Wormhole Economics

A standard trope in space opera is that a planet is rich because it has a lot of wormhole junctions in its system (Bujold, Weber, etc).

Presumably the historical analogy would be of a port city: assuming it's possible to make non-zero-sum trades, being in a position to conveniently make lots of trades will increase your success a lot more.

However, it seems the trope is normally that they _start_ by taxing other people's trade that passes through, and only then start trading. There's obviously lots of precedent for that in history: I think there's a natural progression from "pirate" to "oligarch/noble"? But is this economically accurate, or just an author's somewhat distorted idea of how it would work?

Stuffed toy hanging from telephone wire

There's a stuffed toy hanging from a telephone wire across Chesterton High Street. Is it worth seeing if BT care? I asked the council and they say it's not their problem and to phone BT, but if it doesn't harm the wire I don't see why BT would care.