# Dumb Econ Question: Interstellar Trade **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 9, 2016, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464 "2016-09-09T20:24:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/21 "2016-09-12T15:54:37Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > In one novel, Poul Anderson posits an interstellar fight over a rogue planet. [Nicholas van Rijn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_van_Rijn) of Solar Spice and Liquors Company ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/22 "2016-09-12T15:55:50Z")
Paul Krugman’s 1978 paper on the economics of interstellar trade [https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/23 "2016-09-12T17:46:27Z")
The other issue - compare raw material inputs vs. finished product prices for any of our day-to-day essentials. There are a number of rare elements - gold, uranium, rare earths for some specialized devices, silver, platinum, chromium, etc. But for most industrial inputs, the refined raw material is cheap. Some of our design of day-to-day devices may be constrained by these shortages, but in general, most of what we make uses relatively cheap resources. Cutting these prices in half won’t significantly reduce the price of day-to-day goods. Quick google shows price of steel is about $300/ton. However, a car costs a lot more than $600. Most of that additional cost has little to do with raw material costs. Industrial processing and high-tech production are the price bottlenecks nowadays. Plus, a lot of other raw material costs are unlikely to be affected by asteroid mining or such. Organic materials - oil, plastics, potash fertilizers, biologicals - are not likely to be as abundant except on similar earth-type planets. Consider we’ve almost sucked dry this planet’s oil in a matter of a century, where less than 10% of the world population using much of that output. You’d need to be finding oil-bearing but uninhabited planets every decade or two to supply earth - an transporting - massive tanker-loads of oil interstellar distances. (I’m imagining an Exxon Valdez incident where a tanker-sized ship falls out of the sky and goes splat randomly somewhere on the landscape.) Not to mention the implications for global warming of multiplying the carbon/CO2 content of earth, or its fertilizer content, or… Even unlimited clean energy - i.e. fusion - what does the potential heat problem look like? If I can hop into my flying car and zip over to Australia suborbitally, how many more kilojoules of heat is my Mr. Fusion pumping into the ecosphere? ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/24 "2016-09-13T02:17:35Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Take a lesson from the Good Old Days of oil. … Gas was 40 cents a gallon. Interestingly, $0.40 in 1972 equates to $2.30 today - about $0.10 above the current average price of gas in the US. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/25 "2016-09-13T02:58:46Z")
Going back to the idea that there’s no scarcity and costs are purely based on mining and transport, and that those costs are essentially fixed for any commodity… One thing to set different prices for different materials will be co-deposits, where mining for high-demand X produces a lower-demand by product or waste product Y. Uranium, for example, will always be found mixed with lead. Even if it was pure uranium once, it’s had time to go through at least one half life. If uranium has higher demand, then you could pass on the full cost of mining and separating when you sell the uranium. At that point, your “waste” lead only has a marginal cost equal to shipping it, so you can give it a lower price point and still make a profit on some of it. Looking at isotopes of uranium, some will be rarer than others. As before, you separate all the isotopes, pass on the cost of separation to the highest-demand item and then sell off the waste products at whatever price will justify shipping it home. So you might end up with a market where U235 costs more than U238, which are both more expensive than lead. Of course, part of me is reminded of the Twilight Zone episode where a guy steals gold, uses a hibernation chamber to sleep into the future, where he believes the gold will be valuable. Only problem, they learned how to synthesize gold at home. Oops. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/26 "2016-09-13T03:16:53Z")
also youd get something that’s been known as the “lobster effect” where the price of lobster is 1$ per whole lobster but the stores and restaurant are still selling it like its 9 or 10 a pound I could find an asteroid amd mine tons of gold but its the middleman that sets the consumer prices ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/27 "2016-09-13T14:21:22Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > … its the middleman that sets the consumer prices Right - like how the gas stations have managed to keep the US price of gas near $4, even as wholesale prices have fallen. (IOW, in a free market the middleman can set his price, but if it’s too high, he won’t be selling much.) > [@](#): > > I could find an asteroid amd mine tons of gold but its the middleman that sets the consumer prices If your middleman is selling those tons of gold at a price that moves a few ounces a week, I suspect you’d be looking for a different middleman. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/28 "2016-09-13T14:26:33Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Interestingly, $0.40 in 1972 equates to $2.30 today - about $0.10 above the current average price of gas in the US. But it did go up to almost $5/gal, until we resorted to generating mini-earthquakes across the Midwest, steaming oil out of tar sands, and drilling a thousand feet under the ocean, with the occasional dollop of oil on the beach. Oh, and the US mortgage market kicking the chair out from under the world economy in 2008 so those pesky third-worlders wouldn’t take a bigger share of oil production. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/29 "2016-09-15T05:18:10Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > … > Of course, part of me is reminded of the Twilight Zone episode where a guy steals gold, uses a hibernation chamber to sleep into the future, where he believes the gold will be valuable. Only problem, they learned how to synthesize gold at home. Oops. 🙂 That goes along with the joke about the guy who invests his money, then has himself frozen for 100 years. When he’s thawed out, he phones his broker to find out how much his investments are worth. “Let’s see,” says the broker. “Your account is worth 11 billion dollars!” “Wow!” the guy says. “That’s great!” Then a voice comes on the line “Please deposit two million dollars for the next 5 minutes…” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2016, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464/30 "2016-09-15T11:29:48Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > My understanding is that most of the heavy elements sank into the core of the planet, so anything heavy in the mantle is likely to be right at the top, thanks to asteroids. Digging deeper down won’t get you access to more stuff (unless you have some way to go all the way to the core, without melting or starting a volcano). To a degree, but there are other factors, for example whether or not the element bonds to something that _doesn’t_ sink. The mirror image of how Earth’s remaining hydrogen supply doesn’t drift\* away\* from Earth because it’s bonded to other heavier molecules like oxygen. Since gold has been mentioned, gold is both heavy and inert, and as a result almost all of it sank into the core when Earth formed. Almost all gold that is accessible to humans was deposited by the impact of meteorites and asteroids _after_ the Earth cooled. So, gold would be significantly more common in asteroids than it is on Earth. Still fairly rare, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-econ-question-interstellar-trade/765464.md?page=1)