Paul Krugman: commitment

Transcript context

…It could become your most important paper, right? [laughs] We could imagine that there would be some way. We’d have to find somebody to trade with, although it’s the kind of thing — if you try to imagine interstellar trade for real in intellectual property — it’s probably the kind of thing that would be more like government-to-government exchanges. It sounds like it would be really, really hard, although some science fiction writers are imagining that something like Bitcoin would make it possible to do these long-range . . . I don’t think something like Bitcoin is even going to work here. One might hope that in the 23rd century or something, that we’ve actually gotten to the point where we will give, we will share our knowledge with the aliens out of our goodness, and they will do the reverse. The Star Trek universe appears to be a postcapitalist society, so who knows? If you can send humans out into space at near light speeds and bring them back, does that mean real interest rates have to fall to zero? Many years could pass, and you could save and come back a trillionaire.…

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