Where's the Helium?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Brett, at Traveller TL9+, the CrImp is pretty much likely to be the only currency in use...

Yes, but there is trade, so there have to be price differences from place to place, so you can (indeed must) get real-exchange-rate effects even though there can be no nominal exchange rates.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

See 'desperately poor'. The problem with that model is that the result doesn't look much like a historical TL X; part of the point of having multiple TLs is so that you get to expose PCs to weird low tech solutions, and if they're truly that poor they won't use the low tech solutions either.

I'm not sure that I follow you all the way there. The prices of tradable goods (imports and exportables) will be interstellar prices modified for transport costs (plus interstellar freight charges for exports, minus freight charges for exportables), but the price of non-tradable goods and services can go as low as you like. The locals might be able to dispose of lots of whatever doesn't have to be imported and can't be exported, such as wooden sailing ships and the labour of their crews.

But in as regards using historical levels of technology to model divergent levels of development: you're right, it's a seriously flawed approach in the presence of trade.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Brett

I'm not sure that I follow you all the way there.

Well, we have places on earth that are arguably TL 3, but a distinct lack of knights in armor. The basic problem is that low tech goods can only persist in the market if they have some sort of advantage (usually price) that high tech people don't consider worth the trade, but low tech people do (typically because of cheaper labor). Where the high tech good is both better and cheaper than the low tech good, it totally displaces the low tech good. However, Traveller has historically had design systems for things like helicopters, and thus an expectation that those rules might have some use, despite contragrav being both better and cheaper.

High Guard has some particularly visible howlers. Consider a Far Trader. Built at TL 11, its power plant (factor 2, 4 EP) is 12 dtons and 36 MCr. At TL 13, that drops to 8 dtons and 24 MCr. At TL 15 that drops to 4 dtons and 12 MCr. The ships are otherwise identical. And yet, people build far traders at other than TL 15...

[Malenfant]

Just to bring this back on track, what (if anything) does all this have to do with the price/availability/distribution of helium? I'm somewhat lost in all the economic assumption-making and number-salads.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Just to bring this back on track, what (if anything) does all this have to do with the price/availability/distribution of helium?

Okay, basically, helium is available for slightly over its cost to transport; any starship with fuel processors can produce it by the ton.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Just to bring this back on track, what (if anything) does all this have to do with the price/availability/distribution of helium? I'm somewhat lost in all the economic assumption-making and number-salads.

Helium has no high tech use, only medium and low tech use. For it to even have that, it must economically compete effectively with high tech imports.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Helium has no high tech use

{{citation needed}}

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Brett

{{citation needed}}

I thought that was determined early in the thread. Otherwise there would almost never be any profit in selling it to the low-techers, no matter how needed.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, we have places on earth that are arguably TL 3, but a distinct lack of knights in armor.

Yes. Just what is it that makes them TL3 when the locals have motorbikes, cheap steel machetes, and mobile phones?

The basic problem is that low tech goods can only persist in the market if they have some sort of advantage (usually price) that high tech people don't consider worth the trade, but low tech people do (typically because of cheaper labor).

That's true enough of tradable goods, but not true of non-tradables.

Where the high tech good is both better and cheaper than the low tech good, it totally displaces the low tech good.

Yes, but that is not everywhere in the case of a non-tradeable good.

Also, you have to take into account that real exchange rate effects can make a low-tech good cheaper than a high-tech one that costs more in real terms. A low-tech good that costs ten staff-hours to make (real cost) can be cheaper than a high-tech substitute that costs one staff-hour to make if the nominal wage rate of labour on the low-tech planet is fifteen centiCrImp per hour and the wage rate on the high-tech planet is 15 CrImp, even though the different purchasing power of the CrImp on the different planets implies that the real wage rate diverges much less than the nominal wage rate.

However, Traveller has historically had design systems for things like helicopters, and thus an expectation that those rules might have some use, despite contragrav being both better and cheaper.

High Guard has some particularly visible howlers. Consider a Far Trader. Built at TL 11, its power plant (factor 2, 4 EP) is 12 dtons and 36 MCr. At TL 13, that drops to 8 dtons and 24 MCr. At TL 15 that drops to 4 dtons and 12 MCr. The ships are otherwise identical. And yet, people build far traders at other than TL 15...

Absolutely. The OTU or even the implied Traveller Universe of proto-Traveller doesn't look much like what we would expect of a set of domains of widely disparate levels of development that are in regular trading contact.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Just to bring this back on track, what (if anything) does all this have to do with the price/availability/distribution of helium?

Well, it's all about whether the helium that is a inexpensive byproduct of high-tech spaceship fuel refining can be brought to market cheaply, considering that the refining in question doesn't typically take place on inhabited worlds. It's also about the question of whether helium is in demand to fill airships as a cheap low-tech alternative to contragrav, or whether contragrav will completely displace airships. So it bears directly on the supply of helium and on the demand for helium.