Re: The economics of interstellar invasions

Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
> Why not? As Greg Costikyan pointed out in his article, interstellar
trade
> is likely to be exclusively in luxuries and hyper-rare materials.
> 
> E.g. "spice", vital to interstellar travel, can only be found on
planet
> Arrakis(sp? sorry Herbert-fans...) Thus it makes sense to import it,
> because it can't be made locally at any cost.

	Absolutely.
	Then you have other oddities, like SPI's STARFORCE.
	The "hyper-rare" materials in this case are the
	telesthetic females.

	They cannot be manufactured.  They are the sine qua non
	of interstellar travel.  The only source is from a large
	population (they occur as a small fixed percentage of
	all live births).

	Therefore, in the StarForce universe, there is very little
	use of weapons of mass destruction. The population of a
	planet is the one item of value that makes the planet
	worth capturing.  (all other materials and goods can
	be synthesized)

	Of course the Xenophobes were the glaring exception...