Low Tech vs Interstellar societies...

[Condottiere]

Which is why you have kids.

 

[kilemall]

What does that buy them locally? If you are buying a 1 million Cr grav harvester versus a 100,000 Cr TL 7 harvester is it worth ten times the cost? If local labor is cheap due to a lack of alternative jobs to agriculture, wouldn't the lower cost harvester plus cheap labor be a better deal?

Exports or not, sometimes better technology isn't the correct solution to a problem.

The fact that we can have nail guns doesn’t stop hammer and nails from use. The option is there and funded when it makes sense.

TL also means general items in use so apparently the locals are well off enough to broadly afford medical/transport/computer tech above our current level.

 

[bookwyrm]

What does that buy them locally? If you are buying a 1 million Cr grav harvester versus a 100,000 Cr TL 7 harvester is it worth ten times the cost? If local labor is cheap due to a lack of alternative jobs to agriculture, wouldn't the lower cost harvester plus cheap labor be a better deal?

Exports or not, sometimes better technology isn't the correct solution to a problem.

It seems like there is room for something in the middle here. I took a look online and found: IOF's and Corporate Businesses. On a Low Pop/Non Ind high tech world, the higher tech could cause the lower population to act like an Ag world, with most, if not all, of the population working for the IOF or CB that owns the farms on the world.

Traveller doesn't have a system for this to work, so it would be something like a house rule. I remember a scene in one of the Star Wars novels, where someone was on a Agri-world with many fields being harvested by robot harvester machines. Hadn't really thought about it until now, about how something might be possible or necessary, like in a Traveller setting.

Going the other way, how much population would a low tech world need to have a viable off world agricultural presence, if they were part of an interstellar trading route?

 

[Krikkitone]

While a perfect justification for a lot of TL5 planets, I view something like a nonindustrial agricultural TL10 world with grav harvesters as a statement of economic export clout.

The planet has enough profitable exports to afford importing the good stuff, so we can expect one or more high value crops or dependent meats or animals and they are amenable to automated equipment, especially being a low pop world.

Or the high tech allows freshly harvested preservation that increases shipping value.

I think that shows up in the World Generation.. the 2 main determinants for TL are Population (ie local resources) and Starport (ie offworld resources). you get a TL by building it or importing it.

 

[Enoki]

It seems like there is room for something in the middle here. I took a look online and found: IOF's and Corporate Businesses. On a Low Pop/Non Ind high tech world, the higher tech could cause the lower population to act like an Ag world, with most, if not all, of the population working for the IOF or CB that owns the farms on the world.

Traveller doesn't have a system for this to work, so it would be something like a house rule. I remember a scene in one of the Star Wars novels, where someone was on a Agri-world with many fields being harvested by robot harvester machines. Hadn't really thought about it until now, about how something might be possible or necessary, like in a Traveller setting.

Going the other way, how much population would a low tech world need to have a viable off world agricultural presence, if they were part of an interstellar trading route?

That argues for something like the Hacienda or Plantation system to be in place. It would be the agricultural equivalent of a mining "company" town. Both would be situations where the corporation owns virtually everything, including the sentient population if not by deed on paper, certainly simply by controlling and owning virtually all businesses and the means of import and export.

In those settings, if robots were doing most of the manual labor, sophants would only be necessary for managerial and administrative tasks along with technical ones like overseeing robot operations or complex repairs and programming. The only other need would be for staff to support those workers like cooks and such. There'd be little reason for a "free" economy, and one might expect the staff to be on contract for set time periods before being rotated out.

One result is that the government would normally be a 1 (company) or 5 (technocracy), or if a government owned the operation then probably an 8 (civil service bureaucracy)

 

[Enoki]

The fact that we can have nail guns doesn’t stop hammer and nails from use. The option is there and funded when it makes sense.

TL also means general items in use so apparently the locals are well off enough to broadly afford medical/transport/computer tech above our current level.

But that, in turn, means the locals need compressed air or electricity to make the nail guns work. They'd also now need the factory produced nail strips the gun uses along with possibly oil for regularly lubricating the gun.

On the other hand, having one machine like this locally and importing only wire for it, means you can make numerous sizes of nails in quantity.

While you would expect it to normally be electrically powered, steam or water would be alternatives. Hammering nails may be a bit slower, but no power is needed on site to drive them other than muscle.

Of course, it might be cheaper to just import the nails by the barrel since they would have an unlimited shelf life. Anything that has a long shelf life is pretty ubiquitous, and isn't too bulky, would be easier to import than produce locally I'd think on a low pop world. This is where the small trade ship with a cargo capacity of 100 to 500 tons would be a perfect fit. It runs on a set schedule arriving at the planet say every 4 to 12 months and delivers a set load of cargo picking up what the locals export, if anything.

That gives the low pop planet a balance of trade they can sustain.

 

[Enoki]

Now, another alternative with low-tech, low pop worlds is combining the company town / operation, be it agriculture, mining, or something else, with the use of 'transport' of convicts, impressed or indentured workers, or outright slaves. These might be cheaper than using robots and high technology to do some menial task that is vital to the operation.

I could see the 'management' and free staff, in any of those situations, including a small detachment of government troops with fairly high-tech equipment and weapons to ensure that the workforce remains passive and busy. This group lives comfortably and well while those 'sentenced' to the equivalent of the gulag (aka labor camp) work themselves to near death in harsh conditions. They might also know that back wherever they came from their families and relatives are only safe from a similar fate if they produce and fill their contract or time of servitude.

This might be why when you are rolling up your character as a marine or army choice you get shipped off to 'prison guard duty' for a term or two.

An example of this might be a world (low pop) that is marginally habitable non-industrial, non-agricultural, but is covered in large swaths with the equivalent of trees that provide lumber and other products. Robots might be unsuitable for use for whatever reason(s) so sophants are sent in. The work is dangerous, brutally hard, and conditions are miserable. The workforce is a mix of convicts and poor that opted to contract for the work along with a management and overseer force.

The convicts get the worst jobs and also get the worst treatment. The contract workers get better jobs and conditions. The management and overseers live in relative comfort. Anger the overseers / guards and you end up paste at the end of their plasma rifles.