Re: [GZG] FTverse colinies

G'day, 

> * First, you project a population of nearly 34 billion for Earth in
> 2188. The UN population projections...level off at about 12 billion...
> What kinds of assumptions are they
> making that make their results come out so differently?

Well for a start you picked on my high estimate and then compared it to
the real world which is more like midway between the low and medium
estimates ;)

The main difference is the implications of technology for growth, the
high estimate explicitly includes increasing carrying capacity and high
reproductive rates 

"High estimate (you would have to be able to pack them into ships like
sardines, have fleets on constant turn around to garden planets and
figure out how to have artificial wombs or multiple births or huge
support system to get this one done)"

> * Do you make allowances for differing start dates for interstellar
> expansion? 

Yes and different movement patterns when there is peace time vs
interstellar war.

> I'm a business student by trade, but your numbers look
> roughly like the outcome of a compound interest expansion. Time
> becomes more important than income in those scenarios, so I'm
> wondering if that applies to population growth, too.

Very much so. Google earth's population through history and you'll find
a nice example of a power curve ;)

> If that is the
> case, then the question of how the NI competes efficiently with the IF
> is pretty easy to answer...

The coefficient of productivity : population will not be consistent
across nations (it isn't today, never has been in history so there is no
reason to think it will change in the future. Who is more productive
than whom will no doubt jump about as it has in the past, but that is a
discussion for a different thread). So it is a bit risky just assuming
that y people => $x consistently across nations. So I'm quite happy for
nations with different population bases to be competitive against each
other fleet wise (or at least game fleet wise).

> * One area where I *might* have enough expertise to add something is
> in the economics of migration....

Sounds good (my progress will be slow but if you send me some operating
cost functions (would you do the normal split of fixed, variable etc
costs?), any discount rates etc you want included I can build them in as
I get moving on the improved code for this). Would also fit my plans to
hand the project to a grad student as an example of metapopulation
modelling as we are increasing the sophistication of the social and
economics modules we're considering in the course too ;)

Cheers

Beth

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