If such technology exists, then there is really no basis for interstellar trade in manufactured goods, just raw materials and people. Why import a tractor at high cost when with the local Maker, you produce it yourself.
I think JTAS4 does a good job answering that concern (without needing to know about Makers specifically):
F Chadwick in JTAS 4 said:
A number of people have argued that there will be no basis for trade as we know it in the far future... Manufactured goods from its own tech level can be produced more efficiently locally....
The difficulty with this argument is that it rests on the assumption that trade is the result of [today's] primitive manufacturing techniques, which it is not. Trade is the result of economic imbalance. The development of improved manufacturing, synthesizing, and energy generating processes will not spell the end of trade, so long as the rate of technological development is not evenly distributed.
Frank goes on, but what he is describing is basic economic trade theory. It doesn't matter if one economy is better than another at everything, there can still be gains from trade to both economies if each focuses on its comparative advantage.
As the article continues, it gives a model for a key driver of trade and financial equilibrium between unequal economies: exchange rates. I think GT has a better exchange rate model than CT, but whichever you prefer, if the cost/technology disadvantages of one economy can be overcome with a lower exchange rate, then you have a financial reason for trade.
And remember also, that Imperium members have to pay taxes, and those taxes are going to be in Imperium credits not local currency. The Imperium doesn't want local goods. It wants to build its navy, support extravagant nobles in the core, etc. Oh sure, they'll take the local starport and maybe some real property for some fiefs, but sooner or later, they want those taxes paid in Imperial Credits, and the only way a world can get them is to trade for them - exporting goods, attracting tourists, or sending out labor that repatriates cash. In most cases exporting goods is going to get subsidized to generate the needed Credits.
Question for aramis:
aramis said:
Makers combine 3D printing, automated machining system, an advanced polymer chem lab, and an automated assembly plant. In a box.
Is that from AotI or is that your own vision of the things?
Some of my own ideas about Makers.
Since there are no rules for Makers, but there are lots of rules for equipment and their prices, I think we could start by assuming (as Mike suggested) that cost of using a Makers is at least what it would be to buy at the list price.
But probably an even more sensible approach is that anything made by a Makers is more costly than list price, and that things sold in commerce are built by lower cost, mass production equipment, and Makers are generaly reserved for prototyping and emergency or convenience builds away from home where they are worth the higher expense. And of course providing a few higher TL items than might otherwise be available on a world, but again, this has to be fairly limited, as otherwise all worlds would quickly converge to the same tech level, and they don't.
I'd probably put more constraints on what Makers can build than I'm reading here. For one, Makers build items at 1 TL below their own, e.g. a TL15 Maker makes up to TL14 devices. Not sure what AotI says about that, but it seems a reasonable constraint.
I'd also emphasize Reban's point
- Makers require materials. I doubt you can feed an asteroid in one end and get a FusionPlus out the other end. Processed materials, specialist components, and complete sub-assemblies are probably required (and therefore generate trade in those parts).
I'd say things like passive electronics might be built by Makers, but the certain components (quantum semiconductors, or insert your own fav futuretech component here) cannot be made with a Maker because it is not precise enough or otherwise does not have the capabilities to fab those items.
Other ways to distinguish Maker goods would be to make them lower quality or reliability or have lower production yield rates or worse early-life failure rates, etc.
One way or another, the economics of 3I have to be more or less the same with the introduction of Makers, because the prices we see in T5 more or less reflect that. They are just a little chrome that tells us how things happen. They don't radically change the economic landscape.
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