Ships with 7G and higher acceleration

[steve98052]

. . .
We don't carry around expensive meat-sacks for fun, but because we have to.

Advances in naval automation allow fewer meat-sacks, and advances in manufacturing automation make equipment relatively less expensive than meat-sacks. That's Baumol's cost disease in action, again. It turns up all over, doesn't it?

Traveller consciously ignores Baumol's,* asserting a universe where sophonts are still important, and not replaced by automation. If drew a lot of inspiration from the science fiction of its time and before, and almost all science fiction featured important roles for humans (and other sentient living beings). Additionally, it's a role-playing game; the lives of the humans on the Axiom in WALL-E are not the stuff of fun role-playing.

* Or maybe none of the creators of Traveller were aware of Baumol's, or perhaps it was not a solidly-enough established economic principle by the early 1970s for it to be a part of the curriculum at Illinois State University, where many of the founders of GDW went to school.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Traveller consciously ignores Baumol's,* asserting a universe where sophonts are still important, and not replaced by automation. If drew a lot of inspiration from the science fiction of its time and before, and almost all science fiction featured important roles for humans (and other sentient living beings). Additionally, it's a role-playing game; the lives of the humans on the Axiom in WALL-E are not the stuff of fun role-playing.

Of course SF literature and RPGs are about people, hence we must have people in space...

That does not mean that we must have thousands of people on every ship.

* Or maybe none of the creators of Traveller were aware of Baumol's, or perhaps ...

I believe they were neither physicists nor economists? They did a rather good job with both, in my opinion.

Baumol's certainly did not come up when I studied economics, but it was taken for granted that labour cost increases were related to the productivity change of the entire labour force, so obvious that it didn't need a separate name.

 

[Reynard]

"Advances in naval automation allow fewer meat-sacks, and advances in manufacturing automation make equipment relatively less expensive than meat-sacks. That's Baumol's cost disease in action, again. It turns up all over, doesn't it?"

The Ultimate Computer.

Also notice in Star Wars, where automation is common, living beings still rule the roost and fly the ships.

 

[Condottiere]

1. They just fought against a droidized military in the Clone Wars.

2. And they cloned enough grunts to man any number of battle stations.