Economics In RPGs 6b: Pre-Digital Tech Age Ch 2

Image by schachnerah from Pixabay
This is literally the second part of the article I posted last week, so I’ll forego all the usual preamble bits and pieces, just as I did the last time this happened, diving straight in from where I left off – well, almost.
Writing like this sometimes has strange confluences and coincidences, and in this case, it means that I need to insert a footnote that should have been part of the previous post, but could not possibly have been included.
Explaining that statement, and giving context to the actual footnote itself, requires a little real-life background. I’ll keep it as brief as I can.
One of the free-to-air TV channels here in Australia is SBS, or the “Special Broadcasting Service”. This channel specializes in multicultural content, sourcing programs from all over the world, often in multiple languages; where these are not subtitled, the channel has its own small-scale translation-and-subtitling operation. This is the channel that has broadcast everything from the original (Japanese) Iron Chef, South Park, Who Do You Think You Are? (British & Australian varieties, and sometimes the US franchise as well), amongst many others (some of them quite odd-ball).
They have also broadcast numerous science documentaries, championed Soccer and Cycling, taking them from virtually non-existent in terms of TV coverage to national prominence, and the channel broadcasts news services from many different countries, from Vietnam to Germany to the US.
I’ve referenced their programming in a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery – from
- A Hint Of Tomorrow: The Future Evolution Of Homo Sapiens
- The Thrill Of The Chase
- The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 3
- Thinking Alien Thoughts: Roleplaying First Contacts
- The Olympian Perspective: Personal Opinions, Fake News, and the GM
- An Amazing Ancestry
- Growing The Perfect Family Tree part 1 and Part 2
- The Miracle Of Wood
- The Inevitability of Extraordinary Characters
- Throw Me A Life-line: A Character Background Planning Tool
- Ask The GMs: The Passage Of Substantial Time
- The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs
- Layers Of Mis-translation: RPGs and Dubbed TV
- And, last but not least, Flavors Of Victory: Why do good GMs fail?
- Plus, of course, a number of the documentaries were referenced in the Pulp Reference Library series (notably shelves 3 and 6).
They also do a lot of history doccos, and somehow the 5-30PM-6:30PM time-slots on Saturday & Sunday have become reserved as a “World War 2” spotlight. They’ve tried other programming then, but this is the subject that they return to, time after time – presumably because that’s what rates best!
So that’s the background, now to the footnote itself:
Blood Money: Inside The Nazi Economy
Over the weekend just past, in the 5:30-6:30 “World War 2” time-slot, SBS broadcast a two-part French documentary, “Blood Money: Inside The Nazi Economy” (link is to the IMDB page for the series). While this is not available (yet!) on DVD, Amazon has it for streaming, free, and the two parts can be found on YouTube (as of this writing: Part 1: A World War on Credit, Part 2: An Economy Of Death).
Had this broadcast taken place a week earlier, I would have referenced it in last week’s post; but at the time I didn’t even know that it existed. So I have to insert it as a post-scripted footnote, instead, because I think it’s worth pointing to (even though I have not yet had time to watch it, myself).
With that piece of old business out of the way, I can get back to business.
Government For The People
It’s a canonical element of the US Declaration Of Independence – “A government of the people, for the people”. From a modern perspective, it seems that the term “people” wasn’t treated anywhere close to universally until the post-war period, and the eventually successful Civil Rights movement – a success that some seem intent on undoing at the moment, but I’ll leave that alone.
The changes wrought by the Civil Rights movement had their roots in the more egalitarian treatment of minorities during World War 2, which paralleled those of Women in World War 1. This treatment was far from demonstrated equality, but it was the thin end of a wedge, paving the way for a gradual process of integration.
Rather than focus on that, which is very well-trodden ground, I’d like to draw reader’s attention to the other end of the relationship, and the effect on the government of accepting this philosophy of equality.
Governing for the people was generally held to mean protecting the populace from threats where the inequalities of power and wealth left them at a disadvantage; it didn’t matter whether or not that disadvantage was systemic or a function of the differences between theory and practical reality. The job of the government – well, one of them – was to stand up for the little guy in the face of corporate greed and excess.
Liberty Vs Social Responsibility
You can’t do that without restraining the liberty of those corporate entities that would or could put profits ahead of the welfare of the people around them.
I’ve read a lot of very bad fiction in which corporate ‘bad guys’ have a revelatory moment and turn from the immoral “dark side” of profits first, last, and at all points in between. While I have no doubt that individuals can experience a Dickensian transformation and re-prioritize the long-term over the immediacy of profits, all these works suffer from the same fallacy of wishful thinking:
As soon as these newly-enlightened CEOs tried to implement their new policies of “corporate responsibility’, the board of directors would vote the CEO out, because their job is to make as much money as possible for the stockholders. And if they didn’t, those shareholders would revolt and force changes in the board’s makeup, because they didn’t invest to be responsible corporate citizens, they invested to make money.
It follows that any corporation that is well-run will always prioritize profits over corporate responsibility, doing the bare minimum required by law (and less if they can get away with it, or think they can). Which puts the burden on responsibility onto the shoulders of those who write those laws.
- SIlkwood (1983 film starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher);
- Erin Brockovich (2000 film starring Julia Roberts)
- A Civil Action (1998 film starring John Travolta), and the 1995 book of the same name by Jonathon Harr;
- and The Pelican Brief (1993 film starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington), and the 1992 book of the same name, by John Grisham.
Economic Protections
There are four primary tranches of protections created by, and enforced by, the government of the time. the first of these is economic – protecting the banks from failure and making sure that profitable businesses pay their fair share of taxes to support the work of government.
The latter function had always been part of the role of government, and often characterized (or mis-characterized) as self-interest on the part of those governments. The exemplar of rebellion against such self-service has always been the Robin Hood myth, but it has become recast as a form of social rebellion – in essence, claiming that if you object to some element of what the government is doing with “your” money, you are entitled to evade the tax obligation as much as you can.
But it was the credit restrictions and other financial reforms that emerged from the Great Depression as part of the New Deal that were the primary economic protection implemented in the course of the Pre-Digital Tech Age.
Extremes of perspective as a tool for GMs
I’ve often found it useful to think of government regulation as ‘defining the perimeters’ within which corporate entities can seek profit-making opportunities. This is a view which completely discounts the costs of compliance, making it an ideological perspective, but it simplifies and exemplifies the government perspective on such matters.
Business interests, on the other hand, live in what they like to think of as ‘the real world’, in which those practicalities have to be taken into account. There is a clear conflict between these interests, creating an ‘us-vs-them’ environment that is extremely useful for storytelling.
Neither of these perspectives are entirely accurate; they both carry their respective philosophies to illogical extremes. Realities can be more nuanced, and this can also be useful grist for RPG plotlines.
It must be remembered that the players (and hence their PCs) will almost always view both from the perspective of the ‘citizen’ caught in the middle, validating plotlines of both corporate greed and government overreach. By painting the extremes so starkly, and allowing gradations of social responsibility in specific cases, and taking this perspective into account, the direction of ‘satisfying’ plotlines can be easily discerned.
Which makes this a useful conceptual tool for the GM.
Personal Protections
Ralph Nader started the personal protections function of government, expanding the policy function from protection against criminal deprivation to a broader mandate with his drive to force the wearing of seat belts in automobiles, balancing the liberty to choose (or risk) of the individual against a policy of protecting people from the consequences of poor personal choices.
He argued, and fought for, the principle that part of the job of government was to protect people from themselves. From this beginning grew the entirety of what is now called “Consumer Protection”, which attempts to force business interests, through government regulation, to ensure that products are (1) safe to use, and (2) able to satisfy the purpose for which they were purchased.
Caveat Emptor
Many don’t realize it, but truth-in-advertising laws derive from this same tenet. Consumer Protection seeks to overturn the old warning of “Caveat Emptor” (Buyer Beware) – but it can only ever do so imperfectly, so that principle still has validity. Interestingly, it was originally a warning against buying stolen goods, and is often now manifested in the proverb, ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is’.
Regulation, after all, does a fairly poor job of anticipating potential future needs; it fairs much better when there is a concrete example of misbehavior that it can legislate against, and from which it can generalize.
Acceptance
It took a surprisingly short time for people to come to accept this role of government, and even to expect it to protect them. Nader published “Unsafe At Any Speed” in 1965; a decade later, and many jurisdictions had laws which mandated the wearing of seat-belts (compliance is, as always, imperfect).
The US was a little slower than elsewhere, but not by very much. Compare the details of different national regulations from the table in Wikipedia: Seat Belt Legislation with those of the US from the state-by-state table in Wikipedia: Seat Belt Laws In the United States..
National Attitudes for Characterization
This delay, widely attributed (rightly or wrongly) by the rest of the world to the conflict between personal liberty and consumer protection, has begun to assume mythic proportions and an underpinning perception of the USA held by many. Australians generally believe that they have more rigorous Product Standards and consumer protections than anywhere else in the world (which is sometimes true, but I could not say its definitively accurate in all cases).
Generalized, this provides a valuable touchstone for differentiating characters from different parts of the world – Americans are more likely to accept personal risk, and have shaped their legal protections to accommodate this (hence their gun laws). Non-Americans are more willing to trust their government to patrol and limit their personal risk, and consider the benefits of doing so to be worth the price.
Neither perspective has to be right or wrong, but they are a reality that the GM can employ.
Medical Protections
This gives me the opportunity to wax on about one of my favorite subjects, Snake Oil and Snake Oil Salesmen. I’ve been fascinated by the subject of deceptions and frauds and scams for a long time, covering everything from the manipulative genius of Derren Brown through to the intricacies of mystery plotlines and a long-standing fascination with Optical Illusions.
But I’ve already covered that subject extensively in earlier parts of this series, so I won’t do that; suffice it to say that this is one area of life in which consumer protection was (and is) sorely needed.
The FDA was formed in 1906.
The history of the FDA can be traced to the latter part of the 19th century and the Division of Chemistry of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which itself derived from the Copyright and Patent Clause. Under Harvey Washington Wiley, appointed chief chemist in 1883, the Division began conducting research into the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs on the American market Wiley’s advocacy came at a time when the public had become aroused to hazards in the marketplace by muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair, and became part of a general trend for increased federal regulations in matters pertinent to public safety during the Progressive Era.
— Wikipedia, Food And Drug Administration
By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products that had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, mascara that could cause blindness, and worthless “cures” for diabetes and tuberculosis.
— Same source
FDR greatly increased the regulatory powers of the FDA as part of the New Deal. These regulations also granted emergency powers to the FDA, which were employed to authorize the mass vaccinations against Polio in the 1950s.
After the Thalidomide Scandal of the 1960s, these powers were significantly enhanced again. Americans were largely spared the horrors of Thalidomide thanks to the refusal of Frances Oldham Kelsey to authorize it for sale in the US because she had concerns about the lack of evidence regarding the drug’s safety, a position for which she came under attack by the manufacturer.
Experts estimate that thalidomide led to the death of approximately 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, with over half of them in West Germany. I have to admit to a personal stake in this story – my mother was prescribed Thalidomide but found it to be of little benefit, and so stopped taking it, and so I have no observed defects resulting from the drug; I have always regarded this as a bullet dodged. I have a distant cousin who was not so lucky; his left arm ended at the elbow, and I was constantly amazed by his ability to overcome this limitation.
What none of the articles report is the allegation contained in Arthur Hailey’s Strong Medicine, alleging that even after the Scandal broke and the connection between birth defects and Thalidomide was established, it continued to be sold in various third-world markets as a medication for morning sickness. While some of the criticism of the novel’s flaws is valid, I still regard it as a fairly balanced review of the benefits and potential pitfalls of a for-profit drug manufacturing environment and the regulatory necessity that the environment necessitates. Say what you will about his characters, Hailey did good research for his novels, making them useful reference sources for GMs.
There is, of course, serious downsides to the level of protection provided by these regulatory requirements – delays and expense. Watershed moments in medical regulation that occur outside the scope of this era include the creation of the Generic Drugs industry, which derives from a more streamlined approvals process in the 1980s, the carving out of exceptions in the case of life-threatening health emergencies that derive from the AIDS epidemic, and which led to 21st century reforms which enabled the rapid approval and distribution of Coronavirus Vaccines – despite the claims of some, now the most widely-tested vaccines in existence.
It is ironic, but a measure of the level of acceptance of medical regulation by the public, that the complaint of many who otherwise oppose government regulation is that these vaccines had not been sufficiently tested.
Environmental Protections
It’s a shame that the same level of respect is not endowed upon the EPA – an agency proposed and created by Richard Nixon in the 1970s after about twenty years of growing demand for environmental regulation.
This is not to suggest that there was no regulation prior to the founding of the EPA; there was, but it was distributed through many agencies, piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory in what it permitted and what it made illegal.
Pesticides, for example, were regulated by both the US Department Of Agriculture and the US Department of the Interior. There may have been some additional regulations regarding its transportation under the Department of Transport, too.
A lot of the modern perception of corporate culture actually stems from the problems attacked by the EPA through the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and the public perceptions created by popular culture in the 60s and 70s, for example by songs such as “Down By The River” by Albert Hammond.
Throughout the 1970s, there was a growing litany of stories about pollution and contamination of soil and water intruding into the public awareness. But my favorite references from popular culture stem from a later time:
To those references, you can add awareness of the history of Wittenoom in Western Australia (made famous internationally by the Midnight Oil song Blue Sky Mine, and the decades-long fight for compensation by victims of Asbestosis here in Australia plus the broader international lawsuits on the subject (refer Wikipedia – Asbestos and the Law – Litigation). I could also refer to the Ozone layer and current attempts to eliminate single-use plastics – attempts which appear to be failing – but this section is more than sufficiently comprehensive already.
Between them, these paint an almost cartoonish impression of business’ willingness to look the other way when it comes to environmental concerns. When generalized, this impression provides a foundation for environmentally-related plotlines, in much the same way as oversimplifications of the pharmaceuticals industry and consumer protection provide a framework for drama.
Responsibility By Proxy
Citizens have grown so used to the protections provided by these and similar agencies that they have generally forgotten what things were like before they were significantly empowered. There is a general sense in some circles that they don’t have to worry because the government wouldn’t let anything bad happen, and even that excessive regulation can be pared back without risk of significant harm.
Business, too, has grown accustomed to having restrictions placed upon them by such agencies, and while they will continually demand the elimination of regulation as “red tape”, they too have the attitude of “nothing bad will happen”. In general, this stems from a myopic perspective in which only they are able to flout, evade, or escape the protections, rather than considering the cumulative impact of many such acts of contamination.
The economic protections put in place by the New Deal were systematically weakened and watered down by successive governments until history was permitted to repeat itself, resulting in the GFC. New regulations were then put in place, only to be weakened or eliminated by the Trump presidency – which led to the recent banking crisis, and could easily have resulted in another GFC / Great Depression, had not intervention been successful.
Similar stories are emerging about environmental contamination after the weakening of the EPA, and the active undermining of public confidence in the FDA over Coronavirus vaccines and treatments is well-known. But all these lie in the future of this era, when the general perception is that anything can be fixed by an enlightened government – but there is always a question as to whether or not the price of that cure and clean-up is worth it.

A wonderful picture of a DC-3 in flight. Image by Ciarán Ó Muirgheasa from Pixabay
Aviation
After making a big deal about how I was saving this subject for this article, even though Aviation was born during the previous age, I managed to completely forget to include it when I initially laid out this article. Fortunately, I remembered before it was too late!
Aviation – specifically, powered heavier-than-air flight – began with the flight at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers, though there were several others who came close, creating many competing claims to the honor.
Clement Ader of France flew 50m in 1890, but failed to achieve sufficient altitude to claim the honor – at least, according to some. Ader claimed in November 1906 that he had made a successful “uninterrupted flight” of around 300m on October 14, 1897, for two officials from the French War Ministry were not convinced – and the test was designated a military secret and not publicly revealed until 1910. This claim was widely believed at the time, but later discredited.
On 14 August 1901, Gustav Whitehead claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. An account of the flight appeared in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald and was repeated in newspapers throughout the world.[citation needed] Whitehead claimed two more flights on 17 January 1902, using his Number 22 monoplane.
Whitehead claims are ignored or dismissed by mainstream aviation historians,
— Wikipedia, Early Flying Machines
— though a few consider them to be the first manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight – with no proof that they actually took place.
On 6 May 1896, Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia.
— Same source
— but these were unpiloted, and attempts to scale the aircraft up to sufficient size to permit the carriage of a pilot failed when the resulting aircraft proved too fragile.
Perhaps the most credible alternative claim belongs to Richard Pearse of New Zealand.
Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.:Ambiguous statements made by Pearse himself make it difficult to date the aviation experiments with certainty.
— Wikipedia, Richard Pearse
The problem is that all the evidence is undated. Confusion over the date was enough to deny Pearse credit for being the first – though he still has his champions, even today.
Pearse himself admitted in a 1909 interview, “I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904” – but what he meant by ‘practical’ remains unclear; did he mean that he made his flights in 1904, despite the witness recollections, or that he didn’t take the successful flights seriously until then? Pearse died in 1953, so we can’t seek clarification, but in a 1915 letter to the Evening Star, Pearse wrote,
“The honor of inventing the aeroplane […] is the product of many minds [but] pre-eminence will undoubtedly be given to the Wright brothers […] as they were actually the first to make successful flights with a motor-driven aeroplane.”
— Same source
To his credit, Pearse also described his flights as failing to be sufficiently controlled to qualify; his rudder would not work at speeds of less than 20 mph.
There were a number of other claimants to the honor, but they also fail to attract sufficient credibility either as to the dates, the flight profile, or whether they even took place.
So the Wright Brothers retain the official nod.
Aviation In WWI
Aviation developed in leaps and bounds during WWI, initially for aerial reconnaissance. Specialized variations began to appear, and pioneers pushed the limits of their machines, leading to the development of fighters, bombers, and trench strafers. Arguably, it was in the logistics of coordinating ground activities and aerial action that would be the greatest legacy.
Post-War
After the war, these early aviators began taking contracts for the delivery of mail at premium prices, and – in general – accepting any excuse to take their machinery into the air. But, as yet, they had neither the range nor the cargo capacity to be commercially viable operations.
And this is a series about economics.
Commercial Aviation
Aircraft engineering steadily improved through the post-war years, increasing both range and carrying capacity. To some extent, these were aspects of the same problem – heavier lifting capacity enabled the installation of a larger fuel tank – so it would be more correct to state that engine & fuel efficiency, aerodynamics, controls, and instrumentation steadily improved. Eventually a tipping point was reached at which point a commercially viable aircraft could be manufactured, not as a bespoke custom creation, but as an industrial product.
The Douglas DC-3 was the first commercially-viable aircraft. Capable of profitable operation carrying passengers alone, or of being reconfigured in various ways to make it a cargo aircraft, it was an extremely reliable workhorse.
Everything that commercial aviation became by the time of the oil crisis – the chosen end-point for this historical period – began with the DC-3.
Origins
8 years before the DC-3, Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, and a year later, Charles Kingsford-Smith flew solo across the pacific. These were harbingers of the impact that commercial aviation would have on the world, proving that it was now possible to get almost anywhere by air.
The DC-3 was preceded by the DC-2, a 14-passenger aircraft that competed with the Boeing 247.
In the early 1930s, fears about the safety of wooden aircraft structures drove the US aviation industry to develop all-metal airliners. United Airlines had exclusive right to the all metal twin-engine Boeing 247; rival TWA issued a specification for an all-metal trimotor.
The Douglas response was more radical. When it flew on July 1, 1933, the prototype DC-1 had a robust tapered wing, retractable landing gear, and two 690 hp (515 kW) Wright radial engines driving variable-pitch propellers. It seated 12 passengers.
— Wikipedia, Douglas DC-2
The year after the debut of the DC-2, Douglas unveiled the DC-3. It was all Boeing’s fault.
TWA’s rival in transcontinental air service, United Airlines, was starting service with the Boeing 247, and Boeing refused to sell any 247s to other airlines until United’s order for 60 aircraft had been filled. TWA asked Douglas to design and build an aircraft that would allow [them] to compete with United. Douglas’ design, the 1933 DC-1, was promising, and led to the DC-2 in 1934. The DC-2 was a success, but with room for improvement.
The DC-3 resulted from a marathon telephone call from American Airlines CEO C. R. Smith to Donald Douglas, when Smith persuaded a reluctant Douglas to design a sleeper aircraft based on the DC-2 to replace American’s Curtiss Condor II biplanes. The DC-2’s cabin was 66 inches (1.7 m) wide, too narrow for side-by-side berths. Douglas agreed to go ahead with development only after Smith informed him of American’s intention to purchase 20 aircraft.
— Wikipedia. Douglas DC-3
Many factors converged to make the DC-3 exceptional – improvements over the capabilities of the DC-2 in virtually every respect were incorporated.
The DC-3 cruised at 207 mph (333 km/h), carried 14 passengers in sleeper configuration or 21-32 passengers with traditional seats, or 6,000 lbs (2700 kg) of cargo, and could carry them 1500 miles (2400 km). It needed shorter airstrips than the DC-2. It was faster, cheaper to run, easier to maintain, more capable in the air, and more reliable.
Let’s put all that into a practical comparison:
Eastbound transcontinental flights could cross the U.S. in about 15 hours with three refueling stops, while westbound trips against the wind took 17½ hours. A few years earlier, such a trip entailed short hops in slower and shorter-range aircraft during the day, coupled with train travel overnight.
— Same source
Faster aircraft were soon developed – that cost a lot more to run and carried a lot less. Transports with greater capacity were developed – but they were slower and more expensive per pound of cargo. More economical aircraft were developed – with a fraction of the capacity, speed, and reliability. The DC-3 seemed to have magically landed on the ‘sweet spot’ of the optimum configuration.
If that were not the case, it is unlikely that it would have had the economic impact that it did; something else would have been the ‘iconic’ aircraft of its era.
The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules for airmail at its 1929 Postal Union Congress in London. Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par Avion, literally: “by airplane”.
For about the first half century of its existence, transportation of mail via aircraft was usually categorized and sold as a separate service (airmail) from surface mail.
— Wikipedia, Airmail
The impact of air mail is best measured in days. Before the service, there would have been a zone around the poster in which next-day delivery was possible (let’s simplify and assume a single delivery each day, even though many locations had two or more mail deliveries daily).
Beyond this range, there would have extended psuedopod zones along railroad lines, in which overnight delivery might still have been possible, depending on the speed of trains and the terrain over which they had to run. Outside these additions to the ‘next day’ zone would have been another of roughly equal distance in which ‘day after next’ delivery could be achieved, and so on. For coast-to-coast mail, 3-5 days of travel were required.
The DC-3 made next-day delivery to anywhere serviced by air traffic possible. If the postal destination was not in such a location, it might still have been a two-day process – at worst.
For anything truly urgent, cables by telegraph remained faster – but forewent privacy and length. And for most commercial agreements, privacy is essential.
But the greater impact was on personal communications. Before air mail, the speed of communications meant that a letter a month was the most that could be reasonably expected from family members who had moved elsewhere. It might take a week for such mail to be delivered, so there was no sense of immediacy; everything was at a distance. Even when rail transportation improved delivery speeds, occasional long letters remained the norm.
With air mail, everywhere became so much closer that it created a psychological point of difference; people thought about mail differently, even when they weren’t using the service. It became a reasonable expectation to get a (much shorter) letter every week, perhaps containing a photograph or souvenir. People’s lives became far more entwined.
This effect was doubled or more with respect to international mail – instead of three months by ship, it might be a week or two to send a letter by air.
Business Travel
Business travel to somewhere some distance away used to be a major undertaking – one planned to be away for a week or more, and that’s just within the continental US. Significant planning was required. This naturally compromised the scope of business.
Air travel used to be very expensive. If a New Yorker really had a business need to visit (say) San Francisco, three-to-five days rail travel – each way – was involved, plus the duration of stay in the remote city.
If you could afford air travel, that becomes one day each way. It’s still not enough to travel casually, but it is enough to make such travel routine. And, with the shorter time requirements, it becomes more acceptable to travel for just a few hours or for a day. If your schedule worked out, you could even travel and have a business meeting the same day.
Networks of businesses and employees become possible. Instead of needing to contract locally, you could negotiate with suppliers anywhere else in the continent – you might need to factor additional freight costs for the commodities, but with those factored in, you effectively had dozens or hundreds of suppliers competing for your business.
And you, in turn, were competing with dozens or hundreds of rivals who wanted to provide a better deal to your customers.
Air Freight
And that’s without factoring in any impact from air freight. This trades speed for price – but when you absolutely have to have it ASAP, air freight was the answer. Initially expensive, but economies of scale would make mail-order shopping a reality before the 1950s.
For a while, there were even products custom-built to travel by air freight – lighter and flimsier, but cheaper. It soon transpired that unnecessary bulk became a significant negative factor for local customers, too; leaner and cheaper was an effective market division.
Tourism
The price of air travel also yields to economies of scale. At first, something only the rich could afford, but by the 1960s, it was entirely reasonable to pack up the family and fly somewhere for a week’s vacation once a year. In the 70s and 80s, this effect would become international in scope.
Instead of spending four or five days in the car getting somewhere, and then four or five days coming back again, you could be there tonight – and spending six or eight days at your holiday destination.
Travel for tourism would not become casual until after this era was concluded, but non-casual travel for tourism starts now.
Personal
It suddenly becomes possible to travel in order to attend some family function. It’s still a big deal, but it can’t automatically be ruled out. This has two impacts of note.
First, it brings family closer together, breaking down the barrier of distance that made family cohesion so much harder to maintain. This is already underway because of the impact of air mail; personal travel acts as an amplifier.
Second. it reduces the impost of such family functions; instead of something really major (significant anniversary, marriage within the immediate family, parental funeral), it becomes acceptable to travel more regularly, so you need less of an excuse (birthday, graduation, whatever).
Secondary impacts
These are all primary impacts, stemming directly from the economic realities and possibilities of air travel. Secondary ripples are just as significant. Spending and shipping gifts becomes far more normal. Lots more people want to pay for transient accommodations, and food, and entertainment. There’s a wholesale shift in spending patterns for at least part of the year.
In the past, you might have cabled a florist, who fulfilled and delivered your order. Now you could send a cutlery set or nick-knack personally chosen to be valuable to the recipient. Result – store that sells the nick-knack has your money and the florist does not.
This isn’t a complete transformation; florists don’t all close overnight. What changes is personalization; where once, it would have been extremely difficult to arrange, it now becomes possible to include a personal, handwritten, card with a floral delivery without your going anywhere near the city of delivery.
Although it won’t be expressed in such terms, or even noticed, until the next era, what has happened is that distance has compressed. Faster travel makes the world smaller, makes more people (effectively) neighbors, and more closely connects the world.
But not half as much as the next significant development in this era will – though that will have to wait until the next chapter, I’m out of time!
In the next chapter – Space Flight, Miniaturization, Atomics, and RPG economics!
- Economics In RPGs 1: The Early Medieval
- Economics In RPGs 2: The Later Medieval
- Economics In RPGs 3: Pre-Industrial Eras
- Economics In RPGs 4: The Age Of Steam
- Economics In RPGs 5a: Electric Age Ch. 1
- Economics In RPGs 5b: Electric Age Ch. 2
- Economics In RPGs 6a: Pre-Digital Tech Age Ch 1
- Economics In RPGs 6b: Pre-Digital Tech Age Ch 2
- Economics In RPGs 6c: Pre-Digital Tech Age Ch 3
- Economics In RPGs 7: Economic Realities
- Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 1
- Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 2
- Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 3
- Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 4
- Economics In RPGs 8: The Digital Age Ch 5
- Economics In RPGs 9: In-Game Economics
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