Sectors of an Ultra-Tech/Bio-Tech economy

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The stuff that actually gets sold may very well be of almost inconceivably high quality.

Strikingly realistic VR simulations, I imagine. Complete with the latest equipment necessary to properly enjoy it.

And that's just for those who don't go for bioroids or other artificial 'helpers'.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But we are discussing the economies of the Suite worlds in specific, which means that the absolute cutting edge is very much what we are concerned with.

You stated:

Originally Posted by Icelander

most common consumer products

FB technical advance is not fast, so I'd suspect that the "common" consumer products, even on the Suite, are out of IP protection, especially if the IP is the main cost of the cutting edge stuff.

OTOH, perhaps in the Suite even common consumer products are still in IP, simply because out of IP stuff is "low class frontier crap," no matter how serviceable it might actually be. Hell, maybe they slightly vary existing optimized designs and re-patent them, just so they don't have a freeware stigma.

But I'd like to know.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by martinl

You stated:

FB technical advance is not fast, so I'd suspect that the "common" consumer products, even on the Suite, are out of IP protection, especially if the IP is the main cost of the cutting edge stuff.

Perhaps.

Originally Posted by martinl

OTOH, perhaps in the Suite even common consumer products are still in IP, simply because out of IP stuff is "low class frontier crap," no matter how serviceable it might actually be. Hell, maybe they slightly vary existing optimized designs and re-patent them, just so they don't have a freeware stigma.

Judging from people today, I'd consider this far more likely than the alternative.

Originally Posted by martinl

But I'd like to know.

Me too.

[sir_pudding]

1. robotics
2. space technology that isn't FTL
3. software
4. neuropsych tech

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Langy

I'm slightly confused by this. Wouldn't a negative marginal cost imply that the more pron you produce, the less it costs to produce all of that porn? So it might cost ten dollars to produce one unit of porn, but it'll cost five dollars to produce two units of porn. Doesn't make much sense.

You seem to be confusing negative marginal cost with diminishing marginal cost. Bill's suggestion is that making porn is fun, especially if you are an exhibitionist, and that people would do it even if they were not paid. It is not a statement about the way that that the cost changes with changes in output.

Edited to add.

For anyone following along, I misunderstood what Langy said, and my answer is wrong.

[Langy]

In economics and finance, marginal cost is the change in total cost that arises when the quantity produced changes by one unit.

So a negative marginal cost would mean producing two units of porn would cost less than producing one unit of porn, which is what I described. Diminishing marginal cost would mean that you could produce one unit of porn for, for example, ten dollars, and then produce the second unit of porn for five dollars - which would mean the total cost would be $15 for two units of porn.

Negative marginal cost also applies when someone is actually paying to produce the product. This would be the case if, for example, men paid to star in a porn video and the person getting paid was the one producing the video.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Just to note -- Exceptions exist, where advances in technology allow the simplification of a tool or product (e.g. drop-forged tools, or single-piece plastic/ceramic knives etc.).

Indeed. One of the reasons that I talk of development levels rather than tech levels is that in Flat Black such industries tend to relocate to underdeveloped economies where resources such as labour are cheap, even if they embody late inventions and discoveries.

I'm not sure I'd go along with generalizing that to all times and places. I think it only becomes true when scale thresholds are met. The village blacksmith is an enduring example of a generalist whose service is economical because of his locale and the scope of his coverage.

That's a classic tradeoff between technical efficiency and transport and co-ordination costs.

Hm. In a way that statement seems axiomatic.

I ought to add "and the scale tends to increase with increasing sophistication of the products".

Well, that may be true if you define the accumulated knowledge-capital underlying the TL as part of the what you mean by economic scale. However if you leave out the implied/inherent knowledge capital, I would be hesitant to conclude that all rise in TL must imply an intensification of inputs. In fact, I suggest that the trend of technological progress (toward efficiency) strives against that outcome.

I'm not talking about input intensity, except inasmuch as that is cost and therefore must be minimised. I'm talking about increasing absolute scale to allow specialisation of indivisibles such as labour. If you try to make very sophisticated products at below the efficient scale you have to use resources inefficiently, which increases resource intensity of output. Smith's famous example of the pin factory shows that the effect can be astonishing, even for products far less sophisticated than, say, a robot.

Despite my previous theoretical quibbles, I can see that being a valid paradigm for the campaign background (it's just not necessarily a universal condition).

Certainly there are some settings you might want to put a game in in which you must suppose that the trend of increasing technology towards increasing
minimum scale is reversed.

Interesting question. One comment first -- it seems like Tau Ceti's specialization is too narrow to form a full tenth of such an economy, unless violence and warfare are major parts of this setting.

I expressed myself badly. I meant to say that these were two products that Tau Ceti has been established as exporting or (in the case of weapons) supplying to the Empire. I did not mean them to define the area of its specialisation. If Tau Cetian industries specialised in technologies manipulating the interaction of light with matter that would include not only holographic displays, holographic recorders, and optical phased array weapons, but also certain types of sensors, communications equipment, perhaps photonic computers,.... It might still be too narrow.

I'd propose the following ten broad sectors of a Bio/Ultra-tech economy, starting with expanded implications for the ones you already identified:

Empire - starcraft and their requirements and implications like propulsion systems, life support, armor, astrogation, applied cosmology.

Esbouvier - hard industrial bio-science, species genetic modification, parahumans, planetary eco-morphing.

Todos Santos - psychology, brain manipulation, pedagogy, individual/retail bio and medical.

Tau Ceti - force manipulation technology like beam weapons, active sensor arrays, force fields, magnetic bottle applications.

#4 - Information processing, computers, artificial intelligence.

#5 - Entertainment industry.

#6 - Coordination and adjudication functions and services (the kind of thing generally provided by town-halls and capital cities -- commercial agents, arbitrators, judges, stock markets, regulators yada yada)

#7 - Enclave of Privilege

#8 - Consumer goods -- while most of this stuff would be imported into the Suite from lower-cost places, some niche products would still be necessarily or more economically produced within the TL 11 cluster.

#9 - [I'm running dry here ... maybe a 'pure research' centre.]

* Electro-mechanical industries, producing eg. servomotors and sensors for hight-tech robot bodies.

* Fusion tech for power generation and supplying spaceship engine components to Imperial shipyards (as Tau Ceti provides sensors and weapons)

* The biotech-is-nanaotech end of biological engineering: histological technology to complement Esbouvier's expertise in novel ontogeny and embryology.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Once you earn your Nobel for being the first man on the surface of the sun, feel free to laugh maniacally and say 'I told them! Mad, they called me! Mad!'.

To be fair, the CT effect is not supposed to completely shatter or melt the planet, so nick012000 is correct in this: if you buried your arcologies deeply enough, and took enough precautions to protect them from shockwaves and spalling, then they might survive a CT event. However, it does seem unlikely that building such expensive accommodations for everyone would be less of a burden on the economy than allowing the Empire to extract monopoly profits from interstellar shipping.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Icelander

You are aware that you're speaking to a transport economist (Brett) who actually spent years comparing the difference between state run and private transport systems?

No, he probably isn't. How would he be?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Langy

Too bad it still won't keep you safe from the multi-gigaton explosion Brett and Icelander were talking about.

We're talking about kilotons per square metre over the entire surface of the planet, and much, much more over the oceans. That comes to exatons in total, plus perhaps three orders of magnitude for the oceans going off, which puts it up to zettatons.

However, the effect is spread out over the surface of the planet, so treating it as a point-like zettaton explosion would overstate the intensity.