What's Being Traded On Those Trade Routes?

[robject]

Yeah, yet another thread.

We have lists of <stuff> that a trader carries in its hold, sure.

Your opinions, but also some probable truths (I won't call them "facts"):

(1) All worlds have adequate resources for daily living. E.G. The population of any given world can live for weeks or months without interstellar trade.

(2) Specialization (e.g. for industry and technology) and rarity (e.g. uniques and rare natural resources) are probably two keys to understanding interstellar trade in Traveller.

(3) Imbalance transport is reasonable for explaining half of trade.


How much further can we go to understand interstellar trade in what is more or less "Hard Space Opera"?

 

[atpollard]

Actually, real life offers some examples that suggest attempting to model such things is an exercise in futility.

Respecting the WW2 and politics policy here at COTI, why on earth would someplace as resource poor as Japan become a powerhouse (political, economic and military) while someplace like China languished? Clearly some cultural/historic factors trumped anything that Traveller Game Mechanics might model.

Moving on to less political areas, a city that is otherwise in the middle of nowhere becomes a major center for building light aircraft because of the vision and passion of an individual (or group of individuals) who happened to meet/come from/ live in that area. Cesna, Beechcraft, Learjet could have been founded and headquartered in a lot of places, they just happened to be started where they were by the people that started them. Predicting what world the next Sam Waldron will be born on and transform local commerce throughout the sector is a tough task to set for yourself.

Economic Advantages will suggest certain obvious goods (guess what an Ag world probably exports), but I see room for an element of complete random surprise. The fact that the Chaiman of the Committee on Appropriations for the Sector Fleet was born and has family on that particular TL 9 world has nothing to do with the fact that 40% of all turret missiles for the sector fleet are manufactured there creating a huge subsidized local industry ... it is purely a coincidence.

 

[coliver988]

Ignoring the real world, and based on my hazy recollections of Far Trader, and with the assumptions this is the tramp/user trader, not the Megacorp trader which is :CoW: (well, as is trade in Traveller in general)

1. Luxury goods that can't be produced locally
2. items of a lower tech level that can be produced more cheaply than locally
3. items of a higher tech level that cannot be produced locally (variation on luxury items really)

Essentially - stuff that is cheaper to import than to create locally.

 

[GypsyComet]

The big ships carry more of the same stuff we see on the Free Trader's menu. Free Traders are carrying the leftovers, the detours, and the odd lots.

 

[flykiller]

How much further can we go to understand interstellar trade in what is more or less "Hard Space Opera"?

well, it's hard to "understand" a sci-fi fantasy projection of an extrapolated assumption. imagine a camp of roman soldiers arguing about what warfare would be like in two thousand years. you're better off with "because!"

that said, one can consider real-life examples from history. for a thousand years china sucked all the silver out of the rest of the world because everyone wanted their silk and no-one had the faintest idea of how to go about getting it except by buying it. later the british empire returned the favor by trading opium for silver. both of these trades spanned an entire planet using sailboats and camels. massachusetts became wealthy exporting cod to europe for their catholic meatless fridays - sure the europeans had fish, but not enough - and the state remembers this with an image of a cod on its state seal. as for passengers consider las vegas, a dustbowl town that draws fantastic wealth to itself simply because of its laws regarding various subjects, and fort lauderdale, a beach town that draws tens of thousands of drunk college students every year because ... well, just because. and consider spanish california, deliberately maintained by spain as a colony but forbidden to compete with spain economically and permitted only to supply spain, so all california could do was raise cattle and ship the hides to spain - by government policy. any number of backstories to any kind of trade can be found.

 

[robject]

well, it's hard to "understand" a sci-fi fantasy projection of an extrapolated assumption.

[...] any number of backstories to any kind of trade can be found.

Actually, fly, you just nailed Marc's default assumption about Traveller with that last statement.

 

[creativehum]

Actually, fly, you just nailed Marc's default assumption about Traveller with that last statement.

+1

 

[lostscout5]

Plus, some things are seasonal.
Ex.1 USA is one of the agro power houses of the planet. It grows almost everything in abundance. But in winter it imports oranges from south america
Ex.2 Local crop of X get slammed by a drought. Price goes through the roof. Suddenly imports from Africa are cheaper.
Ex.3 The holidays and good marketing make demand for gadget Z go through the roof. Local manufactures can't keep up. Foreign producers step up to fill the need.

I could go on like this for days. Used to work on wall street. Hated it, but remember enough.

Things like this are why having die rolls for that random factor in trade always made sense to me. The real economy is a lot more random then many people realize. It just happens slowly. Meaning it times for trends to develop.

 

[flykiller]

Ex.3 The holidays and good marketing make demand for gadget Z go through the roof.

heh. remember gigapets? I was at a toys-r-us and some japanese guy all the way from japan was trying to buy every gigapet in the store so he could sell them back in japan (where they had been manufactured in the first place) to make a huge profit, and the manager was trying to explain to him that the limit per customer was three, and the guy didn't speak english and was getting quite upset that the land of the free and the home of unbridled capitalism wasn't letting him buy all he wanted .... trade is nuts.

 

[ovka]

heh. remember gigapets? I was at a toys-r-us and some japanese guy all the way from japan was trying to buy every gigapet in the store

<snip>

That takes me back. I remember my father needing to buy a fire-proof lock box many years ago. He dragged me to a store half an hour away because they were listed in the sales flyer at a very good price. We arrived 20 minutes before the store opened. I complained the whole way there that we didn't need to arrive early to buy a lock box.

When we got there, there was a line of people waiting to get in. He mumbled, "see I told you." When the doors opened, everyone but us rushed to the toy aisle. We rushed to the lock boxes because my father was afraid they were about to sell out. When we checked out, he asked the cashier why everyone ran to the toy aisle instead to the lock boxes. Cabbage Patch dolls. He looked at me and said, "Why would anyone want one of those ugly things?"

Everyone has different priorities I guess. If you can find this month's gigapets or Cabbage Patch dolls that are selling like hotcakes on Regina, it doesn't really matter what route you take to get there.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[flykiller]

Cabbage Patch dolls.

back in the late '70's it was railroad track ties. yes, railroad track ties. there was some kind of building boom going on and everyone wanted old railroad track ties for landscaping. at the peak they were going for $150 each (them's 1970's $). my friend's dad got into selling them, he got calls constantly - "WE NEED TIES!" people were scouring the desert and ripping them up wherever they could find them, he bought a full 18-wheel tractor trailer rig to haul them in, made a run twice a week, made quite a bit of money.

then it all went away. poof.

I can see major shipping firms trying to drum up business for whatever cargo they can persuade people to take - trying to make supply drive demand. pretty rocks from rethe! chic blenders from boron! psionic artwork from the consulate territories! you want it! you know you do!

trade is nuts.

 

[BlackBat242]

back in the late '70's it was railroad track ties. yes, railroad track ties. there was some kind of building boom going on and everyone wanted old railroad track ties for landscaping. at the peak they were going for $150 each (them's 1970's $). my friend's dad got into selling them, he got calls constantly - "WE NEED TIES!" people were scouring the desert and ripping them up wherever they could find them, he bought a full 18-wheel tractor trailer rig to haul them in, made a run twice a week, made quite a bit of money.

trade is nuts.

In the 1990s I got a bunch of ties for projects - a friend used about 60 for his yard (to level out his sloping front yard), and my father used a lot to line the irrigation ditch in out back yard (and to build 2 bridges across it for vehicles).

While it would have only cost us about $10-$20 each if we had bought the so-so condition ones from a landscaping supplier, we actually got them for free.

My father had just retired from the Southern Pacific Railroad (Sgt. in the police division), so he just asked his old co-workers if we could raid the piles of ties from the rail-yard redesign project that was ongoing in our town.
We didn't get *new* ones - but some of what we got had been installed less than 10 years before and were almost new (and were undamaged).

 

[Drakon]

trade is nuts.

Trade is supply and demand. Supply is physical, how many widgets are there to sell and deliver. Demand is mental, based on what people think, feel and/or guess they want.

Trade makes sense when you realize people are nuts.

 

[lostscout5]

Trade is supply and demand. Supply is physical, how many widgets are there to sell and deliver. Demand is mental, based on what people think, feel and/or guess they want.

Trade makes sense when you realize people are nuts.

You speak great wisdom !

 

[coliver988]

Trade is supply and demand. Supply is physical, how many widgets are there to sell and deliver. Demand is mental, based on what people think, feel and/or guess they want.

Trade makes sense when you realize people are nuts.

Now that explains Traveller trade!

For me, bottom line, trade at the PC scale had nothing to do with trade at the macro scale. More like a pawn shop versus a big box store.

 

[creativehum]

More Trade Weirdness:

On the way to the office this morning, I heard a story on the radio. The US is buying rocket engines from Russia for its military launches, because the US doesn't have a reliable, domestic source for the rockets needed.

This despite the fact that most in the Pentagon see Russia as the greatest current threat to the US. And despite the fact that Russia will be working to comprise the payloads that get into space after their engines get the payload into space.

Especially because of the slippery nature of Tech Levels (or, at least, the slippery nature I've always seen), I find this story compelling in Traveller terms. Not only because of the lovely-weird political complications, but also because two "worlds" with similar tech are in trade on goods that you figure both would have because of the same tech level... but when push comes to shove, they don't.

 

[CosmicGamer]

And this brings up more interesting twists on trade. Restrictions for various reasons.

Entity A wants to put pressure on Entity R to stop military action with Entity U, so they put sanctions, tariffs and whatnot in place. Entity R goes around the problem and makes agreements with Entity C and other entities. In some cases these Entities increase production to meet demand or since they are not under the same restrictions, they act as middle men buying and selling with Entity C and the people with whom they have trade restrictions.

 

[flykiller]

The US is buying rocket engines from Russia for its military launches, because the US doesn't have a reliable, domestic source for the rockets needed.

heh. and you DON'T want to know who manufactures most of the electronics used in our military aircraft, defense systems, and cyber-systems ....

 

[Condottiere]

There's an issue, less overtly to do with security and more with reliability, where Chinese companies are buying up second hand circuits and recycling them, which are then installed into US weapon systems.

 

[kilemall]

Drinking alcohol. The universal human commodity.