Except ... you have entirely missed the point of what LBB2.81, p9 actually says.
I'll copy/paste quote it here for you and bold text what you are missing so you can see what you have overlooked.
LBB2.81, p9:
Ergo ... tickets are priced PER JUMP ... NOT per parsec.
If a starship needs to make more than one jump to reach the (ultimate) destination ... then you have to buy multiple tickets to reach that destination aboard THIS starship.
This is a 'yes, but ...' situation. You haven't carefully read the quote, either, it seems.
Passage is always sold on the basis of transport to the
announced destination, rather than on the basis of jump distance.
Number of jumps to get to the destination is never mentioned. The 'announced destination' is certainly not some intermediate piont where the ship's not even stopping. (Now the RAW
do mention that if a ship
stops at an intermediate destination, follow-on transit requires a sepatate ticket. This is a separate case, though, and not what I was referring to).
If a non-stop trip to the Bahamas cost $300 or $600 with a stopover in Atlanta, who would pay twice as much for a trip that takes longer?
Wrong.
Cargoes pay for tickets the same way that passengers do ... on a PER JUMP basis, regardless of the number of parsecs traveled per jump.
I can't find cargoes paying per jump anywhere. What I do find is:
All cargos are carried at Cr1,000 per ton. Starship owners may purchase goods locally and ship them
at their own expense, speculating that they can later sell them at a profit. (LBB2 p8-9).
Not 'per ton per jump', but 'per ton'. MgT1 does a bit better, by making the shipping distance part of the per ton rate. But as Commander Truestar says, you can do as you like IYTU. But it doesn't make sense to me, and won't ever be the case IMTU.
If cargo did NOT pay per jump, you could ship 1 ton of cargo across an entire SECTOR of space for Cr1000 for that 1 ton of cargo to transit (multiple) dozens of parsecs.
This would seem to be the actual case.
Such an interpretation does not even pass the laugh test (let alone the steward accounting test).
It seems to pass the RAW test, though. If it doesn't pass the accounting test, that means it's a bad plan, not that the rule is otherwise.
Notice what is underpinning your assumption ... that a "faster competitor" will AUTOMATICALLY (and Always?) be available with tickets for sale in direct competition to your own "slower" option ... leaving you with No Customers Willing To Buy At Your Price. That MIGHT be the case, some of the time ... but it won't necessarily be the case ALL of the time.
So, I'm not assuming anything other than a person
without an emergency will not pay twice as much to go someplace more slowly than a faster ship will get them there. A 1-Jump competitor can arrive a week after you and still arrive at the same time at the final destination. Are there places in the Imperium so desolate that only 1 ship a week goes there? Maybe. But 4 weeks in a hotel is cheaper than a second ticket. For the cost of a ticket, you can lease a very nice house or condo and live comfortably for months while you wait.
Besides, the LBB2 ticket rules aren't exactly modeling "there's another starship leaving to the same place that YOU are, and your competitor has better service and amenities than YOU do, so a -DM penalty is going to be assessed on the number of tickets that YOU can sell to the same destination" ... because RAW isn't trying to model "the entire pie" of interstellar transport competition, just merely the "slice of the pie" that is relevant to your starship operation.
I'm not sure
what LBB2 ticket prices are modeling, but double jumps aren't explicitly mentioned anywhere I can find. Since the RAW aren't modeling double jumps at all, you're already working a corner case.
Which is another way of saying that anyone buying J1+1 tickets from YOU when there's a J2 competitor at the starport going to the same place you're bound for ... well ... your competitor "sold out" their ticket capacity, but the demand for transport to that destination is greater than they can accommodate (alone) ... so YOU get the "overflow demand" that your competitor cannot satisfy RIGHT NOW. Therefore, even if your competition is offering a "better/cheaper service" than what you can, there is still demand for what YOU have to offer once "beggars can't be choosers" in terms of getting stuff (passengers and/or cargoes) to move.
And just like when demand outstrips supply, if the demand for transport to 2 parsecs away EXCEEDS the capacity of the J2 starship(s) going there ... then the Laws of Supply & Demand "dictate" that the price for the service to that destination 2 parsecs away will necessarily have to INCREASE in order to balance the Supply with that Demand ... at which point, paying 2 tickets for a J1+1 starship to the same destination 2 parsecs away is both "reasonable" and "makes sense" in macroeconomic terms.
Sure, the J2 starship will "sell out" first on ticket sales ... but then your J1+1 starship is ALSO there to scoop up the remaining pent up demand at a higher price (because, 2x tickets) than what the J2 starship was selling (fewer) 1x tickets to the exact same destination for.
We're talking WORLD EXPORT economy volumes of trade here ... compared to the "soda straw" transport capacity of ACS Free Trader competitors. There will tend to be an overall level of demand which individual starships cannot always suppy capacity for ... and so the ticket buyers get "bumped" down the list of options until they can buy what they need to get to where they want to go (even if it means needing to take more than 1 jump to get there).
So, the ticketing and travel sections don't go nearly into this much detail. Technically, if you roll 10 1C passengers and only have 9 cabins, you could start a bidding war for tickets. None of this is RAW, and as mentioned above, tickets aren't per jump, they're per destination. If you can sell tickets to 'floating in space halfway to <place>', be my guest.
As for waiting for a different competitor J2 starship to arrive next week going to the same place that your J1+1 starship is going to THIS week ... see again, bird in the hand versus two in the bush. If you couldn't buy a J2 ticket to where you want to go TODAY ... what guarantees do you have that you'll be able to buy a J2 ticket to that same location a week from now? If there are no guarantees that you'll get what you want if you wait a week, do you take the "sure thing" (at 2x price) now ... or do you keep waiting for a "cheaper" deal later ... while continuing to rack up living expenses while you wait?
Living expenses are so much less than an interstellar ticket, waiting is far more economical. You'd have to wait
years to add up to the cost of a 2-jump ticket. And I don't think any place in the empire that only sees one ship a week.
The point I'm making is that the comparison isn't quite so simple as you've made it out to be.
Well, yes, and I explained that I was confused. Some of your answers make good sense, others confuse me. But I think I've run enough of the RAW to ground that I understand the situation well enough and can plan how to play in my games, so that has been accomplished. And I will be working that 500T J-6 drop tank cargoliner. It should make good money.
