(Sci-Fi) Welcome Merchants

[jacobmuller]

Edit: oops - finally realised this should have been in the Roleplaying in general category. My bad.
Just putting an idea out there. Recent news item about nuclear powered ships being used to provide desalination & other services made me think of the SciFi trope of expensive Dock visits.

Party's vessel docks at a station - haggle with Dock Master over how much they'll be paid (not charged - Paid)
In most SF, star-traders are treated like criminal scum, here to steal your valuable resources.
Historically - traders were a welcome sight - they brought rare necessities and gewgaws.
Few systems are built to handle future needs and everyone ends up needing more of something.
Space stations, even planetary colonies in the Goldilock's Zone, will be short of something - power, spices, gewgaws, basic/luxury food, even fresh water, and news.
And the Dock Master can always take a cut - transaction fees/ sales tax.

Food should be a big item. No matter how good you make your new world soil, nothing tastes like food from home.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

Just putting an idea out there. Recent news item about nuclear powered ships being used to provide desalination & other services made me think of the SciFi trope of expensive Dock visits.

Party's vessel docks at a station - haggle with Dock Master over how much they'll be paid (not charged - Paid)
In most SF, star-traders are treated like criminal scum, here to steal your valuable resources.
Historically - traders were a welcome sight - they brought rare necessities and gewgaws.

It depends. There are traders and traders. It depends on where they're from, who they are, what they are selling, and where they are.

Few systems are built to handle future needs and everyone ends up needing more of something.
Space stations, even planetary colonies in the Goldilock's Zone, will be short of something - power, spices, gewgaws, basic/luxury food, even fresh water, and news.
And the Dock Master can always take a cut - transaction fees/ sales tax.

Food should be a big item. No matter how good you make your new world soil, nothing tastes like food from home.

Depends on what you mean by 'big'. Luxury foods could potentially be a profitable line of trade, things like chocolate, coffee or tea, spices that you can't grow locally for some reason. They mass relatively little and can bring high prices per unit mass.

Booze? That's a maybe. Ethanol per se is so easy to make that it's hard to imagine any world that is habitable at all that can't produce it locally. But the flavor comes from other ingredients, often organic in origin and hard to duplicate. Cheap booze would likely never be profitable (except possibly to a closed environment like a space station or the like where they just can't do it locally), but fine wines, spirits, etc. might possibly be, for the same sort of reason French wines can compete with local ones in Cali and vice versa.

Meat? That's another maybe. If the planet is broadly habitable, but for some reason a given species just won't thrive there, then someone with a taste for that meat might pay high prices to indulge it. But it would likely have to be a particular kind, if no meat animals at all are viable it's hard to see the planet being habitable in the usual sense of the word.

Now again, meat in general might be a profitable line of trade to a space habitat or station where they don't have room or resources, they might pay a lot for beef or pork.

But bulk food to a supposedly habitable planet doesn't add up. If they have to import the majority of their calories, it's likely not a viable colony (though it might be a viable outpost).

[awesomenessofme1]

A TL9+ long-term planetary colony that's ever short of fresh water is completely doomed.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by jacobmuller

Just putting an idea out there. Recent news item about nuclear powered ships being used to provide desalination & other services made me think of the SciFi trope of expensive Dock visits.

Party's vessel docks at a station - haggle with Dock Master over how much they'll be paid (not charged - Paid)
In most SF, star-traders are treated like criminal scum, here to steal your valuable resources.
Historically - traders were a welcome sight - they brought rare necessities and gewgaws.
Few systems are built to handle future needs and everyone ends up needing more of something.
Space stations, even planetary colonies in the Goldilock's Zone, will be short of something - power, spices, gewgaws, basic/luxury food, even fresh water, and news.
And the Dock Master can always take a cut - transaction fees/ sales tax.

Food should be a big item. No matter how good you make your new world soil, nothing tastes like food from home.

Traders don't have to be criminal scum to start a pogram. What often happens is that the poor want someone to take out their envyings on and the tyrants want a scapegoat to keep themselves from ending up propped against a wall. It doesn't have to be a rational resentment, and in fact the traders may actually be a benefit in purely economic terms. Also local cultural icons may be disturbed, etc. That is a delicate problem as honor is often valued more than wealth. Things like that require a knack for diplomacy which not all traders have and in any case easily becomes a tragedy of the commons (if we don't buy these unsaleable geegaws someone else will,etc). To get an idea of that sort of thing read Yuri Slezkine's "The Jewish Century" and Amy Chua's "World on Fire".

Also historically traders have attracted prejudice because they did not create concrete goods but added value by manipulating time and space. More to the point they gained enough power to rival the noble classes. The later was not necessarily a cause of hostile relations: some families had a finger in commerce, clergy and landholding. And the classic marriages of nobility to money really did take place: high status people needed to pay for partying while merchants wanted an upgrade in status.

In fact traders do have a lot of benefit. They tone down the zero-sum nature of politics just to start. A lot of modern democracy was developed when the town classes became strong enough to add their own ideas to how government should be arranged. That is just talking about politics. Traders also have economic benefit. The routine access to luxury goods (like strange food and drink from the other side of the world) is just one example. And of course the toning down of routine famines by the flood of foods available is another example. Food may not always be of the best quality but it is pretty good compared to what the lower classes got before the commercial revolution.

The desire for food from home that you mentioned is an interesting factor. When the colonists came to the New World they wanted the foods from the parts of Britain they came from. In fact the climate was often similar. However there were subtle differences; for instance the Pilgrims found out that the wheat they had taken along would not take to the local soil. They had to adapt their agriculture but getting home style food was good for those who could afford it.