I never saw it as a problem, really. How does planet Earth support it's population? We're talking 250 million people here, it is really not that many people when you think of it. Also all of them are on cardamine - now to my knowledge the effects of cardamine/what kind of "real life" drug it resembles havent really been explored deeper, but in my imagination it equates to something similar to cocaine, which reduces the feeling of hunger. In other words massive over-consumption (as we see it in the Western world in real life) probably wouldn't be an issue, which in turn of course will lead to a smaller demand for food (just enough food to sustain the individual / RDI).
Also the Maltese House is more than a hodge-podge of tattered desperate pirates who cant find their arses with both hands. They are a proud, intellectually superiour and filthy rich house in their own right.
And when people go "duh but Malta doesnt have big corporations like lolberty", let me just remind you that there are plenty of other production modes than 20th century capitalism.
Also for a sense of scale (real life example ahead, watch out!), it is estimated that organized crime in Italy alone has an annual revenue of approximately ~285 billion USD - FIAT (the italian car company with several sub-brands) has a revenue of ~74 billion USD... Recently there was a European Union report that sought to estimate the entire revenue for organized crime in Europe and compared these to the largest corporations in Europe - the revenue of organized crime far far far surpassed that of the largest european corporations. Can't remember the title of the report, but I'll try and find it. To put it short: Organized crime is a huge moneymaker!!!
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' Wrote:Citations needed.
Citations taken from FLDev, with IDS number appended. Go look em up if you don't trust me.
Here's what the Zoner's of Freeport 10 provide Malta with. Mostly commercial and industrial goods imported from the core systems, not crops:
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Many of the components that we use to build our ships come from this base. It is one of the reasons we let the Zoners live here. Ship Hull Panels, Construction Machinery, and Polymers are only a portion of the goods we ship to Malta.
Agriculture (not sure if this one is vanilla or dev handiwork):
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Once we discovered how to use Alien Organisms, the agriculture on Malta boomed. The creatures make for a kind of super fertilizer that causes the Cardamine grasses to grow twice as fast and become twice as potent. They even allow more Foods to grow on Malta.
More food:
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We have lived so long on Malta that our genes have mutated, and now we require Cardamine to live. On Malta it's in everything: our Food, soil, air, and Water. After a while it got so we needed it. Somehow the Cardamine also had a negative effect on our birth rate. Fewer and fewer Outcasts are being born, though we live much longer.
Maltese food - top pick for addict chow, everywhere:
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Cardamine has changed my life. It's the greatest stuff you can imagine. You have really strange hallucinations with heavy doses -- flying across alien landscapes, seeing creatures and places that you can't imagine. It's truly an amazing trip. I've noticed that I'm gradually losing interest in eating regular old Synth Paste. I've heard that Outcast Food is more palatable to heavy Cardamine users. Not sure why.