Yes, in terms of economics the OTU simply does not make sense, in many ways.

If you're restricted to small ships, and interstellar trade is essentially a rounding error as a fraction of total trade, they why is there a need for an Imperium? Where does the money come from to support the gargantuan naval fleet, (plus scout service, marines, and other ancillary branches) the OTU requires? And why?

My opinion has always been that PC-level ship operations are running in the backwaters, 'small package' trade and such. fulfilling the 'tramp steamer' kind of traffic.  Building the kind of interstellar infrastructure that exists costs several orders of magnitude more that the trade is worth. It's akin to building the modern ports of Rotterdam, or  Long Beach...in order to service the equivalent of the cross-indian ocean dhow fleet between the Arabian Gulf and India. ( This episode of 'Michael Palin Around the World in 80 Days' give a great glimpse of that world. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1z37k7 )

Way back in the MT days, Alvin Plummer wrote up a great post about the kinds of ships that the Imperial Navy WAS built to protect. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bjohnson/Majesta.html I think it neatly supports the Large IN /Large Volume of trade model with plenty of space for PC-scaled ships to operate in, because it essentially functions as a backdrop, nothing more; the world of the megamerchants and the world of the Free Trader Beowulf never really intersect; but it supplies a justification for the vast infrastructure that exists.

small ships + little trade + Imperial Navy makes about as much sense as the British Navy being built up to the height of it's strength in the 18th and 19th centuries, if faced no threats from any great powers and there were few if any merchant ships flagged in Britain, and almost nothing was traded between it's far-flung colonies and home.

What is the point of such a huge expense? The imperium faces no serious threat to it's existence (the Zhoodani have never penetrated farther than a subsector or so, and the Solomani likewise, never a threat to more than a subsector.

If commerce is so low level that it's managed by a relative handful of 200dt ships, where does the money come from?

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs

________________________________________
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> on behalf of Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net>
Sent: Friday, January 4, 2019 11:36 PM
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Subject: Re: [TML] J3

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.