I'd think it'd be more that the low population worlds trade among themselves, rather than the trade being low pop <-> high pop.

The median distance from a low pop (<= 10^5) imperial world to a high pop (>= 10^9) imperial world is 2.49 parsec (meaning Jump-3 is needed, generally). 

Histogram, for those curious about it: 
https://i.imgur.com/RYBMFAG.png







-------- Original Message --------
On January 20, 2018 1:03 PM, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:


Remember, we are thousands & thousands of years into the future. MakerBots would be very, very old hat.

And would be avail just about anywhere & everywhere.

Still, for obvious reasons, I prefer to imagine 'Free Trading' would be still be possible.

Also, how would all those dinky systems pay for imports? Esp if the Hi-Pop systems don't really need anything?
Aren't we back to "info & artifacts"? (The initial 'MakerBots' would be imported but then....)

BTW, how many 1-9 billion Hi-Pop worlds are there?