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My recent thread working out the gold content value of a gold coin (ys$405) got me thinking what would trade be like in a multi-world/dimension civilisation.
So I'm throwing the thread open for people to hopefully discuss what kind of rules and trade they think would be good. Assume for the purposes of this discussion that via magic you have access to multiple dimensions and worlds ranging form typical pathfinder style medieval fantasy up to modern day earth and the magitech eberron equivalent what rules would you have for your civilisation?
For me I'd probably start off with the following.
1) No items, magic, creatures or concepts that don't already exist there are allowed to be introduced on a mass scale I.e. No magic spellbooks to earth, no mass production to Golarion. As they can destabilise the civilisation.
2) No long-term resource inequality e.g. For every tonne of gold ore exported to a world/dimension a similar amount needs to come back in one form or another e g. Selling copper ore to earth and buying an equivalent amount of copper wiring from it. One tonne goes out, one tonnes worth comes back leaving both dimensions with a similar amount of copper to what they had before.
3) Heavy inspections and probably intermediate dimensional holding areas to check for diseases/pathogens.
4) Total imports must not be so great that if cut off internal supplies can't be ramped up to meet demand within 5 years. The difference between knowing where to mine our oil and actually using it. Imports from any one source can't exceed 10% of total imports. Similarly no one trading partner can receive more than 10% total exports.
I'd probably trade primarily in limited amounts of raw goods for manufactured ones as per rule 2 and consumable ones like meat, fruits, grain, etc in exchange for the right to release cultural objects (book publications, tv shows, movies etc).
Depending on the world (primarily whether it has existing trade with other life planets, dimensions) I'd either try to acquire an island as a trading hub or go through intermediaries as a middle man "you need x legal item bought or sold we'll find someone who can do that, incidentally we've a buyer for lots of cars".
As part of this wed probably also allow for controlled trade between places that are aware of the concept but have limited ability to implement it, or do so safely at lease to use us as a shipping firm.
I had somthing like this in a homebrew game not that long time ago.
I ditent make laws on the subject since the trading was mostly done by a select few that know the secret of the planar corridors. And luckely that because my players never really went in to it. They just used the corridors to get home whenever some macic accident had sent them far far away:)
The corridors was somthing like the infinitestaircase in the DanD multiverse, just with more doors.