A 'Star Trek' Economic System May Be Closer Than You Think

HughPickens.com writes: Anna North writes about "Star Trek'"s "post-economic" system, in which money no longer exists and anything you want can be made in a replicator, essentially for free. According to Manu Saadia, the author of "Trekonomics," a forthcoming book about the economics of the "Star Trek" universe, when everything is free objects will no longer be status symbols. Success will be measured in achievements, not in money: ""Instead of working to become more wealthy, you work to increase your reputation," says Saadia. "You work to increase your prestige. You want to be the best captain or the best scientist in the entire galaxy. And many other people are working to do that, as well. It's very meritocratic."

In a time of rising inequality and stagnating wages, a world where everyone's needs are met and people only work if they feel like it seems pretty far away but a post-scarcity economy is actually far more within reach than the technological advances for which "Star Trek" is better known. If productivity growth continues, Saadia believes there will be much more wealth to go around in a few hundred years' time. In general, society might look more like present-day New Zealand, which he sees as less work-obsessed than the United States: "You work to live rather than the other way round." Wealthy retirees today also already live an essentially post-money existence, "traveling and exploring and deepening their understanding of the world and being generally happy." According to Saadia we're beginning to get a few hints of what the post-money, reputation-based economy might look like. "If you look at things like Instagram, Vine, places where people put a huge amount of work into basically just gaining a certain amount of reputation, it's fascinating to see. Or even Wikipedia, for that matter. The Internet has begun to give us a hint of how much people will work, for no money, just for reputation."

Comments

Called "Communism".

[gurps_npc]

1. I love Star Trek.

2. That does not change the fact that the economy portrayed in the show is a version of communism. That is the scientific term for the economic system they used.

3. Morons that think calling 'communism' "STAR TREK ECONOMY" will somehow hide what it is should be laughed at.

4. Communism is ALSO the system used by almost all modern militaries and families. You don't charge your kids for the use of the house. Nor do you charge Fighter pilots for the use of the plane, fuel, bombs, etc.

5. While Communism works pretty well within the military and within Families, it SUCKS for a general economy. See Russia, Cuba, North Korea for prime examples.

6. WE WILL NOT EVER END UP USING COMMUNISM / 'STAR TREK ECONOMY' FOR THE GENERAL POPULATION. That battle was fought and Communism lost during the 20th century.

7. A 'post scarcity' economy is a false idea. there will always be scarcity - fuel, ideas, certain types of entertainment, sex, will ALWAYS be scarce. Merely because we will have solved the scarcity of the original commodities - food, clothing, certain types of products, does not mean nothing will ever be scarce again.

It's a good idea but it won't work.

[Irate Engineer]

We've been through this before. Computers and automation were supposed to decrease everyone's workload. Keynes predicted we would have a 15-hr work week by 2030. It hasn't happened yet, and likely won't, because the bean counters and CEOs will simply see the untapped 25-hr/week as lost potential growth and will do all they can to exploit it to maximizing profits.

We live in a society that demands growth, not steady-state. Trekonomics does not account for the fact that humans are inherently greedy, some so addicted to shiny things that they are willing to struggle to horde so much wealth that they cannot possibly spend it in a lifetime. Until that mentality is erased I wouldn't make extended vacation plans just yet.

Yes, here's the evidence...

[MindPrison]

...minus the replicator:

We're in for a rough ride. A real rough ride. Automation is increasing fast, industry production is being outsourced to 3rd world countries or where labour is cheap, this isn't new, but it's increasing rapidly now. The 1% Richest Elite in America owns 40% of the country, and the rest of the world, the scenario isn't far away. One day, there will be severe uproars amongst the increasingly poor population, not to mention the INCREASING population.

The software companies are essentially building platforms rather than hiring, the industry heads for full automation. The days where you had manual labour is on a fast track to oblivion, all the unemployment numbers speaks for themselves. People are more and more RENTING their own homes rather than owning, more laws are being imposed on the populations "freedoms" to keep them in line during this transaction to new times, it happens with a speed that's similar to cooking a lobster, it dies, but it's so comfortable while dying in the heat that it gets docile and have no clue what's coming, same with the population. We slowly accept the situation.

At some point, there will be so few jobs that socialism technically controls everything, and socialism will by then look more like slavery than freedom and democracy. Voting for all of the above instead of several parties...because they all steer in that direction, they just know...telling you, isn't going to work. But telling you what you WANT to hear, will work. (For them!)

This sounds like some crazy conspiracy tinfoil hat theory, right?

Well it isn't. And it's happening right in front of you, you know it...harder and harder to get a proper job, highly educated people clueless to why they can't get a decent job. Forget manual labour jobs, those are already given to those before you that'll give up their jobs over their cold dead hands before giving it to you, so they now work OVERTIME. Why do you think we just passed laws to allow higher overtime pay?

And property? Don't even get me started. Do you guys remember the 2007 crisis? When hundreds of thousands of people had to leave their homes because they couldn't afford to pay their mortgages? And foreclosures was abundant? Guess what happened after that. Two things, a lot of houses where left abandoned and the banks/financial institutions lost billions on houses that became trashed, unmaintained and uncared for while people still had their debt which they can't possibly hope for to ever repay, now if they had kept their homes - they would have stood a fighting chance, but no. Corporate greed eats itself up.

The second thing that happened, was that smart real estate investors came and purchased the foreclosed homes, and rented them out.

Joblessness, lack of freedom, lack of happiness, lack of money, lack of jobs, outsourcing, automation will ultimately lead to one of the worst periods in history, civil wars will break out, huge fights amongst growing masses of unemployed welfare recipients fighting against the elite who has the law-in-hand, for food and basic needs. This will probably last a good 20 years or so, until we phase into the next "moneyless" society.

The moneyless society is actually good, but it's going to be a rough ride (as described above), and the hardest part will be to convince those with the money to part with the monetary system for good, for the common good of everyone, this will eventually equal man to everyone, and our future jobs will basically be to secure our planets resources and stability. But there's going to be ONE huge fight before we get there. Brace yourselves!

Re:It only works with no scarcity

[tlambert]

The Star Trek economy only works with no scarcity. And while there is a surplus of labor, there is NOT a surplus or resources or energy. And energy is the big one here, as everyone keeps telling us.

OK, I'll tell you different, if it'll make you happy. Energy is an artificial scarcity. Nuclear and space based solar power, or some combination of the two, can pretty easily eliminate that problem.

Sure there is solar, and wind, but they run up against some rather hard resource limitations.

Planet-based renewables, other than breeder reactors, are pretty iffy. Space-based solar (SPS) is very reliable, and doesn't suffer downtime from weather conditions, just like breeders.

(Especially plastics which depend on oil...)

Actually, like food, they depend for a vast amount of their input on CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen), and on energy.

Except people's intrinsic motivations still rule

[WOOFYGOOFY]

It's a nice picture of a possible future, but you have to reserve some skepticism whenever the story starts contradicting what appears to be constants of human interaction.

For instance, look at the online communities which have similar motivational incentives- no money, just "prestige". What is it like to be a member of such communities?

Even in academia, when times are good and the money is available to any credible researcher with a reasonable research project, how do they act to each other and what do they do to each other?

The fact is that "reputation" is a nice word for status which is always shorthand for "relative status" which implies a zero sum game for attention and recognition.

What do people do to each other within that kind of game? Because if you're my competitor and I can ruin you through underhanded means, then I come out on top. Don't kid yourself, making people smarter or richer does not allievate or even abate these dynamics.

How much of the bad things that happen in the world are because the poor are ruining everything for the rest of us? How much are because people with an unthinkable amount of money, post-money people, are behaving in anti-social ways?

Then there's the underlying, ultimate competition - the competition for mates. How is that going to be mitigated
in a post momey world? Do the current crop of post money people behave in a relaxed, egalitarian fashion or are they underhanded, status seeking, manipulative, competitors who stop at nothing to satiate their ever-expanding, ever shifting desires?

The REAL revolution that's so far out there in terms of thinkability is the one where science learns enough about why humans behave they way they do that they can control it and shape it. You know that that is REAL science fiction because whenever you hear someone say something like that, your imagination fills with visions of what a dystopia that would lead to.

The reason we have that reaction is because of the set of facts I was talking about in the beginning of the post- what people are like- post-money or not. The idea that people would naturally and robustly be inclined to act in reliably decent ways such that, say, we would not need a police force to stop criminals and terrorists from doing what it is they want to do, is totally unthinkable science fiction.

Even Gene Roddenberry didn't go there, except in episodes where he wanted to show what a false veneer any such society ultimately was.

That is all we know about humans and what humans are inclined to act like and that's the point. It's not a revolution if it's not revolutionary and making stuff for cheap is not a revolution, it's an evolution.

It's not going to take away the badness of the world or even much mitigate it, at least for people living in developed nations.

For people in developing nations, yes, it will be amaterial godsend and yes, that would be a huge and welcome event.

Re:It only works with no scarcity

[Your.Master]

but in an economy without scarcity, with nothing much to do but lay about and make babies, the population tends to grow rather quickly.

This claim appears to fly in the face of every statistic, which shows the wealthier the nation (in other words, the less scarcity there is), the lower the birthrate, to considerably less than 1.5 children per person.

Re:It only works without humans

[ultranova]

If productivity enhancements means we don't need as many secretaries and factory workers, those expenditures will go towards marketing and sales.

No, they get paid out as management bonuses and dividends. Productivity enhancements have gone towards making the 1% richer at everyone else's expense. That's not sustainable, and will end up in either social reforms or outright revolution, just like it did the last time.

The idea that productivity enhancements will ever reduce the need for human labor was always laughable. Only people such as an ivory tower economist like Keynes could have ever thought this.

Then why do all developed economies struggle with unemployment?