As I said in another post, CT and MT can be viewed as consistent on this issue. CT concentrated on the world of small-scale operations. You wouldn't need to mention container ships if you were explaining air courier services. The world of the latter is effectively independent of the former. So I see CT talking about tramp traders and their commercial ecosystem, which runs alongside but is largely independent of the high-capacity dedicated freighter lines.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 3:52 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:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And yet a previous poster has stated that economies of scale become insignificant once the 3kDT-10kDT level is reached w/i the TU.
So, at that point, the analogy the w/ 20th century post-container cargo maritime economy breaks down.

You, & MT say "It must happen like this" while I, & CT maintain, "Well, it didn't".  That's just another inconsistency w/i the TU that appeared with the advent of MT. Not to mention all the others before or since. (Or maybe the TU just hasn't  made it into a position analogous to the '20th century'  yet? Maybe it never will? Maybe it will, eventually?)
There's lot's & lot's of things in the OTU that any number of folks view as "inexplicable". It's in the nature of the beast.

In any case, & in my experience, inevitably, an individual decides on a desired outcome, in this case commerce modelling & then works backwards from there. (Wasn't that how the TU came to be n the first place?)

Which is only natural when selecting a gaming universe to play w/i.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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, 1:36 PM

 We know
 there are economies of scale in Traveller ships. It's
 cheaper to move a ton of cargo on a larger ship. If there
 are enough tons of cargo moving between a pair of systems,
 simple capitalism will result in larger ships being used to
 move it, up to a limit constrained by factors such as
 required route and timing flexibility and maintenance
 downtime. E.g., even if you could move all the commerce
 between A and B in one ship, you would want at least a few
 of them so if one gets pulled for maintenance you only lose
 1/N of your capacity. Or if a new market heats up, you want
 to have the ability to reallocate some fraction of your
 capacity to that run, rather than all or nothing. And
 further, you probably want daily departures for the 57th
 century equivalent of Amazon Prime. :)
 And even with all that, you end up
 with very large container ships, just as we have today, with
 those same constraints in place. You don't need to know
 anything beyond the available tech, the desired trade
 volume, and the relative absence of regulations or similar
 dampening factors (e.g., ongoing warfare or pervasive
 piracy) for that answer to pop out. To suppress that result,
 you need to change one of those assumptions.
 On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at
 1:24 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:



 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



 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.







  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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  "Eternity is in love with the productions

  of time." - William Blake





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 "Eternity is in love with the productions
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"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake