Yep. That's exactly what it means. You and your people are in competition, each of them wants to use as much of the mineral, production and research capacity of the empire as they can control to improve their lives as much as possible (e.g. TV's, nice food, cars, improved habitats on the planet, a private police force, their own StarCruiser if they're millionaires etc.). You want to use it to improve their lives the way you see fit (e.g. the same stuff, or maybe other things like a fleet, or interstellar bribery or espionage.).utilae wrote:So if me and my people are both buying pps, rps, etc doesn't that mean me and my people will be in competition. And can I expect my people to research techs under my nose. So I go to the research screen and I'm told I can't research lasers, my people already did that. And the thing is, they might beat out of all of the buying of things, there are more of them.
The spending of money on one thing or another is really just saying what things should get done.
The more you think the government makes a better job of this choice for everyone than you'll get from the sum of everyones individual choices, the more you should tax them, and make the decision with that bit for them.
None of which economic phillosphy really gets us much closer to a workable economic system (though I have to say I preferred the one Krikkitone and EntropyAvatar were bashing around a while ago, but unfortunately it was probably WAY too complicated to actually use).