Why did it take so long to deal with Silesia?

J6P wrote:Trade is another word for making money off of others work.

For a system to be prosperous, it needs a just and equitable government allowing ideas, freedom, to flourish.

The only caveat is if a system does not have an intrinsic resource and therefore must trade with someone else to obtain the resource. Then and only then does trade have any bearing on a systems prosperity.

Total GDP/capita is not a symbol of prosperity. That is a symbol of wealth to OUTSIDE systems. Internally it means zilch. It is only useful as a tool when comparing to others.

Definitions

Trade is a necessity for having a working economy, and saying trade is a way for making money off of others work is disingenuous. Trade in most cases actually works like a multiplier for boosting local economies that otherwise would stagnate. Whether trade is only done locally or with other systems doesn't really matter, the economy will benefit from it.

A system can be prosperous even though it's a dictatorship, it's just that the wealth usually will be unequally spread through the society. In essence it doesn't really matter what kind of government you have as long as its goal is to increase its prosperity, ie. its citizens standard of living and education, efficient industry and manufacturing etc. Freedom of speech and allowing new ideas has little to do with it although it will generally affect the growth of the economy positively.

Total GDP/capita is a quite good indicator of a systems prosperity since it directly correlates to a systems standard of living, and comparisons doesn't need to be done to outside systems since it's even more important to use it to see where it's headed by comparing it to historical data adjusted for inflation.

kzt wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
No, but Oyster Bay missed by far the bulk of Grayson's orbital infrastructure . . . including its primary manufacturing base and orbital extraction industries. They killed the Blackbird Yards and the tech types working there; they didn't kill the people and industrial modules which built Blackbird in the first place. In fact, relative to its pre-Oyster Bay industrial capacity, Yeltsin's Star is better off than Manticore in many respects. Still not a good place to be, but better than it sounds like you were thinking.

Oh, I'd thought they had moved all that stuff out to Blackbird and it all got destroyed.

Thanks.

I thought that Grayson was stll assembling ships in open space without the benefit of highly mechanized stations like Hysphasteas. If this is true there should be less infrastructure to rebuild although they might have lost a high percentage of their ship builders.

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

Uroboros wrote:"Possible" does not mean "probable." I cannot imagine it'd be cheaper to transport an entire transport of bulk ore when you have things like asteroid belts right at your doorstep.

Probable or not, there is textev that bulk ore carriers do operate in the Honorverse.

If you don't have enough industry to support an indigenous mining industry, 8 MTons of raw ore once or twice a year might well be far cheaper than starting and stopping local mining.

There is also the probability that places like Grayson have more transuranics and heavy metals than they need but not enough lighter metals, which some other system might have in excess; A route hauling pitchblende in one direction and bauxite in the other would be mutually beneficial for the systems and profitable for the ship owner(s).

Harold, you brought up an important point to remember, namely that not all star systems contain the same quantities and proportions of all the minerals as all others. Some will have more of some elements and less of others, which some of the participants in this discussion seem to have forgotten.

kzt wrote:What 1st world nations have absolutely no ship building industry and a sea coast?. Please name one that hasn't built a ship larger than 150 tons in the last 5 years.

Kzt, you're making some very bold claims, but your logic is seriously flawed.

Just because a country has its own merchant marine registry does not mean that the ships on that registry are built in that country.

There are relatively few shipyards in the world that have the infrastructure and labour pool necessary to build large cargo ships. The companies that own those shipyards then sell their products to the merchant marine lines, which actually conduct trade by sea.

Lastly, you speak of 1st world countries as if they are the only ones with the capacity to build such large ships. I remind you that countries like Brazil, China, India and Indonesia are not 1st world countries, yet have thriving shipbuilding industries of their own.

There are many 1st world countries with coastlines of their own that do not have a single shipyard with the capacity to build large container ships, and then there are some landlocked countries that actually have thriving merchant marines of their own.

n7axw wrote: I thought that Grayson was stll assembling ships in open space without the benefit of highly mechanized stations like Hysphasteas. If this is true there should be less infrastructure to rebuild although they might have lost a high percentage of their ship builders.

Don

assembling is the operative word. You still need the factories to build the graser modules and other heavier parts.

JohnRoth wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:No, the answer to the question is still, "anyone who could make a profit."

Crew costs, fuel costs, maintenance costs, and all of your other objections fall under accounting to "make a profit." Whether a shipper could make more somewhere closer is irrelevant; as long as they make a profit on the longer run, they will make the run.

There is nothing in the stated circumstance to preclude intermediate stops for trade or requiring a certain level of profit, only a logical reason for hauling raw ore 300LY -- the answer is "to make a profit."

That is the basic principle of "Trade" buy cheap in one place, sell high in another, and make a profit. Everything else is mere details.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. What people are trying to tell you is that once you do a reasonably decent economic analysis bulk interstellar trade makes no sense - it's far cheaper to do the resource extraction and so forth locally.

John, I'm with Harold on this one. What you forget is that not all worlds will have the capacity to supply all of their own needs, just as today not all countries can supply all of their own needs. If that were the case, there wouldn't be any need for international trade at all, and we know that is not the case. Some countries today have rather specialised economies and industrial sectors, others are more diversified. The same will be true in the Honorverse - some planetary economies will focus on only a relative handful of major industries, because of local circumstances (such as Montanan beef, for example), which means that they'll have to import all kinds of goods from other worlds.

The mistake you seem to make is to think that all planets in the Honorverse are similar with regards to their local resources, conditions, requirements and socio-political and socio-economic dynamics. We know this isn't true, no more than it isn't true today on Earth.

Well, MWW's post is nicely in depth, but:

He has also stated that moving cargo's in system via counter grav(see pearl several pages back) is actually just as expensive than shipping intrasteller!

Take Grain as an Example:

1) Have to yank the grain out of its gravitational well,
2) Transfer to Hyper capable ship
3) and then ship for weeks/months intrastellerly.
4) Transfer again
5) Enter gravitational well.

He just got done saying shipping via counter grav in system is expensive!

As if a counter grav intersystem grain bulk cargo hauler, couldn't use its counter grav to reach exo altitudes where there is no atmospheric drag(Power/$$$ sucking) and then coast ballistic to its destination without the rig-a-marole of trans shipment 2 EXTRA TIMES and the delay time of weeks/months.

Both scenario shuttles use counter grav. Both use their counter grav the exact same amount. Actually one scenario could use it less as they do not have to go to LEO... One is far faster. One is far cheaper. I will let you sleuth's figure out which scenario is better.

PS. Grass grows everywhere. Any planet that can sustain a population, other than a VERY rare oddball like Grayson, will sustain grain production. Those over populated could have a problem as well. Those who are ecological reserves coulc have a problem as they refuse to provide for themselves and feel entitled to impose their values on someone elses planet so they can feel like they are not harming their own planet. So, sure, in a very rare instances there will be some grain being shipped.

J6P wrote:

hanuman wrote: it is unhelpful to make sweeping statements that ignore that truth

You just made gigantic sweeping statements and are railing on others not to? Especially when you did not even grasp the basic fundamental issue that Namelessfly raised?

Do you mean this one?

The ongoing experience of the US with imperialism is probably perceived by Manticore as another example of imperialism transforming a society from a democratic republic into an empire. By many objective measures, the US is far less free than before WW-2 and Roosevelt. The fact that a US President can routinely wage war without the consent much less a formal declaration of war from Congress would shock Roosevelt and all of his predecessors. The fact that the US usually refrains from exploiting it's conquests economically has mitigated the transformation somewhat.

Those (the bolded parts) are the two points I wished to address. At no point did I indicate a wish or intention to address anything else he might have written or implied in that post.

As for sweeping statements, I think there's a difference between statements that are supported by fact, and those that make broad claims that have no basis in fact. Don't you? Because the only 'sweeping statement' I made, was that no human construct can ever be perfect. If you disagree, I eagerly await your thoughts.

kzt wrote:

J6P wrote:You just made gigantic sweeping statements and are railing on others not to? Especially when you did not even grasp the basic fundamental issue that Namelessfly raised?

Or understand the definition of "empire"....

You mean any one of the literally hundreds of definitions that have been posited over the years? Please, if I'm mistaken, do make the effort and correct me...

Joat42 wrote:SNIP for shortness: Left this para:
Total GDP/capita is a quite good indicator of a systems prosperity since it directly correlates to a systems standard of living, and comparisons doesn't need to be done to outside systems since it's even more important to use it to see where it's headed by comparing it to historical data adjusted for inflation.

China was fairly stable for 2000 years. An Oligarchy. There was no freedom of thought allowed. You learned by wrote. You did not question. Questioning was disrespect to their religion. Ancestor worship. There was no science progress.

Only reason we have science/modern life today is because of the invention of the printing press creating the Reformation. This allowed people to read the Bible for themselves and see that the Catholic Priesthood was only using religious made up dogma(not in the Bible) as a prop for their own power and retention of power. This yoke being tossed off, along with the yoke of aristocracy power supremacy(lessening of absolute power), via many wars, led to freedom of thought and expression of the common person. This led to the prosperity we have today and take for granted. Of course today we are busy trading our freedoms for the yoke of corporate aristocracy and government bureaucracy.

Prosperity is of historical relevance. True. GDP/Capita verses CPI adjusted for inflation is a very good internal indicator. But that is not the discussion at hand now is it? The discussion at hand was weather a nation can be prosperous without external TRADE. A nation has no idea if it is prosperous or not, and therefore to feel "inadequacies" unless there is a higher/lower external standard in which to feel covetous of. A closed system, or mercantile system, by definition will be just fine. Only when one looks outward, and sees others better off than themselves will problems crop up.