Paul Krugman's 1978 Theory of Interstellar Trade

jerryasher recommends Paul Krugman's blog at the NYTimes, where he introduces a paper he wrote, The Theory of Interstellar Trade, with tongue very much in cheek. Some packrat academician was kind enough to send him a scan, because "back then academics did their work with typewriters, abacuses, and stone axes." Abstract: This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved... This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics."

Comments

But...

[Paltin]

What does this have to do with the price of tea on Trantor?

Re:Figure 2 is really informative

[mdenham]

Let's say they were selling a brand new Earth. 6000 years ago, such a thing would not have been necessary On the contrary, this would fit in quite well with fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

The buyer? Well, he dresses all in white, has a big white beard, talks out of burning bushes...

Re:Aluminum

[PrimordialSoup]

Who's to say what nanotechnology will be able to do in 200 years? Nothing big.

Isn't the secret to deal in collector's items

[CrazyJim1]

Buy lots of antiques. Travel someplace while lots of time passes for everyone else. Then your antiques are older and worth more. Of course the big risk taken is if someone invents a time travel device and starts dealing in antiques while you're traveling through space.

Oh exploitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi my name is Prince Valtor Tazalutium the Third from the distant planet Nigeron 7. I have dispatched the fastest cargo ships in my fleet to Earth filled with the rich treasures of my home planet. However because of the vast distance between our two planets my ships will not reach Earth until I am long dead and therefore will not receive a return on my initial investment. As I have no heirs I am looking for one trustworthy stranger to buy these ships and their cargo en route to your planet. I am willing to sell them for $50,000.00 US DOLLARS. If interested please contact me at valtorlol@aol.com.

Don't we already know what the aliens want?

[lorg]

Seem to be something in cattle that can only be aquired thru mutilation. Then there is all that rectal probing. "Rednecks" from backwater parts of the south. All that plus they apparently have some kinda deal with the aluminum industry with all them tinfoil hats we need to keep our brainwaves intact.

What else could they want? One would guess they wanted shades for them big eyes and lots of sunscreen since the little grey bastards tend to walk around nekked all the time.

Re:404

[ThJ]

It still isn't working for me. Maybe they blocked non-US IPs?

Did anybody notice...

[Dr. Cody]

...that he cited a paper of his from nine years in the future?

Re:Did anybody notice...

[OECD]

...that he cited a paper of his from nine years in the future?

Yup. Obviously *temporal* trade is where the money is.

Re:Did anybody notice...

[fracai]

Mm, yes. "Theory Capital and Travel Light-than-Faster" From what I can remember, the paper backwards just reads "Paul is dead" over and over again.
This could be off of course, the last time I read that paper was around 10 years from now.

Re:In the future one or two things will have value

[Guerilla* Napalm]

Knowledge may be able to travel the speed of light, but stupidity travels way faster - which is why we can never escape idiots.

Re:Theory of relativity and economics

[EEDAm]

Not once your wife finds out about your girlfriend you won't be.... :)

Intersteller delivery...what a headache

[elrous0]

Since being an interstellar delivery boy would basically mean leaving behind all your friends and loved ones (as they aged and died and you didn't) only the worst losers would be willing to take the job (unless you were going to pay them and their families a king's ransom). Your recruitment pool would basically consist of orphaned slackers, lazy out-of-work robots, one-eyed mutants, alien doctors with no discernible human skills, and grad students. How on earth could you build a delivery service with just that to choose from?

Re:A continuation of what I posted on MR

[jollyreaper]

That's why instead of massive colony ships you will send out small robots weighing 100 grams. You build the robots using nanotech, so they can be more sophisticated than any 20 mile long spacecraft we could build with conventional means. They would have the ability to bootstrap themselves in new environments to manufacture ecosystems from raw materials on site. Thus, we colonize other planets with Earth life by sending only a database and a universal nanotech constructor. Except that we'll suffer some sort of world-wide catastrofuck like a world war, plague, asteroid impact, Windows release, etc, and spend a hundred years clawing our way back from the brink. The old probes will have been forgotten, only for them to either a) return and try to conquer Earth, having mistaken their definition for "serving man," b) they'll have colonized planets and developed their own civilization at this point and declare war on us when we stumble into their territory or c) will have built up an entire religion of ancestor worship of their fleshy progenitor race, greeting us in abject worship as the return of their living gods. And somewhere in all this will be scantily-clad android cat-girls.