[Space] Economics of a space empire

[Michael Cule]

I find the 'bread and circuses' idea is banging a current political drum rather than using the possibilities of SF to imagine a future that isn't just the contemporary world written on a large scale.

I think if I were you I'd make the oppression on the frontier derive from the technological restraints of the setting. For instance if the 'empire' controls the means of interstellar travel or can easily police them they have the means to impose their desires on the fringe. Stargates or fixed and therefore policeable jump points mean they can tax and oppress to their hearts content. And they don't have to have a unquenchable maw of a welfare state to motivate them. People will rob other people when they can get away with it, even if it's against their long term interests. Look at the magnificent and ultimately stupid con-job of the Delian League, where Athens took an agreement for mutual defence and turned it into their own petty empire.

And then, when some hardworking by-his-bootstraps genius on the fringe comes up with a way of travelling between the stars that by-passes the means that the Empire controlls, you've got the basis for a Story!