Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek Economics
An anonymous reader writes "Rick Webb has an article suggesting we're in the nascent stages of transforming to a post-scarcity economy — one in which we are 'no longer constrained by scarcity of materials—food, energy, shelter, etc.' While we aren't there yet, job automation continues to rise and the problem of distributing necessities gets closer to being solved every day. Webb wondered how to describe a society's progress as it made the transition from scarcity to post-scarcity — and it brought him to Star Trek. Quoting: 'I believe the Federation is a proto-post scarcity society evolved from democratic capitalism. It is, essentially, European socialist capitalism vastly expanded to the point where no one has to work unless they want to. It is massively productive and efficient, allowing for the effective decoupling of labor and salary for the vast majority (but not all) of economic activity. The amount of welfare benefits available to all citizens is in excess of the needs of the citizens. Therefore, money is irrelevant to the lives of the citizenry, whether it exists or not. Resources are still accounted for and allocated in some manner, presumably by the amount of energy required to produce them (say Joules). And they are indeed credited to and debited from each citizen's "account." However, the average citizen doesn't even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not measured in currency units—definitely not Federation Credits.'"
A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all.
He couldn't be more wrong, the more likely scenario is collapse due to over population and limited resources.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
>> we're in the nascent stages of...a post-scarcity economy...'no longer constrained by scarcity of materials—food, energy, shelter, etc.
Tell that to:
- The homeless in our streets
- People blowing their savings on heating costs this winter
- Middle-eastern residents getting blown up because there's oil under nearby ground
- African children still dying of starvation
>> European socialist capitalism vastly expanded to the point where no one has to work unless they want to
Yeah...ask the Soviets or Cuba how that worked. (Or Venezuela if you need a more recent example.) Hell,. just ask Europe how that's going. (Looking at you, France.)
The problem is simple, right out of the first chapter of a high school economics class. "wants" are infinite. Consider our daily lives in today's world. The "working poor" among us live lives right around the "poverty line". Yet they can generally afford motor vehicle transportation (even if it's the bus), to spend most of their time in air conditioned environments (even if it's the workplace at McDonalds), can call anyone on the planet in theory (even if it's from VoIP at a library), and so on. Even the shittiest life is the life of a king a thousand years ago.
Please note that I am not trying to justify social darwinism : I do think something is rotten in our society that causes all income gains to be accrued by the rich and NONE of them go to the middle/lower class.
If we have star trek grade technology, it merely means that the pie is a lot bigger. With Star Trek grade tech, presumably we can tap into the resources of entire stars and planets and manufacture almost anything with minimal effort. But people's desires for a slice of the pie have grown proportionally. Perhaps an impoverished person in Star Trek can get limitless food, basic medical care, and virtual reality porn. But he can't afford his own starship or planet or any of the other toys of the mega-rich. And can you imagine how expensive having a kid would be in such a world?
I believe that this is best described by Ian M Banks in his culture series
Compare it to a century or two ago and you'll see that many homeless now have a higher quality of life than a good portion of the middle class did back then.
Bullshit. You CLEARLY have no idea what being homeless is actually like, nor do you have any realistic idea what being "middle class" was like 100 years ago. Let me give you a hint. My grandmother is close to a century old so she was around back then and her family could accurately be described as lower middle class. It wasn't all that different than it is now aside from some of the technology advances. Her father was a barber, her mom worked for a state agency, they had a house not so different from the one you probably live in. You seem to have some bizarre notion that people lived in caves and squalor a hundred years ago. It wasn't like that at all nor was it like that 200 years ago.
>> and technology hasn't changed at all since, has it.
That's my point: France and Venezuela and other countries have money and access to the latest technology, but have still been unable to summon their slacker's utopia.
If you want a counter example, look how much the lives of Chinese citizens have improved since they began to emphasize reward-for-effort models (capitalism) over exist-get-paid models (socialism).
ST's vision of the future economy (at least from TNG on; TOS wisely avoided touching on it but implied it was a form of Capitalism) is a pipe-dream Utopia. If food, shelter, and energy were in virtually unlimited supply no one would need to work, yes, but more importantly, no one would *want* to. Where would the goodies come from then? Automation? Okay then, the Machines rule the Federation. And no one would ever emerge out of their self-created kingdoms inside holodecks. The future would be more like Wall-E. There'd be no more invention, no more innovation, no more anything..... Just everyone plugged into their fantasies in their holo-simulators, a civilization of lotus-eaters. This is the sort of shit that would cause Captain Kirk to charge phasers. Rewatch "The Apple".
I believe Sowell's definition of economics is correct--it is the study of how we allocate SCARCE resources.
Given the laws of physics and mandatory recycling of biology, there will always be a scarcity some place.
You might have an endless pile of food but that means you have an endless stream of shit to deal with also.
We have just realized that we cannot burn all the oil in the planet without also burning us out of house and home.
In economics, the term to grok is 'externality." They have odd definitions but essentially it is something you think is not scarce and then eventually it becomes scarce like clean air or water after industrialization. I know people who say they can always live off hunting if the economy collapses. Ask someone who knows about population biology. If enough people start hunting deer, there won't be more than one or two year's worth of meat in most US States, maybe 4 years in Maine and Minnesota. As long as only 5% of the population hunts, the biology can maintain itself. If 40% hunted for food, we'd quickly run out of large animals.
The natural processes of biology can handle things up to certain limits. The fish in the oceans can feed a billion of us sustainably, but not 5 billion hence the collapse of almost all the world's fisheries formerly thought to be unlimited. (I know there are 7 billion folks in the world but a third of them are starving).
>> The difference with capitalism is that there is no big investor owning the company, doing what he wants and (the most important part) living from your work.
And in the Soviet Union...the party bosses did what? :) Time to re-read "Animal Farm," I think.
>> A cooperative is the best example of people working in those conditions.
As are churches, many charities and other groups where the membership is small and motivated to achieve a common purpose (as typically demonstrated by a large body of volunteers). The model falls apart once applied to government of any size, however...
I always wondered how people in a society with no money could play poker.
There really is no shortage of anything but money and will. Clearly the reality is that you have to have money to acquire things you need. Those who don't have access to basic needs -- well that's usually a political problem or a corrupt leadership. For example, no one on the planet should go hungry -- food production is more than adequate to feed the global population. I think that's where the author is coming from.