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I'm actually more interested in the theory behind how he got a grant to write this. Interesting nonetheless!
"It should be noted, while the subject of this paper is silly, the analysis actually does make sense. This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics"
More interesting is what resources or products would be potential candidates for interstellar trade.
Information has the benefit of weighing nothing and being easily transmissible at the speed of light.
This is also probably true for interplanetary trade, such as with a Mars colony... though return of very precious materials via something inexpensive like gun launch can't be totally ruled out.
Going full sci-fi mode: if something like consciousness uploading were possible, it would also be possible for people to travel interplanetary and interstellar distances at the speed of light as information as long as something at the other end existed to reconstitute them. So one mechanism of interstellar colonization would be to send unmanned drone ships first, then encode ourselves and go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
That this is written by a Nobel Prize winner and NYT columnist definitely makes it a bit more noteworthy.
This is by Paul Krugman??! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman That this is written by a Nobel Prize winner and NYT columnist definitely makes it a bit more noteworthy.
I believe cstross's book Neptune's Brood is based on ideas from this paper. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/09/crib-she... Which is funny, considering older Krugman's a fan of Stross's other book series The Merchant Princes, which also tries to have a solid economic backbone. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/more-science-fic...
This is by Paul Krugman??! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman That this is written by a Nobel Prize winner and NYT columnist definitely makes it a bit more noteworthy.
Among Krugman's other "accomplishments" is this quote:
"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
More interesting is what resources or products would be potential candidates for interstellar trade.
Probably information -- art, music, culture, scientific discoveries, technological blueprints (that could be "printed" anywhere), software, genetic material, anything informational. Information has the benefit of weighing nothing and being easily transmissible at the speed of light. This is also probably true for interplanetary trade, such as with a Mars colony... though return of very precious materials via somethin…
More interesting is what resources or products would be potential candidates for interstellar trade.