I've actually had this discussion with Karst before, and something he brought up did make sense to me regarding ore hauling. While we mostly interact with stations, the population of a station is normally around the 500-700 mark. If we look at the population of planets it's millions or billions. It's reasonable for a faction to haul ore to its house of origin. Cryer hauling Platinum would be p dumb, Cryer hauling Niobium to New Berlin is also kind of dumb. Cryer hauling Niobium to it's own factories(inrp) in Liberty? Totally fine.
