[IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

[Flyndaran]

I once created a world jumper whose base of operations was an ultra-bio-tech world where he sold all the novel genetic material he acquired in his travels.
Through a native that knew his secret but kept quiet to make bank.

Imagine what Transhuman Space could make with mundane but completely foreign DNA.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

At least making it a collection of plant extracts from a radically alien ecosystem side steps the issue of why Homeliners don't just grow their own after initial discovery.
Well you could, if you knew exactly what fungal, bacterial, soil, etc. life it needs and can get those growing on your plot.

When you have really cheap and quick transportation it doesn't make compelling economic sense to grow something at home that is already easily available elsewhere. Which is why I expect that that they just buy books locally and bring them back rather than going to the trouble of publishing bootleg editions

[AlexanderHowl]

In the case of Permian-9, the animals and plants have spent hundreds of millions of years adapting to an environment that is toxic to the lifeforms from Homeline, so they would likely need a wide range of natural toxins in order to maintain regular health (much like modern life on Homeline requires micronutrients to maintain regular health). A plant or an animal from such an environment would die within a few weeks without a complex variety of toxins that would cripple any human being (and would likely not be able to produce their own poisons without consuming the toxins that are precursor materials of their poisons). It would end up being safer and simpler to trade the natives for the animals or plants.

[Flyndaran]

Toxin is a very humancentric name, in this context though. Many of them aren't toxins, but nutrients to local life.
Look at all the toxins humans love that are lethal or at least very obnoxious even to other mammals. Most spices and aromatic compounds evolved to be toxic to something.
This world could have something safe for us but dangerous for most local life.

[AlexanderHowl]

Of course, but we are talking about from a human perspective. Permian-9 is, however, meant to be an example of an evolutionary arms race in poisons and toxins because the Great Dying did not occur (it is like Australia, but turned up to '11'). Every animal and plant is toxic to humans, the soil and water have so many residual toxins that Homeline organisms die quickly, and even the air possesses trace toxins that cause humans to experience hallucinations like they are taking a dose of LSD every hour. It does not mean that the toxins are useless, the majority of them can probably be diluted/extracted/purified into drugs or medicines, but it does mean that the Yakuza have to work through the Kappa rather than enslaving them.

[starslayer]

Copycat

A slightly weaker United states during 1790 caused there copyright concept to be soundly rejected by the remainder of the world. The rest of the world ignores the US copyrights and produced items via the mixture of reverse engineering and

Thirty years later they collapsed economically, starvation was rampant, the government was overthrown (ironically this ended slavery in the united states several decades earlier). They were absorbed by the northern British colony (what would later become Canada)and the concept of 'copyright' was attributed to the cause of the collapse.

As such no respect or concept was paid to the concept of copyright, and event the patent system became globally ignored by 1880.

This led to an absolute explosion of reverse engineering, basically any new idea is canabalized left right and centre, improved slightly upon and re-released.

Even though the world is only in early 2000 by homeline standards the technology is actually several decades, or even centuries ahead. Further the level of refinement of technology is much higher, which makes items from copycat very popular.

Further the 'copy always' mindset has led to a hugely fragmented technological ecosystem which has led to radically increased security (and without copy protection almost all intercommunication protocols are reverse engineered).

Homeline investors will sometimes release items into copycat just to watch it be taken apart, reverse engineered, and released as new products. They have even on occasion done this for oddball alien artifacts.

The world is lightly controlled because it is feared that if the engineers on copycat ever had access to a conveyer, or even parts thereof, they would quickly assimilate inter-dimensional travel, but as long as travel is kept to a minimum and any accidents are immediately set to cleanup it is considered safe.

[AlexanderHowl]

Hm, the US was a second rate nation in 1790, the only reason why we did not fall to European invasion was that the European powers had more valuable areas to conquer in Asia during the late 18th century (plus they were dealing with European conflicts). Anyway, the modern system of patents goes back to Venice in 1450, and the US patent laws in 1790 only reflected European norms of the time. Copyright law goes back to Britain in 1710, and US copyright laws in 1790 only reflected European norms of the time.

Without even a limited protection for patents (even fourteen years of protection offers sufficient return on investment), you end up with either no technological progress or government-only sponsored technical progress after TL5 (with governments using military conflicts and trade wars to punish competitors who take their technology without their permission). Without copyright protections, writers cannot exist because anyone can print their works without compensating them, so the written word does not flourish during the 19th and 20th century without government support (without copyright protection, movies, recorded music, and video games likewise do not flourish in the 20th century without government support). I doubt that such a world would advance beyond early TL6 unless it became completely socialistic because there would be no monetary incentive to create anything novel.

[PTTG]

You don't know any engineers, I take it.

They invent stuff for fun. You can't stop them.

Admittedly, I don't think a change to patent or copyright could accelerate technological development by more than a few decades over that time scale.

[AlexanderHowl]

I know quite a few engineers actually, ranging from aeronautic to nuclear, and they require lots of money to build stuff (and very, very few of them would bother designing anything if they could not patent their inventions). The reason why people build better mousetraps is because they want the world to beat down their door, not because they want a bunch of moochers taking advantage of their creativity. I doubt that anyone could become an engineer in the first place if there was no way for anyone to make money off novel ideas.

[Flyndaran]

People only spend their time and resources on hobbies when all their other needs are met. Even then, very few people will push themselves as hard for hobbies as they will for jobs that put food on their tables.

I suppose it could be at least theoretically possible to imagine unusually forward thinking cultures that throw tax money at hobbyist creators to avoid the rights issue.
But that's possibly too "functioning communism" for some.