Note that, in the setting postulated in Traveller's Three Black Books, especially in their 1977 edition, star travel is infrequent, dangerous, and expensive.
A parsec's passage in cold sleep (with its 15% mortality rate!) is Cr1,000. Traveller Credits are said to be $3 each in 2020-or-so real-world USD (prior to the current wave of inflation). So, $3,000 just to travel, at a risk to your life, to a neighboring world. Crossing the subsector (8 parsecs) would cost you $24,000. One way. In dangerous cold sleep.
Normal "Mid Passage" without the risks of cold sleep costs $24,000 per parsec. Crossing the subsector will cost $192,000.
Add to that the risks of engine failure and/or "misjump" of the ship you are riding even when in "safe" Mid Passage. And frequent piracy. And hijacking (ships are worth a lot, so thieves abound).
People don't travel casually.
PCs are Travellers - belonging to the small class of people who actually travel frequently, be that thanks to wealth/Travellers' Aid Society membership, or due to having a job on a starship. Most NPCs stay on their homeworld.
Also, the average (and approximately median) world has hundreds of thousands of residents. The average world, isolated by the dark gulfs of space, has the population of a small city.
Worlds with billions of residents are rare, and, if their tech level permits, are often local hegemons. This has interesting implications to interstellar warfare. First of all, given ship size and availability, expect even large planetary invasions to be the equivalent of the Third Battle of Cartagena rather than of D-Day. Second, as world populations are typically small, a reasonably-sized mercenary unit can often have local military significance.
That's Classic Traveller as written originally. Within a few years, it evolved and changed into a more "open" space-opera setting, with various unified task systems and with a grander, less isolated setting. Passage costs remained high, but starships grew, and the setting changed from one or two subsectors rolled by the Referee to the vast Imperium.
My own Cepheus Deluxe books and settings were inspired by these later mechanics, while trying to preserve some of the original spirit. But they are quite different from the original form of Traveller. If I were to write an OSR book in the spirit of such original, it would have looked quite different from Cepheus Deluxe.
I've read posts from three different bloggers recently, that along with my own re-reading of classic SF has me gathering up notes for a post on my own blog. So I'm compelled to make a brief comment here, for now, while I continue my wool-gathering on the subject. To each their own, but to me I think you're reading too much into it. It’s been clearly stated there was no "setting" assumed for either edition of CT, 77 or 81. Rather it's a toolbox, to create your own setting for gaming. I just went and peeked at the Book 1 introduction to the 81 edition; yep, that’s what it is. Looking quickly at Book 3, Miller specifically says the tables are just prods to the imagination, and are there because it’s a stretch to expect the referee to just straight-out imagine hundreds of worlds. One last look, at the Final Word in Book 3. Sure enough, the Traveller books are just a framework, you have to tailor the game to your imagination. Since everything in the game is specifically provided with the expectation that you will modify it to suit your own ideas, I don’t see the utility of trying to divine a setting that was “intended.” Instead, I’d point to the enthusiastic flood of player-designed alternatives that have seen publication over the decades since Traveller hit the gaming table (including your own), and say, “This is what you’re supposed to do. Create.”
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Your blog post about the implied setting of Classic Traveller was a captivating read. It's always fascinating to delve into the world of tabletop role-playing games, and your insights shed light on the nuances of this classic system.
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