Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It says nothing about transporting the same within the Core Worlds. However, it does say "dominant position in the galaxy’s carrying trade," from which we must conclude that the carrying trade includes a significant portion of trade with the Verge. In turn, that must imply that the intra-Core trade isn't that significant. That makes some sense, as those Core worlds developed when interstellar trade wasn't practical, so they probably developed for complete self-sufficiency.

Doesn't that depend on how we measure carrying trade? For example, if the measure is in metric tons times kilometers, then the longer trips might dominate (particularly if the wormhole length is included). Even if the measure is value times length, the lengths involved will dominate. But suppose we ignore length and just measure metric tons; then the intra-Core traffic might be less weight, but higher value (as you suggested).

I still do not completely accept that hundreds of years of cheap and safe hyper-space travel would not modify the relationship between the Core Worlds. I keep going back to this quote from Torch Of Freedom:

Chapter 38 wrote:For some considerable part of that pre-Station life, she and her husband had been very successful freight brokers. That was how they'd amassed their initial small fortune, which Michael Parmley had then parlayed into a much larger fortune playing the Centauri stock exchange—and then blown the whole thing trying to launch a freight company that could compete with the big boys in the lucrative Core trade.

Sudden thought: why does the quote say that raw materials are being transported back into the League? Could it be that some of the Core Worlds have exhausted their asteroids and are no longer self-sufficient? Or is it just a few factory systems that find it cheaper to import from outside the League than to buy from a League member?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And it says "transporting finished goods and passengers from the Core Worlds to the Verge." It says nothing about transporting the same within the Core Worlds. However, it does say "dominant position in the galaxy’s carrying trade," from which we must conclude that the carrying trade includes a significant portion of trade with the Verge. In turn, that must imply that the intra-Core trade isn't that significant. That makes some sense, as those Core worlds developed when interstellar trade wasn't practical, so they probably developed for complete self-sufficiency.

"Dominant position" does not mean majority. It probably does mean plurality.

And the trade may be measured in volume or hulls, not in value. The intra-Core trade may have higher added value and higher margins for the finished goods, while the trade with the Verge included less valuable but bulkier goods. In our world, it could be similar to the difference between a single $20k to $100k finished CPU/GPU versus a containerful of plastic toys.

I don't know that we can conclude the intra-core trade isn't significant. Potentially it could substantially outweigh the Verge associated trade, but be split across the trade fleets of some many different core systems that no one League system's shippers are as large as Manticore's. That scenario could put them in a dominant position despite a plurality of, say, 8-12% of the market.

But you're also right that that dominance might be measured by bulk, not by value.

tlb wrote:Sudden thought: why does the quote say that raw materials are being transported back into the League? Could it be that some of the Core Worlds have exhausted their asteroids and are no longer self-sufficient? Or is it just a few factory systems that find it cheaper to import from outside the League than to buy from a League member?

They wouldn't even have needed to exhaust their asteroids. Just mining them enough that the average concentration of key ores is lower than in other accessible systems could be enough to tilt the economics to importing ore.

The savings on processing and smelting you'd get from using higher-grade imported ores might more than offset the costs of bulk interstellar shipping.

In that case (assuming their domestic mining industry hadn't totally atrophied) they could return to self-sufficiency; it'd merely take a bit of time, and cost more than relying on imports. (Kind of like when crude oil prices get too low it stops being economical to extract shale or tar-sand hydrocarbons and the US and Canada start importing more cheap foreign oil for their refineries. There's still oceans of domestic oil; but at times it doesn't make economic sense to use it)

[quote="tlb"

Sudden thought: why does the quote say that raw materials are being transported back into the League? Could it be that some of the Core Worlds have exhausted their asteroids and are no longer self-sufficient? Or is it just a few factory systems that find it cheaper to import from outside the League than to buy from a League member?[/quote]

Why did Japan become a major exporter of goods to the US post WW II. Why have all sorts of garment industries moved from New England states in the US to Southern States then to places like Saipan , China, then/now South Vietnam, Indonesia, Sir Lanka? Labor costs in manufacturing is a major one. Cost of materials is another as production (either mining things or growing things or making "cloth" out of petrochemical products) close to those manufacture operation also became cheeper than importing from the earlier locations. Where is Cotten grown now? Sugar Cane? Why does China mine and burn a massive amount of coal at home but also imports coal from the US.----they are importing metallurgical coal which is usually missing things that would compromise the materials they are refining if they used the normal coal used for power generation or heating.
If you don't have something- or not enough of that something- you have to import it. If the cost of something made at X plus the shipping to get it to you is less than the cost for your home industries to produce it it gets imported rather than made at home----even if the "environmental" conditions for producing those materials and/or the "social costs (child labor, sweat shop operations etc) on the supplying country/system are not something legal where you are.

I have stories....you don't want to hear them.

I shall reread HoS for myself. I'll get back to you. It'll take some time, I'm quite busy.

@Jonathan_S.

300 years ago? Do you think the situation got better for the SL? Or worse?

penny wrote:I shall reread HoS for myself. I'll get back to you. It'll take some time, I'm quite busy.

Fine, no hurry. I am confident that I found what you wanted based on the key words of "The MWJ forced Solarian transshipment companies to severely cut costs to compete"; which turned out be a paraphrase, rather than the exact quote you claimed it to be. I hope that if I mistyped anything, then someone would have pointed it out.

I am not surprised that you intend to reread The Honorverse Companion (or do you really intend to read the story "House of Steel"?), since the words did NOT have the effect that you expected. Still no sign of a monopoly or any "cornering of the market".

Manticore is a major source of financial services for traffic using the wormhole junction to move between the League and the periphery, but this seems to be supplied by branches of banks and financial firms from outside Manticore. This means that Manticore gets some benefit, but also much of the profit goes elsewhere.

Note that the quote from Jonathan_S indicates that one of the main cargos going back to the League was just raw materials. However I did notice someplace else that the shipyards at Manticore did an export business in commercial ships.

tlb wrote:Note that the quote from Jonathan_S indicates that one of the main cargos going back to the League was just raw materials. However I did notice someplace else that the shipyards at Manticore did an export business in commercial ships.

I think I found that

House of Steel wrote:In addition, the Junction makes the Manticore Binary System a logical shipbuilding hub, and the Star Kingdom’s commercial shipyards are among the largest and most efficient in the known galaxy. Indeed, a sobering percentage of humanity’s total merchant fleet, and especially of its more modern units, is the product of Manticoran builders.

However that appears to be discussing a later time period that the raw material shipments from my first quote. That quote was focused on shortly after the Junction's first three termini were found.

Because the civilian shipbuilding comment follows two paragraph after the mention of " most recently, Lynx" terminus being discovered and one paragraph after " increase in usage fees due to the Star Empire’s need to fund a war".

Though equally in Echoes of Honor Admiral Mayhew points out, in the context of Grayson's production of civilian ships for Hauptman to help retire the loan that funded the Blackbird Yards, that you can't find any free civilian building slip in Manticore right then. (It's unclear if they're all under contract building civilian hulls or if the shortage is due to many of them been switched to war production -- at least dedicated fleet train units or fast JNMTC freighters. But, in either, case Manticore was at that point unable to expand its civilian ship construction -- however temporarily)

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:Sudden thought: why does the quote say that raw materials are being transported back into the League? Could it be that some of the Core Worlds have exhausted their asteroids and are no longer self-sufficient? Or is it just a few factory systems that find it cheaper to import from outside the League than to buy from a League member?

They wouldn't even have needed to exhaust their asteroids. Just mining them enough that the average concentration of key ores is lower than in other accessible systems could be enough to tilt the economics to importing ore.

The savings on processing and smelting you'd get from using higher-grade imported ores might more than offset the costs of bulk interstellar shipping.

In that case (assuming their domestic mining industry hadn't totally atrophied) they could return to self-sufficiency; it'd merely take a bit of time, and cost more than relying on imports. (Kind of like when crude oil prices get too low it stops being economical to extract shale or tar-sand hydrocarbons and the US and Canada start importing more cheap foreign oil for their refineries. There's still oceans of domestic oil; but at times it doesn't make economic sense to use it)

The MBS has sufficient ore for centuries of construction, but MMM routinely brought ore from the Eastern 1/2 of Silesia in the Triangle trade. There wasn't many processed goods in Silesia that could be sold in Manticore, but the cost to run an empty freighters is identical to full ones, so if a freighter can make $1 on a return load to Manticore, it is profitable.

So MMM ships routinely bought ore on the return run in Silesia and selling it for a handful of cents cheaper than Manty ore - making small margins for each load - but even that marginal profit was better than running the ship for a loss on the return leg.

And we saw mining stations near Parmelly station for rare minerals.

So there is ore being shipped, but only because it's marginally cheaper to get elsewhere, or is a very speciality ore

Theemile wrote:The MBS has sufficient ore for centuries of construction, but MMM routinely brought ore from the Eastern 1/2 of Silesia in the Triangle trade. There wasn't many processed goods in Silesia that could be sold in Manticore, but the cost to run an empty freighters is identical to full ones, so if a freighter can make $1 on a return load to Manticore, it is profitable.

So MMM ships routinely bought ore on the return run in Silesia and selling it for a handful of cents cheaper than Manty ore - making small margins for each load - but even that marginal profit was better than running the ship for a loss on the return leg.

And we saw mining stations near Parmelly station for rare minerals.

So there is ore being shipped, but only because it's marginally cheaper to get elsewhere, or is a very speciality ore

Very good point. One conclusion we can draw, whenever we see raw materials being shipped, is that any market in higher profit products produced at the origin has already been saturated at the destination.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote:The MBS has sufficient ore for centuries of construction, but MMM routinely brought ore from the Eastern 1/2 of Silesia in the Triangle trade. There wasn't many processed goods in Silesia that could be sold in Manticore, but the cost to run an empty freighters is identical to full ones, so if a freighter can make $1 on a return load to Manticore, it is profitable.

So MMM ships routinely bought ore on the return run in Silesia and selling it for a handful of cents cheaper than Manty ore - making small margins for each load - but even that marginal profit was better than running the ship for a loss on the return leg.

And we saw mining stations near Parmelly station for rare minerals.

So there is ore being shipped, but only because it's marginally cheaper to get elsewhere, or is a very speciality ore

Very good point. One conclusion we can draw, whenever we see raw materials being shipped, is that any market in higher profit products produced at the origin has already been saturated at the destination.

Good points both of you.
Though I'd minorly extend that later point in two ways.
First it extends also to higher profit goods shipped through the origin (of the raw materials).
Second is more of just an observation, that the market at the destination might be artificially restricted due to laws or regulations -- so another ship willing to try their hand at smuggling might find a more profitable product at that source. (Or, I guess, a smuggler might be moving raw materials to help disguise or hide their smuggling of higher profit items)