Economy Quick Reference for Sci-Fi Writers

The deliberate creation of limited availability for goods that could otherwise be abundant, used to maintain economic control or social hierarchy

Example: In a world with matter replicators, governments might restrict access to certain molecular patterns or require licenses for luxury items to preserve class distinctions

An economic system where goods and services flow based on social relationships and status rather than explicit agreements or market transactions

Example: The Culture series by Iain M. Banks, where advanced AIs provide for all human needs, and people contribute based on personal fulfillment and social recognition

A system where human attention becomes the primary scarce resource and medium of exchange in a post-material world

Example: Citizens earn 'focus credits' by consuming educational content or participating in governance, which they can spend on entertainment or personalized AI services

Corporate alliances that control extraction rights and pricing for space-based resources, often operating beyond planetary governmental oversight

Example: The Belt mining companies in The Expanse series, which create artificial water shortages to maintain political leverage over planetary governments

Economic structures built around the massive energy costs of moving goods between star systems or even within solar systems

Example: Local manufacturing becomes essential; a colony might maintain expensive 3D printing facilities rather than import basic goods from Earth at 1000x the cost

Economic arrangements where the delay in interstellar communication and transport creates complex temporal financial instruments

Example: A loan issued on Earth might compound differently than expected due to relativistic effects during FTL travel, creating 'temporal arbitrage' opportunities

Jobs and services that command higher prices specifically because they're performed by humans rather than AI, regardless of quality

Example: Hand-written letters, human-cooked meals, or live human musical performances become luxury items in an AI-dominated service economy

Systems for distributing AI processing power and intelligence augmentation among populations

Example: Citizens receive daily 'compute quotas' they can use for enhanced problem-solving, accessing advanced AI tutors, or temporarily boosting their intelligence

Legal and economic frameworks governing who owns and profits from AI-generated innovations or decisions

Example: When an AI discovers a new medicine, profits might be split between the AI's owner, the person who prompted it, and a universal basic income fund

Financial systems that trade in quantum superpositions, allowing investment in multiple potential outcomes simultaneously until wave function collapse

Example: Investors buy shares in 'Schrödinger stocks' that exist in multiple states, only resolving to single values when observed or at predetermined measurement events

Economic systems where experiences, skills, or memories serve as tradeable commodities with quantifiable value

Example: A master chef could sell copies of their cooking expertise, while students pay with childhood memories of family gatherings to afford educational downloads

Resource allocation based on thermodynamic principles, where the universe's heat death creates ultimate scarcity driving all economic activity

Example: Civilizations trade in 'negentropy credits' - measures of organized energy - with the most efficient entropy-reversing technologies becoming the basis of interstellar commerce