I am going to outline a vision of a Cornucopian Empire. This is pretty much what I have been working on at the moment - Leaguespace 6000AD - but I’m trying to hack my way through the logical thicket of the setting.

I imagine an world where the idea of zero point energy has been develloped - in that a practically limitless amount of energy can be made available anywhere and shaped into any sort of ‘thing’ of energy or matter. So one could feed a world with replicators in every living quarters or a transfer grid keyed to your phone - “Hub, I want a margharita.” - and ding it appears.

So anyone can have anything, anytime they want. Nothing physical is ‘unavailable’ therefore nothing physical is of any value unless its sentimental. Anything scanned can be replicated. Even planets are largely disposable - if one is shattered in fighting, just build a ringworld or whatever. Over a long enough time frame, even stars can be fabricated. And so we come to the Empire of the title. Empires are viewed as being bad because generally they enrich the Imperial heartland at the expense of the subjects in the dominions. In a cornucopia this ceases to be an issue.

But given that this is Leaguespace, and that a vicious and ruthless Empire has been in charge for millenia, this turns into a Military Empire; where all worlds are settled by ‘our’ people, and guarded to ensure no threat ever arises. In the case of Leaguespace this makes sense since there’s two of them - the Adversary and the Leader out there, possibly even ‘in here’ through stooges.

An Empire is the only way to centrally control a large galactic union, and given the paranoia of its rulers, massive use of military force to wipe out any insurrection would be appropriate response since industrial capacity is no longer meaningful and populations are replaceable.

Suddenly mindsets become the only things holding things together. Beliefs and ‘why’ boil down to dogma, lust for power and all the other things that come from being at the top of the pile and knowing that if you don’t stamp very hard on anyone who looks up from further down, they’ll come after you, in large numbers, with the best weaponry their omnifabricators could magic out of the ether.

So - where coin is worthless the only coin of the realm is power and the will to use it without hesitation or compunction. In fact, it suddenly appears to me that only a system as structurally malicious as the Draxian Creed, with cruelty and viciousness ingrained into its very reasons for being could survive the shock of unlimited energy/resources. If technology provides unlimited plenty, then it turns into a sort of galactic night-watch state (of varying levels) where the only aim is to maintain the status quo and prevent something horrible like a nanoplague or other internal threat.

Essentially everyone in the galaxy lives under the heel of the Navy so that the Imperials can feel safe. Does this sound reasonable?

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