I seem to be going on about this like a bad record, don't I?
It is just that all the economies of the Empires are limited in resources and currency, because any kind of system where the resources and currency are not connected is doomed to do the boom/bust thing that our economies have been going through for the past hundred years or so.
Then there is the economy that the CONCORD lords over, the space economy. That is completely limitless in all ways imaginable. There is limitless resources and there is certainly limitless amounts of currency.
To not have them insulated from each other would be very, very, very stupid from the Empires that founded CONCORD.
Small history flashback of EVE.
In the beginning, there was no ISK (or very little of it.)
You could only get it from agents (missionwhoring), ratting (npcfarming) or trading with the npcs.
Whatever you did, the total amount of ISK in the world got bigger.
Now you can make a billion running level fives solo in an hour.
To let that kind of income making be connected in any way to a planetside economy would be ludicrous.
The spacebound economy would, in time, own the planetside economy.
If even one special snowflake of a capsuleer would have the capacity to do that, that capsuleer slowly but surely (because he/she/it is immortal) would own all the Empires.
New Eden is insidious, the Empires are not stupid, manipulation is everywhere.
Sure as hell the capsuleers feel that they are in the lap of luxury and Special, because treating them like that profits the Empires that they work for. But giving them real wealth and the power that goes with it, that would be more than stupid of the Empires that created them.
Gilded cages and all that.
How many times have you heard of a CIA agent that has toppled the American government?
Zero.
How many times in the world of New Eden would the Empires create weapons that would be capable of destroying themselves?
Zero.
Unless of course it would be an Epic story, so at least once.
Then the story would need to start jumping the shark by creating immortal foot soldiers after creating immortal space captains.
Wait, what?