On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 11:31 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Douglas replied to David: >> I worked for US Customs and can say that there is more to it than just >> fighting between governments. One really important part of it is >> stopping the transportation of pests from one area to another. This is >> very important to a lot of people. Examples of this failing in the USA >> include, rats, kudzu, dandy lions, starlings, cats, dogs, and a big >> bunch of bugs like Japanese beetles, fire ants and tent caterpillars >> and a bunch of diseases too. I would think any ecosystem with pockets >> of isolation would have this problem. > > Once you have multiple planets and their ecosystems to worry > about, little differences might pale, or the need for strict > controls to stop alien pests effectively means controls for > any pests. If your ecosystem is messed up by Terrans and > their crops, who cares about more contamination? But if you > took painstaking steps to prevent Terran invaders, would > you want that ruined by intercontinental invaders? Could go > either way. >
>> There could be checks for drugs, weapons, crime and other stuff to >> depending on the government. > > If each planet tends to be a single political entity, stuff > like illegal migration or smuggling is no issue. The other > checks would depend on the most pressing problems and the > attention span of the population. War on Terror, War on > Drugs, War on Maglev Muggers ... Remember, this is a TL10 culture, which has been TL10 for a long, long (a couple thousand years) time. This means that all sorts of surveillance is pervasive and accepted. It's pretty trivial to use surveillance cameras, facial recognition, gait recognition, ID with radio transmitters, millimeter band radars, automated xray equipment, neutron scanners, and probably a whole bunch of stuff we can't even think of to track who and what gets on board. Technology also removes the need to smuggle lots of stuff. Little need to risk shipping bombs across the world, if you can make them instead. Same with drugs and guns. Small scale automated production facilities are all over the place. While it's much, much cheaper to use dedicated production facilities to build things on a commercial scale, for one-off runs, repair parts, and such, little mini-facs will work just fine. And they're everywhere: Anywhere you'd find a machine shop today (and there are machine shops places you might not expect -- hospitals, universities, and more have them for maintenance and research work -- as well as dedicated machine shops, machine shops attached to factories) plus every deep space venturing ship, station, or isolated facility, plus assorted random ones owned by hobbyists and inventors. -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
