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Why can't the usual comparative advantage arguments work? The USA trades with many African countries, even though there is nothing those African countries can do better than the USA - just like your colonists.

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Comparative advantage when the commodity is ideas? Intriguing.

How it works for physical good is clear. But how can one society produce one category of ideas cheaply while another produces a different category of ideas cheaply?

> But how can one society produce one category of ideas cheaply while another produces a different category of ideas cheaply?

Different brain organization?

I don't see why it wouldn't work for ideas just as well as physical goods. Maybe you are smarter than me and can do research in physics and biology much better than me, but you can't do both - so we're better off if you do physics really well and I do biology not so well and we trade. There's no more reason that 2 planets cannot specialize in different kinds of science or math than 2 universities cannot have different strengths.

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