On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Bruce Johnson <johnson@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Feb 24, 2015, at 1:13 PM, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's always been hard for me to wrap my mind around game rules for lowering prices for *better* items at higher tech levels.

Dramatically lower costs of production. Higher TL economies also have higher TL infrastructure and supply chains.

*Better* as opposed to other items of that type produced at the relevant higher tech level.

An average quality item produced at a given tech level - all other things being equal - is going to sell for less than a *better* (e.g. premium) item from that same tech level. You point this out yourself, with your $25 computer example.

As I understand it, the example which the OP gave was a lower tech level item which - through application of the game's TL adjustment rules - came out as equivalent in quality to an average item originally produced at the referenced tech level. He was asking if the same rules would result in a reduction of it's effective cost.

My answer is, "If it's effectively of the same quality as the actual average item, then it would sell for - on average - about the same. Because it IS the actual average item."

> All other things (advertising, reputation, tarrifs, taxes, etc) being equal, the demand for a premium item in any given market would be higher than the demand for an average item. Since price reflects demand, the premium item should always cost more.

The absurdity is not that high-TL items are cheaper, it’s that there’s a market for those inferior low-TL items at those prices.

There is actually a market for what are effectively low-tech computers in today's real world. It's just isn't visible, because the equivalent of that low-tech computer is built into so many modern items that we simply assume it is there. Yet without its invisible presence, we wouldn't see that device as worth buying. At least, not in the First or Second Worlds.

Again and again we’re clubbed over the head with the fact the the writers of Traveller have only a fleeting and illusory grasp of economics.

For lower TL items to maintain market share in the face of cheaper, better items made at a higher TL to those lower TL points there would either have to be substantial savings in buying them (which there isn’t) or some substantial barrier to getting the ‘low tl things made at high tl’s.

Ummmm.

I think you're actually agreeing with me?

This is *kind* of a indicator of a ‘low trade’ model for the OTU, but that explodes in a poof of magic smoke when it hits reality: a ‘low trade’ OTU cannot possibly support a mercantilist, heavily militarized, trillions of starships OTU.

Which is why I prefer a Small Ship TU, with an Empire that runs things on a shoestring budget and depends upon the voluntary efforts of loyal citizens to carry forward it's banner in the provinces. That is, government by amatuers, in the tradition of the late 19th/early 20th century British Empire and the late Roman Republic.

Your motel rooms are constrained by the fact that THEY CANNOT MOVE. Your motel rooms aren’t a trade good for sale.

Sorry. But I disagree. They are very much trade goods for sale and also carry a rather viscious expiration date; once a given date has passed, any rooms that weren't rented represent wasted inventory.

The fact that the cheaper rooms can't move (to face the mountains rather than not) is equivalent to a model of car possessing Performance X that has plain seating and no stereo versus a different one with the same Performance X that has leather bucket seats and a killer sound system. Or a lower-tech maneuver drive that takes up twice the hull volume of the higher-tech (e.g. better) model for the same Gs of thrust.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester