Economic Theory

This paper, by Paul Krugman of Yale University, seeks to explore the concept of interstellar trade. An interesting conundrum in that we have no idea how much it should actually cost or how to compensate for time dilation in cargo fees. At present for instance we could ship a freighter full of say, ruby, to the nearest star. At a cost of all the money, time, items of value and effort of every single human being who ever lived working for the next thousand years. Which would end up, should we encounter any aliens who would like to trade. So very expensive they would tell us to go home they'll dig up their own rocks. This happens regardless of the item we would wish to trade. In other words Han Solo would lose approximately one million trillion dollars in operating costs for every trip the Falcon took to sell cargo. Except in the Star Wars universe it only takes, at most, the better part of an afternoon to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other and doesn't seem to cost anything in terms of fuel.