Panelists included Ted Chiang, Karen Lord, Aaron Thul, and moderator John Scalzi.
How would an interstellar economy work?
– trade is limited by transport speed
– current sci fi tendency is to simply scale up international economies
– micro-economies will exist forever
– economies of scale don’t work so well at interstellar scales.
– non economy-based desires – food, fetishes, etc – could drive interstellar trade
– economic asymmetries
– interstellar economics is difficult to make plausible and rational
– or maybe it’s just an allegory
– value-add makes such economies feasible
– economies have historical inertia
– status is more important than possessions.
– asymmetries drive economies