Wormhole Economics
Oct. 16th, 2012 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackA standard trope in space opera is that a planet is rich because it has a lot of wormhole junctions in its system (Bujold, Weber, etc).
Presumably the historical analogy would be of a port city: assuming it's possible to make non-zero-sum trades, being in a position to conveniently make lots of trades will increase your success a lot more.
However, it seems the trope is normally that they _start_ by taxing other people's trade that passes through, and only then start trading. There's obviously lots of precedent for that in history: I think there's a natural progression from "pirate" to "oligarch/noble"? But is this economically accurate, or just an author's somewhat distorted idea of how it would work?
Presumably the historical analogy would be of a port city: assuming it's possible to make non-zero-sum trades, being in a position to conveniently make lots of trades will increase your success a lot more.
However, it seems the trope is normally that they _start_ by taxing other people's trade that passes through, and only then start trading. There's obviously lots of precedent for that in history: I think there's a natural progression from "pirate" to "oligarch/noble"? But is this economically accurate, or just an author's somewhat distorted idea of how it would work?