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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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What if there is cheap FTL & planetary elevators (to get off/on planet) and different planets specialize in different tech like in star wars? * ocean planets : seafood * cloning * computer tech * low cost labor * spacecraft
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