dscott8 wrote:One caveat about comparing the SKM's economy to any of ours: the wormhole junction. It generates huge revenues in the form of transit fees that are paid by non-SKM ships, giving the SKM a favorable balance of payments from which they can finance things like education and infrastructure. That's why Peeps were obsessed with taking the junction. The SKM has a revenue generating resource that is not consumed by its use.
One important difference between "hunt and harvest" economies and "herd/ranch and garden/farm" economies is that in the latter the resource is not consumed by its own use. Provided, of course, that it is handled responsibly. Slash and burn farming or equivalents to the contrary, the latter are at least in theory sustainable.
Even the former will recover given enough time. A quarter I mostly rent out has fifteen acres where blowouts in the 30s were bad enough that no one wanted to bulldoze them into shape for farming. There is now a few inches of topsoil, and we are planting useful trees, which don't care about the lack of flatness.
