Perhaps it doesn't work like that in the Far Future...
Fiat,
That suggestion is... well... extremely implausible is a more polite term.
Economics and trade have worked essentially the same way since goods were traded. Whether carried by hand, camel, barge, or container ship, the same basic precepts hold and suggesting they'll be different aboard starships is... well... extremely implausible.
... and even the great shipping lines can no longer ensure that degree of reliability in transport.
And yet the Imperium can ensure a reliable x-boat service but Tukera cannot schedule freighters? Sure.
A large cargo might need a big ship to transport it...
And big ships, ships in the megaton range, are found in canon.
... but if you have, say, a thousand tons of anagathic precursors to ship in bulk somewhere, and you put it in one cargo hold in one big ship, and that one big ship misjumps, then that's a thousand ton cargo the destination is never going to see, and a whole lot of debt back home.
First, the risk of misjumps is wholly overblown by folks who are unaware of the actual rules. Even in
CT a misjump is impossible if a ship takes elementary precautions like using refined fuel and jumping from beyond the 100D limit. Misjumps are primarily GM imposed events and, even when they do occur, they more often result in a damaged drive aboard a vessel remaining in it's departure system than a ship vanishing into jump space.
Second, risk management is a practice as old as trade itself. Suggesting that shipments be reduced to sizes whose loss can be "handled" through insurance and other mechanisms is nothing new. Gillette, for example, limits the number of razor blades in every shipping container for this very reason. However, Gillette still ships razor blades in containers carried by huge ships.
Suggesting that megaton cargos are going to be routinely cut up into decaton lots is little more than a desperate search for an excuse to explain away the economic illiteracy at the heart of too many
Traveller trade systems.
But if it got broken up and put in the holds of a bunch of smaller ships, at least some of the shipment is likely to get through...
Or provide more chances for them to be lost, damaged, interfered with, etc.
... because a hundred ships with a bunch of ten ton cargoes aren't all likely to misjump on the same route, are they?
Please read
LBB:2 again and disabuse yourself of this fixation regarding misjumps.
Furthermore, due to the threat of piracy, corporate warfare between rivals etc., a shipping firm cannot afford to put its most precious payloads into its more visible ships because those vessels are clear targets for piracy and hijacking.
So shipping firms don't defend their ships? And Al Morai doesn't own several
Gazelle-class close escorts as route protectors? You're simply suggesting more excuses and not providing any rational reasons.
Seeing as large shipping firms will fly along large trade routes between large worlds that will have large defenses, cargoes are more likely to be tampered with in warehouses. It's the tramp traders, those small ships flying to backwaters without escorts that need to worry about piracy and hijackings, not the other way around.
So the corporations have to hire the more discreet, honest small traders to ship these cargoes on the QT, while the larger vessels run decoy with empty cargo holds, or cargo holds filled with less valuable loads.
The mind boggles. You're confusing
freight with
speculative trade goods. Ships are paid to carry freight, ships own trade goods, and we've been talking about trade goods here.
SuSAG isn't going to ship 100dTons of anagathics by
selling it to the players. They're going to ship 100dTons of anagathics by hiring someone to carry it as
freight.
And lastly, even the largest corporate shipping lines cannot afford to acquire the taint of impropriety...
Which, of course, is why Oberlindes committed several acts of piracy over a two week span at an Arekut deep space refueling point and Arekut burned down an Oberlindes warehouse.
You invoked trade wars as a reason for corporations using multiple smaller shipments just a few paragraphs ago and are now claiming that corporations won't want to be involved in trade wars due to the impropriety. Which is it?
No matter how illegal those cargoes may be at the destination world...
No. The free movement of goods is what the Imperium was founded to provide.
The illegality of a certain item on a given world does not enter into the equation unless that item crosses the world's extrality line. The Imperium enforces the free movement of nearly all goods between starports. Not across extrality lines, but between starports. While Bluenose-III can prohibit the shipment of alcohol across it's extrality line, it cannot prohibit the shipment of alcohol through it's system.
When we talk about the few items the Imperium does prohibit, psionic drugs, warbots, and very little else, we're entering the realm of the smuggler and that an entirely different proposition.
Hence, free traders operating as private contractors. Verbal contracts, no questions asked and if they get caught, the corporate lines' hands are clean.
Hence more excuses resting on a torturous interpretation and mistaken appreciation of the
OTU. And more excuses that confuse freight with speculative trade goods.
Regards,
Bill
