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Old 11-12-2004, 09:56 PM   #13
Ian Wright
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: Infninte Economy

Commodities prices will drop like a rock. Remember, in our history gold rushes started when settlers looked at a region and realized that all they needed to get rich was a pack to carry the gold in. People used to find fist-sized lumps of gold lying in California streams. In Pennsylvania crude oil used to bubble up from the ground in sufficient quantities to be collected by bucket. Imaging what must be lying around in uninhabited worlds, where people haven't been picking up the good stuff for twenty thousand years.

The real money is going to be in unique information. Even if a worldline is broadly identical to Homeline, that doesn't mean the details are the same. Sure, both timelines had a Picasso - But in their version he was a modernist architect. His designs might not be comfortable, but how much would a snob pay to live in a Picasso design. And on a personal note, I would cheerfully murder a hundred kittens for a new never-seen-before Modigliani.

Getting away from art, very different worldlines will have put time and effort into developing different technologies. You can't be good at everything, and odd parralel (Parallel? Parrallell? Paaraaleel?) worlds may be very advanced in materials design, or electronics, or software - Imaging a world where Microsoft Windows works all the time!

And tourism - See the Avesbury Haligdom, grand jewel of the Waelwulfsson Dynasty! Visit the Temple of the Mount in Unconquered Jerusalem! Wallow in decadence in the famous Tokyo love hotels!

Wait. That last world in the guide book...
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