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What's stopping investments outside the empire?
"Outside the empire" means "outside a legal framework which I can use to obtain recourse against people who default on our business dealings."
Because the ability to reliably obtain recourse against people who default on your business dealings is a pretty good working definition of the difference between "inside" and "outside" the empire.
(Lots of building still needed across the world.)
Just like, in the expanding empire, producers gain power from exploiting previously unclaimed (by stakeholders internal to the empire) economic niches, and then change the rules to favor producers, which opens up even more previously unclaimed niches to exploitation.
Your post implies that the whole set of economic theories basically only works while you have an expanding empire.
Growing empires attempt to explain their world, in order to better realize opportunities, since power resides with those who have a vested interest in opportunities being realized. NB: This is not necessarily (or even typically) the same group of people as the ones who do the actual work of realizing the opportunities.
Stagnant empires invent excuses for looting.
An economic theory which "works," in the sense of providing actionable explanations for what drives economic activity, is actively contrary to the interests of those who guide the direction of a stagnant empire.
After that the rate of growth limited by productivity isn't a zero-sum game, but very close to being so?
But relative to the expanding empire? Absolutely.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
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