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Old 12-11-2017, 07:34 AM   #21
Dr. Beckenstein
 
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Could it be that some people are still believing in the old-west, "pushing the frontier" memes?

Digging up stuff that nobody owns to become rich, or cutting timber in untouched woods? Maybe even building up a little farm?

This is all part of the primary sector of economics, but most of the money today is made with the other sectors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector

If you want to make money in trading (that's Infinity's official goal) you need people to buy your stuff.
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Old 12-11-2017, 11:56 AM   #22
malloyd
 
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But for commercial opportunities you can't beat people.
Of course you can. Just because Infinity hasn't yet stumbled over the timelines where Earth became the hub of the Galactic Library before the Great Universal Extinction, or entirely by wishing genies who've been eagerly searching for a master....

But it's not impossible for an alternate civilization to be looking for something else. All economies are ultimately built on irrationally determined wants. If they're far enough out it becomes difficult for Infinity to even come up with anything to trade - "Why are you concerning yourself with material food and shelter anyway when everybody knows the purpose of life is to seek a spiritual state that makes death a wonderful experience?".
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Old 12-11-2017, 11:56 AM   #23
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

At over $30 per gram, I think gold is still quite profitable, especially when you do not have to mine it from the historical surface deposits. If you are talking about manufactured goods though, it is easier to establish your own facilities on an uninhabited world than to attempt to exploit existing populations. With local materials, imported tools, and an imported workforce, you can set up a factory town in less than a year.

Since you would control access and information to and from your factory town, you could create whatever you wanted without worrying about industrial espionage (and with reduced worry about industrial sabotage). The company could create bootleg computer chips, design genetically engineered crops, grow opium for heroic production, process nuclear fuel, etc without having to worry about environmentalists or government regulators. As long as they made sure not to destroy the infrastructure or kill their workers, they could make a whole lot of money.
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Old 12-11-2017, 12:09 PM   #24
David Johnston2
 
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At over $30 per gram, I think gold is still quite profitable, especially when you do not have to mine it from the historical surface deposits. If you are talking about manufactured goods though, it is easier to establish your own facilities on an uninhabited world than to attempt to exploit existing populations. With local materials, imported tools, and an imported workforce, you can set up a factory town in less than a year.
First of all "exploit" is not a synonym for "trade". It's easy to make it worth the locals while when you have access to all kinds of things they want and can't get from anyone else. And there is very little point to a factory town that has no local access to raw materials and food
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Old 12-11-2017, 02:13 PM   #25
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

But the beauty of an uninhabited world is that you can mine your materials and grow your food without anyone protesting. With TL8 technology, you need only one farm worker per 50 people and only one miner per 500 people. Just find a location with the required raw materials, set up mines and farms, and build your factory town.
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Old 12-11-2017, 02:36 PM   #26
David Johnston2
 
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But the beauty of an uninhabited world is that you can mine your materials and grow your food without anyone protesting. With TL8 technology, you need only one farm worker per 50 people and only one miner per 500 people. Just find a location with the required raw materials, set up mines and farms, and build your factory town.
And the beauty of an inhabited world is that you get your materials from all over the world with a fraction of the capital investment and you can get manufactured goods that aren't produced or are produced at much greater relative expense at home. Genuine samurai swords and hand made kimonos. Unique works of fiction. Undiscovered cancer cures. Flint knives. Lost paintings from great masters. Uninvented musical instruments. And if you're legitimately trading for them, who will protest?
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Old 12-11-2017, 02:56 PM   #27
ericthered
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Of course, you do need infrastructure for those farms and mines. You've got to make and repair the tractors, and bring in fuel and fertilizer, for starters.

I don't know that making thousands of acres of new farms is what the modern economy needs though. Food can only be used to feed things. I suppose we could take a few worlds and bring the rest of humanity up to US beef consumption, but that's actually very easy to do. Agriculture is only useful for feeding and clothing people, and the world has an excess of food (though individuals might not).

Also, most of the time more expensive food needs more labor, not more land. Meat being the large exception.

Industry is a different story, though. I don't want to eat more food, but I would really like a bigger house, airplane tickets I can pay for in half a day of work, as many cool medieval souvenirs as I desire, and TV screens instead of walls.

More resources can help with this, but they don't solve industrial problems the way more land lets us just crank out more food. The machines to build things matter, and human labor is still a large part of our industrial machinery. Iron and Aluminum are actually quite abundant in the earth's crust, and we're in no danger of running out of those. They just take energy to refine. And carting fossil fuels from other worlds to your own and burning them there... has issues all of its own.
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Old 12-11-2017, 05:26 PM   #28
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Why would you cart fossil fuels across timelines when you can just extract fossil fuels from the world with your factory town? Honestly, all you need to do is settle in that timelines equivalent of Spain and you have everything you could possibly want (the deposits around the Rio Tinto River have been mined on and off for five thousand years). Situate the factory town there, build farms and mines to support its activities, and transfer the finished products to a shipping subsidiary in the original timeline's Spain before shipping them across the world.
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Old 12-11-2017, 05:39 PM   #29
Flyndaran
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Default Re: [IW] Timeline Breakout Scenario

Why trade with nations when you can just create vast nations yourself? I feel there's an issue of scale and population between the two.
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Old 12-11-2017, 06:05 PM   #30
David Johnston2
 
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Why trade with nations when you can just create vast nations yourself? I feel there's an issue of scale and population between the two.
Creating vast nations takes a lot of time to make your return on investment. Not that it's an either/or choice.
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