io9
We may not have interplanetary travel for humans yet, but it's never too early to start dealing with problems related to interstellar trade and solar system stock market crashes. That's why textbook publisher Routledge has a journal called Astropolitics, whose latest issue features an in-depth scholarly article on "problems of interplanetary and interstellar trade." And no, the problems aren't "we don't have warp drive yet."
International Studies professor John Hickman sums up his article thusly:
If and when interplanetary and interstellar trade develops, it will be novel in two respects. First, the distances and time spans involved will reduce all or nearly all trade to the exchange of intangible goods. That threatens the possibility of conducting business in a genuinely common currency and of enforcing debt agreements incurred by governments. Second, interstellar trade suggests trade between humans and aliens. Cultural distance is a probable obstacle to initiating and sustaining such trade. Such exchange also threatens the release of new and dangerous memes.I am seriously excited about those "new and dangerous memes." Please let one of them be related to having sex with an alien in a transparent ship hurtling through the center of the sun. Oops, did I write that in public?
Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade [Astro Politics] (Thanks, Chris!)
Comments
problems = ibm having a gun pointed at my head?
problem = misspelling interstellar
@Annalee Newitz: lol
great pre-vis video for "interstellar" here
@BlacklistedJoe: you mean here
[www.youtube.com]
Transparent. Centre of sun. Aren't you afraid of being, I dunno, BURNED TO FREAKING DEATH?
Unless of course, the sex is SO alien that it somehow prevents you from harm at fusion temperatures. Now that's some awesome sex right there.
Gallimaufry anyone?
I bet they will be surprised we eat frozen things. I'm looking forward to charades Martian style.
@antipaganda: Hellz yeah.
@BlacklistedJoe: What? What was that?
Intersystem trade would need to be independant of real time markets, right? You couldn't very well have trading on the New York market and expect Mars to be part of that action. For one thing, there is the time lag. Before any market trading can take place, there would have to be instantaneous communications technology. It'a hard enough for me to deal with the Asian markets living in Michigan, as I do.
Paul Krugman, a noted economist wrote a paper about the economics of interstellar travel. It's actually funny, but does derive some useful theories.
I saw this earlier today, by coincidence.
[www.princeton.edu]
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