Starships and Trade

[BMonnery]

Some thoughts.

When dealing with the number of starships we have to try and deal with the nature of trade between the colonies and Earth, and indeed trade between the colonies.

Now, Earth is interesting. She imports 4 times what she exports (Earth:2300), and indeed, due to this imbalance, there is a tendency to put colonists on ships going out (a colonist will require several tons of material on landing) (SotFA).

However, what Earth is poor of is metals, petrochemicals and food. Bulk metals are mostly found insystem, and are mined at orbital mining stations in other systems where there is no gravity well stopping the launch. Only special metals are actually boosted up a colonial gravity well to be sent back to Earth (see Kafer Dawn etc.). The same may be true of some petrochemicals (ECS notes that demand for petrochemicals has dropped). Food of course is at a premium on Earth, which simply can't feed itself*

Looking simply at Grain, Earth has a population of 5.38 billion, many of whom go hungry. Europe, Indonesia, parts of Asia and parts of Africa simply can't feed themselves, and there are no large grain excesses elsewhere, so they need to import from Offworld.

The economics are such that asteroid mines etc. are possibly more valuable to Earth, and these avoid the need to lift out of orbit.



* A side effect of the loss of grain imports from the French Arm during the 2nd Invasion was a likely series of famines in the parts of the world reliant on such grain.

 

[Anders]

Food of course is at a premium on Earth, which simply can't feed itself*

Looking simply at Grain, Earth has a population of 5.38 billion, many of whom go hungry. Europe, Indonesia, parts of Asia and parts of Africa simply can't feed themselves, and there are no large grain excesses elsewhere, so they need to import from Offworld.

* A side effect of the loss of grain imports from the French Arm during the 2nd Invasion was a likely series of famines in the parts of the world reliant on such grain.

Huh? What is the evidence that they go hungry? Are you assuming we are better off today hunger-wise (yes, even with the current food price peak) than people in 2300 with agricultural robotics, genemod self-fertilizing crops, vat farming, advanced hydroponics, very efficient transports, a more peaceful Earth *and* the option for offworld import? We are 6.7 billion today, Earth 2320 has ~7 billion - just 5% more.

I can imagine one way to have famines on 2320AD Earth and that is to remove globalization (isolated economies are vulnerable). But even assuming rampant nationalism it does not seem to fit well with the setting descriptions. As Amartya Sen pointed out, the rule of thumb is that functioning democracies do not get famines. They 1) have incentives to keep citizens happy, and 2) have more options and flexibility in solving scarcities.

If you really think Earth needs offworld food you will also have to assume very large number of spaceships and low transport costs. Assume the need to import just one billion 1 kg meals each day. That is around one million tons or cubic meters each day. That means 54 Guiana-class freighters arriving each day, or around 220 Mammoths or BC4s. It might work if you want a thousands of spaceship setting where spaceships are more like trucks and current container ships, and less like airplanes.

A more plausible approach is that bulk food production is done locally, but that high-end food gets transported. A break with the French arm would lead to a rise in food prices and a scarcity of Beta Canum fruits or Vogelheim pickles, but not a calorie problem.

Similarly it makes much sense to do local processing for ores or petrochemicals before shipping them, unless they are very cheap to ship (i.e. mass drivers in an asteroid belt or in-system robotic shipping). I expect most of the tantalum that leaves King is in the form of small, heavily guarded packages of purified 180m isomer ingots rather than mountains of unrefined metal, just as what left Kimanjano was fullerene composites, pharmaceuticals and special chemicals rather than bulk hydrocarbons. The big cost is anyway orbit-ground, so any trick that reduces it will be important. It may be cheaper to import food from Beta Canum to Augureau than from nearby Beowulf just because of the beanstalk. Hochbaden actually made sense, since it had a gravitational well advantage that in time might have made it a key point along the lower arm.

 

[BMonnery]

We have food production figures (and most economic stats) for about 4b of Earths 5.38b (2300 Earth's population is stated in canon to be 5.38b*). The major region without statistics is the Indian subcontinent.

The excesses are:

America: 14.8
Texas: -0.7
Mexico: -27.3
Canada: +1.7
Argentina: +4.7
Bolivia: -5.8
Brazil: +41
Chile: -3
Guyana: -1.2
Inca: -1.3
Paraguay: +.5
Uruguay: +0.4
Venezuela: -3.3
Australia: +0.7
Japan: -9.3
Azerbiajan: -0.9
Burma: +14.4
Canton: +50.9
CAR: -9.3
Georgia: +0.3
Indonesia: -83.5
Manchuria: -8.2
Arabia: -2.1
Palestine: +0.4
Iran: -9.8
Syria: -5
N. Africa: -22.4
W. Africa: +5.6
C. Africa: -77.1
S. Africa: +5.3
Mozambique: -14.7
E. Africa: -23.1

Total: shortfall of 167.3

This of course excludes Europe**, which has probably very little arable land (since it's population has largely increased, but the population density of urban areas has plumetted, much of Europe is urban), and India, which is renowned for continual famines.

The Terrestrial French Empire alone seems to roughly have a shortfall of between 150 and 200m fed. This is a trade of 200,000,000 tons of imported agricultural goods (maybe 8,000 shiploads a year***), with a rough import cost of 2.7 Trillion Livre pa (an additional Lv4 per days food). Of course, the French have a few more sources such as the Ukraine which will lower this a bit, maybe half it.

* There are two nations that managed to gain an extra zero in the ECS, resulting in nearly 30 fold population growth, which is plainly ridiculous.

** Holland, Ireland, Flanders, Spain, Italy and most of the Balkan states are noted to have agriculture based economies. Greece is "almost self-sufficient". Ukraine is noted as a major agricultural exporter, and is the reason for French support, Ukraine's exports mainly go to France. The situation in Europe is thus 7 relatively industrialised nations (France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, Russia and Portugal) don't produce enough food, while the others produce minor excesses. We can assume a lot of that Brazilian excess goes to Portugal and Britain.

*** Assuming 25,000m3 is typical. Due to the maths underlying the stardrive, reasonably small drives can push huge loads if you accept going slow.

 

[Waldemar]

The 2320 AD book says on page 67, on the round-up of the Tier 4 Asian nations, that they are making due with much less than on other continents but no one is actually starving. This line about not actually starving is repeated on page 68 about in the round-up of the Tier 4 African nations.

In the 2320 AD book there also seems to be many referrals to nations being self-sufficient. That may not mean a good diet in many cases, in comparison with the standards of other nations on Earth, but it would seem that the food situation is better than in the setting's 20th century.

 

[Anders]

I think the economics of EC is pretty broken. It makes more sense to assume that the numbers given are bogus than the existence of a *huge* merchant fleet importing food from off-system to a smaller population than the current one that strangely cannot feed itself despite much more advanced technology and higher overall wealth.

So what should we be using to guide our estimates? Clearly they would need to be in keeping with the overall "style" of the setting - transports are expensive but cheap enough that bulk goods are shipped between systems, asteroid mines make sense and offworld agricultural products ends up on Earth (I wonder how OQC handles it?) We can use population numbers and some extrapolated wealth level to estimate how much goods are consumed, and then maybe assume a similar export-import pattern as the current to estimate how much is offworld. It seems that the key issue is to create a self-consistent system rather than explain every last decimal.

 

[aramis]

You are all overlooking one potential source of food shipped down the beanstalk: orbital hydroponics! Solves the food import issue while not requiring vast fleets. It's been years (literally) since I looked at ECS, but I seem to recall there is a significant orbital population.

 

[epicenter00]

I really don't think the Earth would be starving. There seems to be an assumption that the French Arm is the only colonies in human space, something I find a little questionable. Ellis is noted to be a place that is a net agricultural exporter, so much so that it almost caused Hermes colony to fail. Even the "lower tech" worlds in the Chinese Arm, many are noted to be agricultural -- all that if you can find bulk haulers to move things cheaply and the cheap transport-to-orbit that'd make the effort worth it, neither of which I've seen evidence of.

Of course, to me, that brings up a problem with 2300. Who's losing serious money transporting food? 2300 shares a problem with Traveller: a part of trade doesn't work. In Traveller, it's the Jump-1 traders being profitable while Jump-2 traders all go out of business in original Traveller - everyone kinda ignores it. In 2300, bulk trade doesn't work. A similar thing goes on with what Anders touched on - lack of "gravity plates" in 2300 makes gravity the biggest killer of interstellar trade in 2300. Certain high-value, low-mass items would be profitable to move, but that's it. Certainly not grain ships to Rome. Beanstalks are supposed to be the solution to this, but Beanstalks as described in the supplement of the same name, shows that Beanstalks might transport things relatively cheaply, but it's not doing it in bulk. There's not enough cars operating and each car doesn't carry enough. While grain and meats and so on would be good candidates for shooting in slingshots, slingshots still aren't that cheap and the containers don't seem all that large - the cost of the shipping containers themselves would seriously eat into the profits of shipping something high-bulk and low-value like food.

I'm with aramis on this. If Earth has an on-planet food shortage, the solutions need to be found on Earth and in orbit. It's honestly not even profitable to import food from Alpha Centauri, let alone like 5+ jumps away up the French Arm! Really, the only "imported" food would be food grown in habitats in orbit and dropped to Earth. Kafers running amok in the French Arm have nothing to do with this, at least by 2300's transport realities.

 

[robject]

You are all overlooking one potential source of food shipped down the beanstalk: orbital hydroponics! Solves the food import issue while not requiring vast fleets. It's been years (literally) since I looked at ECS, but I seem to recall there is a significant orbital population.

That's awesome. And a fascinating problem, with a few of its own plot hooks.

 

[Anders]

"Sky farms are fantastically beautiful, with their kilometer long networks of glass framed in grids of metal, and the sunlight shining through jungles of vegetation inside. When one of them catches the light, you can see the refracted beauty for miles; they are life-giving stars on a desolate planet...gardens on the wing."
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri​

While I love orbital hydroponics it certainly seems absurd to import ice from the outer system, regolith from the asteroid belt, chemically fix ammonia ice into nitrates and then culture plants that are dropped down to the green planet below - a planet where the raw materials and growing environments can be had for a fraction of the cost.

If people find agrifacs or crop fields ugly or ecologically undesirable it could still happen, and would be an interesting sign of the wealth of Earth (it is rich enough to be wasteful, ethical and organic). And I think space hydroponics is at the very least important for much of the orbital economy and a natural way of providing food for some early colonies.

Epicenter is right about the main problem. Our problem is to come up with an explanation that makes the most sense with the setting as given.

 

[aramis]

Anders: as in Why there is food shortage?

That's probably remnants of the twilight war. Areas where radioactive salts were used on dirty (otherwise conventional) warheads to deny crop growth.

Take a 1000# bomb, load it with 10% high-ex, and 85% radioactive salts, detonate at 500m, and you just killed a few hectares of farmland for at least 3 centuries, possibly as many as 10. (Carthages fields are only NOW recovering from the salt-tilling by the Romans!). Carpet bomb with these, and you get huge swaths of dead land.

 

[kmsoice]

Without directly overcoming Epicenter's problem (because of the cost to overcome gravity, trade as we know it in 2300AD is not going to happen) let me at least provide some reasons why large scale trade could still happen.

One factor is I think it is very easy in imagine that large spaces on Earth are locked up as environmental preserves of one kind or another. After the Twilight War people survived by careful husbandry of the world and probably look with horror at the waste of the 20th century. ("They poisoned their rats instead of eating them?!?!"). This is not without precedent in cannon, the Elysia revolt was over environmental issues (see the player created website http://www.geocities.com/joi_sourcebook/sttheo.html for a wonderful expansion of this idea) and NARL is constantly portrayed as a sort of super Greenpeace/PETA -large and aggressive. There could still easily be vast tracts of land on Earth under cultivation but if there is enough political will then enough will be off limits to raise food prices and a significant portion of the population will find it necessary to seek alternate supplies.

Which brings me to my next point, in 23XX sure nobody is starving, but what are they eating? Does a steady diet of yeast with flavors added , vat grown carniculture, and genemodded cereals really sound that appealing? How long before you yearn for just one bite of something grown in the sun and the earth? Try a taste test that you can do in your own home, butter vs. margarine. Margarine is the congealed product of whatever edible oils happen to be cheapest this week with enough dyes and chemicals to make it into a cost effective substitute for butter. Most people, including myself, usually have no significant problem with margarine especially with the price difference, but even I think there is nothing as good as a cracker with some butter smeared on it! I know people who care about their food more than I do who blanch at the thought of eating margarine even though butter costs twice as much. Anyways, I am not talking about some tiny niche market like the fools who pay $100s per kg for Kobe beef. I am talking about the housewife willing to pay a $1 or 2 per kg more to get some organically grown carrots. She still buys chicken bulked up with steroids and fruit juice with 5% real juice, but in her cart there is an expensive package of eggs from 'cage free hens'. Except in 23XX the 'good stuff' would likely come from offworld. Maybe offworld food costs 2X to 4X times what the cheap stuff does, but that is still within the budget range of middle class households for some items. Which makes for megatonnages per year of imports. Sure there is plenty of food grown on Earth, fresher and tastier even than the offworld food but say it costs 3X to 6X more than the cheap stuff? Indeed this could be one of the big reasons why people are willing leave the Core worlds and suffer the hard labor and deprivations on the colonies, because there they always get to eat real food. [To forestall an objection, yes this is ignoring the point that the same people should be put off by the fact that they really are eating something 'Not of this Earth'. But maybe by 23XX that would not be such a problem, how many 'traditional recipes from the old country like your grandmother used to make' involve that New World vegetable the potato?]

Much the same argument could be made for mineral extraction. Not only would the industry have to face tougher environmental restrictions but as we are now finding out with oil, there is still plenty of oil down there but the easy to get at stuff is all gone. It is going to cost more and more to get the same amount. Instead of a multi-billion dollar enterprise Canada's tar sands would be just an amusing bit of geology if it were not for the threat of war in the Middle East. By 23XX we have had 3 more centuries of digging on all the minerals, they may still be plentiful but they may not be quite so cheap. For manufacturing, think of how we think of medicine in the 17th century? Revulsion and laughter at their barbaric art? The people of 23XX may view our 20th(21st) century smoke belching factories the same way and back the environmental laws to do something about it even if it costs them a bit more at the store.

Maybe only 2 to 5% of Earth's needs are supplied offworld. Enough for a steady stream of bulk carriers but not whole fleets of them. In the end my point is there is what makes economic sense; and then there is that slightly irrational desire of what people are willing to pay for just a bit more **QUALITY**.

Anyways, is this all just handwaving arguments and no statistics? Yes. But economics be damned sometimes you need a bulk carrier just so you can run from the Xenomorph down the twisted, deserted, machine filled corridors with nothing but an improvised flame thrower in your hands trying to get to the escape pod while the pleasant but soul-less computer voice counts down the seconds before the engines overload ...

 

[epicenter00]

Given that Earth in 2300 isn't some Cyberpunk dystopia and is more of a socialist "nanny-state" I'm seriously doubting everyone is just eating textured protein (I've always sort of ignored that whole "Food Extruders" thing from GDW as one of the signs of the Decline and Fall of GDW). Why? It's a little cliche for my tastes - long lines of people eating textured and flavored yeast is too much like Sci-Fi written during the Cold War to me. I'm also not of the opinion that some countries go hungry while others have plenty, certainly not that these countries that have plenty are conveniently where whites live, while those that go hungry are where "those darkies" live - while GDW 2300 was written this way, I always felt it was terminal lack of imagination on the part of GDW's (very strong) historical recreationist crowd.

Here's my take on the matter.

There is no starvation on Earth, except in a few places which still are fighting wars. Globalization (and I mean true globalization, not "free investment" which is what the G8 nations are telling us is globalization right now) has pretty much ingrained the notion that everyone on Earth swims together, or they sink together. Transportation is too cheap for populations suffering not to move to where things are better. In addition, the Twilight War has left many nations with a tradition that "nobody goes hungry." Indeed, in my view of 2300, the Indian States continue fighting because ironically, the rest of the world subsidizes it. The juntas and fanatical religious governments don't really need to worry about famine in their nations - provided they don't block the trucks from Zamapoga and such, the rest of the world will feed their populations and their fighters, while they can concentrate on fighting each other. Truces are called between partisans on both sides so the trucks can distribute food, water, and medical supplies. The irony of the situation isn't lost on the rest of the world; but they'd rather subsidize war than let the "common people" go hungry.

My personal opinion is that agriculture is much more intensive than we can ever imagine it today. Grain fields are unbelievably productive utilizing energy-intensive technologies that can't really even be duplicated on Alpha Centauri (let alone anywhere else) because only around Earth are there not just solar power satellites but LEO is infested with them. Whereas a few colonies on Aurore had to invest in one, on Earth, any respectable city would have several to supply its own power needs. However, the majority of this work is done via machines controlled by remote overseers. On Earth, the majority of homeowners have a tradition of the "home garden" where food is raised inside the home - even people who live in high-rise apartment buildings are given a tiny plot on the roof of buildings where they can raise stuff - these are scars of the Twilight War, and while these gardens wouldn't really feed people, it makes people feel better.

The ECS states the Japanese invest very heavily in aquaculture. I'm actually pretty certain that while the Japanese might be the world leaders in this technology, any country with decent access to the sea does the same. While at the same time, terraforming has made the Sahara bloom - I would imagine North Africa would probably a net agricultural exporter in 2300. Even in urban areas, a lot of places probably invest heavily in hydroponic gardening on a corporate scale with the intent for sale.

Even with all this, I think there would be places on Earth where people would go hungry. Enter the orbital greenhouses. "What orbital greenhouses? It would be stupidly expensive to build them and seed them with soil, why would anyone do it?" you ask.

Remember, there was a time when humanity expanded out to the solar system before Stutterwarp with the intention of colonizing worlds like Mars and so on. With the invention of Stutterwarp, interest in stuff like this basically dried up. Why live on Mars when you can on Alpha Centauri? However, at one time, trillions of livre were being spent to prepare Mars and moon colonies (the moon to provide raw materials - as tossing stuff out of the moon's gravity is trivial compared to Earth's). The infrastructure is still there. People built orbital greenhouses around Mars to feed colonists, there's similar ones near the moon (as it was easier to raise foodstuffs in simulated gravity than on the moon). Once in-system colonization went bust, many of these farms were abandoned, until entrepreneurs bought up the property rights for them. Occasionally, they found squatters in them - some kicked the squatters out (rumor has it, right out the airlock in some cases) while in other cases, they were given jobs as farm overseers. In many cases, it wasn't economical to bring these orbital greenhouses closer to Earth, so there's ion-powered grain ships that run a continuous orbit between Earth and Mars. Faster, fusion-powered ships pick up and drop off modules from them, but the grain ships themselves rarely slow or deviate from their course (there's your nearly deserted ships kmsoice).

 

[Anders]

Assuming just 220 (2100-2320) years of 1% growth rate (much lower than historical) gives about *ten times* more standard of living as in 2100, which was presumably ~1990 level. A more historical 3% rate gives 667 times as much wealth per capita. Core people are *rich* by our standards. 23XX generally seems to assume most development has not been in the direction of consumer goods but rather into big infrastructure: maglev, spaceships, colonies, and that the economic growth has been slow but steady. This would make these people have less impressive toys and food habits than they could have had, but it is very unlikely they are starving or living in a soylent green dystopia.

I think soy-protein, food extruders, golden wheat fields and offworld food all coexist. The Core is enormously diverse, not the bland place suggested by the EC sourcebook. After all, consider the range in food available today, and scale it up by the new possibilities in 23XX.

Want something really cheap? Go to FoodExtruder(tm) or buy some of the Manchurian hydroponic rice. Want to feel like you are a real self-reliant gardener? Buy a hydroponics module in one of the local agriscrapers and direct the robots with telepresence (finished product delivered right to your door through courierbot). Like seafood? It is going to be Japanese aquaculture, even if it is Scottish salmon (since Murasaki Aquaponics directly or indirectly own most Northwest European fishfarms). Want to have something pricey but authentic? Get some traditionally farmed French countryside food. Like meat? Provence has some of the best vat-mutton and hybrid meats imaginable. Dislike natural food? Vendee Spatiale makes exquisite synthburgers and abstract dishes for your subculture. Like exotic food? Why not get some Vogelheim pickles, Inca guinea-pig and Liberian coconut bread for a Mexican torta to serve with the latest creation from Osgood Nutristudios and some Nibelungen Apfelwein. Health conscious? Get some of the antioxidant rich genemod vegetables from orbit, guaranteed to be totally bacteria free until you open the package.

You can express your ethics and philosophy through food. People show off wealth or sophistication by what you use and do not use (which is what much of current "organic", fairtrade and anti-obesity food is about). Being the amateur gourmet chef, food ethicist or source of real produce of your circle is a sure way of impressing people.

 

[kmsoice]

Epicenter, I will disagree with you on one tiny point, I think that Earth in 2300 is both a Cyberpunk dystopia and a socialist 'nanny-state' and every shade in between depending upon who you vote for, what street corner you are standing on and what is in your wallet. [Indeed, what better place for a Cyberpunk dystopia than at the crumbling edges of a socialist society, just beyond the numbed & monitored masses, out where the SINless live.]

But other than that, heck yah, I love everything you said including the revitalized orbiting farms! Do you see it still dovetails nicely with what I was saying? Because what are these incredibly productive, extreme energy intensive technologies you mention but grain from robot tended argriplexes where every plant is monitored and metered chemicals lit 24/7 by orbital mirrors to endless warehouses of poultry in tiny cages fed by tubes and have never seen the sun, to vats of textured yeast product. -->It is what I was talking about; cheap, plentiful, processed, plastic food that many people are leary of and sick of. For bonus points perhaps people are even literally sick of their sterilized life if you borrow some of the great ideas found in the TV series 'Earth2' The same thing goes for mineral extraction and manufacturing. With advanced seismic, horizontal drilling, fracing, acid leaching etc we can get almost but not quite every drop of oil from a reservoir. But there comes a point of diminishing returns where it is just cheaper to go find a new reservoir. My point is that by 23XX many (but NOT ALL!) of the untapped reservoirs, the big ones with vast lakes of light sweet crude needing no refining, practically bubbling out of ground wanting to be captured are going to be out in the colonies.

The more productive the Earth is the more NARL and its ilk can justify creating more and more environmental preserves. I can imagine debates like what is going on in modern USA about AWAR drilling 'For the sake of NATIONAL SECURITY we need to drill to reduce dependence on FOREIGN OIL' vs. no drilling 'It is a FRAGILE ECOSYSTEM and drilling is just a band-aid solution anyways we need to REDUCE CONSUMPTION' being an ongoing thing in 23XX.[Read more adventure opportunities for PCs to make a corporate buck or save a forest by Shoot, Shoot, Shoot! ... errr, ... thoughtful role-play]

 

[BMonnery]

Assuming just 220 (2100-2320) years of 1% growth rate (much lower than historical) gives about *ten times* more standard of living as in 2100, which was presumably ~1990 level. A more historical 3% rate gives 667 times as much wealth per capita. Core people are *rich* by our standards. 23XX generally seems to assume most development has not been in the direction of consumer goods but rather into big infrastructure: maglev, spaceships, colonies, and that the economic growth has been slow but steady. This would make these people have less impressive toys and food habits than they could have had, but it is very unlikely they are starving or living in a soylent green dystopia.

I think soy-protein, food extruders, golden wheat fields and offworld food all coexist. The Core is enormously diverse, not the bland place suggested by the EC sourcebook. After all, consider the range in food available today, and scale it up by the new possibilities in 23XX.

Wealth doesn't work that way, and it doesn't continually increase. What is currently increasing is the money supply, and it's increasing faster than the amount of wealth generated (which in most of the western world has actually been falling since the late 1960's).

Figure 1: US Wealth PC where 1792 = 1 (growth calculated as reported growth - reported inflation).

Wealth is primarily linked to the exploitation of resources, be they power, metals, agriculture etc. and Earth of 2300 actually produces less of these, while at the same time the ability to consume them has increased with robotisation. This is a shift to a system where wealth generation is linked to obtaining resources, fairly small portions of the population are required to actually do the work (leading to an America where less than 30m people constitute the entire workforce for example).

 

[Waldemar]

I think soy-protein, food extruders, golden wheat fields and offworld food all coexist. The Core is enormously diverse, not the bland place suggested by the EC sourcebook. After all, consider the range in food available today, and scale it up by the new possibilities in 23XX.

It depends what mood you want for your game. My general impression of 2300 AD and Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook was that the authors wanted to describe a generally quite positive future

... back in the 80's

Traveller: 2300 was published in 1986 when stating that the Soviet Union was going to fall was very forward sighted, when the main debate was how overpopulation would destabilize the world. GDW described a world where a part of China (Manchuria), Africa (Azania, imagine that! The fall of apartheid) and parts of South America (Brazil & Argentina) mattered. That was when Japan Inc had started to be discussed in public opinion.

I find it a good development in our world that this game could be pointed out as eurocentric.

But the same 80's generally positive vision of the future, can spell out as a generally negative vision too. We tend to see, or at least want our societies more open and less hierarchical than in the 80's. We're children of the internet now.

The choice is with the referee, you can go for the bland Core, further giving an understanding why people move to the Frontier, but also for the diverse Core offering an opportunity for a modern style sf-game.

Then you can also go for a good old cyberpunk campaign like written in the ECS

The options offered by 2320 AD are more varied than before IMO

 

[Anders]

Wealth doesn't work that way, and it doesn't continually increase. What is currently increasing is the money supply, and it's increasing faster than the amount of wealth generated
...
Wealth is primarily linked to the exploitation of resources, be they power, metals, agriculture etc.

I completely disagree, and I think most professional economists would too. Modern economists discuss wealth that exists in the form of services and human capital. Check out this World Bank report (or these popular articles,1, 2). Adding more physical resources doesn't add as much to wealth as adding better ways of using them, or ways of developing better ways.

In fact, the nature of economic growth is important for 23XX. Check out Robin Hanson's paper "Long-Term Growth As A Sequence of Exponential Modes", especially figure 1. The assumption of no new economic growth modes seems to be the key setting assumption - if you drop it you end up in Transhuman Space. But otherwise the data seems to suggest that the ability to create wealth is proportional to population times a factor ("worker productivity") that has increased over time with technology, apparently in a loosely stepwise manner.

DeLong argues (pdf) that we were trapped in a Malthusian trap before the commercial revolution ~1500, where population and economy grew slowly and there were no increases in standards of living. After that increases in productivity led to both a growing population but also increasing standards - wealth accumulated faster than population. Actually, that entire chapter seems to provide a lot of good ideas for how to do 23XX growth the right way.

23XX may have had a slower growth rate than all the historical trends would suggest due to a stagnant population size and slow technological innovation. But people in 2320 are clearly not less productive than current people and most likely far more productive. This is where I actually agree with BMonnery; most people are not needed in the workforce due to automation. They need to find meaning somewhere else: the big struggle 2320 is not to make end meet but to matter.

Resources can in principle be used up quickly, but the history suggests that the Core has instead aimed for efficiency supplemented by offworld imports. The real super-wealth lies in the nanny states and networks: the Core has enormous human capital. If you want a problem solved you can get it solved cheaply (compared to average wages) relative to earlier or in the colonies.