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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 5, 2004 1:59:20 GMT -5
One thing that is going to come up is the concept of 'trade' between the worlds of the Anargo sector... Indeed, we are currently working on the principle that worlds within subsectors primarily, and nearby subsectors, engage in trade. Trade, broadly, is defined as including both Merchant and Civil trade, both 'tithe redistribution' (i.e. shifting of significant volumes of freight along main trade routes achieved primarily by Chartist ships of the Merchant Fleet) and also 'free trade' along other routes (Civil)... The Guide is ultimately derivative of the Traveller universe, i.e. from an old and out of print GDP publication, but which has subsequently been reprinted in various other forms by both GDP, SJGame, Imperium Games, etc. Anyway, while scanning through some new books I've come across something that, I believe, was mentioned earlier on in the project when it was on Portent. That is the use of GURPS Traveller Far Trader to model the economy/trade of the Imperium... Reading through that book makes me jump with joy since it offers a structured approach to 'trade', allowing us to create not only 'warp routes' but also begin to talk about the flow of goods in the Anargo sector. There are, however, a number of potential problems of which the simple fact that Traveller is not 40k is the most obvious. This includes both 'conceptual' glitches in terms of ownership and the definition of the Imperium, the concept of 'Imperium currency', and so forth, that might be uncomfortable for some. Unlike the potentially interesting PDF information from GURPS Traveller Star-Mercs, I'm not about to type out this monstronsity. Hopefully zholud - who normally gets excited about economy despite his predilection for a 'totalitarian' state!  - will have a copy. He normally does... Anyway, the gist of this comment is that you're going to have to forgive any inability to properly synthesise the material. I'm still getting my head around all the rules and, more importantly, economic theory of the darned book! Reading through the first bit of the book, the various assumptions and concepts included are as follows. Zholud, please remember that I'm an osteoarchaeologist and not an economist... Indeed, before this my knowledge of economy was limited to poor wages in archaeology in the UK ( ) and reading about the formation of modern economy in the post-medieval period. With that caveat: - The adeptus administratum is necessarily involved in 'trade', both in terms of moderation of the assets of trade (i.e. registration of ships, registration of ship crew, etc.) but also in moderation of the financial institutions. It moderates the influence of an individual world government on 'trade', as well as serving, with other ordinatio (i.e. departmento munitorium classis) trade in restricted goods.
- Imperium economic growth is exceptionally slow. However, in the Traveller universe communications are only as fast as the ships themselves. In 40k, however, the combination of Navigated jumps and the Astropathic Network offer to allow much faster communication. Thus it would be possible for the identification of new trade potentials/customers as well as the exchange of information.
- There is no central bank, though the adeptus administratum once again determines the distribution of 'new money' to sectors predicated upon period reviews provided by the exchange of economic information through the 'world hierarchy' advocated in the ASP.
- There is an Imperium-wide currency which is nominally backed by the 'word of the Emperor' and the adeptus terra:
This is one potential conceptual glitch. The Emperor nominally owns all assets in the Imperium, including the worlds and their 'gross world/domestic product', but as the advocated parasitic government acts in the same way as the Traveller Imperium.
- The lack of centralised banking requires the exchange of reserves between communicating financial institutions on individual worlds. This may take the form of local currency but is usually the currency of the Imperium. This removes the need for worlds to trade currencies, the requirement for a foreign exchange market based upon supply/demand, etc.
- Commerce is predicated upon three features: (1) comparative advantage, or that each world specialises in what it produces best (i.e. asteroid belt is good for producing industrial goods, but poor for the production of food resources); and (2) economies of scale, or the production of increasingly specialised goods becomes cheaper the more you produce, and that increasingly technologically specialised goods amplifies this. This does not imply a single 'Imperium economy' becuase of the "expense of transportation, the months (or years) of travel time, the natural and human hazards of star travel, and the simple differences in technical specifications and human tasts combine to make regular trade from one end of the Imeprium to the other nearly impossible..." (GT:FT 10-11). Indeed, "Most worlds do not conduct significnt amounts of trade beyond neighbouring subsectors, and even the largest worlds rarely trade beyond neighbouring sectors" (ibid, p11).
- The "Law of One Price" means that goods will tend to cost the same on neighbouring worlds (apparently something called 'arbitrage'). It should not be taken too literally (again apparently! ).
- Productivity of a world is linked to the TL, which represents an overall increase in the 'standard of living' in terms of both human capital (e.g. education) and physical capital (e.g. infrastructure). Natural capital/resources are assumed to be present on the world that is colonised, i.e. giving economic validation to that colonisation in the first place.
- Trade balances over the Imperium, if not on the scale of trade between individual worlds.
- Productivity determines the relative value of goods on a world and, as such, is once again linked to TL.
Okay, my head begins to hurt... The various assumptions above work to produce a simple system (at least in GT:FT ) for working out trade flows, etc. This is calculated simply between pair-worlds working on the principle that subsector trade predominates (see above) and, more than likely, subsector-subsector trade predominately moves around the axis of the 'subsector capitals'. In brief, the system works in the following manner: - The "World Trade Number" (WTN) is a product of the local tech level and the population (i.e. see above regarding productivity), moderated by the starport class (note: one potential problem here is that only Forgeworlds are permitted the 'best' class of starport creating an inherent bias towards them; also, on a hiveworld what percentage of the population might be thought of as productive?).
- The 'Trade Classifications' are used to determine meaningful flows of trade and/or comparative advantage.
- The "Gross World Product" is then determined around base per-capita income, again a product of TL and as modified by world type (Rich, Industrial, Agricultural, etc.).
- Bilateral trade is determined between worlds as a product of the Trade Classifications (i.e. trade is more likely between an industrial and non-industrial world, or agricultural and non-agricultural world) moderated by distance. E.g. It is less likely for a world to trade with one hudreds or thousands of light years distant. The product of the World Trade Number of two worlds, the above modifier and the negative influence of distance are used to calculate the Bilateral Trade Number.
The Bilateral Trade Number is then used to calculate the 'credits/year' and 'v-displacment tons/year/week/day' that flow between worlds. This is then used to map the trade routes into 'main', 'feeder' and 'minor'.
40k-ifying this doesn't seem too hard. With the above assumptions, the Main routes are likely to be the primary dominion of Chartist captains, as well as significant subsector routes such as, say, between an agricultural and non-agricultural (civilised or hiveworld) world... And you've still got space for those lovely 'free traders'... I'm going to stop once more...  |
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Post by Dazo on Jul 15, 2004 5:09:50 GMT -5
So are you any closer to somthing that can be applied to the anargo sector, the worth of the actual goods being traded would also need clarification basic goods, food stuffs, exotic materials etc. and this is about world economics yes, so how does private industry fit in
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 15, 2004 12:25:06 GMT -5
So are you any closer to somthing that can be applied to the anargo sector... That was kind of the point of the thread. While I'm not going to type out the whole of GURPS Traveller: Far Trader and post it here, I'm sure that 'copies' can be found on the 'Net... I suggest you check them out. While there are so many broad similarities between the Imperium of Traveller and that of 40k, the former does tend to work off slightly different premises (i.e. smaller interstellar-capable ships, the sheer premise of the Imperium being defined by trade, etc.). Hence opening it up for discussion. It seems, however, that with a lack of interest it is best to simply 'impose' the GT:FT system and see how it goes. Tryphon and Anargo seem the most obvious candidates at the moment. the worth of the actual goods being traded would also need clarification... It does more in calculating the volume of goods, IIRC. and this is about world economics yes, so how does private industry fit in Depends on the world in question... |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 16, 2004 0:11:43 GMT -5
Well, that didn't quite work to inspire interest, so I'm going to talk to myself ( ) and offer an example of how this models 'trade' between two worlds: Anargo Primus III (Anargo) and Aquina I (Tryphon). Since there seems to be some discrepancies in the UWP and SR for Tryphon, I'm going to use the unmodified UWP presented in CELS' SR and use that as a way of described trade. UWP for these worlds are as follows: Anargo Primus III (Anargo) 19/19/14 - G2V - B966ADG-A Hi 213 Im 59B Aquina I (Tryphon) 20/21/14 - M1V - C8459AE-8 Hi In 604 Im 251 Quick ComparisonWell, the most obvious things to notice are that the two worlds have different TTLs, with Anargo pipping Tryphon to the post in terms of populated. Because of a fluke of atmosphere, Tryphon somehow rates an 'industrial' category... World Trade Number (WTN) The TTL of A for Anargo and 8 for Tryphon translates to a GTL of 9 and 8, respectively. Likewise the Population is A and 9, with starports class B (IV) and class C (III), respectively. The WTN for the two worlds based upon GTL, Population and 'Port Modifier' are: Anargo = 1+5 = 5+0 = 6 Tryphon = 0.5+4.0 = 4+0 = 4.5 Thus, Anargo has a WTN of 6 and Tryphon one of 4.5. Gross World Product (GWP) and Per-Capita IncomeBased off the GTL (see first post for abstractions), the base per-capita income is Cr3,600. This is unmodified by Trade Class since neither world are Rich, Industrial, Agricultural, Poor, Extreme or Non-industrial. GWP is the per-capita income multiplied by the population. Thus: Anargo ~ 28,000,000,000 x 3,660 = Cr102,480,000,000,000 Tryphon ~ 9,000,000,000 x 3,600 x 1.4 = Cr46,116,000,000,000 Obviously, the GWP for the two worlds is different. With 10,248 trillion 'credits' income compared to 4,612 trillion for Tryphon. This, of course, doesn't not reflect the amount of trade performed by each world (i.e. GWP does not reflect external trade, only internal 'worth'; see above). Bilateral TradeThis is derived from the World Trade Classification Modifier (WTCM) and Distance Modifiers to determine the Bilateral Trade Number (BTN). World Trade Classification ModifierNeither of the worlds have a WTCM since while Tryphon is Non-industrial (Ni), Anargo is not quite Industrial (In) because of a lack of polluted atmosphere (hey, I'm just using the statistics used in the book!). Distance ModifierThis is based upon the number of 'parsecs' between the two worlds. From the SR for both systems, we know that Anargo is at 19/19/14 and Aquina/Tryphon at 20/21/14, with the co-ordinates in roughly parsec units. Thus a bit of simple trigonometry: Linear distance = sqrt.([20-19]2+[21-19]2+[14-14]2)
Linear distance = sqrt(12+22)
Linear distance = 2.2 pc This translates to a distance modifier of 1. Bilaternal Trade NumberThis is equal to: WTN1+WTN2+WTCM-Distance Modifier
Or
6 + 4.5 + 0 - 1 = 9.5 This translates as a minor trade route. In terms of amounts of cargo/money shifting between the two worlds a BTN of 9.5 translates to: - 5G-10GCr/year.
- 500k-1M td/year.
- 10k-50k td/week.
- 500-1k td/day.
- 100k-500k passengers/year.
- 5k-10k passengers/week.
- 50-100 passengers/day.
Remember that 1t d ~ 14m 3. (Passenger statistcs result from the fact that Anargo is a subsector/sector capital and requires a +1 modifier to BTN as a result of this.) From the information posted in another thread, this means that trade exists as a "Feeder Route" between Anargo and Tryphon... Although just what this means to the subsector and, larger still sector, economy is up for grabs... Would have to apply this to a whole number of worlds out there for it to fit in with the bigger picture! (And I'm sure that it's going to have funky results with Forgeworlds!) But, well, it's a minor start... Had to change the calculation slightly to take into account me forgetting that CELS resposted the SR for Tryphon rather rather than including a modification of the original SR... <sigh>
Edit: Forgot to add the 'passenger' section! |
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Post by Dazo on Jul 16, 2004 0:31:07 GMT -5
So it can be done excellent  Do you have a link to where all this info can be found please so i can have a crack at it Well of course its so obvious when you use a bit of simple trigonometry   I really have no idea, whats trigonometry and is it truly as simple as that help me out i'm floundering here |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 16, 2004 1:01:07 GMT -5
Unfortunately all of the calculations are presented in GURPS Traveller: Far Trader and as it is in publication I'm wary of typing out the whole thing. That and I have a life at the moment. (The Guide was transcribed from an out-of-print book while I was at a laboratory and had nothing to do on the evening.) The actual calculations and tables necessary for calculating WTN, BTN, etc., are relatively easy to put 'out there'... it's just the rest of the book that's the problem! The information above goes to calculating basic trade routes and volumes of goods, but the rest of the book goes into a tad more detail about freight shipping and brokering, speculative trade, business organisation (incl. banking, share market), shipping and freight handling, system traffic control procedures, inspections and port tariffs... and so on. Overall it would require typing up 76 pages of copyrighted material. If you're interested in the parallel material directly, go and buy the book either in RL or online. I'm sure that you could also acquire somewhat dubious copies through various file-sharing programs. What I'm basically after is whether the model could be used to make an overall sense of the various worlds. To offer the desired framework for interpretation which we could then apply to create trade routes, etc. (For example, an obvious glitch is with Forgeworlds and Hiveworlds. The former is going to require significant resources, but would this be reflected in the BTN? Arguably, and depending on the values, this would only reflect the 'free trade' between, say, an agricultural world and a hiveworld and not the tithe... But it's all up for grabs.) Oh, and OffT, if you want to know more about 'trigonometry' or the specific application here, e.g. Pythagoras' Theorem, then go here. Amazing what Googling can do! In application here, all that was done is a right-angled triangle created between the two points and the theorem applied...  And I probably made a mistake anyway! I normally do in these situations! |
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Post by zholud on Jul 16, 2004 5:20:11 GMT -5
On the trade between planets. I still have to end up reading first, prior to any comment, but I’m a little bit crazy tonight and decided to shout some stuff out. While the system proposed about is not bad, actually I would advise more ‘economics’ stuff meaning here the real world models, used by other guys. One of the most well-known models is partial equilibrium gravity models. Like the stuff presented above they say that trade (attraction power) depends on relative masses of the economies (proxied by GWP in our case) and squared distance between them. There is unlike physics a number of additional ‘controlling parameters’ such as common language, religion, TL, etc. – I’ll make up a list and post it shortly. I hope.  |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 16, 2004 11:56:19 GMT -5
Well, the pages that I didn't want to type up go into detail about gravity models of trade, etc. I just didn't want to type those out! Again, however, I remind people that the goal is to get a 'best guess' trade/economy system up which we can subsequently modify for 40k, rather than spend ages creating something which might not work anyway... But, definitely, post more comments zholud since this is what you do (economy, not posting comments! )... Oh yes, if you could make them understandable that would also be good... let's keep jargon down to a minimum! ;D |
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Post by CELS on Jul 16, 2004 14:46:48 GMT -5
When we actually do set up the trades model for the Anargo sector though, will we be using the guidelines for which worlds are industrial, and which are not? Even if it doesn't make sense (I.e. Civilised worlds being marked as 'In', whilst Industrial worlds are not?)
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Post by zholud on Jul 17, 2004 0:57:08 GMT -5
On trade and economy, some pickings which I can think out at the moment. This is brain-storm-like post with loose ends and you read it on own peril. It probably does not give answers but sets questions. Sector-Imperium trade – it should be small relative to sector’s output (I guess 0.1-2%) of luxury goods and exclusive stuff. it is balanced, i.e. no trade surplus/deficit. Reason is simple – you need something to feel the gap and why you are or your partners are willing to accept it? note that 0.1% of sector output is more that total output of some planets… for all sectors, Anargo and adjusting ones we will set up a formula sector-wide trade ( i.e. export +import)/output ratio = sector output -beta, beta>0 this makes economically large sectors relatively less willing to trade ‘abroad’, the same situation as in real world where most wealthy countries has lesser export/GDP ratios than low and medium wealth states… maybe they are more self sufficient. OutputI’m unsure whether it is good idea to link productivity to labour only, missing capital entirely. Usual simple formulas use both labour, capital and productivity as parameters that affect output. However in our case I’m thinking about setting 2 more parameters in the system, namely land and mineral wealth. You always need tools (i.e. capital) force (i.e. labour) to get output from field/mine. At the moment I’m stick with usual Cobb-Douglass function for this one, namely Output = LabourA* CapitalB* LandC* MineralsDA+B+C+D=1 I have to decide whether set TLs entirely to capital=tools or split between capital and labour (where TL gives education). Multi-lateral vs. bilateral tradeI strongly support the idea that while inter-(sub-sector/system/planet) overall trade should be balanced (exports=imports), specific trade between any given 2 worlds could and even should be unbalanced. This goes in line with real world experience and especially with medieval merchant trade. An example – 3 country model 1. China can sell iron ore, needs chemicals. 2. Japan can sell machines, needs iron ore. 3. USA can sell chemicals, needs machines. If you set a bilateral trade with them you can see that we can have overall balances between them, while each bilateral trade (China-Japan, Japan-USA and USA-China) shows either surplus or deficit. All for the moment, looking for comments – it is very strange not to use established models on the basis of real world data, but create framework where everything does work as you’ve ordered it to. |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 17, 2004 12:47:22 GMT -5
Again, remember that the goal is to put the tools in the hands of the workers, not keep them locked up in a shed with the shed owner being the only person with the key! ...it is very strange not to use established models on the basis of real world data... AFAIK the model is based on real world economy, or at least sayeth the economics doctoral student who wrote it (with others). The problem here is that it is modified specifically for the Traveller universe with the assumptions therein and this, if anything, will likely create bias rather than incorrect premises. Trade between the 'sector' and those other sectors that constitute the Imperium, presumably? Yes, having a small trade relative to 'gross sector product' makes a lot of sense given the costs of transportation. Arguably it only becomes feasible with Navigators, surely? E.g. they reduce the overheads on shipping through moderation of the 'dangers' of the warp (e.g. the concept of insurance) and increase jump distance and thus overall efficiency. The general assumption is that it ultimately comes to TL. With a sustainable TL you have the infrastructure (including fixed capital) to produce goods, with productivity linked both to the means of production (i.e. manual labour to partially automated labour) and the population. The question is whether with splitting we are making it more complex to show how clever we are? I admit that this is because economics is not something that I'm that familiar with so that anything that allows me to input numbers and get a product gets my vote. If it were archaeology or whatever, then perhaps I would be more inclined to increase the complexity... Out of interest, you might find the following quote useful: So, again, it's a good working model but it is the specific application to the 40k universe which is potentially a more useful topic of discussion rather than specific alterations to the system? This would seem to lead to viable changes rather than the necessary creation of something from the start...? This is, I believe, the basic premise of the system. Something else of interest might be: |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 17, 2004 12:47:37 GMT -5
And: Just some more wood for the fire, as it were! |
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Post by zholud on Jul 19, 2004 0:08:44 GMT -5
Again, remember that the goal is to put the tools in the hands of the workers, not keep them locked up in a shed with the shed owner being the only person with the key! I thought about setting a black box system, where everyone enters values and receives trade figures, so easy that it could be made by a well-trained monkey. I just think that introduction of smooth formulae are much better than ‘integer only’ point values. Of course, I plan to make most of the technical stuff myself and end-product with all framework will be available. I perfectly understand your point on absence of specialisation, so I’ll try to keep it simple. AFAIK the model is based on real world economy, or at least sayeth the economics doctoral student who wrote it (with others). The problem here is that it is modified specifically for the Traveller universe with the assumptions therein and this, if anything, will likely create bias rather than incorrect premises. It is based on real-world, but there are lots of models for different facets of the world and they have simplified model for usage in the already established game system. I highly suspect that if the author took part in UWP stats creation with economics in mind he’d added capital/land/resources in more detail. We as you say use Traveller as guideline but not stick to it too much and I guess we can introduce abovementioned stuff at latter date. Trade between the 'sector' and those other sectors that constitute the Imperium, presumably? Yes, having a small trade relative to 'gross sector product' makes a lot of sense given the costs of transportation. Arguably it only becomes feasible with Navigators, surely? E.g. they reduce the overheads on shipping through moderation of the 'dangers' of the warp (e.g. the concept of insurance) and increase jump distance and thus overall efficiency. Yes to both. BTW, before we started inter-sector trade creation, should we set first that Anargo is really enclosed from all sides by other sectors, as in relevant thread? I mean that galaxy is relatively slim and I haven’t checked whether there is a place for three sectors in a row = 600 l.y. The general assumption is that it ultimately comes to TL. With a sustainable TL you have the infrastructure (including fixed capital) to produce goods, with productivity linked both to the means of production (i.e. manual labour to partially automated labour) and the population. It is right assumption/best guesstimate for gaming system, where economics is on background, so it is enough to set outlines / sketches only… we have the same in 40k-verse, but I’ll try to give more in-depth stuff to it. The question is whether with splitting we are making it more complex to show how clever we are? This is important as well but the main point is to make it less human-only dependable. Ok, I stop now, have to work |
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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 19, 2004 1:05:45 GMT -5
All valid points... But we must also remember that we don't want to wait for years to try and get some form of framework up there... |
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Post by zholud on Jul 22, 2004 5:28:07 GMT -5
I'll try to make out some kind of model for Anargo during the next two weeks. If we are lucky, we will discuss it in full by then p.s. almost spammy post ;D |
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- will have a copy. He normally does... 
And I probably made a mistake anyway! I normally do in these situations! 
