------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I've always been highly skeptical of "inevitable" evolutions of anything. My experience is that such a thing is usually highly subjective. In this case, one could easily posit that the supposedly "inevitable" result did not occur in the TU 'cuz the post-containerization 20th century is not a perfect (or perfect enough) analogy to the TU. Or that the 17/18th centuries are better analogies. Or any number of other speculative onclusions. Once again it really just comes down to a personal preference. It's really all about exactly what sort of TU is desired. In other words there is a desired outcome & the process is required to support that. After all, isn't that what the original conception of the TU was all about? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Wed, 3/30/16, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Relic tech and Scarcity-Driven Imperium (was: Salvage Operations (and Submarines)) To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2016, 12:54 PM The problem is that you really can't create a consistent explanation for a civilization with Traveller tech (including cheap energy and easy travel), relatively laissez-faire capitalism, and pervasive local scarcity that *doesn't* result in the spacegoing equivalent of modern container ships. It's just the natural evolutionary direction that the market will push freight shipping to follow. Never mind that it's equally tough to account for pervasive local scarcity given the tech assumptions, as exhaustively discussed already. My explanation for the CT view of shipping is that it was simply what mattered to small-lot shippers. The boat that runs supplies out to Two Harbors on Catalina Island off Los Angeles is a converted WWII LST with a crew of three. They sail to and from Long Beach Harbor, a gigantic container port. They pass many freighters along the way, most hundreds of times their size. But none of them are carrying a week's worth of groceries and fuel to Two Harbors, so from their point of view, those giant ships are economically irrelevant, part of the scenery. On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote: This email was sent from yahoo.com which does not allow forwarding of emails via email lists. Therefore the sender's email address (xxxxxx@yahoo.com) has been replaced with a dummy one. The original message follows: -------------------------------------------- On Wed, 3/30/16, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@Pharmacy.Arizona.EDU> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML] Relic tech and Scarcity-Driven Imperium (was: Salvage Operations (and Submarines)) To: "xxxxxx@simplelists.com" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2016, 10:40 AM > On Mar 29, 2016, at 4:50 PM, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 06:48:22PM +0000, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote: >> I've seen 'official' stats for up to 10,000DT's & have heard of >> others up to 20,000DT's. >> >> Would that be enough to run the CT 3I? > > Yes, certainly. Economies of scale in the construction and operation > rules in most versions start being fairly negligible around the 3k-10k > dton range. You would just need more of them to support the trade > volumes than you would of 100k dton ships, at about the same total > cost. Yet this is not reflected in real-world experience: the trend has been to ever-larger container ships rather than more of them. Why? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'Cuz the OTU (at least until DGP/MT came along) is based upon the 17th/18th century & not on the post-containerization 20th? Works for me! ;-) Which is only to be expected since I prefer CT. Someone who prefers MT is bound to differ, of course. p.s. someone posted a very treatise to the list over 20 (pre-TNE) years ago detailing the fundamental changes in a lot of the basics that occurred when MT appeared. My impression was that the author was making the case that the CT 3I & the MT 3I were actually two different 'critters' &, rather than attempting to reconcile them, it was easier/better to just pick one or the other & go with that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com -- Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry) "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a
