On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 03:21:27PM -0700, Craig Berry wrote:
> Yes; by the 57th Century (heck, by the 22nd Century) we should be
> able to create anything we want "magically" (3d printing, nanites,
> or whatever).  Trade in anything other than information makes no
> sense in such a world.

Efficiency, capital costs, and production volume are still
considerations.  I worked some examples of production volume for
nanoscale fabrication techniques some time ago in this list.  With
fairly generous estimates, it worked out to be very slow for
general-purpose assemblers.  It also ties up some quantity of your
nanoscale fabrication capacity, which then can't be used to make
something else of value until later.

Specialized production will always be more efficient, and resources
(of a great many types) are not evenly distributed.  Even supposing
that many worlds have built up substantial specialized capacity in
lots of goods, what happens when the local demand for those goods
falls?  They're going to have an interest in exporting the surplus.

But still, it is interesting to consider the alternative scenario in
which any goods can be made almost for free locally anywhere.  That
would include starships, for example.  Then the primary cost of
starship operations would drop to basically just the labour cost of
crew to operate them.

> It should be noted that polities will often use regulatory methods
> to push back against this principle.

Also pushing it forward: e.g. imagine that there's some interstellar
political body charged with promoting and protecting interstellar
trade, and which has a financial interest in such trade.  In some
settings such a body might even have been operating for more than a
millennium.

- Tim