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Old 09-06-2022, 01:40 PM   #17
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Cyberpunk, Space Travel, and Setting Design

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
And any of those works only to the extent that you have no competition who can offer the peasants or the miners more. As an anthropological book I read put it, you can have any two of free land, free labor, and nonzero rents, but you can't have all three.

And to prevent competition, you need state granted monopolies, or business monopolies gained by paying off officials for favors, or anticompetitive state policies such as regulations that only huge firms can afford to comply with, or extralegal violence by private parties such as mafias. Which is why cyberpunk is a futuristic version of noir. Look at classic noir if you want something you can translate into your intended future.
In this context it doesn't take all that much effort to prevent competition. In an interstellar Corporate Worlds setting with no intelligent alien life having been encountered, early colonies are going to be vastly more isolated and dependent on the colony's sponsor than any historical colony on Earth ever was or ever could be. Heck the "competitors" might not even be able to find you.

Here's something inspirational.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvANy49Kqhw
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