Economic Models

As attentive readers know I’m not an economist by training, but I was chatting with someone about things science fictiony and they told me that there are other models than capitalism.  One of them is based on the socialist agrarian communities that used to be more common in the 19th century.

These planned economies attempted to internalize production as far as possible to make themselves self sufficient in necessities and create a surplus for trading to obtain what couldn’t be locally produced.

The specifics of our conversation were about food growing, preparation, and recycling in the context of severely isolated populations you might find in slower than light speed space colonizing and the details too arcane for me to grasp, but what I found fascinating is that among experts for whom this is a serious thought experiment what passes for modern academic economics are considered laughably primitive and inadequate because of their failure to account for externalities.