Why is smuggling bass-ackwards?

[Cross]

The whole point of smuggling is to sneak illegal (or at least un-taxed) goods into a region where they are otherwise illegal (or heavily taxed), such that one may thus realize high profit in trading said items on the black market. This obviously comes with some elevated degree of risk for the people involved, as the thuggish minions of the PTB take a dim view on such free-market capitalism.

In Elite, however, smuggling carries all of the risks and yet smuggled goods (that are otherwise hard or impossible to obtain in the target market) are worth half their normal market value on the black market. Why would smuggling even exist in this universe, when there's obviously no demand for the smuggled items?

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

A big yep to this thread, it's broken and this is the primary reason why no one does it.

 

[anikaiful]

Been wondering that too... and thus avoiding anything related to smuggling unless absolutely necessary (rep increases, etc).

 

[Ben Ryder]

The whole point of smuggling is to sneak illegal (or at least un-taxed) goods into a region where they are otherwise illegal (or heavily taxed), such that one may thus realize high profit in trading said items on the black market. This obviously comes with some elevated degree of risk for the people involved, as the thuggish minions of the PTB take a dim view on such free-market capitalism.

In Elite, however, smuggling carries all of the risks and yet smuggled goods (that are otherwise hard or impossible to obtain in the target market) are worth half their normal market value on the black market. Why would smuggling even exist in this universe, when there's obviously no demand for the smuggled items?

Yup nut so far FD have dropped smugglers a bone in the way of onionhead but the mechanics are messed up. Making smuggling profitable does undermine a lot of Elite in the sens that in the fiction its clever but in the game it's not a hansolo adventure. And people and players are greedy. See how the rare items went mental? Can you imagine people 'gaming' smuggling? Yuk. All those bad elements being frame-shifty.

In many ways its like fight club.