>In the future of space, it's really easy for a planetary government to produce or replicate virtually any major resource or food except FTL fuel
What would interstellar trade consist of if everyone can easily feed themselves and produce enough equipment to keep everyone relatively comfortable?
In the future of space...
Austin Powell
Nicholas Bennett
FTL fuel. Slaves.
Cameron Wood
Art, science, designs, games, philosophies, entertainment, basically new information. New ideas.
Andrew Flores
You still need materials to make these things unless you're going to bullshit that anything can be made from nothing.
Even in Star trek they didn't let people use teleporters and replicators willy nilly because it requires power to use it.
So how about we narrow down the [infinite can do anything] into something we can work with.
Kevin Hall
Also, tourism. Tourism is basically trading experiences.
Logan Thomas
For starters this sounds like a massively contrived situation. You're telling me every single inhabited world has the means to produce any resource they need infinitely? I don't even understand how you could make any sort of conflict around this other than these infinite food and gas-producers are extremely stingy with who they give their exponentially-increasing resource stocks to.
I guess another big question is how exaclty does the FTL work? Is it hyperspace? Stargates? What is this fuel you need to travel between systems? Where does it come from? Why would people want it? Can you synthesize it? Who has it, and who doesn't have it?
Brody Foster
FTL fuel and entertainment.
Games, movies, books, porn, etc.
Sentient life forms crave enrichment, there is no permanent satisfaction, unless you also want to have some kind of Star Trek holodeck + computer AI that can replace creativity on a whim (e.g. "computer, reconfigure my quarters into a waterpark", "computer, write me a political intrigue novel about a roguish prince").
Otherwise artists will be the main resource of culture.
Nathan Barnes
Those same products, because the name of the game at that point is corporate propaganda. You gotta make them think the products you make are better, even if they're making a literally identical product.
Luis Martin
>What would interstellar trade consist of if everyone can easily feed themselves and produce enough equipment to keep everyone relatively comfortable?
>Tourism
I don't think Tourism will ever go out of style no matter what happens; there'll always be a market for people who want to experience the real deal physical place of some foreign land or unique land mark, etc..
They want to experience the dinosaur planet, or spend a summer on the moon of a gas giant, or maybe go hitch-hiking across an agriculture and-nothing-but-agriculture terraformed planet.
>Media, Entertainment, Works of Art
The need for entertainment will always be constant and that won't be any different in the future where people will still most likely buy and sell pieces of media: movies, anime/cartoons/comics/manga/whatever space has to offer. There's a very real chance people will still be watching Seinfeld while we're living on mars.
>Patent/Information exchange
I'd imagine with everything being replicated or multiplied artificially people won't have to compete for resources, but planets 'may' have to purchase or bid on access to patents, documents, information or otherwise recipies on how to create new tech or replicate certain resources, etc..
Europa for example could have an extensive organic printing list compiling their millions of fish species both wild and domestic and some would be public domain (just basic bitch fish to create a functional ecosystem), some one time purchase stock (for start up/basic aquaculture) and then their premium genetically engineered/domesticated stock for fancy livin' which would request a royalty fee.
Adam Brown
it could just be that's it's 'practically infinite'. Let's say in the entire milky way Galaxy there's only fifty earth-like planets.
With entire star systems to tap for resources and the potential other technological implications of FTL, than you can basically have enough for everyone.
Christopher Adams
>Everything boiling down to "arts and ideas"
If space pirates are ripping off information and entertainment instead of physical goods, would that make the PCs that oppose them hardcore DRM enforcers?
Owen Long
>Let's say in the entire milky way Galaxy there's only fifty earth-like planets.
>With entire star systems to tap for resources and the potential other technological implications of FTL, than you can basically have enough for everyone.
Really though; if you have access to even a solar-systems worth of resources it would lessen the extent or importance of finding earth-like planets due to how much it would ease the difficulty of terraforming or otherwise making "less than ideal" planets habitable.
On that note: it feels like the more we look out into other systems the more we might be "allowed" to actually scrutinize and redefine our definition of "Earth-like planet" since our current model is becoming more and more common than we think.
Noah Bailey
No, money is completely gone in this future man.
Why would you need money? To buy a personal replicator? Because everything else is free now. Unless this is a future where replicator technology is only held by people like the government or some body above the normal people, and it's creations are used as backups for when crops fail or ships explode, in which case there would be fucking billions of dollars flowing into espionage groups to fucking get that shit into the public's hands, which it inevitably would, which ends money.
Money only exists because we need to spend money to buy essential goods, which bleeds over into creating things like art for money to buy those goods. If there is no more money, entertainment is only created by the auteurs, because things like corporations don't exist when there is no money anymore.
Cooper Diaz
So essentially, techno-communism?
Thomas Richardson
Patent officers.
Aaron Kelly
Liam Green
Basically. The only way Communism can easily work without effort, even. Post-scarcity economy. An economical situation where resources are unlimited.
Since the entire economic system is built on supply and demand, if there is infinite supply, then demand will never be able to outpace it, which creates a price of 0.
With essentials out of the way forever, money is already fucked, but could possibly survive. We have a system in place, after all. It's hard for it to break down.
But then you realize he said EVERYTHING is infinite. Which means manufacturing is done. Full, perfect automation. That entire industry is gone.
The only jobs that would continue to exist would be skill-related jobs (pilot, firefighter, police) and maintaining replicators. And they would have to do it altruistically, because any money they would be paid would be worthless. And this is assuming in this world, robots can't do those in place of humans.
Blake Phillips
Unless you have AIs that produce creativity, there will still be demands for entertainment with a finite supply.
Kayden James
But here's the thing. what are you going to spend the money on as an entertainer? More entertainment?
You can create a system of money based on gold, food, even people. But there's never been a system of money based off of entertainment. It doesn't make sense. How would it work?
Julian Morales
>But here's the thing. what are you going to spend the money on as an entertainer? More entertainment?
Yes? Why does this idea strike you as absurd? If I'm a football player, that doesn't mean my entertainment consists entirely of my own football playing. Sometimes I might want to play some vidya, or watch a movie.
Luke Brown
Things like emergency responders would probably have been replaced by robots too. It's a lot safer to send a robot with ultrasound and UV sensors into a burning building than a human.
William Ward
But it doesn't work as a currency. If only entertainers are making money, then how do normal people make the money to pay entertainers? Not everyone can be an entertainer, hell, most people can't. Where is the source of this money? Is it a Government backed entertainment budget? Or some kind of Entertainer's Guild thing?
Cameron Nelson
In an interstellar empire, you could have whole planets of just a couple million people. You don't need a ton of resources for every planet.
Trade would only be in:
1. Luxury goods
2. Experiences.
or 3. Commodities, and that's only if planets specialize in being the planet of making steel real good, making cars real good, etc.
Jeremiah Rogers
The fuel needed for FTL is depression.
But all the civilized people of the setting are perfectly happy, so they had to create a more primitive but sapient livestock species in an artificial environment for this resource.
Humans on Earth.
I probably stole this idea from SMBC.
Angel Murphy
FTL fuel enterprises obviously
So yes everyone has to be employed as an entertainer or a fuel miner, or they don't get to enjoy the entertainment district (they still get all the other support though)
Dominic Walker
You just described The Culture.
And the answer to your question is that there is no trade. You've created Techno-Communism, which is about the only way that communism can work.
The only thing worth anything in your scenario is FTL travel itself. Which is probably done on a bartering for entertainment or reputation system, since currency won't exist.
Entertainers are paid in prestige and recognition. Possibly favors and an in route to high society of other entertainers and politicians. Also probably all the pussy and/or cock they could possibly want.
Dominic Walker
Well technically right now we could feed and clothe the entire population of the world, but transportation and distribution are major limiting factors. I would imagine something similar would happen on a galactic scale so trade is very dependent on how easy it is to transport materials between locations and where industrial/processing centers are.
Adrian Allen
>currency won't exist
People will either use FTL fuel as currency if it's trivial to store and carry, or will have a symbolic currency that's used only for entertainment and FTL fuel. Maybe the currency will be backed BY fuel, who knows.
As long as people assign value to things, currency will develop because it's more convenient than barter.
Henry Torres
This is the reason we in real life ship fruit half way around the world rather than growing it where it is eaten. If FTL travel is very easy then it might be simpler to ship goods all over the galaxy rather than make them in place.
David Roberts
Memes.
David Diaz
FTL fuel, replicator feedstock, information, and copyrighted intellectual property.
Landon Lee
There is enough material in Sol to build a dyson sphere, there is enough material in the galaxy to cover every star in the milky way in a dyson sphere. Metals are practically infinite and a single solar system can sustain hundreds of trillions of people.
Currency could be batteries, energy is always useful.
Landon Butler
>slaves
if such a theoretical government could produce or replicate any major resource or food, could they not also make machines to do the work that slaves would?