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While I can see large-container-ship along a Core jump main (it neatly explains any lower-tech worlds; nobody invests in boosting their tech levels because importing needed higher-tech products can be done so relatively cheaply), I tend to run my games along the fringes.

That sort of locale justifies tramp freighters as the only means of shipping between systems, since the amount of shipping is so low that a container ship isn't economical to run. Fringe worlds are caught in the same Catch-22 as modern Third World states - they're underdeveloped because nobody invests in them and nobody invests in them because they're underdeveloped. So trade volumes remain low.

Since I base my Imperial taxes on Gross World Profit, I'm not really worred about a world's external trade volume. My Imperium lays claim to 3% of member world GWPs using the rationale that Imperial protection means each world can potentially can spend relatively more on self-improvement (compared to independent worlds). Since the GWPs of my Imperial worlds therefore tend to be comparatively higher, the pittance which the Imperium skims has little effect on the overall economy.

NOTE: If you leave out the periods over the past century when the US was actively at war (as well as the peak years of the Cold War) and average out expenditures over the remaining years, 3% of GDP just about equals the proportion of it's the overall economy that was invested in defense. I use the US for comparison because during most of this period this level of spending supported a world-wide military presence, one which vastly outstripped what was actually needed for defense of the US mainland directly. Like the Roman Republic (and my Imperial Core Worlds), over time the US became committed to propping up foreign "friends" . . . in order to keep the enemies of said friends from becoming direct threats to the US. Of course, whether or not those enemies would have become actual threats to the US is unknowable (just as whether or not the Heirate or the Extents or the Thousands Worlds would have become actual threats to the Third Imperium is unknowable).

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