[TML] AWAD: Texaco

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 2/3/08 7:07 PM, "Timothy Little" <tim at little-possums.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 03, 2008 at 06:02:06PM -0500, Richard Aiken wrote:
>> I know the CT rules literally say "0-No inhabitants," but the next
>> step up is "1-Tens of inhabitants."  So I always took the "0" level to
>> actually mean "Less than ten inhabitants."
> 
> I always took it to mean "no permanent legal inhabitants".  So there
> could be hundreds or even thousands, but they're all citizens of some
> other system.  They might even be workers who have children born
> there, and most of them are not scheduled to leave until they retire
> in 30 years, but they're still not counted as "inhabitants" for
> official purposes.
> 
> A similar alternative I used once was a planet that did actually have
> thousands of people permanently living there, but their presence was
> illegal.  The world was legally owned and in pre-colonization stages
> of development by others - and had been for nearly a century.

I've seen this interpretation many times.  In this regard, it's really
"citizens", not "inhabitants".  Same for situations where the pop code
doesn't register somebody because they weren't found by the survey team, or
recognized as intelligent beings, or simply not reported as inhabitants by
the recognized government...