Down to 966 words!
Level of economic development
Development level 1
On the ten poorest colonies (Dirawong, Rebirth, Surikate, Leviathan, Goodhope, Bohemia, Serengeti, Luoyang, Haudenosaunee, and Oberon) the local manufacturing struggles to produce anything more sophisticated than Iron Age tech. There is no infrastructure to speak of, no permanent settlements larger than a few thousand occupants, almost no workshops larger or more specialised than a village smithy. Agriculture is primitive, often depending on annual crops and livestock that have to be killed to produce meat and hides.
These worlds can’t practically export anything at any price. Their few critical high-tech imports, reserved to the powerful, are brought in by foreign visitors and interstellar aid programs or paid for with their cash.
Development level 2
About 125 worlds, with a combined total of about 73 billion population, use the production methods of the classical empires and of mediaeval times. They have high-biotech crops, either as a legacy from Old Earth or introduced recently, but there are no power networks or reticulated water supplies. Cellular communications are confined to the cities and busy travel routes; between them satellite communications are reserved to the privileged.
These worlds have enough bridges, roads, and ports, and sufficiently robust institutions, that they can export precious minerals and premium agricultural products—but development aid is still a critical source of foreign exchange. Imports are precious and used sparingly, even mid-tech ones from neighbours with middling development, such as smart phones.
Development level 3
About 100 worlds, home to 72 billion people, use pre-industrial production methods like those of Renaissance and Enlightenment workshops. Reticulated sewers, water supplies, power supplies, and communications are confined to wealthy areas. Cellular comms are widespread but have regional gaps.
These worlds usually export enough minerals and high-biotech agricultural products, some of them improved by handicrafts, that imported gadgets and equipment are not rarities, though few firms or households can afford to use imports in more than limited key applications. Ordinary people use a makeshift-looking combination of high tech imports and local basics, such as an electric impeller on a wooden boat, or an autophysician in an adobe clinic.
Development level 4
About 100 primary colonies, home to 88 billion people, are at least partly industrialised. They use production methods of the Industrial Revolution (DL4.0) and assembly lines (DL4.5) to assemble cast, stamped, machined, and imported parts. Some factories process agricultural and mineral products for domestic consumption and as value-added exports. Others assemble imported subassemblies from multiple specialised sources for sale and re-export as high-tech products. These economies also produce mechanical and electrical components.
Cities here have reticulated water supplies, energy grids, and sewers. At DL4.5 towns do. Cellular communications cover all but remote rural areas. There may be a global information network, but not universal access.
Over 200 new worlds in the fringe (home to a total of 37 billion) are at a roughly similar level of development, though their economies are oriented to clearing land to establish plantations. Immigrants and investors supply most of their foreign exchange.
Development level 5
About 330 primary colonies, home to 65 billion people, use methods based on printing (such as photolithography) to mass-produce such things as microchips and printed microcircuits. They are the primary source of electronic components in the interstellar economy. These worlds have data networks and grid power supplies reaching every home, ubiquitous high-speed cellular data. Many combine materials from lower-tech worlds and components from higher-tech ones to produce typical consumer products and traded subassemblies of the interstellar economy.
About 110 new worlds in the fringe, home to 44 billion people, have reached a comparable level of development. They are industrialising, and starting to replace sources in the Core and Periphery as suppliers of consumer products to the Fringe. They are also starting to attract migrants less inclined to rural pioneering.
Development level 6
About 120 primary colonies and forty new worlds, home to 180 billion people, use industrial methods based on sophisticated microscale extrusion (“3D printing”, “tissue printing”), etching and so forth to produce photonic devices and microstructured materials, including tissues and organs.
Development level six is the median by population. Colonies more developed than this are seen as rich, those less so than this as poor. The full range of consumer products is in ordinary use, but poor and frugal people do prefer some cheaper mid-tech alternatives.
Development level 7
Fifty-odd primary colonies and the five most successful new colonies use industrial methods based on nanomachining and molecular biology to assemble cells, organelles, nanocomposites and smart materials. The involvement of human workers in such economies is abstruse, as IT replaces much cognitive work and the specialisation of capital rather than that of skilled labour becomes critical. Many jobs on these worlds seem abstract and frivolous to the materially deprived denizens of less developed economies.
Development level 8
Fewer than twenty worlds—none of them in the Fringe, perhaps three in the Periphery—use industrial processes under exotic conditions, atomic epitaxy etc. to make such things as optical phased array emitters, quantum computers, long fullerene strands, small amounts of antimatter…. These worlds export the critical components of high-tech devices for the wider economy, and import lower-tech products and fully assembled devices for consumption.
DL8.0 is what Earth achieved before its destruction. Six worlds in the Core (Aeneas, Iter, Seeonee, Simanta, Tau Ceti, and Todos Santos) have taken advantage of interstellar trade to achieve economies of scale and specialisation allowing DL8.5. They manufacture commercially products that were seen on Earth only as experimental demonstrations, if at all. Pundits call this group “the Suite”, and analyse its members as sectors of a single more highly-developed economy. Some analyse the Empire as the transport sector of the Suite.