Most people probably have crap to decently crap lives in the Sector. If you’re living on an agri world on a Luddic planet, farming or making cheap consumer goods like clothes or tools, life probably isn’t so bad. If you’re a miner on a TriTachyon repossession colony, burning your paycheck on drugs just to stay sane, not so much.

Consider that crew are probably fairly skilled laborers in a hazardous job and only get paid 10 credits per month. That’s 120 credits per year. Now, it’s possible that these guys are one step above indentured servants considering they can be ejected into the vacuum of space with literally zero consequence, but let’s pretend that’s not the case. Let’s say they’re lower middle class workers, making the equivalent of maybe $70,000 a year. Engineers, technicians, maintenance workers, ex-military weapons experts, and pilots. That fits for Marines too, who are payed twice that for considerably more dangerous work. A small trading frigate costs around 10,000 credits, or roughly 5.8 million dollars in today’s money. In other words, completely out of reach for the average joe to ever pay off. You would need the mother of all loans to just get your feet off the ground. Once you’re there making money gets a lot easier, but if you’re just dropped into the Persean Sector as a complete rando you’re probably SOL.