Economics in Transapient societies
Early Stage in construction of a Dyson Swarm (diagrammatic)
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Economics in Transapient societies
Early Stage in construction of a Dyson Swarm (diagrammatic) |
(from the 10404 Elepeth Sihjang Key Lecture, Ken Ferjik by Al Firbrnd)
The key to a realistic calibration of the economics of those star
systems which are controlled by transapient entities lies
in:
a) facts of life that are going to be true about
almost every star system and
b) the behavior of the resident transapient in that
system.
For simplicity, let's first imagine a medium-tech
civilization in a star system with zero transapient activity. Note
that all of the following applies to the "average" system, not to all
systems, and not to any given system. Things can be different in all
kinds of ways in any given system — cultural traditions, unusually
large or small energy/mass availability, biological limitations, odd
transapient behavior, and any of an infinity of other things. My goal
here is to create a starting point so at least we have some handle on
what the variables and dependencies are and then alter them to make
interesting local economies.
Matter and Energy distribution in a star system
In a star system, the optimal place to harvest energy is as close to a
star as your technology will permit you. The optimal place to harvest
matter is in the asteroid fields or around planets that have belts.
That right there lays the groundwork for trade-- the matter-miners fire
payloads at the star (which decelerate using solar sails) and the
energy-collectors pay for the matter by beaming concentrated microwaves
at the collectors of the matter miners. This is just an overall
picture — all kinds of elaborations are possible where different
energy-collectors and matter-miners bid for each other's goods along
with a host of middlemen, auxiliary services, manufacturers, etc.
Effect of the economy on lifestyle choices
In terms of lifestyle, one would expect that overall sun-siders will be
prodigal with their energy (warm habitats, lots of light, computers
running all the time) but would tend to recycle and favor
artifacts that are small and efficiently made. The rock-siders will be
the opposite — energy conscious but extravagant with certain physical
goods. These are overall trends, though, not absolute rules.
Why Cheap!=Free
From a sapient point of view, matter may be infinite... but extraction
and refining equipment (be it nanites, synsects, or giant bots) as well
as the sophont-hours necessary to control, troubleshoot, and build it
are finite. Therefore, even though a ton of iron may be cheaper in the
current era than it was during the Industrial Age of Old Earth,
you will still have to encumber a certain amount of your time to pay
for it one way or another. Same story with energy. On the average, any
individual will work less... in some polities it will mean that a few
individuals will work somewhat short hours and
everyone else will be unemployed outright. In other polities leisure
and employment will be more equally distributed and everyone's
work-month will be several days worth of actual labor.
Orbital Planes
The rock-siders will be in the plane of the star system where there are
the most rocks to be found. They will be particularly concentrated in
areas where rare elements are to be found and in the areas closest to
the sun. As the high-demand elements are exhausted, the rock-siders
will move further and further out from the star. The sun-siders will
start out in the same plane as the rock-siders (due to ease of
receiving payloads from the rock-siders) and (very slowly) build a
Dyson swarm.
Dyson Swarms
A dyson swarm is much easier to
build than a solid dyson sphere (even the dynamically supported supramundane shell
variety). No exotic engineering techniques necessary to resist the
star's gravity. Just a huge number of thin solar panels saturating all
orbital planes around a star to the greatest extent that would be safe.
See the image above showing what it would look like during
construction. When completed the swarm elements look like a
continuous semi-opaque ball from a distance. Semi opaque because the
panels themselves are not 100% efficient at absorbing and storing
sunlight and also because there would have to be some gaps between the
panels. Furthermore, if there are inhabited planets in the system,
there may be political opposition to saturating the shallow-angle
orbital planes... this may be a recurring causus belli in numerous
star systems. One possible technical workaround to this is a
treaty or contract under the terms of which solar panels have to
retract or turn parallel to the star's rays whenever they were between
the star and the planet. Another workaround is for the planet to buy
solar energy equivalent to what it would normally get from whatever
solar collectors happen to be in front of it at the moment. In fact,
buying more or less energy than it would normally get amounts to
terraforming. The phased array Sunbeams of various Negentropy Alliance
dyson swarms are an example of such redistribution of focused stellar
energy.
In practice, this happens very rarely, since it would takes nearbaselines and other typical ordinary sophonts a LONG time to saturate even a few orbital planes let alone complete a Dyson swarm. This is especially true if one factors in that actual growth is determined by the profitability of selling microwave power rather than by the hard technological limits. In other words, like a fossil fuel cartel on a low-tech planet, the sun-siders need to balance their expansion of output against the drop in prices the increased competition brings. One endless source of small-scale conflicts can be accusations of price fixing being exchanged between sun-siders and rock-siders.
Interdependence
Early in a star-system's colonization, the rock-siders need the
sun-siders much less than vice versa... the rock-siders could build
(expensive) fusion reactors or (inefficient) solar collectors where
they are. It would be much more expensive for sun-siders to skim matter
off the star's surface. As the matter gets depleted and the
technological infrastructure improves, the power shifts a little more
toward the sun-siders — with the rock-siders further and further away,
the cost advantage of importing matter versus using stellar husbandry
techniques diminishes.
Low to Medium Transapient Activity
Now, what happens if a modestly active transapient is added to the
mix (which will eventually happen in most systems, as soon as one more
ordinary sapient beings manage
to ascend)? The transapient may lay claim to a certain percentage of
the orbital planes (perhaps the shallowest angled ones) and the
choicest asteroid orbits (perhaps the ones closest to the star or the
ones richest in rare elements). These claims could potentially be
occupied/depleted
faster due to the transapient's higher intelligence and tech level. In
addition, some orbits far from concentrations of matter may be
claimed for the purpose of megascale structures, which reduces the
number of available trajectories for microwave beams and matter
payloads. (In the event of conflict the transapient can punish those
who endanger
its construction projects by ignoring its space, and the surviving
baselines quickly learn not to do that.)
From an ordinary sophont's point of view, solar collection under these conditions is less efficient (since the sun-siders are picking up whatever stray light got through the transapient's own collectors). Mining will involve more of a time-lag (due to firing payloads over greater distances and along trajectories that would not provoke the transapient) and may be more expensive (if the inner system is so crowded that there is no 'clean' trajectory and fuel must be expended on velocity adjustments). Therefore, it will take more time and effort to get a given amount of goods or energy, and therefore the average work week will be higher and the average standard of living, lower. However there are ways the transapient and the ordinary sophonts can benefit each other. The transapient can pay the baselines in wormhole access, processing/virch time, and artifacts in exchange for scraps of matter and energy the transapient doesn't find cost effective to collect personally. Maybe even for some services, such as the use of their brains as random-number generators.
High Transapient Activity
A system with high transapient activity may have several high-level
transapients, several wormholes, a completed Dyson swarm, and possibly
a Dyson sphere or Niven ring in some stage of construction. The
original asteroid belts have been converted into artifacts and perhaps
some of the planets have been converted into asteroid belts. Sapients
may be largely shut off from direct sunlight and rely on fusion or
beamed energy. Unless allowances are made by the transapients, they
live under conditions of scarcity, in some cases as
bad as that in early Information Age Europe, Japan, and North America
(although at much higher tech levels). Since the transapients loom
larger in their lives, their attitudes toward them also span a larger
spectrum ranging from worshipful subservience, to parasitism, to
paranoid avoidance.
Saturating Transapient Activity
Almost all the energy in the star system is captured by transapients.
Almost all the matter is already locked up in the form of structures.
Star systems rely on stellar husbandry and recycling of old structure
to obtain raw materials for building new ones The only 'feral'
nearbaselines remaining are the haloists in the outer fringes of the
star system... everyone else is either a servant/pet of the
transapients or perilously clings to life as a god-dweller parasite.
Per Capita Material Wealth and Population
Per-capita wealth is a function of resource availability (factoring in
the cost of extracting these resources into usable form per unit of
time as well as the cost of transporting them) and population.
Population is only weakly limited by scarcity (and in some cases is
accelerated by resource scarcity). The main limiting factor on
population growth in the early stages of a star system's colonization
is the speed at which the nearbaselines in question are willing and
able to reproduce.
In the early stages of a star system's development, the ability to harvest resources grows faster than the population, and so there is a growth in per-capita wealth. In the later stages, resource extraction levels off and population growth enters its Malthusian stage with a consequent reduction in per-capita wealth. It should be noted that in the complete absence of transapients, by some calculations it would take nearbaselines in an average star system about 8,000 years and several decillion individuals to reach this point. The increased energy and resource demands of transapients shift the Malthusian point down to as low as 1,000 years and several octillion individuals.
True Malthusian systems are rare for several reasons. First, wormholes permit rapid migration to any region of civilized space. Second, transapients can easily control population growth through memetics, provoking wars between the ordinary sophonts, and in some less scrupulous places, outright culling or compulsory contraception. Thirdly, of course, many cultures develop in ways that lead to slow, zero, or negative population growth, either because they can foresee the Malthusian point or because of other reasons. Finally, those systems (in the Outer Volumes and remote parts of the Middle regions) which have no resident transapients have generally not been around long enough to reach the Malthusian point. More common are the pseudo-Malthusian systems that got that way through inept government, transapient malevolence, or for other preventable/remediable reasons.
The corollary of this is that in the very oldest systems, children are rare and young adults even rarer (since the young adults are most likely to leave and seek their fortunes on the periphery).
