines. Thats true.
But honestly, running Oberlindes seems not to be Traveller life. Guess thats a prior career thing.
Anyway large scale operations provide a vast amount of seeds for real Travellers

So having a kind of rough guideline would be nice....

 

[aramis]

TE, Robject:

You're assuming that Oberlindes does more than simply treat each ship and it's brokerage crews as an autonomous sub-units. Which they very well might, as Hans unwittingly implied.

Sure, they own lots of stuff. So does McDonalds. But corporate checks on corporate owned stored in McD's only once per quarter, as long as the money is flowing in from them. Same for Franchisees, but less intrusive. Why would Oberlindes be any more invested?

The meagacorps probably operate more in manner akin to McDonalds than to Sears. Instead of restaurants, we get ships, manufacturing plants, and local supply centers.

Everyone (in the marches) knows that Oberlindes has certain high standards for stewards aboard their ships, as well as cargo handlers. But that doesn't mean that Marc Hault-Oberlindes actually enforces that, or even owns all the ships. He makes money or prestige off of every ship under the oberlindes livery... but that might be the subsidy share of the fat trader, or even a subsidy share off of the Al-Morai class ships.

Just because it is a megacorporate entity doesn't mean it is a unified corporate culture. Heck, it is far more likely that the various subsector offices are nigh-independent, so long as they don't damage the corporate name.

Hans: Reductio in absurdam only works when:
1) you take the opponent's argument and do so
2) the other person can recognize their argument in your reduction.

Neither one applied. You took the book and reduced it in the absurd, by insisting a trader was a ship. I realize, you don't consider rules to be part of the canon. I do remember a blatant statement to that effect in 1996, on the TML. On a near identical argument.

AS soon as you load it on the lorry, it's a cargo... and you have to take delivery of that cargo. Doesn't specify a ship. But you can bet it has to be moved by lorry to get it delivered, so you are buying a cargo... it might not be "technically" a cargo. Besides, under the TTB version, one buys a lot of "goods."

Also, if one want to go reductio in absurdam with literalism, then one should be able to load about 5-10x the cargo volume tonnage in carried cargo... since cargo is by mass, not volume in the trade system (TTB, p. 104, "Trade Goods", para. 2), and design is by volume, not by mass. (TTB, p67, "Deck Plans." and p. 56, "The Hull")

If one is going to have a speculative system, it should apply to any and all speculators, without regard to who they are.

Bk2 places no limits on how many speculators may buy nor sell at a given world. That's a referee decision.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Think about those large scale companies:
They are ript apart by the vast space and time delay in interaction and communication, but they are tied together by money and internal organisation.
I agree with Aramis, that independence in actual operation might be high (for obvious reasons) but the prime directive should be set by the company top management. Thats the only way to form something, where the value of the organisation is more than just "the sum of the single components".

Brr, regarding the rest of this "discussion", there will be no advancement here and propably not in the future. Hans will be convinced as ever, that parts of a FICTIONAL setting is not REALISTIC or BROKEN and other will just try to get along in this environment...

Go on

Regards,

Mert

 

[robject]

Yup, what Aramis says makes sense. If the Imperial government is forced to rely on decentralized government and local autonomy, the megacorps will be forced to do same. In their case, we know it's with a tortuous chain of holding companies and subsidiaries.

So, subsector lines must allow their starship captains to make autonomous decisions.

 

[TheEngineer]

Now, thats pretty the same as in real world economy.
So perhaps the only thing, which keeps the components in touch is money and a reduced set of directives from higher management structures.

robject, how far would you stretch the ability to make those autonomous decisions ?

I assume, that those abiltity could increase or decrease depending on the existence of a direct way for a management to show control, e.g. wide resonsibilities on a backwater trade mission, but subordination if a company office is in commo range.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by robject:
But no, Oberlindes et al are too far up the food chain to have our free trader rules apply; their operations probably have nothing to do with role-playing.

Well, the Book 2 trade rules themselves have little to do with roleplaying. That's not to say that a good referee can't add roleplaying, but the rules themselves constitutes what I'd call 'the trading game'. I'm not saying that that is a bad thing, mind you. The trading game can be a lot of fun. But there's no roleplaying involved. When you arrive at a new destination, you roll dice for the available freight and decide on where to go based on what's available to which destination. There's no provision for introducing personal desires unrelated to trading (like wanting to get to Regina before Granduncle Alistair's will is read). You get paid Cr1,000 per dT. There's no provision for negotiating a better (or worse) rate based on the fact that there haven't been another trader here for months or that a rival free trader happened to arrive at the same time as you did.

Once you've decided on a destination, you roll dice for the number of passengers that want to travel with you. Essentially, they're just so many lots of freight at Cr1,000, Cr8,000, or Cr10,000 apiece. There's no provision for roleplaying there either. No family of four who insist on traveling together or not at all, no arrogant rich bastards who wants to rent the last six staterooms in a corridor and have a curtain rigged to make it into a private suite, no one trying to wheedle you into letting them travel two to a stateroom at a reduced rate, no one offering to pay extra if you'll evict another passenger and let him get the spot (thus earning you the undying hatred of the evictee), no one desperate enough to get off planet that he'll pay Cr20,000 for a ticket.

When buying speculative cargo, you roll for the price, pay it, and load the stuff. There's no provision for rivals trying to outbid you or for dishonest sellers with substandard goods.

When you want to sell speculative cargo, you pay 20% of sales price to a broker who gives you +4 to the resale price roll. There's no provision for brokers with overblown reputations who actually only give you +2 or for dishonest brokers that tries to cheat you. There's no provision for word of mouth reccomendation to help you chose a hopefully honest broker either.

All these things can be added by a good referee. But the trade system itself has no role-playing involved at all. And i'm pretty sure you could run an excellent role-playing campaign based on a merchant company. And just as the abstract trade system of Book 2 helps provide the background for a free trader campaign, an abstract trade system for running a trade company would help provide the background for a company campaign. For a fledgeling line campaign you might be able to use the Book 2 rules, but you would need additional rules to handle the differences between a free trader and a company. For bigger companies you'd need a different system at a higher level of abstraction.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by robject:
Well, that's a clever and thoughtful view. Add another adventure background to the list!

In the campaign I ran in Brubek's a few years back the PCs were part of the crew of a ship owned by a fledgeling line (Uakye Transport Partners, in fact). The idea was to see what sort of adventures you could have if you were restricted to jumping back and forth between the same half dozen systems. Unfortunately the campaign dissolved when one player was sent to Kuwait, another fell out of touch, and two got so busy thay had to drop out. We didn't get very far, but it was fun while it lasted, with, among other things, highly individualized cargo and passengers.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
You're assuming that Oberlindes does more than simply treat each ship and it's brokerage crews as an autonomous sub-units. Which they very well might, as Hans unwittingly implied.

Sure, they own lots of stuff. So does McDonalds. But corporate checks on corporate owned stored in McD's only once per quarter, as long as the money is flowing in from them. Same for Franchisees, but less intrusive. Why would Oberlindes be any more invested?

Because it improves earning potential. Instead of arriving cold in a system and having to scrounge around for freight and passengers, Oberlindes can have contracts with suppliers about deliveries for specific dates. they can have factors who buy stuff beforehand and store it in warehouses, ready for loading. They can have agents sell tickets for specific departure dates in advance. Which means that their ships can have a turnaraond time of ten days instead of 14, enabling them to make 35 trips per year instead of 25. This is a trememdous economic advantage.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
You took the book and reduced it in the absurd, by insisting a trader was a ship.

It would be absurd to insist that you can't be a trader if you don't have a starship. There's nothing absurd about believing that the traders that Book 2 talks about were meant to be traders with starships. Why do you think that Trading without a starship points out that this is not, in fact, a necessity?

I realize, you don't consider rules to be part of the canon. I do remember a blatant statement to that effect in 1996, on the TML. On a near identical argument.

I consider them to be part of canon, but I do think they need to be treated with extra care. RPG rules are meant to simulate some aspect of 'reality'. Thus you can deduct certain facts about the OTU from them. But rules are very seldom a 100% match for reality, so I do think one should be careful not to read too much into rules, yes.

Also, if one want to go reductio in absurdam with literalism, then one should be able to load about 5-10x the cargo volume tonnage in carried cargo... since cargo is by mass, not volume in the trade system (TTB, p. 104, "Trade Goods", para. 2), and design is by volume, not by mass. (TTB, p67, "Deck Plans." and p. 56, "The Hull")

Speculative trade is by mass (though I wouldn't bet a plugged nickel that this is deliberate and not the author getting mixed up), but that doesn't mean that freight is. Besides, even if you were right about this, all it proves is that the trade rules contains at least one mistake. So why is it absolutely, completely, totally impossible that the bit about jump-3 vessels charging Cr8,000 for a middle passage is likewise a mistake?

Bk2 places no limits on how many speculators may buy nor sell at a given world. That's a referee decision.

Nope. But it does place a limit on how many lots of speculative goods a PC crew can buy in a week (namely one lot ("Throw once per week" [TTB:104])). There's only two possible reasons: 1) There is 'really' only one lot for sale per week or 2) the Book 2 trade system is an abstraction.

My money is on the Book 2 trade system being an abstraction, a simplification that applies to small low-jump tramp ships but not to big, high-jump company vessels.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Re: All worlds goods are the same: Not So, Hans. The world imposes modifiers on the goods roll.

Population size impose a modifier on what sort of goods are available (And it's a modifier that makes little sense. Why can't you get textiles, polymers, liquor, wood, crystal, and radioactives in high-population systems and why can't you get parts, tools, and vacc suits in low-population systems?) But the amount of goods you can find is completely unaffected by population size and trade classification. Grain is cheaper on an agricultural world, but it's not any more available. Which is absurd.

Given your criteria, and the nature of brokerage, I doubt even the Megacorps could tie up ALL the resalable cargos

That depends. If there is only one lot available per week, they not only would be able to, they'd have a powerful incentive (survival) to do so. But I completely agree that they can't do it. Why? Because I think they handle orders of magnitude more every week and that the lots that the free traders stumble across once in a while are lots that 'fall through the cracks'.

Tukera has HUGE resources, yes, but the resources needed to be able to handle an Al-morai with 500 tons to fill can run to a billion credits cash on hand (unlikely to NEED that much, but MCr1/Ton is a quite likely capital reserve for EACH ship at EACH stop under Bk2. (The ship can equalize cash reserves for stops by carrying the cash needed from accumulation points back to outflow points.)

A megacorporation can borrow money from a local bank if it suddenly needs extra money.

Further, it is unlikely that local governments will tolerate such "hogging", as it reduces competetion and thus (usually) prices and thus also taxes, and will simply prohibit megacorporate agents from exiting the extrality zone, and require purchase contracts be signed on-world, outside the extrality zone, or mandate auctions. It won't prevent the Megacorp from acquiring at least some of the pie, but it could make for quite the inconvenience.

These are the same local governments that you maintain will knuckle under to the Imperium when it imposes those canonical passenger and freight rates that will cripple their interstellar trade? Governments that are so cowed that they won't even dare try to circumvent those rates? How come they only assert themselves when it suits your vision?


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by robject:
If the Imperial government is forced to rely on decentralized government and local autonomy, the megacorps will be forced to do same. In their case, we know it's with a tortuous chain of holding companies and subsidiaries.

So, subsector lines must allow their starship captains to make autonomous decisions.

That the Imperium, which covers 300 subsectors, feels that it has to rely on decentralized government doesn't say very much about what subsector-wide lines need. That the megacorporations do rely on decentralization is a matter of canon, but why should a subsector-wide line have to give their captains more latitude that the East India Company gave its captains (who were out of touch for months at a time).

My vision of a subsector-wide line has local factors and couriers that tie them together in a fairly tight outfit.


Hans

 

[robject]

Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by robject:
[...]subsector lines must allow their starship captains to make autonomous decisions.

[...]
My vision of a subsector-wide line has local factors and couriers that tie them together in a fairly tight outfit.
</font>[/QUOTE]This is reasonable.

Originally posted by TheEngineer:

robject, how far would you stretch the ability to make those autonomous decisions ?

I assume, that those abiltity could increase or decrease depending on the existence of a direct way for a management to show control, e.g. wide resonsibilities on a backwater trade mission, but subordination if a company office is in commo range.

De accordo. Most of their work is routine.

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by rancke:
My vision of a subsector-wide line has local factors and couriers that tie them together in a fairly tight outfit.


Hans

Now that's a very good way to put it

 

[aramis]

Hans:

The locals will tolerate a lot. Buying up all of a various resource is PROBABLY not one of those things.

The Megacorps, canonically, are owned primarily by nobility and each other. AS with microsoft and apple, there is less competition, and more interrelation. They neither need, nor want, monopoly; out of self-preservation.

Heck, Hans, the Al-morai can operate 35 jumps per year, too. It is an advantage of 0 for the Megacorp over the regional line. It only matters versus independents who can't.

That being said, it is fairly evident that Bk2's reference is to an individual, be it ship or person. It nowhere prohibits two at once. This is not a boardgame, where that which is not covered in rules is prohibited. This is a roleplaying game, where only what is prohibited by rules is prohibited.

Of course, we've argued this for a decade, and the only change I can see in you arguments is that you now acknowledge rules as part of canon.

re lines
I see a vast opportunity for megacorps to be like McDonald's, selling franchises (subsidie contracts), and having means and methods beyond Bk2. What I do not see, and can not concede, is ANY form of strong central dominance. The Imperium works only because the central government is weak, but has vested interests throughout its sphere. Likewise, megacorps exist in a kind of stasis: if they get too powerful, their owners get nervous, as the megacorp threatens the positions of the nobles which own much of it. If they weaken, the nobles make opportunities available, so as to not be disenfranchised by the corporation going belly up.

Further, decentralization is good for denials of accountability. The corporation can then simply hang out to dry any who have gone "too far" with the BoD handing a neatly wrapped case off to IMoJ...

They are a part of the Imperial government, indirectly, in that they can set and bind the prices. All lesser lines need to either meet their prices, or work where they don't. They have pressure from their board of directors, under pressure from the noble houses, to maintain the social status quo. They can't afford to break the guidelines, as that will result in interventions.

Bring the megacorps to heel, and all the rest of buisiness falls in line. But the megacorps themselves represent the nobility of the imperium; therefore they represent the imperium in their actions.

The Megacorps, like the imperium, have strong central direction, bt not strong central control; the idea is that the at any level, the coopertive forces can crush any one or few rebels. The same is true of the Megacorps: they are not immune, they are party to the methods of the imperium.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Again, just some of my visions of the TU and trade:
The Imperium, its government and administration, the Megacorps and the "trade system" are awfully old constructions.
Business concentration has happened for a few thousand years here.
The kind of trade an individual (meaning a Traveller character) deals with is just a little corner at the outer edge of the market. The vast amount of the market is already shared and organized for centuries between the big ones. And decisions about the way to serve the market are not made by the market but by politics.
If not being part of a larger trading organisation the lots you can get by a "hand to mouth" method are just lost fractions of the theoretical market volume. Thats perhaps an explanation, why the lot size for grain might be the same on an Ag or another world.
One statement in the header of the MT RefGuide about trade and commerce strikes me for years:
Each world mainly tries to get along on its own.
That increased my impression, that Travellers and space faring people are still a tiny minority and that interstellar trade and traffic is a regular thing, but not as vast as sometimes propagated.

To me, one of the most fascination aspects about the TU is, that it keeps information about "absolut stats" (trade or traffic volumes, navy size, BSPs etc) of the TU so vage.
So, this offers the oppertunity to interprete the TU as well as an enterprising monster with vast trade volumes, which is pressed in its borders as well as an environment, where interstellar trade and travel is still a fascinating adventure and maybe even white spaces in its inner territory...
The TU is really kind of polymorphic.

If anyone would like to picture out the second option a bit more I would be glad

IMHO the trade systems in CT or MT are of course abstractions of this situation, but still provide a good base for roleplaying (just thing Hans noted in post 04-05-2006 02:19, besides a post number display would be fine here).
I consider it to be quite wrong to use this abstraction as a foundation for an extrapolation or up-scaling to a large scale trade system.

Best regards,

Mert

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
What I do not see, and can not concede, is ANY form of strong central dominance.

Like the Imperium imposing uniform, easily circumventable per-jump rates for freight and passenger traffic and heavily enforcing them on worlds that try to circumvent them? That sort of strong central dominance?

The trouble with arguing with you, Aramis, is that you are impossible to pin down to one position. Except, of course, the position that you're right and that any facts that might appear to indicate otherwise are wrong.

I shall do the same thing as Chris did and give up on you.


Hans