This video is great... he kind of glossed over it, but the reporting tool they use is designed to let them know when "players are doing things that are outside of the normal" so they can go "correct it."
i.e. the BGS is nothing more than a tool to not have to store large databases and NOT a tool to help develop a growing, player-driven economy.
For those who haven't watched the above video at the timestamp (I recommend it), the idea is that every system has a "normal" and that a player will come in and buy from that station, which they record as a "deviation from the normal" (i.e. a station stocks 1,000 fish units, and a player buys 200, so the station records that as a modifier "0.8" of the normal, so that the next player can see that 200 units have been bought), and over time, the station BY ITSELF raises the number back to normal. This is not affected by players, or what systems are nearby, or anything but a multiplier incrementing its way back to "1.0."
That's why in Smeaton, they just kept feeding passengers over and over... and sometimes you'd find it really hard to get them and sometimes they'd be plentiful. It's got nothing to do with Allen Hub, or any other nearby system, it's just a number modifier climbing its way back to "1."