Social Status and poverty gameplay

I recently started my first Traveller game, and I had an interesting discussion with one of my players. He rolled a marine brigadier with a social standing of 14, and he requested we have a conversation about what that means. The game has a Social Standing stat. I understand this stat to indicate your place in society. A high Soc might mean you come from a privileged background, or that you have climbed the social ladder during your career. A low Soc probably means you come from poverty, or at least the working class. However, the game assumes that you will be travelling the stars, doing dangerous and isolating jobs for profit. A lot of the game is built around earning money on risky ventures. High status people usually have a lot of money, and even if they don't, they have the opportunity to live comfortably. They don't usually need to take these kinds of risks. So, how do you square the circle of high Soc characters hiring onto free traders and mercenary crews? I don't want to mandate that every character with Soc in the double digits is a noble in exile, but I'm not exactly sure how else to go about this. Any ideas? Am I misunderstanding the Soc stat? How do you explain very high status characters hiring onto janky trade ships? EDIT: Also, are there any good guidelines on this from later editions? EDIT 2: Lots of good advice and plenty of interesting alternatives here, thanks. I'll pitch some ideas to the player and see what he thinks. submitted by /u/HawkSquid [link] [comments]
http://dlvr.it/Sjfkrz