Questions tagged [economy]
For questions regarding wealth, trade, or financial concepts.
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Impacts of matricentric reproductive laws
My world is a matricentric America that holds men legally responsible for unplanned pregnancies. Roughly, the idea is that if an unplanned pregnancy occurs and the woman does not get an abortion, the ...
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In an Urban Fantasy Setting, Why Would a Magical Courier Be Hired Over Traditional Couriers? [closed]
The premise is that there's a guild of couriers that use a dangerous parallel spirit world for shortcuts through mortal space to deliver packages at great speed.
Despite the advantage of speed, why ...
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I'm a billionaire, how would I set up a incorruptible communist society? [closed]
I'm a billionaire with unlimited funds/political influence. It is my belief that communism has always failed because in the real world true communism has never been tested, rather every time it's been ...
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Energy itself as a form of currency [duplicate]
I have pondered a setting/society where people have access to advanced technology (for one example, food replicators), but either have to work to earn or trade to obtain the power needed to operate it....
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What could be the main source of national income for a small nation made up of small islands, with a main workforce for that income be exploited group
Background:
Story Background:
Exploited people are leaving their situation, resulting in a lack of work being done by that group. The exploited group (once rested and feeling restored) take advantage ...
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How can I blow up the Enterprise Death Star ™️©️®️? [closed]
In my world, a group of researchers have developed artificial general intelligence (AGI), and they have open sourced it on GitHub to help it evolve. The AGI is relatively small for an AI and can run ...
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In a capitalist society where automation has made the value of human labour worthless. What would keep the rich from just killing off the poor? [closed]
Suppose, at some future date, AI has reached a point where it is better at every possible job than humans and has entirely replaced human labour in the marketplace (including in the military). In a ...
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Which Planets of my Galaxy Would Have the Most and Least Developed Economies? [closed]
While there are hundreds of thousands of planets in the galaxy my story is set in, only a handful of them are habitable, and over many millennia, each planet has more-or-less broadly coalesced around ...
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Uh-oh, the galactic bank just got blown up - what now? [closed]
I'm running a sci-fi tabletop game, and the current big bad the party is hunting down is a group of freedom fighters with big ideas, and a MacGuffin relic capable of large-scale destruction. The big ...
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How much attrition could human civilization survive? [closed]
The pandemic has demonstrated how even a small reduction in capacity can produce downstream disruptions in supply lines.
The standard model for an apocalypse is that mankind's population drops below a ...
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Feasibility of an industrial state using tax farming and monopolies for revenue instead of a modern tax system? [closed]
In my setting there is a colonial empire that has industrialized and extracts wealth from its urban holdings with the sale of tax collecting privileges to the highest bidder in a manner analogous to ...
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What would a War time Economy look like in a modern, first world setting?
In this instance I'm kind of curious as to what a war economy would look like in a Modern first world nation like say Canada?
Overall what kind of shifts and changes would one expect from an economy ...
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How to set up exchange rate between two very different world
Related to this question. The Science world, of course, has experienced and discarded gold-standard and is using paper currency and floating exchange rates. The magic world, on the other hand, uses ...
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Post scarcity economy via time travel/alternate universes
I'm imagining a world where it's possible to travel back in time, but doing so creates an alternate universe rather then changing your past. There is some high, but manageable, cost the first time ...
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How would a very useful and pretty looking resource being very common affect a pre-modern economy?
Through many time periods things have had value due to their usefulness or their appearance and/or rarity such as precious metals like gold and silver and coins made from them, precious stones like ...
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How many power plants could plausibly be built in a given, relatively small area? For e.g. how many nuclear plants could be built in a 1000sq.km area? [closed]
For e.g. how many nuclear plants could be built in a 1000sq.km area?
How many gas/coal/oil plants could be co-located in a small area? Etc.
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Why do wild creatures carry money?
It's an extremely common trope in Role Playing Games (RPG's) for wandering monsters to carry lootable currency (gold, moolah, dinero, big ones, cash, large, green, etc.).
Now, it makes sense that non-...
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Were there problems for Babbage's Analytical Engine in 1850s? [closed]
Suppose that a mysterious philanthropist provided fundings for Charles Babbage's intricate projects and the Analytical Engine was finished by 1850.
Surely there would be a lot of raptured academicians ...
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How could a civilization with infinite resources be? [closed]
For my worldbuilding project, my main alien race has been given powers by an unknown force, one thing they use their powers for is creating infinite resources, making things like money dissappear.
How ...
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What other metals or gem stones could be used to replace gold when making medieval coins?
If a medieval society had no access to gold, what other minerals or gems could take its place in the making of coins? In my research I found gold was used as coin because:
It is durable (does not ...
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How much food surplus would medieval peasants have? [closed]
So, I am working on a setting. It is medieval fantasy with a focus on realism, and in my pursuits of realism, I am trying to figure out many things. One of them is the rough approximation of how much ...
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Litmus test for discerning worthy counterparty of medieval trade
Medieval Europe tends to be regarded as an example of significant fragmented sovereignty. That is to say multiple entities would stake claim to the same land and/or inhabitants. Of course there were ...
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What job could someone do better with super-strength, but without actually revealing that they have it?
Being a superhero without being state-sponsored or independently wealthy is kind of a massive pain. You're essentially working two jobs, one of which is highly dangerous and doesn't even pay. So ...
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How to sell things that have been brought back from another world
The MC from our modern world (2016-ish) has been iseikaied to another world of swords and magics. But after the MC defeated the big bad, she declined the invitation to stay in that world and insists ...
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Evacuating earth in favor of a off-world habitat: Just how many people can be saved?
In 2024, NASA detects a pair of planetoids, each the size of the earth's moon, careening towards our solar system. The good news is that they're set to enter earth's orbit without any collisions (how ...
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Can some countries regress and other advance when petrol will not be available anymore?
In my world, petrol will not be available anymore and there will have been a crisis ending its availability (the story is set after the crisis).
The consequences will be these:
Developing and poor ...
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Energy based economy
I am attempting to design an economy based around energy, namely, within a society possessing practical nuclear fusion. As I currently have it set up currency is backed by Hydrogen, meaning you could ...
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What would be the cost of living in a country where only millionaires and billionaires are allowed to live?
I am imagining a small country with a relatively small population; say around five million people, where by law everyone living there needs to be a millionaire or a multimillionaire/billionaire.
So ...
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How can a country devote centuries of resources to building giant mechas without being stopped?
There is a world where giant monsters the size of mountains come every few hundred years and destroy huge amounts of the world and any organized civilization of humans. The only effective response ...
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most profitable way to operate wormhole "highway" [closed]
in the near morrows, mankind had gain the might of wormhole. for with this craft man could walk from a stead to another by only a gang of walk.
such crafty man of that day was, that they are mayen ...
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What do I need to do to define resources and economic exchanges? [closed]
How to define the resources of each country/state and the trade route (road)?
I would like to define:
the resources of each country/state in my world;
the trade of goods (economic exchanges) between ...
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How can homunculi be prevented from being used as a slave race for human sacrifice as opposed to conquered populations?
The human body contains mana, the life force that can be transferred for use as a source for magic. The individual's capacity for mana slowly grows with time as the person ages into adulthood, finally ...
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What socio-economic pressure would cause humans to depend on an interstellar resource? [closed]
It's generally cheaper to make it at home, but when we can reach another star, what non-magical pressure would make that not true for humanity? There exist small niche markets in wine and some ...
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What is the most altruistic economic system? [closed]
I'm trying to write about a world with an altruistic society, and want an economy that facilitates that most of the time. I'm looking for an answer that improves public goods, retains some level of ...
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How to monetize soap bubble portals that travel across dimensions and bring various creatures and objects from different times/places in one planet [closed]
In my project there's a species of creatures capable of bending reality, using very advanced technology they achieved the power to travel through dimensions using portals.
The portals work like soap ...
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Why would my central bank suddenly increase the interest rates to over 20%?
Question: My plotline is an alternate history of the US and requires the Federal Reserve bank to increase the prime interest rate to an unheard-of 20% for one full year.
The political environment is ...
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Why would money or any other means of exchange need to exist if AI, robots, automation and nanotechnology produce all goods and services?
Let's say almost everyone is now jobless but almost all goods and services are made by machines including nanobot swarms and 3D printing. Even the government and the justice system in this futuristic ...
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Is a biofuel-backed currency viable? [closed]
I have a world where there are no fossil fuel deposits. This means that biofuels - fuels artificially created out of biological matter, rather than via geological processes - are the sole hydrocarbons ...
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Are Black Holes Military & Economic Assets? [closed]
I'm working on a sandbox astrophysics, economics and military simulation generator (there is no defined setting but I try to use real and hypothesized science for the most part) where different types ...
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kickstarting childbirth by rich investors [closed]
Elves....
The cliche' of elves living a long life thus being very underachieving on the fertility side.
I was thinking of the implication, pregnancy and child not being something that paesants do to ...
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Merfolk Beauty Products (part 1: makeup)
What could an underwater civilization use to produce makeup and cosmetics? Considering that:
The merfolk's tech level is the same as ours (they have fire and metallurgy thanks to magic)
Makeup ...
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Beating “A Good Deal at Any Price”
Over the summer, I had the privilege of listening to a Cherokee storyteller. One of the many things he mentioned was his take on trade between the new colonists and his people.
The gun, he said, was a ...
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How Can River Nomads Protect Themselves?
A tribe of peripatetic nomads (Think Travelers or Romani rather than Mongols) ply their trade along a vast stretch of river, profiting as merchants, moneylenders and cargo haulers for an ...
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Mercenary Nobles
To be elite in much of the ancient world was to be a warrior. There are a few famous kings who spent part of their youth fighting for foreign rulers, like Harald Hadrada, but in my setting there’s a ...
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How many workers are required for a medieval civilization to have metals?
The setting of my story is a medieval refugee community that has found a protected place to settle. They end up remaining in isolation for a few hundred years. The protection is a boost for life, in ...
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One reason Taiwan's military would be using weapons sold by China
I need a way to change history so that Taiwan, in 2015, be using weapons manufactured and sold by mainland China as well as some US equipments--sort of like how Pakistan uses both Chinese and US ...
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1-month Free Shipping... To Mars
Amazon has extended to Mars, and their Prime customers there need, if not 1-day shipping, at least 1-month shipping.
They have created a shipping mechanism involving some method, that allows them to ...
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How can witches compete with mega-corporations who benefit from economies of scale?
Mana is the life energy present in all humans. It also gives us the ability to use magical spells and rituals. However, only witches are able to access their Mana in order to use it directly. For ...
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In a supercontinent would ships still be the primary way of transportation before the invention of engines?
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My world is made of a super-continent with very little isles, it has 100 countries, 97 of which are on land. 3 of those are underwater for folk who are able to live confortably in the ...
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Most in-demand items/skills in dystopian future [closed]
Civilization as we know it has fallen. You want to begin to rebuild and/or set up a village shop to turn a quick buck.
What goods or services from the past (aka, now) would be most in demand?
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