[Space] Economics of a space empire

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

To take Fish's example, my original plan was to have Britain, instead of forcing Hong Kong to buy anything, would just start putting larger and larger taxes and/or tithes on Hong Kong

Taxes are the price at which government services are sold, and which the taxed entity generally can't (legally) opt-out of. So, in a sense, raising the taxes imposed on an entity is just a special case of increasing the quantity of goods that the entity is compelled to buy from the taxing/selling entity.