Trading, er..., whatever

A few short notes:

Long term investments

 Finnish economy, as you may know, is/was largely based on forestry.
Now, it takes quite a lot of time to grow a tree to harvestable size. Long
enough to enter the "why should I waste my money planting new trees as by the
time they're harvestable, I'm dead or retired anyway" factor. Thing is, it
doesn't make much sense for the individual. Therefore there are basically
three kinds of countries in the world:
 - those that still have untouched forestry resources (typically due to
geographical access problems)
 - those that have had their forests stripped
 - those that have laws requiring reforestation
Guess which group Finland is in...

Ergo, unless required by law, interest in investments that *may* be profitable
after decades is not going to be exactly rolling hot. Just calculate compound
interest at, say a mere 2%, for 50 years to see what kind of Return Of
Investment would be required. As for laws requiring you
to invest in off-world colonies, well, governmental attention span is
typically even less -- they need results before the next election, or
someone else ends up taking the credit for it...

Shipping people

Moving people used to be cheap. They sort of took care of themselves. On land
voyages they could walk and even forage for themselves. Other stuff, like
horses, needed to be cared for, making it expensive to move.

Space changes all that. It's a hard environment. Humans don't survive there
without assistance. Compared to the "horses" of the era, tanks, it's the
humans that need caring for. Consequently, shipping humans is the expensive
part (as far as mechanized travel is concerned, this is already
the case -- and it's bound to get worse when providing breathable
atmosphere to the cargo becomes a major concern).

Mass exodus into space, while a nice idea (and one that I've used myself), is
frankly ludicrous. The resources would be *much* better spent finding a
solution to population growth control and researching more efficient means of
food production. Ofcourse, logic was never something to stop politicians from
trying...

Call me a cynic, but about the only kind of mass exodus into space I find
reasonable is the kind presented in the story "Green hills of Venus" --
they launch all the excess population into space after convincing them Venus
is a paradise world...

Absurdity in backgrounds

Everybody knows BattleTech, right? And now I'm talking about "classic" BTech
here. They have fusion reactors, and they're fighting over water. Bzzzt!
Hello! Anyone home?

Take Gundam (and forget newtypes for a while). Build some O'Neill stations,
okay. Move 90% of human population into said habitats. Bzzzt! Hello! Anyone
home? After that, I eat newtypes for breakfast.

Looks like when giant robots are involved, common sense need not apply.

Nevertheless, I enjoy Gundam (some of it anyway) and used to like BTech.
What's important is not "realism" per se, but (here comes the big word)

*internal* *consistency*

E.g. I can buy FTL. I can buy fusion reactors. But if you tell me you
can only use that reactor to power a 40-foot giant robot...

Actually, 7th Street Games' Mecha!/Spirit Warrior Empire is pretty much
the only giant robot background I find plausible -- they have Aztec GODS
powering mecha for sort of ritualistic combat.

The problem is, the more holes you fill with PSB, the farther you stretch the
dreaded IC, and the more likely everything is to fall apart sooner or later.
Ironically, the settings that have the most initial appeal (i.e. flash), are
the ones likely to have the least lasting appeal (to me anyway) due to lack of
IC.