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Predicting the consumption of a scarce resource is extremely plausible, and there are many historical precedents. Predicting that interstellar travel will ever

by sethrin 10y ago

Predicting the consumption of a scarce resource is extremely plausible, and there are many historical precedents. Predicting that interstellar travel will ever be in any way economically advantageous is probably unphysical. With travel time for messages taking decades and travel taking centuries, your "Human Empire" would be more along the lines of "Human-descended collection of exceptionally bad pen-pals". The speed of light and the tyrannies of the rocket equation don't really allow for anything else.

throwanem 10y ago
> Predicting that interstellar travel will ever be in any way economically advantageous is probably unphysical. What's sauce for the sad alien is sauce for the human empire, say I.
nickik 10y ago
Can you give me some of those historical precedents? They must have happened in a market society, otherwise its not valid as a comparison. For most resources it seem that they dont run out and the prices dont skyrocket in the apocalyptical. I have seen books from pre-1900 that were warning of the eminent "peak coal". Their is an issue if their are no useful property rights like you can see in whales and you race to the bottum.
- sethrin 10y ago
  I would cite any animal driven to extinction by a commercial market. If we agree that the criterion is where the good is no longer marketable, we can examine e.g. the markets for beaver or sea otter furs, the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, and arguably the Tasmanian tiger. It's also not hard to find examples of mine or oil well exhaustion, which demonstrates the principle. I'm not going to insist that it's a common or inevitable phenomenon, my contention is merely that, as you say, there are circumstances which can promote it. Often these are market failures like a fixed price for a commodity, but perfect competition being something of a rarity, market failures abound. Either way, it's far more plausible, however unlikely, than interstellar trade or interstellar empires.

by sethrin 10y ago

throwanem 10y ago

> Predicting that interstellar travel will ever be in any way economically advantageous is probably unphysical. What's sauce for the sad alien is sauce for the human empire, say I.

nickik 10y ago

Can you give me some of those historical precedents? They must have happened in a market society, otherwise its not valid as a comparison. For most resources it seem that they dont run out and the prices dont skyrocket in the apocalyptical. I have seen books from pre-1900 that were warning of the eminent "peak coal". Their is an issue if their are no useful property rights like you can see in whales and you race to the bottum.

sethrin 10y ago
I would cite any animal driven to extinction by a commercial market. If we agree that the criterion is where the good is no longer marketable, we can examine e.g. the markets for beaver or sea otter furs, the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, and arguably the Tasmanian tiger. It's also not hard to find examples of mine or oil well exhaustion, which demonstrates the principle. I'm not going to insist that it's a common or inevitable phenomenon, my contention is merely that, as you say, there are circumstances which can promote it. Often these are market failures like a fixed price for a commodity, but perfect competition being something of a rarity, market failures abound. Either way, it's far more plausible, however unlikely, than interstellar trade or interstellar empires.