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rfmcdonaldOne topic broached Sunday afternoon was the lack of economic realism in fantasy novels. Crooked Timber has a brief piece on this. We three agreed that the problem can be traced back to Tolkien and Middle Earth. Consider that there is no hint of any settled agrarian economy capable of supporting Gondor's war machine, or the question of just how exactly Mordor is supposed to equip its would-be conquering hordes if the entire country is a barren volcanic wasteland. The skill of Tolkien's achievements elsewhere in Middle Earth, in the construction of a single broad history with a vast array of detailed cultural elements, certainly shouldn't be underestimated. It is safe to say, though, that his worldbuilding fails on that critical point.
Science-fiction writers often face similar problems with economics, in their case with the economics of spaceflight. In certain settings--for instance, that of a post-Singularity nanotech economy where material scarcity is no longer an issue--questions of economics really do become irrelevant. In reality, questions of economics will be very important for future space colonies. My writings last year on space colonization (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) explored this. In these posts, I came to the conclusion that for the foreseeable future-say, the next century or so--settlements in space will not only be capital-intensive and dependent on massive investments for a long while, but that the most successful colonies will be those supported by prosperous and relatively powerful Earth-based polities, whether great powers (United States, Russia, Japan, China, Brazil) or confederations (the European Union, perhaps MERCOSUR). Space will not be a viable domain for libertarians.
This conclusion leaves something very important unspoken, though: What happens to the colonies which lose out to more viable settlements? When the European Union's Ceres settlement, for instance, manages to not only develop a better industrial base for the mining of volatiles and maintenance of spacecraft than the half-dozen independent settlements on that world, but acquires a large domestic market for consumer goods, just what does happen to the independents?
From a very early date--perhaps no later than 1550--the bulk of the Spanish empire in the Americas was concentrated in the continental landmasses of the Western hemisphere, thanks to the success of the conquistadors in conquering the densely-populated and relatively prosperous culture areas of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Spain's massive continental holdings made in unique in the ranks of the Western colonial powers. Its contemporary Portugal, for instance, had developed a global trading network based on the retention of strategically located trading posts on the world's maritime routes and a quasi-monopoly on long-distance sea travel. The Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean, stretching from Malindi in East Africa to Malacca in Malaya, with more distant outposts on the shores of Persian Gulf and in Japan, was perhaps a more subtle and remarkable achievement than Spain's easy disease-aided conquests.
In the 17th century, as a variety of northwestern European powers--most notably England, France, and the Dutch Republic--emerged as colonial powers in their own rights, they tended to follow the Portuguese model rather than the Spanish. In insular Southeast Asia and India, although these powers and their agents dealt with populous settled civilizations, the technological and epidemiological factors which allowed Spain such great success in the Americas couldn't be applied in the Old World. In North America and the Caribbean, the three powers established trading posts to exchange European manufactured goods for native-gathered items like furs. Only in the case of the English settlements, however, did full-fledged settler colonialism take off at an early date, that largely because of England's internal religious convulsions.
For these second-generation colonial powers, by far the greatest immediate profit was to be found in their Caribbean colonies, in the islands depopulated by Spanish slaving and Old World epidemic disease. These islands were perfect for the creation of tropical plantation economies, using cheap and disposable African slave labour alongside considerable European immigration--at one point, Barbados was a more popular destination for English immigrants than Virginia--to mass-produce a variety of tropical crops. Settlement colonialism on the adjacent continental mainlands was expensive and chancy; factory colonialism was much more profitable.
The balance between continental and insular holdings shifted over time, as settlement colonialism ended up producing society more flexible and dynamic than factory colonialism. England--later the United Kingdom--did the best job, assimilating the Dutch holdings in the mid-17th century and conquering the French holdings a century later en route to the establishment of a continental hegemony. This shift took time, though. Once, Saint Domingue was a more important French holding than all of New France, those quelques arpents de neige. Had the Treaty of Paris of 1763 allowed France to retain (most of) New France while handing the most important of the French sugar islands to Britain, the French would have been displeased. Now in the twenty-first century, after a lacuna of two centuries, Québec alone is a considerably more important partner for France than ravaged independent Haïti. Had Canada remained French through the 18th century to experience rapid development and mass immigration in the belle époque--perhaps a massive if somewhat delayed boom like Argentina's--the differences between the relative standings of French continental North America to the French insular Caribbean would be all the greater. Virginia or Barbados, South Africa or the Netherlands Antilles, even Mexico or Cuba--in the end, the insular colonies all lost ground.
Much depends on the precise environment in which space colonies are founded, whether space settlement is dominated entirely by states from the start or whether there is room, at least at the beginning, for the foundation of settlements with humbler beginnings. It's quite possible that there may be a significant lag time between the establishment of colonies doomed to marginalization and colonies destined for greatness.
If, for instance, lunar settlements are established in an era of cheap fusion energy with the purpose of mining our nearest neighbour's stockpile of helium-3, then until either the discovery of cheaper sources of helium-3 or the development of better energy-generation technologies than nuclear fusion the lunar settlements may thrive for quite some time. Conceivably, depending on the speed and tenor of settlement elsewhere in human space, even after the lunar economy is undermined there might be a large enough population already established on the Moon to support a switch over to a viable and relatively conventional economic structure. The possibilities of a successful transition, however, seem likely to decline as the size of the colony decreases: If it's very difficult even now on our eminently habitable Earth to maintain prosperous small island economies without abundant natural resources, highly developed human capital, or convenient locations on relatively important trade routes, how much more so would it be to keep the Hygeia or Triton settlements going?
The improvement of transportation technology over time can also marginalize many settlements which once were necessary stopovers. Imagine, for instance, that at some point human technology produces a faster-than-light stardrive with a maximum range of eight light years. If the only nearby habitable planet orbits the star Procyon, located some 11 light years from Earth, potential colonizers will have a serious problem. The lack of stars suitably located as potential stopovers between Sol and Procyon would force potential colonizers to embark on a much longer trip than 11 light years, instead travelling one hundred or so light years via (among other stars) Barnard's Star, Delta Pavonis, and Tau Ceti. Assuming that our hypothetical colonizers are committed to the Procyon project, they will be forced to establish outposts and settlements at many of the planetary systems lying on this indirect route between Sol and Procyon. Over time, as the Procyon colony grows, these outposts and settlements will also thrive thanks to their location, perhaps also acquiring secondary roles in exploiting local resources.
Now, let's imagine that a century after the foundation of the Procyon colony, the brilliant technologists of Sol expand the range of the faster-than-light drive to twelve light-years. Suitably equipped starships can no proceed directly to Procyon. At first, it would be too expensive to equip starships with this improved drive, and the Barnard-Pavonis-Ceti route would remain active. Over time, though, this route would experience a serious decline as its basic economic rationale disappeared.
The history of C.J. Cherryh's universe begins with the establishment of manned stations in the planetary systems of nearby stars from the twenty-first century on. The discovery of an Earth-like planet in the Tau Ceti system, a useful source of materials to support that system's stationers as well as a source of biological organisms which could serve as useful trade goods, triggers the beginnings of a decline in the population of the older stations as they drift to rich Tau Ceti. The discovery of a second, more distant, habitable world in the BD+01 4774 planetary system, more distant still from Sol than Tau Ceti accelerates this decline, and eventually precipitates the establishment of two independent states, the Alliance based at Tau Ceti and the Union based at BD+01 0123.
Economics plays a major role in the evolution of Cherryh's universe: The fact that it is much easier to sustain prosperous and powerful human polities in the planetary systems of Tau Ceti and BD+01 0123 than in (say) the planetary systems of Alpha Centauri or 61 Cygni, and the relatively distant locations of the potential seedbeds for empire from Sol, allowed human space to be permanently divided. Economics has very serious consequences indeed.
Relatively large colonies, or colonies with significant potential for growth, are likely to be the best bets for future investors. Right now I'm impoverished. If, in a decade's time, the governments of the United States or Japan put a trillion or so dollars worth of bonds on sale to fund their constructions of helium-3 mining settlements on the moon, I might well buy some. I'd be much more reluctant to invest in a corporation intent on constructing an advanced biotechnological research lab in the asteroid belt, though. Investing in space colonization is still a crapshoot, but investing in large and stable entities committed to making large-scale investments in colonies with the potential for economic diversity and growth is less of one than investing in much smaller and more fragile entities with necessarily more tenuous plans.
There's still going to be a niche for private industry in space colonization. I fully expect, for instance, that the private space-launch industry will end up prospering, transporting satellites and people to and from low Earth orbits. As the human presence in space expands and becomes more complex, more niches will appear for private industry. The basic infrastructure and the main direction of expansion, though, will be led by the largest and most stable entities involved in the program; and, The Corporation aside, these will be states or state-like entities. We haven't come up with any other sociopolitical structure capable of executing complex plans over long periods of time, and I'm skeptical that we ever will.
For the independents, then, barring remarkable and unexpected successes--remarkable discoveries, unexpected successes, defections or radical transmutations in the larger colonies--they will be destined to first relative then absolute decline. Cultural separatism may encourage group bonding and limit defections; but by the same rationale, cultural separatism will limit their influence in wider human space, and might just postpone the date of decline. Their best bets for continued viability and relevance, ironically enough, might lie in successfully finding niches in the broad state-dominated economies of human space.
Science-fiction writers often face similar problems with economics, in their case with the economics of spaceflight. In certain settings--for instance, that of a post-Singularity nanotech economy where material scarcity is no longer an issue--questions of economics really do become irrelevant. In reality, questions of economics will be very important for future space colonies. My writings last year on space colonization (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) explored this. In these posts, I came to the conclusion that for the foreseeable future-say, the next century or so--settlements in space will not only be capital-intensive and dependent on massive investments for a long while, but that the most successful colonies will be those supported by prosperous and relatively powerful Earth-based polities, whether great powers (United States, Russia, Japan, China, Brazil) or confederations (the European Union, perhaps MERCOSUR). Space will not be a viable domain for libertarians.
This conclusion leaves something very important unspoken, though: What happens to the colonies which lose out to more viable settlements? When the European Union's Ceres settlement, for instance, manages to not only develop a better industrial base for the mining of volatiles and maintenance of spacecraft than the half-dozen independent settlements on that world, but acquires a large domestic market for consumer goods, just what does happen to the independents?
From a very early date--perhaps no later than 1550--the bulk of the Spanish empire in the Americas was concentrated in the continental landmasses of the Western hemisphere, thanks to the success of the conquistadors in conquering the densely-populated and relatively prosperous culture areas of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Spain's massive continental holdings made in unique in the ranks of the Western colonial powers. Its contemporary Portugal, for instance, had developed a global trading network based on the retention of strategically located trading posts on the world's maritime routes and a quasi-monopoly on long-distance sea travel. The Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean, stretching from Malindi in East Africa to Malacca in Malaya, with more distant outposts on the shores of Persian Gulf and in Japan, was perhaps a more subtle and remarkable achievement than Spain's easy disease-aided conquests.
In the 17th century, as a variety of northwestern European powers--most notably England, France, and the Dutch Republic--emerged as colonial powers in their own rights, they tended to follow the Portuguese model rather than the Spanish. In insular Southeast Asia and India, although these powers and their agents dealt with populous settled civilizations, the technological and epidemiological factors which allowed Spain such great success in the Americas couldn't be applied in the Old World. In North America and the Caribbean, the three powers established trading posts to exchange European manufactured goods for native-gathered items like furs. Only in the case of the English settlements, however, did full-fledged settler colonialism take off at an early date, that largely because of England's internal religious convulsions.
For these second-generation colonial powers, by far the greatest immediate profit was to be found in their Caribbean colonies, in the islands depopulated by Spanish slaving and Old World epidemic disease. These islands were perfect for the creation of tropical plantation economies, using cheap and disposable African slave labour alongside considerable European immigration--at one point, Barbados was a more popular destination for English immigrants than Virginia--to mass-produce a variety of tropical crops. Settlement colonialism on the adjacent continental mainlands was expensive and chancy; factory colonialism was much more profitable.
The balance between continental and insular holdings shifted over time, as settlement colonialism ended up producing society more flexible and dynamic than factory colonialism. England--later the United Kingdom--did the best job, assimilating the Dutch holdings in the mid-17th century and conquering the French holdings a century later en route to the establishment of a continental hegemony. This shift took time, though. Once, Saint Domingue was a more important French holding than all of New France, those quelques arpents de neige. Had the Treaty of Paris of 1763 allowed France to retain (most of) New France while handing the most important of the French sugar islands to Britain, the French would have been displeased. Now in the twenty-first century, after a lacuna of two centuries, Québec alone is a considerably more important partner for France than ravaged independent Haïti. Had Canada remained French through the 18th century to experience rapid development and mass immigration in the belle époque--perhaps a massive if somewhat delayed boom like Argentina's--the differences between the relative standings of French continental North America to the French insular Caribbean would be all the greater. Virginia or Barbados, South Africa or the Netherlands Antilles, even Mexico or Cuba--in the end, the insular colonies all lost ground.
Much depends on the precise environment in which space colonies are founded, whether space settlement is dominated entirely by states from the start or whether there is room, at least at the beginning, for the foundation of settlements with humbler beginnings. It's quite possible that there may be a significant lag time between the establishment of colonies doomed to marginalization and colonies destined for greatness.
If, for instance, lunar settlements are established in an era of cheap fusion energy with the purpose of mining our nearest neighbour's stockpile of helium-3, then until either the discovery of cheaper sources of helium-3 or the development of better energy-generation technologies than nuclear fusion the lunar settlements may thrive for quite some time. Conceivably, depending on the speed and tenor of settlement elsewhere in human space, even after the lunar economy is undermined there might be a large enough population already established on the Moon to support a switch over to a viable and relatively conventional economic structure. The possibilities of a successful transition, however, seem likely to decline as the size of the colony decreases: If it's very difficult even now on our eminently habitable Earth to maintain prosperous small island economies without abundant natural resources, highly developed human capital, or convenient locations on relatively important trade routes, how much more so would it be to keep the Hygeia or Triton settlements going?
The improvement of transportation technology over time can also marginalize many settlements which once were necessary stopovers. Imagine, for instance, that at some point human technology produces a faster-than-light stardrive with a maximum range of eight light years. If the only nearby habitable planet orbits the star Procyon, located some 11 light years from Earth, potential colonizers will have a serious problem. The lack of stars suitably located as potential stopovers between Sol and Procyon would force potential colonizers to embark on a much longer trip than 11 light years, instead travelling one hundred or so light years via (among other stars) Barnard's Star, Delta Pavonis, and Tau Ceti. Assuming that our hypothetical colonizers are committed to the Procyon project, they will be forced to establish outposts and settlements at many of the planetary systems lying on this indirect route between Sol and Procyon. Over time, as the Procyon colony grows, these outposts and settlements will also thrive thanks to their location, perhaps also acquiring secondary roles in exploiting local resources.
Now, let's imagine that a century after the foundation of the Procyon colony, the brilliant technologists of Sol expand the range of the faster-than-light drive to twelve light-years. Suitably equipped starships can no proceed directly to Procyon. At first, it would be too expensive to equip starships with this improved drive, and the Barnard-Pavonis-Ceti route would remain active. Over time, though, this route would experience a serious decline as its basic economic rationale disappeared.
The history of C.J. Cherryh's universe begins with the establishment of manned stations in the planetary systems of nearby stars from the twenty-first century on. The discovery of an Earth-like planet in the Tau Ceti system, a useful source of materials to support that system's stationers as well as a source of biological organisms which could serve as useful trade goods, triggers the beginnings of a decline in the population of the older stations as they drift to rich Tau Ceti. The discovery of a second, more distant, habitable world in the BD+01 4774 planetary system, more distant still from Sol than Tau Ceti accelerates this decline, and eventually precipitates the establishment of two independent states, the Alliance based at Tau Ceti and the Union based at BD+01 0123.
Economics plays a major role in the evolution of Cherryh's universe: The fact that it is much easier to sustain prosperous and powerful human polities in the planetary systems of Tau Ceti and BD+01 0123 than in (say) the planetary systems of Alpha Centauri or 61 Cygni, and the relatively distant locations of the potential seedbeds for empire from Sol, allowed human space to be permanently divided. Economics has very serious consequences indeed.
Relatively large colonies, or colonies with significant potential for growth, are likely to be the best bets for future investors. Right now I'm impoverished. If, in a decade's time, the governments of the United States or Japan put a trillion or so dollars worth of bonds on sale to fund their constructions of helium-3 mining settlements on the moon, I might well buy some. I'd be much more reluctant to invest in a corporation intent on constructing an advanced biotechnological research lab in the asteroid belt, though. Investing in space colonization is still a crapshoot, but investing in large and stable entities committed to making large-scale investments in colonies with the potential for economic diversity and growth is less of one than investing in much smaller and more fragile entities with necessarily more tenuous plans.
There's still going to be a niche for private industry in space colonization. I fully expect, for instance, that the private space-launch industry will end up prospering, transporting satellites and people to and from low Earth orbits. As the human presence in space expands and becomes more complex, more niches will appear for private industry. The basic infrastructure and the main direction of expansion, though, will be led by the largest and most stable entities involved in the program; and, The Corporation aside, these will be states or state-like entities. We haven't come up with any other sociopolitical structure capable of executing complex plans over long periods of time, and I'm skeptical that we ever will.
For the independents, then, barring remarkable and unexpected successes--remarkable discoveries, unexpected successes, defections or radical transmutations in the larger colonies--they will be destined to first relative then absolute decline. Cultural separatism may encourage group bonding and limit defections; but by the same rationale, cultural separatism will limit their influence in wider human space, and might just postpone the date of decline. Their best bets for continued viability and relevance, ironically enough, might lie in successfully finding niches in the broad state-dominated economies of human space.
