>>5734445I was thinking a lot about the economics, lol Cobb-Douglas production functions lol. But from what I read about currencies the sci-fi approach is basically one of these
-Currency as basket of resources. Like an intergalactic IMF SDR, or Keynes bancor. It doesn't really even work on this planet though, because of political things
-Currency as thermodynamic unit; one approach had it standardised on energy cost to deliver X weight to fixed Y planetary destination etc. It is almost like that PRASM (passenger revenue per available seat mile) from airlines lol
-Currency as human specialists / expertise. You could see this in Dune etc, the shadow currencies of Bene Gesserit, who gets the concubines?, the doctor order people or those that could make the reanimated corpse people Gholems? and axolotl tank things
-Currency as years of life extension (if some megacorporation monopolises immortality technology) A variant of this might be currency as years of indentured servitude etc
-Currency as reputation, honour etc. This is an intuitive and popular one lots of authors use it but to me it is a bit circular/tautological. I am also not certain it fills the definition of fungibility or tradeability or store of value (you cannot "store" reputation, it decays over time because rivalry or your acquaintances die; also if you are allied to one faction, you cannot trade with their enemies? Defeats purpose and economic definition of money) It is mechanically interesting from a gameplay perspective though (Star Traders Frontiers rpg had an amazing implementation of it)
-Currency as computation: I saw this I think in Greg Egan novels, it feels a bit like elastic supply allocation of compute power hours hehe the serverless computing idea from hyperscale cloud. It works well with sci-fi involving PLANET COMPUTERS yay
-A weird idea I had is maybe there is just one planet that issues all the currency. The planet is perhaps some holdover from the FALLEN GALACTIC EMPIRE everyone just uses their sacred trinket tokens debentures or promissory notes or whatever because of cultural inertia. Maybe this could be the start of PLANET BANK HEIST mission. Need a better idea for this Federal Reserve Planet though