Colony requirements

[alanb]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
Colonies could seldom be supported at tech levels lower than 7 and if properly maintained would never drop below their starting TL; the only exception would be on worlds already ideal for human habitation where "living off the land" is a possibility. Zubrin's book highlights that we have the tech now to create a reasonably self sufficient Martian colony, given the initial colonization effort receives the proper equipment and is supported in its infancy

Zubrin's book is twaddle, IMHO. A delightful blend of economic nonsense, nationalist fantasy and questionable science.

The "living off the land" thing probably isn't going to happen. The problem is that when people refer to "worlds already ideal for human habitation" they are generally referring to worlds that are already life-bearing. Settling such worlds probably isn't a good idea. You can't really quarantine two distinct biospheres from each other, and you can't predict what the results of their interaction will be. And if you start mixing three, four, or more different world's lifeforms, you are likely to get into trouble rather quickly.

Think about it: would you consider it a good idea to introduce alien lifeforms to Earth? Particularly if it occurred in an uncontrolled manner? That is what would happen if you start settling "worlds already ideal for human habitation".

Alan B

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Ahhh, Alan, you read between my lines nicely! I meant to imply there are really no worlds suitable for immediate human habitation. Even the most promising candidates would still require extensive terra-forming to some degree.

Even if a world similar to primordial Earth (pre-pre-Cambrian) was discovered, it's atmosphere and probable surface conditions would not support human habitation. Much after and the first native lifeforms may already pose a significant threat to Terran biology.

Sending humans to an environment already inhabited by alien creatures would be worse, in most ways, then sending them to a lifeless world. The potential for total incompatibility is very high, resulting in extinction of the species least adapted to the environment (i.e. the colonists).

The best possible situation is finding an environment that humans could be engineered to fit into, without dramatic re-writing of basic gene sequences. This is an extreme long shot, but even a century of bio-research, cloning, and redesign beats waiting until terraformers can build a new Earth.

IMHO, humans have a long time living in tin cans, eating their own recycled waste products, and squeezing rocks for every drop of water available, before we find another planet we can enjoy without space suits and radiation shielding.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
IMHO, humans have a long time living in tin cans, eating their own recycled waste products, and squeezing rocks for every drop of water available, before we find another planet we can enjoy without space suits and radiation shielding.

Yep.

Fortunately, however, this isn't the case in Traveller!

Actually, in Traveller, the idea of "roll up to a world, land, build a few buildings, and start plowing" might actually be a viable colonisation strategy.

I've been tending to argue against it because, well, frankly, it's dumb. But the "realistic" alternative is kind of boring. So I've been going for something somewhere in between, and assuming that easily habitable worlds exist as per the default Traveller assumptions, but there's likely to be at least _something_ that will tend to bite you if you walk in blind.

Strictly speaking this entire thread is based on false assumptions.

Alan B

 

[Straybow]

Worrying about existing ecologies assumes the anthropic principle: that life is "bound to appear" as soon as conditions warrant. If that is not so, then finding a world with life on it might be the rare exception.

A N2 atmosphere would be the best we can expect, which humans might enjoy with nothing more than a breather.

 

[Balakar]

Good thread!, I have read in in one huge read, so am a little shellshocked, plus I have not played Traveller in years, PLayed some New Era a long time ago; that being said though.

A colonization effort could well be started and funded by a government for defensive/strategic reasons. Get a system going, load it up with loyal folks, create a tax base, get money from asteroid mining/lanthunum etc. Start your own Pocket Empire.

When picking what you need, I think you have to look at what you want to start with, and maintain. If I had to 'take on' and build a colony, I would want to bootstrap it as fast as possible. So my upfront cost would be bigger, but the return on investment time would be faster.
Someone mentioned asteroid mining. What if you took in a smelter in a ship, (and one of those gasgiant processing ships that was written up years ago (anyone remember those? if so, can you post where it is?)) Asteroid mining provides fast access to metals.
I would take a computer controlled machining system, so I could make parts out of slabs of metal.
I would want enough piping (or a pipemaking machine) to set up a refinery for plastics.
And stealing ideas from Zubrin (whose 'twaddle' ideas of living off the land is now the plan for Mars, using local resources.
Thermal depolymerization technology provides oil, and lubricants from biomass. This can give me plastic as well.
Solar Bubbles and a microwave reciever provides free energy (Marshall Savages Colonize the Galaxy in 8 Easy steps)
So we have power, metal and plastic. We can now make Gameboys, or electronic transmissions. Or DVD readers to play the educational discs we brought along.
For power on the ground, Use the plastic to make pipes, bring along a diving crew and make an OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy COnverter). This needs a water world, but we did say Earth like world in our list of many assumptions. This provides fresh water, salt water for aquaculture, electricity.
Steal again from Savage and you get sea-crete buildings...
Heck, ground a small ship with a power output in teh Megawatts and you can grow buildings with rebar made from meteoric iron.
Upfront costs, Billions of credits, but you bring with you the technology and equipment to build the infrastructure that you need to bootstrap yourself up the tech ladder.

Zubrin had an equation where he ends up with ethylene, plastic. Thermosetting plastic was mentioned before. Take a plastic desgin factory, tons of machinery, but you can make anything out of plastic.
IMTU I had the Fullerites setting up colonies. Geodesic domes and Dymaxion houses. All self contained units. All Praise Bucky!

Self sustaining? depends on how you measure it. Take a skimmer and a plastics plant and you have greenhouses. Free heat from fusion plant, plastic boxes with compost and earth and you have growboxes. Plastic mulch covers no weeds.
www.earthbox.com has a patented plastioc box that cuts water use. I called them a few years ago, they did an acre of these little boxes, thousands of them. no weeds. A lot of plastic, but no weeds.
So now you have a tech reliant system. You better start mining surveys for aluminum, gold and all the other stuff you need. Asteroids might be fastest (you have ships after all)
Again, the point is to take the items with you that will sustain your tech level as you want it. You won;t be able to repair everything yourself until you find the raw materials to use your machines to make the tools to repair things, but you know how (take along the contents of the Universal Patent office) Every instructional video ever shot, and your colonists are repairguys and engineers. Go Scotty!

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Balakar:
A colonization effort could well be started and funded by a government for defensive/strategic reasons. Get a system going, load it up with loyal folks, create a tax base, get money from asteroid mining/lanthunum etc. Start your own Pocket Empire.

And end up with a revolution as soon as the colony is self sustaining. And this is part of the problem of government funded colonies as I see it.

Either 1) the colony will not become self sufficient, in which case it is a drain on the resources of the host government. Or
2) Due to interstellar distances and travel times, the separatness of the colony from the home system will give rise to independence movements. You get war and all the chaos that comes, as well as the cost in money, and destruction and lives that such will entail.

If the colony wins, you now have an economic competitor that you have just created. If the colony loses, you are stuck with rebuilding it.

Taxes are the problem and can be the primary source of a revolutionary conflict. On each planet, the flow of tax dollars is going to create political friction for the ruling party. Other factions in government and the worlds themselves are competing for the money "wasted" on the colony. But if you shift the burden to the colony, they start asking what goods and services they get in return for those taxes. Either way, it is going to be trouble.

Even governments can only spend the dollar they have once. And whether it goes for a new hospital on the capital world, or out on some far off colony, someone is not going to like it.

[There is also an issue of "brain drain" to deal with. If the colony does prosper and has a more liberal political atmosphere (in the classic sense) than the home world, all your best and brightest are heading out, leaving you with, well, not quite the best and brightest.]

IMTU I had the Fullerites setting up colonies. Geodesic domes and Dymaxion houses. All self contained units. All Praise Bucky!

Some great ideas here. Self sufficiency is key. Yes as you note the start up costs are pretty big, but you do get a quicker return on your investment, and your colony is far less dependent on the home world and far sooner. Which renders any discussions about the expense rather moot. But also might make revolution more likely unless you give the colony far more autonomy than might be comfortable.

As a government, colonies appear to be almost suicidal to the home world. Creating political competitors that later may become military competitors does not sound like a good idea.

Now, if there were an EXTERNAL threat, say another star empire in the neighborhood, this might bind the colonies to the home world and prevent a revolution. But absent some kind of external threat posed to both worlds, I don't see how you can prevent it.

[I mean short of armed conflict. If yours is a military dictatorship, always stomping and scaring colony worlds, that creates a whole new set of problems. Authoritarian regimes have their own fundamental problems. They are going to be slow on the tech level advance, and in a galaxy with competing interstellar governments, this means that after a while, it will get gobbled by a more liberal, faster technically advancing organization (A Federation of some type)]

Granted, these are long term problems. But they are a direct result of committing the host world to interstellar colonization. In the long run, for a government, it looks like a losing proposition to me.

Self sustaining? depends on how you measure it.

Can the colony provide the basic necessities of life under its normal circumstances? Can it feed, clothe, and shelter its own inhabitants, using what it has at hand, or does it depend on regular shipments of supplies from the homeworld? How much harm to the colony results from a misjump of a single ship? Its the difference between wearing last year's home world fashions, or starving to death. Somewhere between those two extremes.

Go Scotty!

Amen

 

[Balakar]

Drakon: Not sure if I agree with the gov't suicide concept. If a colony can be set up to develop infrasturcture the end result will be trade. In the beginning it will be information of new designs flowing towards the colony (better research facilities on homeworld), and raw materials or roughly processed raw materials flowing back.
As the colony grows, through people moving there, or through birthrate. The capabilities of manufacturing will improve, and innovation will increase. 'Yankee Ingenuity', as colony develops tech needed for special needs on planet.
Binding together against on outside threat is also a possibility. Other Pocket Empires, against Virus Ships (Coalition), etc. The colony will WANT the homeworld navy ships as well as the high tech imports.

In the long haul? Maybe the colony will want better trade deals. More autonomy. It depends on the makeup of your Empires government. I am New Era Traveller, so I have World tamers Handbook, and then bought Pocket Empires. The Coalition wants more worlds, and every world gets represented.

Of course this is a fun discussion, but it leaves out all the high tech possibilities. That powdered metal technology mentioned before, or a Molecular Epitaxy concept that lets you build parts and then put them together. The whole Santa's workshop/Nanotech machine. Get one of those shipped over, start shovelling in raw materials and build your tech items as needed.

 

[Drakon]

I agree that trade is a possibility. And primarily the reason for supporting a colony (markets) in the early setup. And I would even argue that competition is not a bad thing.

But I don't see governments liking or desiring a competing government. Especially one they create. Governments are run by people, and evolution determines that selfish people have an edge over altruists, folks who do what is best for others even if it is to their own detriment. Setting up a colony off planet is expensive, risky, and off world. The benefits are not nearly as obvious as spending that money and resources at home.

Colonies are going to demand more autonomy, and once that happens, not only are they going to get it, but that can result in war. Which is expensive and risky for both sides.

And even if you don't get war, you still lose the colony and home world's power over it. Plus you have created a potential rival, politically as well as economically.

Why create the conditions for war and revolution? Why create a potential rival or competitor? Why fight all the people back home who want to use those funds and resources for the home world? For governments I don't see it as a smart move.

Why would a colony demanding autotomy get it?Because the home world can't make decisions fast enough, nor have enough information to make the right decisions. Not compared to the guys who are there, the guys at the colony. Also home world does not suffer the affects of bad decisions. If a new law, with the best of intentions ends up ruining the lives of many colonists, the colonists are still way out there amongst the stars instead of right here on the home world where they can make trouble for the government.

In short, because of the minimum 1 week travel time between colonies, ruling from homeworld is not a viable option. The people at the colony know and will always know what they need better than anyone else back at the home world. The rulers on homeworld are going to screw up, again and again, until and unless they let the colony rule itself. But if it is allowed to rule itself, then the home world has no political power over it.

Just as businesses are about money, governments are about power. Creating a colony has a lot of downsides for a government, and not too many good sides. Again, in the face of an external threat, or possibly a penal colony, a dumping ground for folks you don't want, (which has a whole nother set of dynamics to contend with.) governments might go the interstellar colonization route. But generally speaking, I don't think they will.

 

[Balakar]

Well why did all the European colonies start colonies then? why not stay at home? And traveller is absed on a system of thousands of colonies that were made.
People will move out to explore, to make a place for themselves. Governments will want mroe resources, and a few weeks travel time is nothing compared to the waits some 17th and 18th century governments and companies had to endure for 'their ship to come in'.
Fear and paranoia may also fuel colonization. If we do not settle this planet in the name of Capitalism, those Godless Commies will. Imagine 1950's U.S and the Red Scare with Jump Drives.
Cost is not factored into it if it is in the national interest. The Space Program was about gettting a man on the moon first, national pride. Imagine if they put missiles there. (See all sorts of 60's fiction for that concept)
A Pocket Empire that does NOT expand its zone of control runs the risk of being isolated, surrounded and absorbed. If you have one system and I have 4, my navy is big enough to beat you navy, and I own your world.

 

[robject]

That's a very good leading question. I imagine there are all kinds of reasons for colonies in Traveller:

* Classified military research
* Agriculture (assuming a need for it)
* Penal colony
* Mining and (later) production
* The call of the wild
* etc

Until star travel becomes *very* cheap, planets won't be able to effectively offload their population (assuming population size becomes that critical of a problem).

 

[Balakar]

Penal Colonies! Hmmm, Australia was started as a penal colony, of course if you wanted to REALLY get rid of someone, dump them on a planet with no tech base... but if you wanted them as a labour force (slave labour, using highly productive machines), then you need a tech base... And in their spare time the prisoners and their kids would want to improve their lives. (Moon is a Harsh Mistress concept)

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Balakar:
Well why did all the European colonies start colonies then? why not stay at home?

Read my comments again. I was talking specifically about governments. Not businesses, not religions, not any other social institutions.

You are right, that people may want to move out and explore etc. But this is contrary to what a government may want, or what will continue the viablity of that government. If you look at the list of rationales for colonization in the next post, you see that other than the external threat, (or as a means of dealing with an internal threat, i.e. penal colonies) the reasons of the people are not the reasons of a government.

Businesses want new mining and agricultural centers. People want to get away from the government at home. Religions may want to escape persecution at home. But the distance involved is going to make such a government's hold on the colony tenuous at best. It is going to have to give the colony a greater degree of autonomy than if the colony were closer to home. And that render its power over the colonists fairly weak. For the business or the religious group, this is a plus. For a government, its a negative.

Any colony that is set up, it is in the interest of the colony to become self sufficient as "humanly" (sophantly?) as possible as fast as possible. Regardless of how it gets there, (low tech, or "right" tech, which would include biotech) is secondary to that goal of self sufficiency.

For a business, having to transport food and other vital supplies to the colony is more likely to be more expensive, and less profitable than shipping say, equipment to expand the mining/agricultural colony.

Assume you hold transportation costs the same, the food has to be provided for your workers, or else they don't work. And so it would come under ongoing operating costs. But improved/more equipment for mining or farming, while it might be more expensive to provide than food, will not maintain the status quo, but actually aid in creating profits for the business. Picking the right gear to expand or grow the colony is more profitable, than maintaining the basic necessities of the colony.

[Plus, a self sufficient colony would be more attractive to people as well. Not making each and every shipment from the homeworld a life or death risk (that the colonists have absolutely no control over) is more likely to attract workers, than setting up a colony where such a risk exists. The less attractive colony is going to have to pay higher wages, that cut into its profits. So you can get cheaper labor, simply by letting some of the colonists provide those necessities in situ, than shipping those same necessitites from homeworld.]

[To put another way, a dependent colony will cost more than an independent or self sufficient one. Higher labor costs due to the less attractive and higher risks to the colonists, as well as higher shipping costs and use of shipping resources for less profitable cargo, makes dependent colonies a bad investment in general. You gotta be pulling the most rare, most valuable substance that no one can live without to make a dependent colony economically viable or a good business plan.]

Different social institutions have different needs, different agendas. They ain't the same. So will respond to the "Do we colonize?" question differently. The business and the Church of Cousin Marrying will have a different answer for different reasons than a government.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by alanb:

None of this is being done for the convenience of some pack of religious sectarians or other freaks. In fact, it's quite likely that such types might be banned from the world as troublemakers. This is a "best and brightest" project staffed by people seeking hefty paychecks.

And if the only culture with access to the target planet is a capitalist culture, your analysis is perfect.

If, however, there is a Earth Prime that is discovered by religious sectarians or other freaks, the religious sectarians may colonize it before the capitalists find out that it exists.

Capitalism isn't the ultimate truth of the universe, or even the universally most effective mode of human behavior. Religious sectarians and other freaks are often shockingly effective, even at technical tasks.

A big problem with Marc Miller's design of Traveller is that he assumes that hundreds of cultures will all be as fragile, rigid, and unsustainable as 1970's America.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Drakon:
Horses are also self repairing and self replicating. Their infrastructure needs are not as great to produce more horses, and varies little from the infrastructure needed to support human beings.

Which infrastructure is very expensive, actually. All societies based on animal and human labor (rather than mechanical labor) have required 80-95% of the population be involved in the production of food (typically farming, though at lower population levels hunting and gathering are options). Modern high efficiency farming is dependent on mechanization and synthetic fertilizers, both of which require large support structures. </font>[/QUOTE]Modern energy-intensive farming produces maximum profit. It is designed to be inefficient and to prevent small family farms from gaining self-sufficiency.

That is a man-made crisis, not a technological one. It goes along with the elimination of family gardens. There is a very small labor cost if 100% of the population takes fifteen minutes per day to mind the family garden -- particularly if the family garden is climate-controlled and indoors, as would be the case the the "narcoterror stealth colony" example I posted in a separate thread.

Technologically, sustainable farming does *not* have to be labor intensive in order to produce large amounts of food.

That, however, requires an entirely separate thread on the difference between permaculture and energy-intensive agriculture.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by alanb:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Maghwi:
[qb] When it stops being profitable, it stops being a colony. People will pack up and move on to the next exploitable planet.

Yeah. And maybe that's when they sell the world to the Church of Cousin-Marriage, so it could establish its subsistence level utopia.
</font>[/QUOTE]Of course the danger that America faces today is that we tend to underestimate the low-tech religious freaks who somehow have sufficient charisma to reliably, repeatably motivate their followers into grotesque acts of self-sacrifice for the putative good of their communities.

Underestimating the religious cultoid freaks only makes them more dangerous. What if the enlightened capitalist group makes its profit, channels all the wealth to the CEO, and ceases to exist but the Church of Unsavory Habits continues to hypnotize the gullible masses? In a long term scenario, the Church might have more staying power than the profit-driven individualist society.

I don't want to minimize your technical reasoning, because you seem to have thought it through carefully. In fact, I would be interested if you could critique my thread on narcoterror stealth colonies for any technical errors.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:


Okay, let's stop at this point. Elsewhere in your post you mention a colony size of 1000 sophonts. What I'm trying to get across here is that 1000 people is nowhere near enough to sustain a tech level of 4. Period. Most everyone here is seriously underestimating the amount of work that needs to be done.

"At TL 12, you could probably make an engine out of handwavium that is designed with the expectation of wear that will last a few hundred years if you remember to put a cup of vegetable oil in it every few months. Hopefully by that time it wears out, you'll be making your own engines."

Well, if we're going to apply handwavium the whole exercise, why not just bring along nanotech 'Santa Claus' machine, shovel sand in one and, get hot fudge sundaes out the other end.

Even at 'just' TL4, there one HELL of a lot of work that needs doing and your colony simply won't have the hands to do it.

I don't want to resort to handwaveium. I have read a few sources on topics like:

hydroponics
urban farming and sustainable agriculture
fish farming
accelerated vegetable growth through timed light
methane and renewable energy

I don't want to go and find web resources for all of those. I am going to assume that most folks are willing to ask if they want specific sources on specific opinions. (I'm sure you won't be shy...)

An offworld colony that starts off with a low tech level of artifacts but a high tech level of information does not follow the same growth curve as a colony with low tech tools and knowledge.

For example, if you can sustain a machine shop to build catfish tanks, those require very little labor. You could live in a cave and still raise protein, especially if you had fusion-based electricity. The biggest worry would be disease and pests in the tanks. But the tanks require almost no maintenance labor.

Also ... how much labor does hydroponic agriculture require? In the real world they have nurseries producing flowers underground with timed lighting to accelerate plant growth. How much labor goes into those? Probably very little.

Now, all the labor to maintain the tools -- electricity, welding, light bulbs -- that would require more than just a self-replicating machine shop.

But you could have a situation where there are 1000 skilled mechanics and technicians, each of whom has a 3-cubic-meter trout tank in his kitchen which he dips into for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are no full-time trout farmers -- it's just a chore, like washing the dishes, that everyone does at home.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
[QB]

Now now, there's no need to give up just because we gave you a BIG bite of a reality sandwich. There's far, far, FAR more to technology and production than you can see from your cubicle in the IT department.

...

Ask you friend just what 'light maintenance' means with regards to his tools. Rust-proofing oils? O-rings? Filters? Lubricants? Do you honestly think a small colony can turn out viton o-rings? Also, how are his tools powered? Electricity? Pneumatics? Can our colony provide him the generator he needs? Or the compressor? Or keep both fixed? Or supplied?

The people of our proposed 'self sufficient' colony will not be sitting on their thumbs all day 'cause they'll be too busy working. Most of them and most of their time will be involoved in food production. Why? Because they haven't the bodies necessary to support the techno-production web necessary to sustain mechanized argiculture [whether they use geneered 'Santa Claus' crops(1) or not].

The only network administrator in our colony of ~50,000 souls will be the fellow who administors the network of rat traps. The other kind of network administrator is a luxury that the colony can't afford. After all, we gotta keep those silos vermin free and save the grain.

Well, if you're right (and you might be) then a lot of self-proclaimed permaculture experts are wrong.

You might be a professor of agricultural science and a consultant to the U.N. World Food Organization for all I know.

But if you're just reasoning based on guesswork, the self-proclaimed permaculture experts might have a few items of relevant information.

I'm having trouble pinning down your estimates of labor costs. Your overall claim seems to be that agriculture can't realize large efficiency gains from organic composting, hydroponics, fish farming, etc.

If I look at fish farming in the developing world -- e.g. Egypt -- what I see is a small number of folks with almost no resources or education producing a huge amount of food.

When I factor in all the hippie tree-hugging stuff, it looks to me like even unmotivated folks can make a whole lot more food than they can eat using just human manure, water, and sunlight.

Now, I'm not a professor of agricultural science. It could be that the tree-hugging hippies have misled me with doctored reports on the effectiveness of organic farming, underground houses, geodesic domes, solar power -- you know, all that hippie tree-hugging stuff.

If I took the trouble to go back and find all the links to that organic farming, spaceship earth hooey, would you take the trouble to tell me whether each link was delusional? Because if we don't have a common basis of science fact, I for one don't know how to usefully proceed.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Red Walker:

Modern energy-intensive farming produces maximum profit. It is designed to be inefficient and to prevent small family farms from gaining self-sufficiency.

If it's designed for maximum profit, it's _not_ designed for inefficiency; inefficiency is not profitable. The loss of small family farms is a side effect, not a cause -- small farms have higher labor costs than large farms, and therefore lose out on efficiency.

That is a man-made crisis, not a technological one. It goes along with the elimination of family gardens. There is a very small labor cost if 100% of the population takes fifteen minutes per day to mind the family garden -- particularly if the family garden is climate-controlled and indoors, as would be the case the the "narcoterror stealth colony" example I posted in a separate thread.

The evidence from premodern societies is that you're wrong. We have plenty of examples of societies using only low-tech farming methods, many of which exist today. They all require very large expenditures of labor.

As for climate-controlled indoor gardens, remember to count in the labor and material costs for building, maintaining, and running the climate-controlled garden. Indoor gardening is expensive.

Technologically, sustainable farming does *not* have to be labor intensive in order to produce large amounts of food.

Plowing, planting, and harvesting take a certain amount of effort, which can be done either by hand or by machine. We have examples of it being done by hand, and it requires very large quantities of labor. I agree that you can probably get away from the fertilizers used in modern agriculture. However, getting rid of the tractors, trucks, and irrigation systems is nowhere near as practical.

 

[redwalker]

Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Red Walker:
[qb]
Modern energy-intensive farming produces maximum profit. It is designed to be inefficient and to prevent small family farms from gaining self-sufficiency.

If it's designed for maximum profit, it's _not_ designed for inefficiency; inefficiency is not profitable. The loss of small family farms is a side effect, not a cause -- small farms have higher labor costs than large farms, and therefore lose out on efficiency.
</font>[/QUOTE]Well, it depends who's counting the cost.

An energy-intensive farm which puts money in the pocket of the CEO of Monsanto or ADM might be making a money profit, but in terms of environmental costs, it's running at a huge loss, because it's destroying topsoil, etc. According to the tree-hugging hippies, profitable systems can make a monetary profit even though they are hugely inefficient. Example: the cleanup of the Exxon Valdex oil slick was hugely profitable and lots of folks made money -- but it would have been more efficient if it could have been avoided.

I get the feeling that I have to dig out the hippie tree-hugging links on permaculture so there can be a bit more factual input on this.

The science facts of agricultural science are not entirely relevant to the Traveller conversation -- Traveller assumes little details like practical fusion.

Also there seems to be a huge ambiguity in the notion of "tech levels." Traveller tech levels were designed for a fiction game, not an engineering feasibility study. If we're going to argue about real-life agriculture we need to use terms a whole lot better defined than "tech level" in the Traveller sense.

 

[Anthony]

Well, the point about topsoil degradation is well taken, but not actually relevant to family farms. It's perfectly possible to have environmentally correct large-scale agriculture, and it would probably still be cheaper than the family farm. The family farms that have been driven out of business by big agribusiness concerns weren't doing environmentally correct farming, they were doing the same stuff as the big farms only not as well.

As for practical fusion, this simply means you need a colony big enough to build the parts for practical fusion...