World Development

klingsor

Mongoose
It appears to me that low tech worlds in Traveller are in trouble. Their own development is going to be stifled by the presence of more advanced worlds nearby able to produce high technology goods that they can import, who would want a TL-8 camera if you can import a TL-12 one instead?

Economics are going to be important, shipping goods by starship is going to add to the price, probably quite a lot but I have not done the maths.

Helping a very low tech world is going to be in the producers interest – giving them the infrastructure to have a market for the goods and the ability to distribute them – a radio is no use unless you can get a source of power for it and someone is broadcasting something to listen to. However after an initial boost the low tech planet is going to have a harder time getting aid and loans to help raise itself any further as it might become a competitor, not a market and the high-tech would is going to want it to stay as a market and producer of raw materials.

Economic questions like this even have some use in game for scenario creation. Suppose planet A and planet B are economic rivals. Planet C is a lower tech world in the sphere of influence of planet A, a useful market and source of raw materials. Planet B sells planet C at a give-away cost a factory for manufacturing microchips – and the training for using it. You can get some plots from that yourselves but it seems to me that economic warfare between planets, even within the imperium, is going to be quite interesting.

Another question is about the role of the Imperium itself, is it going to take any role in this or will it pursue a laissez faire policy? What might get it interested is the deliberate attempts to keep a planet disadvantaged – on the other hand the high tech, high population worlds are the important ones so the low tech ones might be largely ignored – just as long as the high-tech planets do not try to turn economic domination into something more overt.
 
klingsor said:
It appears to me that low tech worlds in Traveller are in trouble. Their own development is going to be stifled by the presence of more advanced worlds nearby able to produce high technology goods that they can import, who would want a TL-8 camera if you can import a TL-12 one instead?

That's certainly going to happen for a while. Once the market on the advanced planet starts to reach saturation, though, the corporations there are going to be looking to increase the size of their market, and if there's a nearby world, that's a possibility for them.

Economics are going to be important, shipping goods by starship is going to add to the price, probably quite a lot but I have not done the maths.
Look at the shipping of goods from China to the West. the ships are huge, slow and outrageously costly to run, but they shift *so* much cargo that the cost per item is less than the difference in production costs between Chinese and Western goods in many cases. Small, high value items like handcomps won't add very much per item, since many can be shipped per ton(d). Things like machine tools are so expensive and difficult to ship anyway that interstellar transport probably isn't much more expensive than transcontinental, or even much slower.

...after an initial boost the low tech planet is going to have a harder time getting aid and loans to help raise itself any further as it might become a competitor, not a market and the high-tech would is going to want it to stay as a market and producer of raw materials.

The financial institutions don't care. They can make money out of their money, whether it's financing mining or hi-tech fabs. If the high tech partner/competitor were a monolithic managed economy or its investment capital were entirely controlled by zaibatsu-like conglomerated banking/industrial combines, then the manufacturing and service (well perhaps not so much service; it's a bugger doing tech support with a 2-week comms lag) industries might have no influence to speak of where the financiers pour their investment.

Economic questions like this even have some use in game for scenario creation. Suppose planet A and planet B are economic rivals. Planet C is a lower tech world in the sphere of influence of planet A, a useful market and source of raw materials. Planet B sells planet C at a give-away cost a factory for manufacturing microchips – and the training for using it. You can get some plots from that yourselves but it seems to me that economic warfare between planets, even within the imperium, is going to be quite interesting.

Yes, economic struggles can be interesting. I think it's important not to paint planet-scale entities with too consistent a brush, though. You're as likely to see conflict between two corps from the same planet (a manufacturer, and the financiers who are trying to create competition on the barbarian world, say).
 
klingsor said:
who would want a TL-8 camera if you can import a TL-12 one instead?
Cereal Manufacturers who include the cheap 'toy' TL-8 camera in their box, and Fast Food joints can include it in their kids meals. Various TL-8 cameras in the shape of ships. Collect them all!
klingsor said:
Another question is about the role of the Imperium itself, is it going to take any role in this or will it pursue a laissez faire policy?
The Imperium protects interstellar trade. To what extent and how this is accomplished is totally up to you. In general, it seams that the Imperium is laissez faire regarding local law, government, technology, and so on. IMTU they would stay out of any such conflicts. They have even been known to let conflicts come to blows with wars between worlds without stepping in.
 
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