kzt wrote:The only customer mentioned in the text was manticore, which would certainly help pay for the advanced fabrication systems needed to build warships. But I would tend to doubt they bought enough (or grayson could build enough) to cover the cost of the huge fleets the GSN built.
It appears that essentially trade is only useful if you want to buy stuff from someone else, and a lot of planets don't need to do that. If you are effectively self-sufficient in critical resources and can manufacture modern machine tools/fabrication system (which seems to be the case for most of the core worlds) the main thing interstellar trade does is allow you to buy some things for less then you can make them, which adds to the standard of living of the population. In addition. it allows you to buy luxuries that can't be obtained locally.
From Mr Weber's post:
[9] In terms of Grayson, it wasn't access to interstellar trade which was so economically transformative. It was access to modern interstellar technology, which it acquired through its alliance with Manticore much more than through general interstellar commerce. This is, in fact, one of the huge pro-Manticore influences in Yeltsin; the Graysons understand what Manticore's tech transfers have meant to themselves and to their children's futures. The Grayson economic boom, however, is largely self-fueled as the constraints on food production are gradually eliminated or at least greatly reduced (courtesy of Skydomes), as industry becomes geometrically more productive (courtesy of those tech transfers and of Manticoran investment), and as the Grayson labor force's purchasing power expands in step. The only real export product Grayson has at the moment are starships — military or commercial — and I believe that one can safely assume that Grayson will become/remain part of the Manticoran shipbuilding industry's network for the foreseeable future. In most other respects, however, Grayson's much more likely to be a net importer in the interstellar economy.
The bolded part implies that Grayson sells her ships (I assume civilian ships only, at this point) to other star nations than Manticore...which, come to think of it, still means a helluva lot of export income in absolute terms.
Like I wrote, I might very well be wrong in my assumption of exactly how significant Grayson's export revenues are to her ability to rapidly expand her economy and industrial capacity. Still, every cent does count, doesn't it, and even if the Sword collects only a few billion dollars in tax revenues from those exports, that would still be money that can be invested in Grayson's economic expansion that don't need to be levied elsewhere. My argument holds, even though I might be wrong wrt the extent of those exports' contribution to the Sword's purse.
