> Makes me wonder if a solar system wide civilization, with trillions of beings, wouldn't invest in ships to go to the next system, extract resources, and create a stream of resources ships going back to the original solar system.

You mean colonize and feed the empire?

> Long distance/time dependencies could develop and be naturally maintained via complex decentralized indirect but intertwined economic arrangements.

But that would require causality-breaking FTL, no? Otherwise the speed of light itself would create enough of an obstacle to make any trade impractical. Property rights only work if they are enforceable, which is the case on Earth but not over interstellar distances.

> Makes me wonder if a solar system wide civilization, with trillions of beings, wouldn't invest in ships to go to the next system, extract resources, and create a stream of resources ships going back to the original solar system.

This reminds me of those old 4X-type games like "Stars!" where I would often do exactly this. Basically some planets were good for living on and others were good for mining and you'd have a constant caravan of freighters from the latter to the former.