Colony World Frontiers

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

The problem with the 19th century US example is that it depended on mass immigration. Russia and Siberia, or Japan and their northernmost island, show that it can take thousands of years before a society even thinks of expanding into nearby marginal, lightly populated territory.

Good point. The colony is mostly dependent on providing it's own population for expansion.

Originally Posted by Nosforontu

True however the 19th century did not have access to the possibility of Clone Tech, Bioroids, Fertility Drugs, Artificial birth clinics, state of the art medical care, panimunity treatments, longevity vaccines etc. I suspect that if a TL 10 society really wanted to crank out new population units they could do so at least as quickly as 19th century immigration rates, and would do a far better job at keeping its current population alive and fit.

Yeah if they really want to crank out more population they can just explode. I was thinking that while the population growth in the colony and the frontier specifically was greater than usual because of a societal demand for backup population and a need for more population to support the full range of TL 10 specialists more easily they weren't actively trying to fill the planet up as fast as humanly possible

Originally Posted by ericthered

On the other hand, The higher the tech level, the greater reliance on cities, so settlement might refer to the building up of specific sites. People will want to live on less space so they can have access to the high tech amenities of the city.

Yeah this is part of the reason I'm stretching out the settlement of the planet. The frontierspeople are noticeable in their numbers but they are outnumbered by people in the capitol and don't comprise enough people to maintain a colony independently. In fact they are somewhat parasitical though they do have their uses to the capitol in resource extraction and backup population. Ultra-tech allows quite phenomenal city densities and the people in the capitol like it that way so a large chunk of the colony while growing and developing isn't really expanding horizontally.

Originally Posted by ericthered

another thing to consider is how "filled up" the US is today. I grew up in a town of 30,000. there is nothing bigger than us for 120 miles in any direction. The land wasn't settled because it wasn't desirable, and is now off limits for settlement (not that there is a burning desire to do so). I know that I am the exception, but the fact that it exists demonstrates what america considers to be "settled".

Good point! A society might expand slower if it prefers to settle areas more thoroughly.

[dcarson]

I wouldn't expect a high growth rate. The richer you are the more a child costs. If you have nothing it is easy to give a dozen children what you have. If you are rich it is impossible. Giving them what you consider a reasonable upbringing is expensive. Women also tend to be not willing to have lots of children if they have a choice. The combination leads to low to negative growth rates. A frontier world would select for people who want to have larger families to some degree and TL10 allows exowombs and such to make having children less of a hassle. That gives you a moderate growth rate for the first few generations, dropping to close to 0 for the city dwellers I'd think.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dcarson

TL10 allows exowombs and such to make having children less of a hassle. That gives you a moderate growth rate for the first few generations, dropping to close to 0 for the city dwellers I'd think.

TL10 also gives you affordable immortality through Mutation Repair genetic therapy as per Bio-tech p.182. Use TL10 nano to do it and it's only $50,000.

That also happens to be the starting wealth at TL10 so it should be like $20,000 to a TL8 person. It's also not much at all if you start thinking of 401k money. 20,000 for another lifetime looks real affordable to me.

So it's possible that your growth rate does nothing but go up though still morre slowly than late 19th century rates. There might be a significant number of women who wouldn't mind having 1 child every 20 years and if you lose very few people to old age you can still have real population growth at that pace .

Asd to what people might be doing in th wilderness, bio-survey is a good/momneymaking possibility on an actual alien-but-frendly world. There's lots of possibility for new and useful biochemicals and even whole plant and animal species. Also sustainably exploitable biomes.

The planet is goign to be hungry for investment opportunities if it has a lot of long view quasi-immortals.

[ericthered]

to those pointing at decreasing birth rates, there are a few things to consider:

the upper rich have never colonized. Their life style can't follow them out there, and neither can their wealth. The wealthy are found in the cities and follow civilization, not lead it, which affects your communities.

One of the hallmarks of a classic frontier society is that resources are much more abundant than manpower. This is going to allow you pass on decent amounts of wealth to your children.

The exceptions to the rule: "wealthier women don't have as many children" breed true. yes, the number goes slightly down, but you get generations of exponential growth. The families that continue to breed usually have the genetics for it, and they pass on an attitude. example: I know a friend with around 800 second cousins, and I know others who are the only children of only children. And in this case, the guy with 800 comes from a wealthy family. Not rich, but certainly upper middle class, which is what's going to matter in this case.

so yes, the birth rate isn't going to go crazy, but its not going to die out either.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

TL10 also gives you affordable immortality through Mutation Repair genetic therapy as per Bio-tech p.182. Use TL10 nano to do it and it's only $50,000.

However, in a quasi-realistic setting (one where interstellar trips are very expensive and machines-that-can-reproduce-themselves are dangerous and inefficient) TL 10 tech will be in very short supply. The colonists will have what they brought with them until it breaks down, and possibly a few imports if round trips home are available. And a lot of the colony's early industrial era farmers, miners, loggers, foresters, and hunters will suffer serious accidents and die before they can get to ultra-tech medical care. Of course, without more details we don't know whether the OP wants vaguely realistic economics, but the colony less advanced than its metropolis is a common trope in interstellar colonization stories.

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

However, in a quasi-realistic setting (one where interstellar trips are very expensive and machines-that-can-reproduce-themselves are dangerous and inefficient) TL 10 tech will be in very short supply.

If machines that can reproduce themselves are dangerous (seriously how would they be dangerous, even if they explode like nuclear bombs, just don't put them near people), or less efficient than a fabricator, or robofac... you don't have TL 10 industrial tech. (Or TL 9 industrial tech for that matter.)


Anyway I think this is really going to come down to whatever you want the setting to be. Full TL 10 tech is blue-collar workers are replaced by AI, and white-collar workers (if need be) are replaced by bioroids. (Who enjoy their work so much its not really work.) Now through in limits on the AI, ethical concerns, not full grade TL 10 tech ect. things require more and more work. Heavy limits might even make things dangerous like Polydamas suggested. In addition a colony can be closer to whatever resources you want (water, rare earth elements, sunlight, inspiring nature scenes, ect.) giving them some sort of economic edge which combined with the above factors can set up any sort of dynamic you want.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

Either it's a very new world or the culture goes ape on ZPG.

Thomas Jefferson thought that it would take 1000 years for EuroAmericans to fill in the interior of the United States. It was pretty much done, the frontier declared closed, 54 years after he died in 1826.

It was never 'done'. This is an important and oft-overlooked point.

North America's frontier was not closed because it was fully 'settled', in the sense that Jefferson meant. It's never come remotely close to that. Intead it was closed in the sense that the continent had been explored (by Americans) and mapped and conquered politically, and technology was rendering the Jeffersonian 'pioneering' model irrelevant.

Even today, North America is rather sparsely populated, overall, compared to much of the Old World. The population of the USA is concentrated east of the 100th meridian and on the West Coast, for the most part, if you look at satellite mosaics of city light, there are vast empty sweeps from roughly the middle of Kansas over into the Rocky Mountains. You don't start hitting dense population again until you're past the Sierra Nevada. (Salt Lake City is an exception.)

This is relevant to the OP world because much depends on the definition of 'pioneering'. With a solid TL10 industrial infrastructure behind them and a world friendlier than Terra, the frontier is likely to be 'closed' in the North American sense very quickly. Presumably they have very detailed space-borne observations of the whole planet, so mapping is not an issue. People/machines will still need to take close-up looks at many things to get the details, but we're not talking about vast unknown prairies and mountains.

At high tech levels, explored territory accessible to industrialized regions tends to be not so much 'colonized' as 'settled'. It's more like real estate development rather than pioneering.

(Now, if some special circumstances have limited the available knowedge, and for some reason space flight is not an option to the civilization in question, that would change things somewhat.)

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by dcarson

I wouldn't expect a high growth rate. The richer you are the more a child costs.

The degree to which that matters depends on a number of social policy choices, though, religious, social, cultural, and economic factors can interact in very complicated ways. Generally, if people want kids, they aren't stopped by cost, if they don't, making them cheaper doesn't help.

How big is a homestead in the OP setting? Are we talking suburban plots, the traditional 160 acres, or are they staking out vast estates? I suddenly have a vision of a pseudo-aristocratic settlement wave made up of the very wealthy creating vast country estates the size of large counties...

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Lamech

Anyway I think this is really going to come down to whatever you want the setting to be. Full TL 10 tech is blue-collar workers are replaced by AI, and white-collar workers (if need be) are replaced by bioroids.

That would of course lead to a city with a miniscule human population if the affluent while the bulk of the population move out to live a hard-scrabble frontier existence. But the OP specifically said they didn't have good AI.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Nosforontu

True however the 19th century did not have access to the possibility of Clone Tech, Bioroids, Fertility Drugs, Artificial birth clinics, state of the art medical care, panimunity treatments, longevity vaccines etc. I suspect that if a TL 10 society really wanted to crank out new population units they could do so at least as quickly as 19th century immigration rates, and would do a far better job at keeping its current population alive and fit.

But prosperous western nations show that being well off makes people have small families. Why do people think the moment humans have elbow room they spew out children like a fire hose?