Are "planet of hats" realistic?

Planet of hats is the name of a trope where all inhabitants of a planet share a defining characteristic, of which there are many sub-tropes like environment or economy. I'd like to focus on the culture.

Is it realistic to have planets with defining cultures?

I'd like to share my initial thoughts, hopefully without influencing the answers too much. I see there are two conflicting factors:

• Economically, it makes sense for a highly-integrated interstellar society to specialize, such that certain products are produced on one planet but not another; this is also known as comparative advantage. This would have the same effect on a planet's culture, making it distinct. Real-life (but much smaller) analogies would be Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street.
• On the other hand, such a high integration would also cause cultural ideas to spread, diluting the unique cultures. We see this in how similar and cosmopolitan our modern cities are, whereas they were far more distinct only a few generations ago.

posted about 10 years ago

congusbongus‭

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