On Fri, Jan 04, 2019 at 08:48:19AM +0000, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
> At Traveller's TL's I believe it actually would be cheaper to just
> grow more tomatoes just about anywhere you wanted rather than expend
> the enormous amounts of energy required to move their mass over
> distances measured in LY's.

Energy is essentially free in Traveller.  Labour is not (also probably
other costs, but let's use that as an example).  If tomato plants
require 10% more labour in one place than another, then this can
easily outweigh the credit cost of shipping them in bulk.  That
shipping cost is likely to be on the order of 0.1 Cr per kilogram.

If tomatoes were grown by fully automated facilities that were
produced and maintained by fully automated self-repairing robots, and
the whole facility construction and land/habitat space was also cheap,
then maybe tomatoes would cost next to nothing and an extra 0.1 Cr/kg
would be a huge markup making shipping uneconomical.

As I stated in a previous post, I believe this should be a consequence
of Traveller technology.  But according to canonical price lists and
wages, it isn't.  Despite the advanced technology allowing automation
and nearly free energy, basic material goods are still just as
expensive as on today's Earth, or in some cases even more so.

- Tim