What Would Starships Ship As Cargo Across the galaxy?

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm not a historian, so there are probably gaping holes in this, but surely the answer is you trade at each stop, exchanging what you have for something you know (or hope) will have value at your next stop. As a caveat on all this, one of the scenarios to consider is that some trade will result in a loss.

The first practical/historical example that springs to mind is the Europe/Africa/America trade sequence - get your slaves and sell them, picking up things like cotton/sugar/tobacco and head back to Europe where you can sell those and buy things which can then be traded for more slaves. You have no real common currency here, other than precious metals and the like, but really I think the point is at each point you exchange one cargo for another.

Really, if you give people a means of transport and the chance to make a profit, somebody, somewhere will figure out how to take advantage.

Right. But the problem I'm having trouble with is figuring out where the profit actually is.

Yes, I know that the traditional model is to take goods from point A and trade them for point B's goods, which you then pass on to point C or back to point A. But it's been bugging me for a long time, trying to figure out what's in it for the traders in an interstellar model. There is no common currency among planets, that's self-evident (unless you're working off a Federation of Planets model with a common currency, and that one is not what I'm concerned with -- obviously, that works). The problem is, Planet B's money won't do you any good when you've sold Planet A's goods for it. You can buy stuff on Planet B while you're there, but it won't help to take the currency to Planet C, or back to Planet A. All you can do is trade stuff for stuff in a line or circle, and collect trade goods for yourself. Now, I suppose you can pick up artwork to sell for a profit on your home planet -- that might work. Otherwise you just take your pay in food and clothing and fuel to keep you going in circles. It just seems to me that there's no real building of a nest egg in interstellar trading -- you just keep doing it to keep doing it. Which is ok if you just want to run around the stars -- I wouldn't mind it. But it's not the get-rich scheme that it's generally portrayed as, in books. And it's not the entrepreneurial merchant thing, though it could be the family occupation some show it as -- if all you want to do is travel the stars, it works fine, providing you have some sense of what to trade where, and good luck on your timing.

Do you see where my problem is? Does it make sense? What I'm saying is that you take a shipload of widgets from A, and you trade them for gizmos on B. Now if you have more widgets than it takes to buy a shipload of gizmos, where's your profit? Your profit isn't the extra widgets, because you're out of room; your profit has to be either B's currency, or other stuff from B. You have no room for other stuff from B, except fuel and whatever food/clothing/trinkets you can fit into your living quarters comfortably. It wouldn't do to keep collecting trinkets, because you'd run out of living space. Currency doesn't do you any good on another planet. So even if you technically "make a profit", that is, have more widgets than you need to buy as many gizmos as you can fit, there's nothing in it for you.

Now, if you move this to an information/entertainment model, you take your ship from Planet A with as much information or entertainment as you can get (in most cases, it's not a matter of filling up the ship), and you go to Planet B. You trade it for whatever of the same sort Planet B has, as much as the traffic will bear. Or you sell it to Planet B. For what? Currency doesn't do you any good at Planet C. All you can really do is trade A's info for B's info for C's info, ad infinitum. And take your fee in food, clothing and fuel. Now, if you make your home on Planet A, you can indeed come home and sell this stuff to them for currency that you can put in your bank account. You could do the same with the goods model, but this really seems to go against the notion of the merchant spacer. You don't think of him as being a guy who comes home on weekends. And the only way I can see to make a profit is to have a home currency that you can eventually sell stuff for, in this chain, and a way of using it for something other than continuing the pattern.

 

[Coast]

Prisoners and Stowaways!

But the problem I'm having trouble with is figuring out where the profit actually is.

I think that's the crux of it, TDZ.
It depends on the universe you inhabit. If you have a central base or hub, you can take out something that another planet needs/wants, and bring back what the hub needs/wants. The profit comes from knowing your markets, and being a good enough negotiator to build value into the deals.

If you have no central base, and you're jumping from star to star without any common currency, I don't think it makes any sense. Eventually you've got to come 'home' and convert all your goods into cash. Or you have a commodity that allows you to increase the value of your cargo, but not the physical size.

Then you need to be one step ahead of yourself, knowing what the next star wants before you trade at this one. If you turn up at a mining planet with a cargo of iron ore, you'll have to sell your ship and become a miner!

 

[Overread]

If you've got interstellar travel it stands to reason that either there would be trade like-for-like in the relative value of goods or more likely there would be some form of interplanetary currency exchange. You'd sell your goods for a value in the local currency which would then convert into a value within your own relative to the other worlds. Essentially you take the model that works on the Earth and upscale it; the only difference being the likely size of distance between worlds and the size of the cargo.

In the past we certainly had trade exchanges that could function over slow communication and travel networks when it could take weeks or even months to complete trades.

 

[Ursa major]

I'm going to assume that TDZ is referring to inter-species trade... if only because there are far bigger financial and currency problems associated with colonisation (and the funding** of it) than with trade between the colonies once they're established. And if those funding problems can be solved, trade problems should be a piece of cake***.


** - Charles Stross wrote a novel, Neptune's Brood that considered this problem. (It's an adventure story, so isn't all about how banking, investment and money work where FTL isn't available, in case the thought of... er... banks in space puts you off reading it....)

*** - Other, more durable, trade goods are available....

 

[Biskit]

But the problem I'm having trouble with is figuring out where the profit actually is.

Ignoring the scenario where it doesn't make a profit, I think there is possibly an assumption/pre-condition you need for it to make sense: Your trader is based on Planet A, or is employed by someone who is based on Planet A.

Then then a really simple sequence goes:

Your trader starts on A with 1000 credits and buys cargo to that value before traveling to B.
At B she trades the cargo for something else and returns to A where the cargo sells for 1100 credits, so on home planet your trader has made a profit. Or the owners have made a profit.

If you put more trading steps in then the skill becomes ensuring that at every point there is some increase in the notional value of the cargo.

Even if your trader is permanently 'space based', I think she still needs some sort of home port where she goes back to and banks her profit. Or equally she might have 'banking' arrangements in multiple ports. Interstellar trade and merchant venturers is fun, exciting, thrilling... and in the background, in an established trading network, there will be the dull, safe, boring and highly profitable business of banking.

I think the need for a common currency is a bit of a red herring. We've had international banking for centuries (obvious example, the Rothschild family dating from the mid 1700s and still going strong) and I don't see why that can't extend to interstellar banking, particularly connected to trade. At it's simplest, if your trader needs the next layer of sophistication, she carries a letter of credit from her branch of Megabux Bank on Planet A and presents it to a branch of Megabux on B. The bank will be more than happy to provide the letter of credit, for a fee, and at the far end, hand over cash in whatever currency is agreed, for a percentage.

That's a simplistic transaction, but international trade finance is big business and one that is constantly evolving. I was writing software for this stuff 15+ years ago, and back then the financial instruments were evolving, some going out of fashion, new approaches coming in. It sounds a bit clichéd but I suspect there's a whole bunch of stuff that will always go together - traders, bankers, fraudsters and pirates. Along with massive profits and abrupt bankruptcy.

 

[hopewrites]

Two things I'd like to add to this discussion.
1) what about traveling museums / circus / zoos?
A circulating living library of life?
The operators in such a venture would find value in the doing of the thing, as well as rake in local currency enough to resupply and acquire local luxuries they wish to enjoy in retirement. A below decks personal museum of places they've been, lives they've changed, and good they feel they've done. No reason close friends made along the way wouldn't be invited to come down for a drink or exotic fruit dish to hear stories and gander at the collection which represents the person's (or perhaps even their family's, if the personal satisfaction holds true for more than one generation in a family) lifetime experience.

Which kinda brings me to 2)
Wealth is personal. Yes here on Earth we have made general social agreements about the categories from which wealth can be recognized by others; material goods, celebrity status, political power... but on the whole wealth is personal. This is how you can have people languishing on estates feeling worthless, celebrities who chafe at the idea that they are only valuable as a bit of entertainment, quadrillionairs for whom more is never enough. And on the same planet, in the same social agreements people with next to nothing on a material scale who are blissed out of their brains over how awesome life is and how lucky they feel to be living.

I would look for a story with interstellar shipping to expound on this dichotomy. To have traders who love the work and do it for the thrill of going one planet to another, who feel alive and lucky to have all they do. V the trader who does it because they're good at it, but begrudges the time and energy it takes away from whatever it is they'd rather be doing.

I was watching an anime, I forget which, about two guys who go into menga together and after the first season they start meeting other menga artist. Some are in it for the glory!! Some to compete against other artists/writers like athletes compete in sports... One memorable to me was a character who wished he was a business man. And his agent had to keep bribing him to work. This guy didn't see any value in his talent, it was just an absurd way to make money so he could pretend he was a business man.

So even if there isn't a centralized view of wealth from one solar system to the next, you could still make a profit transporting this and that, provided you knew what wealth was to you, and could barter for it out of what you got paid in.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Without reading any other replies (bit lazy), I'd say art.

It has to be something that can't be easily produced or reproduced, and 3D printing will mean most stuff can just be made on-site. Original artwork can't and, unlike stories/poetry, can't be flung across the universe as a downloadable file.

Historical artefacts would be similar.

 

[Faye HG]

DNA aka a modern day ark. Much better to 'grow' a human than to breed them during space travel!

 

[Ursa major]

DNA aka a modern day ark. Much better to 'grow' a human than to breed them during space travel!

Funny you should mention that....

Anyway: what you describe isn't strictly trade -- unless the DNA is being sold (it can, of course, be used more than once**) -- but more a way of reducing the cost -- mainly in resources and the boredom of (the ancestors of) colonists -- of colonisation.


** - I'm now imagining what are, in effect, slave traders trying to prosecute those who've infringed their copyright (possibly in the absence of some sort of interplanetary law)....

 

[Vertigo]

As others have said: people, art, intellectual property and specialist food products (though I struggle to believe that in a universe with FTL it wouldn't be cheaper to create a genuine environmental duplicate and grow them yourself cheaper). I think Raw materials are definitely out even if you don't want to strip your own planet it would be a seriously impoverished star system if there weren't other planets in it that you could mine cheaper than using interstellar transport - unless that transport is actually cheaper than in-system transport. Unlikely but not completely impossible I guess.

And on @TheDustyZebra 's problem; you simply won't have interstellar commerce unless you have interstellar currency trade and therefore the ability to convert currencies of different systems. Without that trade is virtually impossible. However it is theoretically possible to do it through barter. So long as you are smart enough that when you return to your home system you are carrying cargo that you can sell for significantly more than the original cargo you set out with. So that's when you realise your profit; when you return home. Incidentally without a currency exchange system it might be possible to still manage trade on a barter basis, though it probably wouldn't really be barter; you would sell all your existing cargo for local currency. Then spend some of that currency on ship maintenance, fuel and supplies and spend the rest on a cargo to sell at your next destination (no point taking any of the local currency with you) and so on.

Incidentally if you did carry local currencies with you for use on returning to that system the currency does not necessarily have to be devalued in transit. It is only in fairly recent times that we have become obsessed with the conviction that you have to have inflation to have a dynamic economy. Though you would be taking a great risk without the means to sell a particular currency should it look like suffering an economic collapse.

 

[Gawian]

Depends on the size of the ship? Size of the colony it's going to? Is it a single ship or a convoy?

In Stargate, there was an episode where a cargo ship was pulling containers of food stuffs?
In Star Trek, most of the shipping is building materials to outlying colonies.

 

[Overread]

One thought is energy - high tech can achieve a lot but is also typically very energy and base resource demanding. Thus it might reach a point where yes you can replicate anything; but if you want to replicate enough steel to build a skyscraper it might be prohibitively demanding in energy compared to shipping such resources in - even from off-world (esp on a new colony).


Indeed new colonies requiring regular shipments might well be a demand that shipping companies seek to promote by seeding new worlds to keep their own business structure going .

 

[JoanDrake]

How about the same cargos that were shipped from China to Europe in the 1500's, unique spices. You can't synthesize everything. Also drugs, you may not even know how they work, let alone how to make them.

However, what if you have Stargates instead of Starships. I have a conveyor belt that ends thousands of light years away. Anything is shipped anywhere and the only fees are for handling

 

[Vertigo]

One thought is energy - high tech can achieve a lot but is also typically very energy and base resource demanding. Thus it might reach a point where yes you can replicate anything; but if you want to replicate enough steel to build a skyscraper it might be prohibitively demanding in energy compared to shipping such resources in - even from off-world (esp on a new colony).


Indeed new colonies requiring regular shipments might well be a demand that shipping companies seek to promote by seeding new worlds to keep their own business structure going .

Wasn't there some huge bubble that burst back in the colonial days due entirely to that business model? Doesn't it ultimately form a pyramid structure that is ultimately unsustainable? I'm no economist, so just asking the question.

How about the same cargos that were shipped from China to Europe in the 1500's, unique spices. You can't synthesize everything. Also drugs, you may not even know how they work, let alone how to make them.

However, what if you have Stargates instead of Starships. I have a conveyor belt that ends thousands of light years away. Anything is shipped anywhere and the only fees are for handling

The only problem with that Joan, is I cannot conceive of any technology that is going to transport goods in that way without huge energy demands so I think costs would be a whole lot more than just handling charges. But I guess it's just fiction so....

 

[Overread]

Vertigo yes its a bubble ready to burst. It relies on new colonies and for those to be within a certain profitable range of existing bases of operation/production. Therefore in a space setting increasing distances between habitable worlds and the core production worlds would mean reducing profits unless outer colonies can be brought up to production quickly. Then you've also got the fact that it hinges upon fringe worlds having investment or resources to trade to promote and continue development so a ring of poor resource planets or even worlds just too far away could burst it.

 

[CWScott]

I usually have them shipping exotic foodstuffs from other planets, medicines (assuming proprietary rights stay there). I also like to use furniture for the wealthy. Although, since we'd be so advanced by then, they could make an exact replica wherever they went, who wouldn't want to brag that they have a desk or chair made from real wood from old Earth. Could be any product.

 

[hopewrites]

Luxury planets v production planets...
In a ... worlds?... Where it's decided to keep X,y,z planets free of pollutants you'd only have organic food-stuffs, hand crafted merchandise, and just enough clean energy to keep things going. Everything else would need to be imported in from industrial worlds where PPA (planet rather than earth protection agency) has declared that it can't be wrecked more than it is, so pollute away. Worlds of cheap labor would have more exports, luxury worlds would pay for their imports with tourism revenue

 

[2DaveWixon]

Anyway: what you describe isn't strictly trade -- unless the DNA is being sold (it can, of course, be used more than once**) -- but more a way of reducing the cost -- mainly in resources and the boredom of (the ancestors of) colonists -- of colonisation.


** - I'm now imagining what are, in effect, slave traders trying to prosecute those who've infringed their copyright (possibly in the absence of some sort of interplanetary law)....

Kind of like selling yeast cultures, or sourdough bread starters?

 

[Overread]

Hopewrites or you might even have whole worlds who decide to fix their technological level at a specific rough point in development; rather like we have the cultural groups in the USA who reject much modern technology. Such planets might well work to a certain level; however they might also require shipments of specific resources that they are otherwise unable to access without higher level technology; but which are so beneficial that they cannot ignore them or - for example inoculations or other medical technology - they are required by law. Such worlds might be havens and thus whilst they might not produce resources they might be a huge holiday destination offering clean air; low pollutants; a slower more relaxed lifestyle - heck in the future it could simple be the opportunity to be on a world that is "offline" and which doesn't have cameras in the sky and on the ground watching your every step.




Whilst whole planets dedicated as such can sound odd lets not forget that we already have whole countries on the Earth that are dedicated toward certain types of productivity and output. The UK, for example, is geared more toward tourists and service whilst a country like Japan or China is clearly going out all out for manufacture. Thus its not impossible to consider that kind of thinking up-scaled to a planet wide impact; esp if it were influenced by the founding colony ships or if it fits into a galactic network of worlds; each one with a specific focus and thus each one working in unison via trade to support each other.

Hazardous or high pollutant producing processes might well be restricted to certain worlds or even deep space; thus shipments of raw resources to those sites would be required. Indeed in the future people might be far more demanding of good living conditions on their worlds and thus many processes we take for granted today might not be allowed.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Tribbles?