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Old 05-16-2022, 09:53 AM   #31
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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Originally Posted by Balor Patch View Post
Having aliens want planets is the tricky, usually hand-waved, part.
This is true even for completely biocompatible aliens. One of the things historians know these days but tends to get glossed over in colonial histories is that while some individuals might get quite rich, most colonies were marginally profitable, or actual losses, for society as a whole. At best the return was less than spending the same amount money at home and just insisting on free trade would have been.

Colonies [might] pay off if you have a large labor surplus that you can't figure out anything worthwhile to do with at home, or there is a particularly rich resource that the locals can't figure out how to exploit well enough to sell it to you in the volumes you'd be able to extract, but mostly it isn't all that useful. You'll note that few Western nations have taken a horrible hit from handing off their colonies to local control. Almost anything the colony did for them works just fine with more or less free trade and capital flows via "neocolonial" corporations and maybe some immigration policy juggling to skim off the cream of the underdeveloped world's labor pool at discount prices.
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Old 05-16-2022, 10:58 AM   #32
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Not really. The +50% it assumes is about the increase between TL7 and 8. Sometimes it's smaller.
Ultra-Tech is sort of all over the place in terms of how much improvement over TL8 armor is assumed. +50% is right for the assault vests, but in other cases the edge is much larger. The full-body reflex suits are pretty implausible—the only justification I can think of for them is to cite the example of the TL8 concealable vest in High-Tech, but I think the real-life armor the concealable vest is based on doesn't cover anything like the full torso. The DR values for combat hardsuits and battlesuits are even harder to justify—at best, you have to assume much of their weight is made from ballistic fiber and the fact that this means they ought to have lower DR vs. any attack that isn't cutting or piercing was ignored for the sake of simplicity.
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Old 05-17-2022, 02:33 PM   #33
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
It'll produce a lot less of the light that drives photosynthesis too. A compound unknown on Earth that does photosythesis with lower energy photons is probably possible but there's just plain less energy involved all the way around.
I suspect that its quite possible, and I was basically assuming it. the overall energy coming in will be the same, as long as you are in the habitable zone.


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So there are many issues with habitable planets around red dwarves. I won't say there won't be any but they'll probably be so rare that even the great numbers of red dwarves won't make up for it.
Well, the suggestion basically relied on there not being a lot of good habitable planets around red dwarfs, just a few of them, so I think we're good.



I'm pretty sure that the jury is still out on a lot of exoplanet questions... the primary reason I'm excited for the James Webb Telescope! Hopefully soon we'll know just how bad stars are or aren't for atmospheres.


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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
This is true even for completely biocompatible aliens. One of the things historians know these days but tends to get glossed over in colonial histories is that while some individuals might get quite rich, most colonies were marginally profitable, or actual losses, for society as a whole. At best the return was less than spending the same amount money at home and just insisting on free trade would have been.



Colonies [might] pay off if you have a large labor surplus that you can't figure out anything worthwhile to do with at home, or there is a particularly rich resource that the locals can't figure out how to exploit well enough to sell it to you in the volumes you'd be able to extract, but mostly it isn't all that useful. You'll note that few Western nations have taken a horrible hit from handing off their colonies to local control. Almost anything the colony did for them works just fine with more or less free trade and capital flows via "neocolonial" corporations and maybe some immigration policy juggling to skim off the cream of the underdeveloped world's labor pool at discount prices.
To be fair, free trade wasn't an option when the age of colonialism started. Borders where jealously guarded, and foreigners told to stay in a very few ports. The modern world bears the mark of colonialism in that a merchant can try and sell goods from western countries to just about anywhere in the world, while that would have been very difficult politically in say, 1700.



I suspect that in most cases acquiring a new colony was temporarily lucrative, but that actually running the colony was difficult to do profitably. Which sets up horrible incentives.



I'd say that the global power of at least the UK took a bad hit from losing its colonies. However, you're right that economically it hasn't been too bad for their society, but the political power they've been able to wield is much less. Which says something about colonialism: though much of it was done in the name of money, the old drive for conquest and power is at the core of it all. The desire to change the societies of others, to destroy personal inconveniences, and to be paid obeisance.



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The African, Middle Eastern, or Central/East Asian models are more common: foreign traders establish trading posts on the coasts, initially trading manufactured goods for valuable raw materials and local commodities. Over time, the foreign elites get tied into the regional power structure and foreign business interests put down roots in the areas near the original trading posts.

Gradually, the foreigners take economic and then political control but remain culturally isolated from the indigenous culture. The locals are likely to be exploited and repressed, and occasionally abused or massacred, but they're generally too useful to kill outright. (Shocking examples like the Belgian Congo and German SW Africa excepted.)
This is exactly how colonialism typically worked out. Colonialists generally had small holdings that expanded only with the help of local troops and often had strong local allies. The rapid expansion only happened when a massive technological edge was held, like steel armor vs. the Incas and Aztecs or rapid fire against African polities (the development of rapid/repeat fire weapons in the late 1800's really changed the colonial situation, and as much part of the scramble for Africa as medical advances)
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Old 05-17-2022, 02:56 PM   #34
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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I suspect that its quite possible, and I was basically assuming it. the overall energy coming in will be the same, as long as you are in the habitable zone.
It seems plausible to me that UV as a % of overall energy coming in would be lower. But UV is pretty easy to protect yourself against. But the flare issue Fred alluded to seems like more of a problem (though apparently there's some debate about this).
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Old 05-18-2022, 06:25 PM   #35
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

The thing about Africa and Europe is it wasn't just Britain starting trading posts along the coasts.

Portugal came around first, and the Dutch East India Company established a couple colonies on the Cape back in 1657.

You could have multiple Starfarer empires fighting each other and trying to recruit the planet-siders into their wars while also playing the planet-siders against one another.

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Wikipedia says that the human cortex has about 16 billion neurons; the octopus has about half a billion, and the honeybee has about 100,000. That suggests that you need Complexity 15 to simulate an octopus, and Complexity 11 to simulate a honeybee. I agree that this doesn't map well to GURPS racial IQ. If you did Complexity = 10 + IQ/2 rounding up), the honeybee would take Complexity 11, the octopus maybe Complexity 12, and the human Complexity 15. I suppose what it comes down to is that GURPS IQ is a simplified approximation, and if you want to do the hard SF of neural systems you're going to want to adopt a different approach.
Did that octopus estimate include the tentacle ganglia? We know now that those nerve cords contain two-thirds of their "brains."
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Old 05-18-2022, 06:58 PM   #36
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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The thing about Africa and Europe is it wasn't just Britain starting trading posts along the coasts.

Portugal came around first, and the Dutch East India Company established a couple colonies on the Cape back in 1657.
In context of current thread...The Scramble for Africa (good book).
In the Mediterranean...the works of Homer
In Central Asia...The Great Game
In Space...

But using force and guile to grab markets, resources, and colonies goes back further than writing.
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Old 05-18-2022, 06:58 PM   #37
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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Did that octopus estimate include the tentacle ganglia? We know now that those nerve cords contain two-thirds of their "brains."
It didn't specify. But it's not a major issue anyway; dividing the number of neurons by 3 will reduce it by less than an order of magnitude, or maybe one step of Complexity.
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Old 05-19-2022, 02:39 PM   #38
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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This is exactly how colonialism typically worked out. Colonialists generally had small holdings that expanded only with the help of local troops and often had strong local allies. The rapid expansion only happened when a massive technological edge was held . . .
Or when the colonizers had any sort of serious edge. It could be manpower, social organization, wealth, or something else.

Consider the Roman Republic vs. Gaul. Both the Romans and Gauls were were at approximately the same TL, but the Romans had a huge edge in military organization, logistics, and wealth.

To a lesser extent, the Greeks did the same thing in the Black Sea. They were nearly identical in TL to the local Scythians and other horse tribes, but the Greeks had wealth and organized shipping routes on their side. As a result, they were able to build a number of small trading settlements around the perimeter of the Black Sea. The Venetians did something similar 2000 years later.

In Asia, the Chinese became a dominant maritime power due to their superior ships, manpower, and wealth. As a result, they were able to found (or take control of) a number of settlements throughout the Malay Archipelago and Indochina. By the Middle Ages, there were small Chinese settlements as far west as the Persian Gulf.
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Old 05-19-2022, 02:48 PM   #39
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

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Originally Posted by Pursuivant View Post
To a lesser extent, the Greeks did the same thing in the Black Sea. They were nearly identical in TL to the local Scythians and other horse tribes, but the Greeks had wealth and organized shipping routes on their side. As a result, they were able to build a number of small trading settlements around the perimeter of the Black Sea. The Venetians did something similar 2000 years later.
They weren't just trading settlements. Much of Athens' grain came from the Black Sea in the late Classical period, which was one reason losing naval supremacy to the Spartans cost them the Peloponnesian War - they could no longer import grain and so Athens starved.
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Old 05-20-2022, 05:43 PM   #40
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Default Re: Interstellar empires and the pre-1850(ish) European experience in Africa

If I were an interstellar empire and came across the Sol System? I don't know why I would want to go past Saturn, to be honest. Maybe a small outpost in the asteroid belts to get at heavier elements, but most of what my ships need is available in the outer system.

So long as they didn't act up, I wouldn't drop any rocks on inhabitants of the inner system.
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