A paper from political scientist John Hickman, published in the journal Astropolitics, seeks to establish whether it would be possible to conduct commerce and trade over lightspeed-lagged interstellar distances. This has already been explored in science fiction (Karl Schroeder does a particularly fine job with his idea of the "Rights Society" in Permanence, a book with more fizzingly cool ideas per page than 98 percent of the sf ever published):
Economic exchange itself might be "alien" to the aliens. Members of an alien species may not experience the same intense sense of self that is exhibited in rationally self-interested economic exchange among humans. Instead, a collective identity could be dominant. Money might not exist and without it neither would complex markets or banking. If they do engage in economic exchange it might take a form akin to potlatch, the competitive gift-giving for status solely among members of the same tribe traditional among societies in Melanesia and the Pacific Northwest. Moreover an alien species might not live in separate societies and could thus have no conception of trade between different societies with different cultures.
(via Kottke)
