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Can Star Trek's World With No Money Work In Real life? (cnn.com)
The economics of the Star Trek universe were discussed at New York Comic Con on Sunday. Paul Krugman was among the panelists who debated whether a world without money could actually work. CNN reports: "Star Trek has dared to 'boldly go where no man has gone before' — including a world without money. 'One of the things that's interesting about Star Trek is that it does try to imagine a post-scarcity economy where there's no money. People don't work for it. People don't work because they have to but because they want to,' said Annalee Newitz, the editor of Gawker's io9 blog. Newitz -- along with Nobel Prize winner and economist Paul Krugman, 'Treknomics' author Manu Saadia, economics professor Brad DeLong, Fusion's Felix Salmon and Star Trek writer Chris Black -- discussed economics through the lens of the Star Trek world at a New York Comic Con panel Sunday."
Star Trek couldn't even get rid of the concept of money in the show. This led to various inconsistencies throughout the various Star Trek shows and movies, even within the Federation. See http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...
The Ferengi still used it... and the Federation used it to trade with the Ferengi.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
That one wasn't entirely true.
Yes it is entirely true that the writers in the Star Trek universe completely ignore the effects of relativity. If you believe otherwise then you do not adequately understand the effects of relativity.
Roddenberry at the very least seriously considered the FTL problem and came up with a novel solution, the warp drive.
Relativity and its effects do not go away even if you have the magical warp drive. Relativity is not just about FTL and a warp drive does not make it go away. Relativity matters any time you are moving at a substantial fraction of light speed (which they do routinely in the show) as well as any time you are in a strong gravitational field (which also happens routinely in the show). The effects of this with respect to time, mass, etc are completely ignored in the show.
And now phycisists actually think it could be done
Find me one credible physicist who is making this claim. The most they will say if they are honest is that it hasn't been proven to be impossible, which is true. Our knowledge of physics is insufficient to credibly make the claim that a warp drive or anything remotely like it is possible at this time. We have a few unproven notions about how it might be possible given our current models but nothing remotely close to well formed theories.
Interestingly Alcubierre, the scientist who proved it's theoretically possible
Coming up with a mathematical model is NOT the same as proving something to be theoretically possible. He didn't prove warp drives to be possible - he merely proved that under Einstein's theory of relativity it is not conclusively impossible given our current understanding of the some of physics involved. HUGE difference.
Even that is touched upon, especially in the novel Look To Windward. There, the situation was live viewing for a concert, so that they Mind in charge of the orbital mentioned that people were talking about it being good enough to reinvent money.
I do quibble a little with the opinion that the humans were pets, though some of the ship Minds may have felt that way when talking amongst themselves. Though some of the machines could be downright devious in manipulating the organic citizens, they were just as manipulative to each other. The core belief that individuals have a right to self determination was never questioned, but the Minds entrusted with running things did their job so well that there was no need for any other form of resource management (which is all money is).
Star Fleet is a conceptual futuristic military space navy. This means people are provided uniforms, living quarters, meal rations, and a function to perform. If that's the kind of thing you like it's available here on planet Earth today at your nearest military recruiting station (or the FFL if your country has none such.)
However, that's not how any of the rest of the Star Trek universe works. The Ferengi are notorious "horse" traders and they sell for gold-pressed latinum. That's a currency, and it's only one of the many currencies. Even in the original series there were traders (Harry Mudd) and crimes and criminals and evil doctors who experiment on people and fame and fortune and money.
Those who call Star Trek a utopia are conflating "not much need for cahs aboard a naval vessel" with the rest of the universe -- where it is very much in need!
Ehud