[Kyle Aaron]

I don't think a lot would change, really. Homeline would continue on its present course.

Its present course, I'm assuming is like our own world's. Towards efficiency in use of labour, but not efficiency in use of resources. The future scarcity of resources would cause people to seek efficiency there. Having these conveyers would reduce that scarcity a bit.

However, only "a bit." Remember they cost a fortune.To set up an oil rig or gold mine will cost as much on some other world as it does here - you still need to pay people to dig the holes in the ground, still need the technical expertise, etc. And then you have to add to those costs the costs of transport. When the cost of transport is a $100 million conveyer, well... the cost per ton transported is very high compared to, say, container ships sailing the seas.

I'd be interested more not in the resources that get moved, but the people who get moved; not the economic, but the social effects. You're not going to stop illegal immigration from poor to rich worlds anymore than you can stop it from poor to rich countries in our own world. In our own world, this leads sometimes to racism, for example by Anglos towards Hispanics in the United States. But how would US citizens react if the underpaid migrant labour was not Hispanic, but "fellow Anglos" from a parallel world?

You might get, for example, some countries closing down their universities. Who needs to spend $200 million a year on a uni, when for $100 million upfront and $1 million for search teams, you can hire all the scientists and so on you want from other parallel worlds?

Or consider other sorts of migrants. Think of the German rocket scientists going to the USA after WWII. Now, Germany was only a few years ahead in that technology, but a few years can make a big difference. While the Infinite Worlds setting tells us that Homeline's the most advanced technologically, it doesn't follow that it's the most advanced in every area. If different countries on one world can have different technological strengths, or be strong in one area while relatively weak in another - what about different worlds?

Think also of the unemployed scientists of our world. We worried about former Sovet nuclear scientists going off to third world countries and offering their services. It'd be a logical extension of the current international arms trade to start trading scientists and engineers between worlds. Prime Directive? Haha.

But not only weapons guys. Imagine a Fleming figure going to, say, 1890. Penicillin being invented fifty years earlier would make quite a difference to WWI.

And so on and so forth. Oodles of cheap oil, even if achievable in the game's world of expensive conveyer/projectors, really is the most minor aspect.