Conversation

Space operas are usually thinly disguised metaphor for some mix of contemporary and historically/ideologically interesting societies, but looking at Web3 stuff, strikes me that radically decentralized societies are probably the analytically *correct* solution
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Given typical space-sf tech premises (the big ones — FTL travel, force fields, robots, cloning, extreme longevity) most societies don’t actually map very well. Galactic empires, republics, federations… none of these actually make much sense.
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The problem is meaningful commerce over intergalactic distances. Made-up commodities like kyrt, spice, or asteroid minerals make no sense. And without a premise for commerce, most larger scale political structures have no raison d’etre. Null hypothesis — decentralized.
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Most real high value materials aren’t distributed in any particularly weird ways. Presumably most solar systems will have somewhat similar pie charts. And it’s hard to make up even premise fir a weird special material that can’t be synthesized by a spacefaring civilization.
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The only 2 things that would have an incentive to cross interstellar distances would be people and information. Get ideas/secrets from distant civs, travel around yourself to see the Galaxy irl.
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If you *did* have a galactic scale corporation trading in something like “spice” making the owners richer than most individual worlds, what would they buy? Where would they stash the capital? What would ownership of say private/custom planets (cf Magarthea in HHG) get you?
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But otoh, I can kinda imagine corporate empires being based on logistics and infrastructure know-how with a capital base in say a franchise network of stargate portals, ansible nets, etc. Like railroad or cable corps.
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Centralized/decentralized is at least 4 dimensions: Capital concentration Infrastructure integration Operational control Innovation know-how “Clouds” are centralized on all: ownership, datacenters, management, innovation A “stargate network” would be decentralized on all 4 imo
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I think foundation really hit this well with the Apple TV series, sure it was a galactic empire, but due to its extreme vastness the empire was basically de facto decentralized, especially in the outer reaches.
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The empire was more UN with a useful army, than the Roman Empire, even if the esthetics leaned towards the latter. Outside Trantor their force was weaker.
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Something like the Culture is a much more likely alternative. “The theory here is that the property and social relations of long-term space-dwelling (especially over generations) would be of a fundamentally different type compared to the norm on a planet;”
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