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On Tue, 8/26/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] expected ship traffic
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 6:14 AM

 If you are
 talking the canon 3I, at TL7-8 present day Earth is at much
 of the Imperium's tech level.

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Well, yeah, *but* whereas, in the TU, TL15 (& maybe even 16) could be present on even the most primitive worlds, that's out of the question here on Earth.

Reminds me of the three years my family spent living on a remote USAF airbase in Morocco.
(the airfield was used as a 'staging' base for B-47's in the event of the BIG ONE, so there was usually a 'flight' of six bombers present that rotated every 30 days)
The a/b was about an hours drive inland from Casablanca & once you were very much outside that city you were back in the middle ages until you entered the base.
Now, AFAIK, Morocco had little, if any, post-industrial revolution production capability.
The 'factories' that I toured looked like they hadn't changed in centuries. Some didn't even have electricity!
But when you went into the city (the a/b, of course was totally up-to-date but w/ little, if any, production capability), all of a sudden you found that, in certain areas, you abruptly transitioned from the middle ages to latter 20th century!

So how do you classify a situation like that where you have, essentially, just as much access to all the latest technology as anywhere else?

In the TU would a world filled w/ the estates of the 'Rich & Famous', used primarily as a vacation 'get-away' location, be classified as what TL?
You would arrive & find yourself in a TL15 paradise but w/ *everything* imported!

Quite some time ago I began to consider the TL ratings as, basically, a baseline marker that essentially served to indicate how much things would cost since almost *anything* would be avail at the right price.

So you could travel to any world & could easily find an enclave w/ TL10+ present (esp if theres an 'A' or 'B' port, definitely if there's a Naval Base). I would expect that on any world, with the usual exceptions for 'special' circumstances of a cultural, religious, etc nature, containing more than a million people, there would be at least one location, even if only around the starport, where you could find such an enclave.

Remember that, even in the 'Marches, these planets have been part of the 3I for many centuries & have had interstellar contact for even longer than that.

If trade was really at a MegaVolume level wouldn't just about all worlds have been completely saturated w/ TL10+ by now?
Esp considering how much more durable hi-tech has become even at our present TL here on Earth?

That's a main reason why I advocate for a much lower trade volume than MT does.
Heck, even CT's volume may be too high!