
The Star Trek Economy - FD3SA
https://medium.com/editors-picks/29bab88d50
======
harshreality
I think this is a useless exercise. The economics of Star Trek won't be
coherent, because it was pieced together through multiple series and some
wishful thinking while retaining certain properties needed for the universe to
be interesting. You can't have a TV show about drone ships flying around and
beaming back exploration data via subspace.

Without Star Trek replicators in the foreseeable future, all the 3d printing
and robots in the world will not give us unlimited amounts of basic materials
needed. Concrete and glass might be virtually unlimited, but certain metals
are definitely not. If those resource constraints lead to energy constraints,
we'll have problems getting to any sort of proto-post-scarcity stage at
current standards of living. AI might solve the problem, but the consequences
of AI are unpredictable (singularity).

A few books on the subject worth mentioning, but not mentioned in the essay:

Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (fiction, set in a speculative
world where the economic system is based on units of social status called
whuffies; everyone is born with some, if I recall right (nope, apparently I
was wrong, it's not zero-sum), and from there it's a free market).

Rifkin - The End of Work (nonfiction, takes a look at how society might
function as jobs gradually disappear due to technology).

Iain Banks's Culture universe is mentioned in the further reading section, but
it's completely post-scarcity on planet and orbital scales, with AIs running
everything. The aforementioned books are much closer to home.

~~~
Blahah
Another interesting SciFi exploration of economics is the Unincorporated Man
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4025200-the-
unincorporat...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4025200-the-
unincorporated-man)). Everyone is incorporated at birth, and trades shares in
themselves (paying dividends once they are earning) to advance in life. People
who don't have majority of themselves can't make their own decisions.

~~~
dkuntz2
I thought that the concept was interesting, but their implementation was
really boring and lackluster. It's been a while since I read it, but I felt
that they didn't explore the implications of everyone's incorporated or how we
got to that state as much as they probably should have.

I couldn't even finish the second book because it didn't even have the
interesting bits about people being incorporated, it was just a poorly written
sci-fi war novel.

~~~
Blahah
Agree on all points. The second book was just god awful.

------
transfire
The main hurdle facing post-scarcity economics is not actually scarcity.
Rather it is the elitist class, who will do everything it can to ensure
continued scarcity in order to keep their socioeconomic positions. We already
see this today in a number of ways. For instance, if a commodity isn't scarce,
it can be made scarce by effectively creating a monopoly (even if it doesn't
appear to be a monopoly from the outside) and hording the commodity. The
diamond industry is a good example of this. Another technique is using complex
laws to ensure a great deal of labor and supplies are needed to comply. Tax
laws are a great example of this. How many accountants would loose their jobs
if taxes could be done in five minutes on the back of a napkin? Probably the
worst tactic of all is simply the promotion of continued population growth. We
really do NOT have enough resources on this planet to give everyone on it a
modern life style. And it is imperative for populations to shrink. Until we
are well on our way to the stars this is not going to change. But our current
economic models crumble in the face of decreasing population. So we can only
expect more scarcity in the future, not less.

~~~
skyshine
Then perhaps it is time to start looking for an alternative economic system.
I've been developing a framework to explore new economic systems for several
years. [http://babblingbrook.net](http://babblingbrook.net)

There are two pressures in society. One pushing in the direction you say and
another pushing towards a post scarcity economy. Which will prevail is
difficult to say, but I suspect that in the short term the status-quo
definitely have an advantage, but in the long term they will most likely lose.

The reason is due to a little known theory called non equilibrium
thermodynamics, which essentially states that if the reconfiguring of a system
(an atom, a cell, a solar system, a hurricane, society etc...) can produce
more entropy in the universe, then given the opportunity, it will do that.

A moribund restrictive society that inhibits innovation creates less entropy
than one where everyone is free to innovate, investigate and have fun in ways
that expend energy. This doesn't mean that this will automatically happen, in
the same way that biological evolution uses chance to produce more adapted
species, so do all forms emergent complexity due to non equilibrium
thermodynamics (evolution is just one organising principle). Also, it needs to
be possible for the system to organise in this way. Societies organising
principle is its socio-economic system. We have had several in the past, such
as a monarchic command economy, but today the most successful is free market
democracy. There is no reason to presume that this is the best one. Free
market democracy became possible due to several inventions and innovations,
such as coins, the printing press and debt. Recently we have invented the
internet and this makes many new systems possible.

I've written a lot more on my theory page.
[http://babblingbrook.net/page/theory](http://babblingbrook.net/page/theory).

Sorry if this is poorly written. I have just bashed it out and would like to
write more, but I have to go and get my daughter from grandmas so I don't have
time...

------
JumpCrisscross
One capitalist hybrid which does not distort the market is a free market with
a basic income [1], i.e. an unconditional income as a right of being a
citizen. At what level - survival, comfort, or luxury - the income is set is
an open question to each society. Too high and scarcity erupts in the form of
inflation, too low and inequality and populism corrode the society.

Post-scarcity economics is more the study of localised phenomena. As alluded
to in the post, some things will likely always be in short supply somewhere.

[1]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

~~~
skylan_q
_One capitalist hybrid which does not distort the market is a free market with
a basic income_

Yes, it does distort. Why work on a manufacturing line producing required and
high-demand materials and equipment when instead you can be creating arts and
crafts that very few people would want and adds little to the productive
capacity of the economy?

People need to realize that prices are not just a pain in the butt, but they
are useful pieces of economic information.

~~~
AngrySkillzz
The key point to basic income, in my opinion, is that it seems like it would
increase social welfare while minimally distorting prices and being cheap to
administer. So let's take this to its logical conclusion, that lots of people
don't work/do "useless" jobs, but still want to buy high-demand goods. Demand
gets higher, and prices for those goods go up. Does this break the economic
signalling mechanism? I'd argue that it doesn't, price signals are still
firmly in place. Producers of high-demand goods can afford to raise salaries
and attract more workers. There is still an incentive to work. On top of that,
necessary goods with a satiation point (e.g. food and shelter) would be more
resistant to these effects. You don't need more food than you can eat or more
houses than you can live in. If you aren't working, you still have to mind
your money and budget accordingly; it's not like everything is free.

~~~
msandford
"while minimally distorting prices" SNIP!

I think there's a serious misunderstanding here. Any basic income that is high
enough to be useful will also be high enough to be distortive. Any basic
income which is low enough not to distort will also be low enough not to be
useful.

Consider a few thought experiments. Set a basic income to $100 per month. Time
300 million americans that's only $3b per month or $36 billion per year.
That's a small enough portion of the economy that it's totally doable, but not
useful.

Now instead let's set it to $10k per month. That's definitely enough to pay a
mortgage, cars, etc. Times 300 million folks we end up at $3 trillion a month
or $36 trillion a year. GDP in 2013 was about 17 trillion so we've definitely
distorted prices by a huge margin. The price of everything probably triples.

OK, you say, let's dial it back just a tad and calibrate it to the size of the
economy. Let's set our target at 30% of total GDP which we would argue we can
totally do since the government historically gets about 19% of GDP so growing
that by 50% should be doable. Of course this means that the federal government
provides no services or does nothing except for basic income; no military, no
NSF, no dept of education, none of that stuff. Ignore it for now. 17 trillion
time 0.3 = 5.1 trillion a year, or 425 billion a month. Divide that by 300
million people and you get $1416 per month.

That's not a TERRIBLE number, if you live in a rural area you could pay a
mortgage, car payment and even buy some food for that. If you lived in a big
city that might cover your rent, but probably not.

But wait, you say, there aren't 300 million adults in the US? OK let's assume
it's only 200 million. That number goes up to $2125 per month and you don't
get a check until you turn 18. Yeah that's better, for sure, you might even
make rent in a big city. In a rural area you're doing fairly nicely.

But how do we raise this money? There's a difference between income and
wealth, if you took every penny from all the Forbes 400 list you'd have $2
trillion. But actually you wouldn't because you're assuming that you can sell
their assets for cash at exactly the price they're valued at right now. If you
did that you might recoup 80% because it'd be a giant sell-off. But let's
ignore that for a minute. Let's also say that you by the time you get down to
every person whose net worth is over a million (remember, only the rich) that
you've raised another 2 trillion (pie in the sky, the distribution of wealth
isn't anywhere near equal remember?).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_4...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_400)
At that point you've got enough cash to make this whole thing run for about 10
months.

The total US income for all people in 2013 was $13 trillion.
[https://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-tpi.htm](https://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-tpi.htm)
Take all that money and divide it up between 200 million adults and you've got
$65k per person per year once you turn 18. BUT that's it. Janitor? $65k.
Doctor? $65k. Lawyer? $65k. Startup founder? $65k. CEO? $65k. VC? $65k.
Nobody, anywhere, ever could make more than $65k or else you don't have
somewhere to take the money from. And at that point I think it might be hard
to convince people to work harder, take more risks with their personal wealth,
study longer, etc if NO MATTER WHAT they can't make more than $65k.

If you want to allow people to make more, that's OK. But for every person that
makes $75k under this scheme you've got to find someone to only give $55k and
to convince them that it's right, or dial the basic income back to $55k and
start giving only select bonuses.

Of course, remember that all this ignores the idea that we still have to
provide all those federal functions that we're currently providing.

~~~
greenbeethree
You misunderstand Basic income as providing equal wealth to everyone... That
is not the goal. The point is to provide the bare minimum amount of money
required for someone to survive. You would base the amount of money each
person gets on the cost of living where they live, just like how wages very
from place to place today. The amount of Basic income wouldn't be the same
everywhere.

Basic Income isn't socialism, people would still work, they just wouldn't work
as much. Since the Basic income only takes care of your basic needs if you
want to buy a new tech toy you will have to go to work and get the money to
pay for it. Since your basic needs are already taken care of, businesses won't
have to provide a "living wage", there would either be a very low minimum wage
or no minimum wage at all so a much smaller percentage of a businesses's
revenue would go towards paying employees meaning more profit. Hopefully along
with basic income we would also adopt universal healthcare that would further
take finical burden off of businesses.

~~~
msandford
> You misunderstand Basic income as providing equal wealth to everyone...

I can see how you might think that, but I disagree. What I am trying to do is
show that the idea that a basic income can provide without distorting prices
isn't grounded in reality.

What is the bare minimum amount of money required for someone to survive? And
who defines what "surviving" is? If you're married with six kids (four
currently of the right age for private school) your "bare minimum" might be
$25k/mo. No that's not legit? What is? Does the "bare minimum" require that
you get only a small 1 bedroom to yourself? Or an efficiency? Or maybe you
should be required to live with roommates to bring your rent cost down? Do you
get more money if you have kids, or less? What happens if you get married or
divorced?

If you live somewhere where the cost of living is high you get more money; how
do you ensure people actually live where they say they do? What would prevent
me and 100 of my closest friends from all saying we live in a shithole in NYC
while we use that money to buy all kinds of good lives for ourselves in more
rural areas? The cost of living differential is probably at least 2x and maybe
higher, so there's a lot of incentive to abuse the system.

So the businesses have more profits, but higher taxes right? The money for a
basic income doesn't just magically appear does it? Where does the money come
from to pay it?

~~~
landryraccoon
The point of the article was that this applies to a nearly post scarcity
society. For example, suppose we lived in an Asimov style world where
autonomous robots could produce enough food, clothing and housing to sustain
everyone on Earth even if Every Single Person decided to never work again. In
such a society, the basic income can be determined by what the robots can
produce. I think it's interesting to think about what could be possible in a
future society, as opposed to just the fact that this probably won't work
today.

~~~
msandford
Yeah that's cool too, but where does the $100 trillion to build all the robots
come from? Robots ain't cheap and it's not like it's all software license fees
either, you need to actually pay people (or robots) to dig ore out of the
ground and to use energy to transform it into metal and then form those ingots
into usable shapes and then transform those usable shapes into robot frames
and then attach electrical or hydraulic actuators and pumps and put
controlling circuitry in there and then you still have to have the control
system. So far all that stuff is owned privately and I don't foresee the
people who've spent millions or billions of dollars of private capital to make
all that exist suddenly say "hey it's cool, we're giving all this stuff away
for the greater good!"

~~~
landryraccoon
Well, if the robots can produce ten times more then the amount needed to
sustain everyone, then the government can tax the robots productivity at 10%
to achieve the same thing.

You're going to say that that's theft at gunpoint probably, and I'm going to
say I don't have any moral problem with that. Taxes have existed since human
beings first banded together to form large groups and they aren't going away
anytime soon.

So is this just going to turn into another stupid libertarian argument about
how all taxes are evil? Because I'm pretty sure that debate has been settled
in every single successful civilization since the dawn of time.. Taxes won.

Lastly, I think your viewpoint is pretty evil honestly. So there is a robotic
surplus sufficient to feed the world multiple times over in this scenario and
people still starve because fuck you I own the robots and I'm only going to
help myself? If that's the world there will be a revolution and I'll be on the
side of the dirty hippies.

~~~
msandford
>You're going to say that that's theft at gunpoint probably, and I'm going to
say I don't have any moral problem with that.

No I'm not going to argue that it's theft at gunpoint, actually. But thanks
for trying to paint me into a corner.

What I am saying is that the world is complicated and just because the robots
can make enough stuff or grow enough food in a theoretical sense doesn't mean
that utopia is suddenly achieved.

>Lastly, I think your viewpoint is pretty evil honestly. So there is a robotic
surplus sufficient to feed the world multiple times over in this scenario and
people still starve because fuck you I own the robots and I'm only going to
help myself? If that's the world there will be a revolution and I'll be on the
side of the dirty hippies.

You don't even know what my viewpoint is so I don't see how you can
characterize it as evil! I can't believe how quickly this turned into "you
must be a dirty libertarian so fuck you!"

I don't particularly LIKE taxes and a world where taxes magically didn't have
to exist but I still got to use roads and schools and fire departments and
police and stuff, I'd be OK with that. But since none of those people work for
free, I accept taxes as necessary even if not my favorite.

> then the government can tax the robots productivity at 10% to achieve the
> same thing.

OK what you just said there is that the government is going to take all the
useful output of the robots and leave the owners with no useful output. If the
robots can produce 10x whats needed and the government takes the first 1x then
what the owners of the robots do with the other 9x? Nobody needs the other 9x,
so by definition they couldn't sell it.

Disagree with me? OK great, I want to sell you a million liters of air at 1ATM
for $0.001 per liter. Wait, you already have more than enough air? And
everyone else does too? Fuck who is going to buy this air so that I can make
good on my investment?!?!

If the robots were going to be taxed at 10% of productivity you'd basically
see the total robot workforce get reduced by 90%. If you spend a billion
dollars on a factory you need to get your money back and if you can't sell the
excess capacity then you're going broke.

The best scenario I can think of is that the robots become so cheap that
eventually everyone becomes largely self-sufficient. But even then you'll
still have problems because of land ownership; if you can make everything you
need just so long as you have access to land then the price of land will go
way, way up.

Maybe once you get to space everyone can have as much of whatever that they
need and we can achieve rough approximations of utopia but maybe not. Maybe
once we get to space everyone wants their own 500 ft luxury spaceliner and
there's not enough raw materials to go around.

I think part of the problem is that human desires are basically unlimited.
Maybe not everyone has infinite ability to consume, but the human race,
collectively, could consume nearly infinite amounts of anything. So any
attempt to imagine "well what happens in the future when we can easily satisfy
everyone's current desires" accidentally ignores the idea that in the future
people will probably have desires that are bigger than they are today.

There was a time when many people shared a large single room house in Europe
in the middle ages. Then someone invented the fireplace and the nobility gave
themselves their own rooms. Eventually it became common for everyone to have
their own room. Then, everyone has their own house/condo/apartment though
sometimes shared between several generations. Now in the US it's quite common
for a single person of 25 to have their own 1BD apartment or even a whole
house. 500 years ago you'd have to have been filthy rich to have that. Today
it's possible for someone with a high school diploma and knowledge of a
skilled trade to afford it.

500 years from today I agree that meeting everyone's current demands will
probably be a joke and the robots will be able to do it all. But what new
desires will human beings have that we can't even imagine right now? I'm not
saying that a Star Trek economy could never exist, but that I don't foresee it
happening do to the fact that human nature will probably be the same.

~~~
landryraccoon
I apologize for characterizing you a certain way. The viewpoint I was
"painting you into a corner" on is unfortunately imo super common on HN.

I think you have a contradiction in your viewpoint though. On one hand you say
that human desires are unlimited, and on the other hand you say that if you
tax robot productivity by 10% that means that the owners can't sell the other
90%. How is it possible that nobody needs the other 90% if human wants are
unlimited?

What I'm saying is that basic human needs are NOT unlimited. A human being is
an animal that needs a certain amount of food, clothing, and shelter to stay
alive. And furthermore, in the world we live in today, not every human being
gets all the food, clothing and shelter necessary to survive. That's an
empirical physical fact of reality. What I'm proposing is that the 10% surplus
would be sufficient to provide for these needs, NOT for everything that
anyone's heart could desire. Now it's possible that in a Star Trek future, the
robots could even produce 100x what every human being needs to stay alive. In
that case, you could give every human being 10x what they need and still have
a 90% surplus. And because as you pointed out, human wants are unlimited, the
owners of the robots will still be able to sell the 90% surplus.

BTW, I don't actually believe this is practical to implement today. So I
wouldn't advocate this level of massive redistribution. However, in a
hypothetical super productive future society, I might.

P.S. If you want to hear my reason why this society ISNT as good as it sounds
(which has nothing to do with taxes or the morality of redistribution) see my
post here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7255952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7255952)

~~~
msandford
Thanks for arguing like an adult. It's greatly appreciated.

I do agree that I have a contradiction in my argument; you're spot on. I'm
going to chalk that up to not fully explaining things.

The first gallon of water per day I REALLY NEED to drink. The next I'd really,
really like to have to brush my teeth and wash a bit. The next 5 gallons I
still really want for washing and cooking. The next 20 are for bathing and
laundry. The next hundred don't do me anywhere near as much good and
eventually the utility I get from an additional gallon of water goes below the
$0.01 per gallon that I pay my utility, so I don't use more.

This kind of decreasing marginal value happens everywhere in the economy. For
a lot of things (like energy) the demand is nearly flat but for large portions
of the economy the demand is highly nonlinear. In other words, doubling the
price might reduce consumption by 80% or more.

In those situations if you take the first marginally very valuable portion of
the production away from the factory owners they have to raise prices on the
rest to recoup their losses. But the increased prices bring volume down, which
could potentially increase prices again.

I am sure that there are some situations where the 10% surplus really would be
enough to provide for everyone's basic needs (however the hell you define
that) and not totally fuck over the factory/robot owners. But there will also
be large swaths of the economy where you can't.

I do think taxes are fundamentally immoral because I can't get past the theft-
like nature of "pay the taxes or you'll go to jail" but I'm pragmatic and
understand that taxes are better than a completely uneducated populace. And
honestly I'd be much happier with a world where taxes were only 10% in total
rather than the 20%-40% that they are now. I just don't think you can feed,
clothe, shelter, etc the whole world on 10% of total production. It would be
great and I'd love to live in that world but I really feel like there's
something that would prevent it; I can't put my finger on it but I'm pretty
sure it's there.

~~~
landryraccoon
Well we're debating a totally hypothetical situation. The premise to begin
with is that we're talking about a far future post scarcity society. If you
want to say that's implausible, sure, I might agree with you, but that's not
the issue.

As far as the theft like nature of taxes, we'll just have to agree to
disagree. The concept of theft in and of itself only exists in the context of
a society where laws exist and are enforced. That society can only exist with
taxes. In the jungle, there's only what you can carry and what you can
protect, and what stronger people want to take from you. But I can't say more
without understanding where you get your morality from. If you get your
understanding of morality from religion for example, most major religions
justify allowing the government or head of state to use force to sustain that
government.

P.S. As far as the marginal value of goods; yes I think you are right in that
if you took 10% of each good (like fresh water) and distributed it that way it
would probably cause huge economic problems. My guess is that any workable way
of implementing this tax would be more complex and progressive, much like our
current tax system doesn't tax everything equally. For example, luxuries would
probably be taxed more, and basic necessities such as water would probably be
taxed less. I have no idea what the details of such a system would be, it
would probably take a lot of thought to work out what would make sense.

~~~
msandford
Part of my hesitance to be persuaded that a Star Trek economy could possibly
work is that in some senses it already has. In the 1850s 90% of the people in
the US were farmers. Around 1900 that number shrank to 30% and today it now
stands at about 3% so farmers can now grow 30x as much food as they used to be
able to. But even given a 3000% increase in productivity there are still
people starving in the world.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/trouble/timeline/)

Why is that? Well part of it is that making a single farmer 30x as productive
involves a LOT more capital. You need tractors, plows, planters, sprayers,
combines, and somewhere to store it all. You also need a lot of fuel to make
everything go and maintenance to keep it all working. Worse, most of these
items can't be co-oped between farmers because they'll all need them at the
same time. It's not uncommon for a farmers to have several hundred thousand to
several million dollars worth of equipment.

In response to the complexities you've mentioned I think that's the whole of
the problem; implementation. The technology exists to feed the whole world at
least twice over and probably a lot more. It's not being done in part because
of logistics (getting the food there isn't trivial), but primarily because of
the political and economic issues. How do we decide who pays for it? I can't
see human nature changing, you know?

I guess maybe I have a hard time accepting the premise that somehow the world
will get to a place where you can work for a couple of days and live on that
for a year.

------
kijin
> _If it were, the credit would be too much like money because a) accounting
> is done in it, b) it is issued by a governing body (like a fiat currency)
> and c) it is fungible, i.e. you can already buy things with it and if you
> could buy things with it AND a and b were true, it would pretty much be a
> currency._

By that reasoning, the Joule is the currency of the Federation.

a) The article already supposes that "the accounting is done in energy units",
so a) is satisfied.

b) Energy isn't exactly "issued" by a government. But neither is gold, and
this hasn't prevented gold from being money through most of human history.

c) Finally, energy is fungible, especially if you have replicators. 1KWh of
electricity in your battery is as good as any other 1KWh of electricity.

It doesn't matter whether the people who live in the Star Trek universe
actually call it "money" or not. If it walks like money and quacks like money,
it is money.

And once there's technology to convert anything to and from energy relatively
easily, a Joule does sound like a good candidate for a universally accepted
unit of value. An alien species might not give a damn about some shiny yellow
metal, but they need good ol' Joules just as much as we do.

~~~
dkuntz2
The Joule is basically the currency of the Federation. While most of the time
in the Federation people don't use currency and get what they need/want, in
Voyager because there suddenly was scarcity again they implemented replicator
rationing.

~~~
talmand
I wasn't the biggest fan of Voyager, I saw episodes here and there so maybe
someone can explain this idea to me. I saw a few of the episodes where they
described the rationing of replicator usage due to some shortage of something.
I never understood this as the replicators are described as transforming a
base material into near anything a person asks for which required energy to
perform this task.

The ship was the source of the energy and canon suggests that as long as the
systems were working properly there was an over-abundance of energy available
for use. Granted it wouldn't be a good idea to ask for a cup of tea while the
ship had full shields engaged with constant phasers firing during a battle.
But during normal warp hops there shouldn't be a problem. If the power system
was having problems then it stands to reason that going to warp wouldn't work
as it required an immense amount of energy to accomplish. Which is the reason
for the massive power system in the first place.

It couldn't be a shortage of base material because just about anything could
be used and the ships took advantage of a massive recycling effort that almost
everything discarded was transformed back into the base material that was
stored on the ship. It would be easy to replace if need be so it had to be an
energy shortage of some type.

I always felt the replicator rationing was just a writer's way to excuse
Neelix suddenly becoming a cook on the ship for additional storylines. It
didn't make sense to me. So, what was the rationale behind the replicator
rationing? Did it even make sense?

To be fair, I had lots of problems with Voyager which is apparently why I
never cared for it. I probably just couldn't get into the spirit of things to
enjoy the show as envisioned.

~~~
Jack000
possible explanations

\- not sure about the over-abundance of energy. I remember several episodes
where energy shortage was a plot point. It's also possible that assembling
matter atom-by-atom takes a non-trivial amount of energy compared to warp
travel.

\- I also thought the replicators did have certain limitations - eg. you can't
replicate living beings. If the "resolution" was limited at the atomic level,
you would still need a certain amount of hydrogen and oxygen to replicate
water.

~~~
talmand
I agree, energy problems were plot points, but they were often connected to
equipment malfunctions as well.

If replicators were a non-trivial amount of energy as compared to warp drive
they wouldn't allow such frivolous use of it constantly on the ship, every
hour of every day.

Replicators can replicate nearly anything except very specific complex
materials. The limitations they have is in the amount of energy required to
create the object and whatever items they are restricted from creating. So the
replicators in rooms only have access to enough energy to create typical items
you might need your room. Although I believe they can create weapons as well
but that would be restricted if your restricted to your quarters due to
misconduct. If you require bigger and/or more complex items there are one or
more locations on the ship that function as "shops" were you can obtain such
items. Plus there's a theory that hasn't been shown anywhere that I'm aware of
is that there are large replicators on ships that are capable of creating
parts for the ship which would make sense. Star ships would be created with
very large part replicators located at orbiting ship yards. Not large enough
replicator nor energy source to just create an entire ship from a replicator.

You could replicate a living being because that's the same technology used in
the transporters. Beaming down to a planet and back means they replicated you
twice. It's just that I would imagine there would sever restrictions on
replicating living things for various reasons (ethically, legally, and for
safety) and is only allowed via transporters with trained personnel. There
could be a discussion over what the "characters" inside the holodeck actually
are as they are most likely created with the same technology and have been
shown to become self-aware. There have been suggestions that these
"characters" are in fact real people but as far as I know they never directly
addressed exactly what they are in terms of "living beings" or not. Other
suggestions from the show suggest they could be projections and contact with
them is handled via clever uses of shield technology but I'd like to know how
they simulate the feeling of warm skin with shields. It would mean Riker is
always kissing moving force fields, which I wouldn't put past him.

------
dbcooper
The Volokh Conspiracy post, How Federal is Star Trek's Federation?, was
probably the best thing I've read on Trek's political economy.

[http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml](http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml)

~~~
ItendToDisagree
Great link!

One thing that always bothered me about The Federation was how they treated
certain worlds and members.

Recall the TNG episode Journey's End where the Enterprise is sent to remove
what amounted to some 'Space Native Americans' from a planet the Federation
had given to Cardassians in a treaty. The inhabitants in question were members
of the Federation (with all the rights that was supposed to confer) but they
were (going to be) forced off the planet. The only way they could stay on
their planet was to give in to the treaty and make themselves inhabitants of
what was then a Cardassian planet (and arguably Cardassian property).

Then there is the TNG movie Insurrection. Where a group of settlers who are
_not_ Federation citizens were going to be transported off of their planet
against their will. But Picard decides that they deserve to stay on the planet
so the Enterprise destroys the Federation/alien ships that were sent to do the
relocation (among other things and aliens).

So why is it the Federation wont fight for actual Federation members, but they
will fight for some random civilization because of 'reasons'?

Ok I'm done with my Star Trek rant and feel like a terrible nerd now. Thank
you for letting me vent and for the link. Nerd gland expressed.

Edit: For a laugh Google the Red Letter Media Harry Plinket review of
Insurrection which goes deeper into this.

~~~
dkuntz2
To be fair, the planet in _Journey 's End_ wasn't a full member but a colony
world, which means they don't have the same rights as a full member. Plus, I
think they just settled on that planet which would mean the planet isn't under
Federation jurisdiction, just the citizenry (provided they're Fed citizens).

Additionally, the Cardies have either a similar or better military compared to
the Federation, and the treaty helped prevent full out war (that later showed
up, but in the form of the Dominion War). Giving up a few planets with small
populations doesn't seem all that bad for stopping what could've been the
largest war in the quadrant.

As for _Insurrection_ , it's commonly accepted that Dougherty was working
alone, without the support of the rest of Starfleet or the Federation. It's
not implausible, considering he was an admiral and could very easily order
ships places without much questioning.

The Son'a are nowhere near as advanced as the Cardassians, the Federation
could easily take them if they tried to start something.

~~~
philwelch
It was never firmly established that the Cardassians alone were a match for
the Federation (much less so if the Klingons were involved). If they were,
Captain Jellico's aggressive negotiations in "Chain of Command" wouldn't have
worked. It's more a question of the Federation bending over backwards to avoid
conflict.

In Insurrection, it's established that the rejuvenating radiation from the
planet made the crew feel more youthful and fighty.

------
nhaehnle
An interesting read, but there is one paragraph in particular that sounds a
bit like an elaborate troll. Take a look at this:

 _The most notable is participatory economics, or parecon. This is a
worthwhile attempt, I think, but to me it doesn’t quite pass the smell test of
being sufficiently un-communist, what with its workers councils and lack of
any sort of ruling class. All very un-American, [...]_

Did the author just imply that they are _in favor_ of having a ruling class?
Then, just after that:

 _When you start thinking this way you start getting into the dodgy world of
heterodox economics and, well, that’s a world of a lot of crackpots. Some good
ideas, sure, but a lot of crackpots, and more to the point, it’s a world
devoid of empirical research, which is a serious problem._

Uh yeah, go talk to a real heterodox economist, and they will explain to you
how a lack of listening to real world data is actually the core problem of
orthodox economics.

By the way: What's lacking in the initial brief discussion of alternative
economic system is that aside from capitalism (i.e., firms are privately
owned, compete in the market) and centrally planned communism (i.e., firms are
state-owned and follow a central plan) there are also variants of market
socialism (i.e., firms are typically state-owned and compete in the market).

~~~
rickwebb
Original author here:

1) No trolling, just sarcasm. Not a comment on my personal beliefs, more along
the lines of "wouldn't wash with a bunch of American TV writers during the
cold war." I hope it's pretty clear that someone who wrote this isn't so into
a "ruling class"!

2) Okay that one _might_ have been a bit of a troll. There is some good
heteroeconomics out there. Including, this, I hope. ;) But yeah. The goal here
was to paint a way to the future without getting bogged down in that world.

~~~
notahacker
I thought you were trolling when you cited parecon as an example of heterodox
economics that was actually good. "Democratically" achieved job rotation to
ensure everyone does an equal share of "empowering" and "disempowering" work?
_Really?_

------
mempko
The way people talk about socialism and communism in the west show the sad
state of our education system.

communism is already a big part of our lives. When you sit at the dinner table
and ask for the salt, you get it. When are at work and you ask for a code
review and the person gives it to you. If the need is great enough, or the
obstacles to ability are small enough, people do things.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Our
economy is firmly based on communist actions and the capitalists exploit this.

but the way that people talk about communism, as a centrally planned economy,
shows great ignorance of both the literature and a blindedness to "already
occurring communism"

~~~
a-priori
The similarities between how people act within a firm (where a 'firm' is
basically any sort of corporation, partnership, or similar economic entity)
and within an ideal communist society are not a coincidence: a communist
society is essentially just one very large firm.

(Aside: The core problem with communism is that a nation much larger than the
optimal firm size. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_optimal_firm_size](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_optimal_firm_size))

But I think it shows a gross misunderstanding of both capitalism and communism
to say something like _" Our economy is firmly based on communist actions and
the capitalists exploit this"_. It's not. Both concepts are very modern
inventions, and the psychology of how people act within a firm (regardless of
its size) is based on how people act within family units and bands: based on
working towards shared goals and loose sense of reciprocity.

It's not a coincidence that money is not normally used between family members:
people don't normally buy things off their family, but receive them as
gifts/favours and then are expected to give similar value gifts/favours in the
future (a gift economy). That's the psychology that the firm re-uses, and it
predates both capitalism and communism.

~~~
saraid216
> a communist society is essentially just one very large firm.

This is my favorite discussion of the topic so far:

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-
what-d...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-
need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-
todays-corporate-world/)

------
bayesianhorse
I wouldn't use Star Trek as a canon for post-scarcity economics, it's more
like an inspiration. In fact we are seeing the elements of the vocational
aspects already:

Look at all the Bloggers, the Kickstarters, Youtubers, Justin Bieber at the
start of his "career". Aren't they essentially taking a ton of infrastructure
and a weird "diffusive" sort of income already?

Joseph Sisko's restaurant in our terms might be more like a kind of hobby
rather than a serious economic enterprise. The guests might not pay anything
at all, it's just that owner and guests do this because they enjoy making food
and eating food, rather than eating from a replicator.

You just don't see all the shitty restaurants noone ever goes to...

------
sabbatic13
Umm, documentary fallacy much? That and pretending like hundreds of scripts
written by dozens of hands somehow cohere.

Oh, yes, and that thing about people not living according to economic
theories, but having societies and cultures, only a slice of which economic
theories try to capture. And while I'm at it, the fact that economic theories
float above the actual behavior of humans and only thinly capture what they
are up to, while floating below any serious philosophy that explain why people
should or do anything in the first place.

------
gress
It's worth emphasising that a great deal of work in unnecessary for improving
net happiness and consumes resources in the process and so undermines long
term prosperity.

~~~
patio11
A heretical thought I have had about Star Trek: the Federation has no need for
Star Fleet. They're fantastically wealthy and cannot meaningfully gain from
trade in physical items. They're not just singularity-esque wealthy relative
to the present-day US, they're equally more secure. Nobody kills mass numbers
of Federation citizens. That occasionally happens on poor planets elsewhere.
Sucks but hey poverty sucks.

So why have a Star Fleet? Because Jean Luc Picard is a Federation citizen, and
he wouldn't be happy as other than a starship captain. It's a galaxy-spanning
Potempkin village to make him happy. Why would they do that? You're thinking
like a poor person. Think like an _unfathomably_ rich person. They do it
_because they can afford to_. He might have had a cheaper hobby, like say
watching classic TV shows, but the Federation is so wealthy that Starfleet and
a TV set both round to zero.

This makes Star Fleet officers into in-universe Trekkies: a peculiar
subculture of the Federation who are tolerated because despite their quirky
hobbies and dress they're mostly harmless. Of course if you're immersed in the
subculture, Picard looks like something of a big shot. We get that impression
only because the camera is in the subculture, not in the wider Federation,
which cares about the Final Frontier in the same way that the United States
cares about the monarch butterfly: "We probably have somebody working on that,
right? Bright postdoc somewhere? Good, good."

~~~
kybernetikos
> Because Jean Luc Picard is a Federation citizen, and he wouldn't be happy as
> other than a starship captain.

There are strong hints in Iain M Banks' Culture series that a significant
portion of the mission of Contact and Special Circumstances is giving humans
with a pathological need for conflict and excitement something to do to keep
them happy.

~~~
patio11
Thanks for this recommendation -- I'm a quarter of the way into the first book
now and mostly enjoying it.

~~~
arethuza
If you are just reading _Consider Phlebas_ then that means you still have the
awesome _Use of Weapons_ to go... I'm jealous!

------
thaumaturgy
So, economic models are more or less based on, or at least constrained by,
human psychology, right? Communism and socialism don't work because peoples'
brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward.
This isn't restricted to just people, either, it's been observed in monkeys
([http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_monkeyfairness.html),
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0)
\-- it's a short video and pretty hilarious, worth a watch).

At the same time, capitalism has serious flaws, also exploited by human
psychology. Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but
also greed and cheating.

So, when looking for a new economic model, why not go back to psychology? Is
it really true that _most_ people don't want to work? There are some people
who are content to receive a small stipend and spend their lives jut getting
by without doing very much, but does that describe enough people to cause the
collapse of a strong welfare society?

I think we probably are headed towards a post-scarcity (or low-scarcity)
economy. Food costs as percentage of income in the U.S. have fallen quite a
bit just in the last thirty years
([http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/americas-
shr...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/americas-shrinking-
grocery-bill)). People are already going to find that it takes less real
effort to survive ([http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21596529...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21596529-americas-labour-market-has-suffered-permanent-harm-closing-
gap), posted earlier to HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235810)).
A different economic model seems inevitable.

Likewise, there will probably always be jobs that people don't want to do.
Take oil rig work for example: hard, dangerous work, and it pays well,
starting at the U.S. median wage for unskilled, inexperienced labor
([http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/oil_workers/](http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/oil_workers/))
and going up from there.

As long as demand for this labor doesn't fall, if the available labor pool
continues to shrink, those jobs should net greater incomes.

Maybe we'll see an economy, not quite like Star Trek's, but with a large
leisure class and a well-paid class of plumbers, construction workers,
mechanics, and technicians.

That would be kinda neat.

~~~
WalterBright
> Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but also
> greed and cheating.

That implies that socialism and communism do not reward greed and cheating,
which is hard to believe.

~~~
simonh
In fact by concentrating strict monopolies on political, military, judicial
and economic power in a narrow party elite, it pretty much guarantees it will
be rewarded. I realize Communism and Socialism as abstract principles don't
require this, but that seems to be the way it works out as they have been put
into practice historically by actual Communists and Socialists.

There's nothing about capitalism that demands that monopolies of any kind
should or must be allowed. This is a subject of much debate of course, since
there is no single authority about what Capitalism is. It's not really an
ideology in that sense. However if we take Adam Smith as playing the role for
Capitalism that Marx plays for Communism, Smith was very much aware the
markets must be very carefully regulated in order to protect the common good.
Unfortunately Marx was, shall we say, considerably more utopian about how
Communism would inevitably emerge and self-regulate itself.

~~~
jbooth
"There's nothing about capitalism that demands that monopolies of any kind
should or must be allowed."

It depends on what you mean by capitalism. If by capitalism, you mean a
market-based economy, like that adam smith guy, then yeah, we should have
anti-trust laws to guard against private anti-competitive behavior. If you
mean lack of government interference at all costs (which is more a political
program than an economic program, really), then no, monopolies and/or cartels
will actually be the end state of many industries if you don't have laws
preventing that behavior.

------
terranstyler
Post-scarcity economics sounds to me like post-human anthropology or post-
matter physics, i.e. economics is by definition science on "managing"
scarcity. No scarcity, no trade, no economics.

Honestly, capitalism would be a good system if we had just one example.
Closest example is maybe Hongkong or Singapure, see
[http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _capitalism would be a good system_ //

The reason we have overlays on capitalistic systems seems to me to be because
capitalism values the masses [people] at approaching zero, except where
slavery/soylent green/organ harvesting and such is allowed.

Scenario: Humanland has a dearth of population who're not adding culturally or
through labour to their pure capitalist economy - if they kill them and use
them for animal feed they will both add resources and reduce outputs. Under
capitalism, why not?

Capitalism starts with financial wealth and aims to increase it through
competition.

Communism starts with human society and aims to support its needs through
cooperation.

The later always seems to be far more reasonable to me. You intimate [I think
this is what you're saying] that there has never been a capitalist economy and
that this would be best - absolute market freedom - I'd like to see a
communist society that didn't degrade in to a dictatorship.

In recent historical economic systems it seems this pithy aphorism is
apposite:

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
(J K Galbraith,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith))

------
DanielBMarkham
Capitalism isn't a model that we try on, like we would try on a new set of
pants. Capitalism is just trading stuff. Capitalism drove the accumulation of
things easily tradeable, which then, by convention, we started calling money.

You can add all sorts of _political_ systems on top of capitalism, but it
never goes away. The only thing you end up doing is hurting people.

I liked this article because it's an example of fiction learning from reality,
then scientists trying to learn from fiction. There's a wonderful feedback
loop at work between fiction and science that's neat to watch.

But this post-scarcity nonsense is tripe. I trade with you, not only because I
need to eat or have shelter, but because _you have something I want._ And I
have something you want. It is our _desires_ that cause the trade, nothing
else. And I don't want to live in a world where humans stop wanting stuff.
Sounds horribly stagnant and/or medicated.

So I liked the writing style, loved the theme, and kudos to the author for
having such a good grasp of Trek lore. But from a rational-thinking
standpoint, this guy ain't hitting on much. The quality of analysis itself is
what's missing.

------
calroc
I've been saying for years now that Star Trek forms the best commonly-known
model for what future "economics" will be like. It's really awesome to read a
well-thought-out treatment of that idea.

Some points in no particular order:

* In the limit of nanotechnology and fusion power we can produce anything (physical.) This forces us to confront our essential challenge which is the development of good character. All forms of government are attempts to manage human wickedness. Corollary: it very nearly doesn't matter what form of government obtains if the people in that government are _virtuous_.

* Permaculture (modelling agricultural systems on natural ecologies) is a non-technological mode of abundance.

* Communism: The Smurfs.

* It seems to me that the "natural" economic system varies with personal "distance". Broadly: immediate family/friends -> communistic; (Are the Amish commies? No.) neighbors -> barter / reciprocal gift-giving; strangers -> capitalism.

* If there is something to that last point then as the Internet shrinks personal distance we should expect a general trend from impersonal capitalistic forms to more personal "altruistic" forms (Gittip, etc...)

* As technology advances we are forced to become unwilling to "solve problems with bullets". If you are willing (for _any_ reason) to commit violence you will perforce be kept from the really potent weapons. Already so-called "psych-ops" have become the cutting edge (no pun intended) of warfare: eliminate the enemy's _desire_ to fight. It is only a matter of time before hippy-dippy shit becomes the obvious counter to hostilities by the intrinsic logic of warfare itself. ("Men Who Stare at Goats" is a documentary.)

------
jedmeyers
What are those "we" the author keeps talking about?

\- "we" actually have the capacity

\- "we" don't have the will

I have the will but don't have the capacity. I am assuming that author also
has the will. So, again, who are those "we" that don't have the will? And how
is the author planning to make them to go against their will to not have the
will?

~~~
hitchhiker999
I assume this is a 'thought piece' \- it is designed to foster discussion. I
don't think the author is suggesting a force against any will. The 'we' refers
to his understanding of the collective '?consciousness?' subjectively observed
in his surroundings.

------
oelmekki
I like the exercise and the thoughts developed, but all of it is based on the
fact that a post-scarcity state is happening. This is very XIXth century like
: "science will abolish work !".

A proof of post-scarcity happening presented is the amount of obesity in US.
Let just pretend obesity is just a problem of having too much food, and not at
all a problem of bad nutrition or genetics. The fact still remains that while
there are a lot of obesity in usa, there still have a lot of hunger in other
parts of the world. Could not it be just a repartition problem rather than
abundance ?

There's an other sign that could lead to think we're indeed not at the edge of
post-scarcity. Currently, many previously called poor countries are getting
wealthier. What do we observe in previously called rich countries ? Economical
crisis hitting harder and harder. That may not be a coincidence.

~~~
001sky
Scarcity is rooted in social rank, it is a (by) product of psychology, and
politics, not strictly speaking economics. Someone has to have the corner
office, date the homecoming queen, and be the ranking executive. This is true
outside of markets...just look at...firms. That's the unfortunate dead-end of
this type of thought experiment. Although, I otherwise applaud its _focus_ on
interesting phenomenon. Because in many ways the ~premise is likely true: we
can feed, cloth and shelter the world with only a small subset of working
primates doing the "work". What we can't do...is give everyone the best house
in the neighborhood, the choicest cuts of meats, and the most attractive
partners. But that latter bit of ~scarcity is true...logically. Empirically it
is an observation independent of the the proposed explanatory variable
(economic system X^). Its not the x^, but the physics of life that creates
scarcity. At least when sociological factors are considered.[1]

Edit: [1] See, for example, the notion of 'hedonic adaptation'.

Evidence of this also exists as ~shadow 'fairness' principles, in non-human
primates, and also observable in domesticated canines.

~~~
tomp
> What we can't do...is give everyone the best house in the neighborhood

I think that we can, because land is plentiful, and construction can soon be
automated. True, not everyone will be able to live in city centres, but given
that most people come to the cities only for work, if there is no need to
work, many would probably prefer to live in villages and close to nature.

~~~
chii
the guy whose house is next to a beautiful lake, or a nice beach will look the
best compared with everyone else. It's true that there will be someone who's
gotten the best.

------
teddyh
This should be read in the context of the grand-daddy of such posts, _The
Economics of Star Trek_ ([http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-
Marxism.html](http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html)),
written back in _2000_.

------
powertower
> But we actually have the capacity to feed them, to feed everyone, even now,
> even if we don’t have the will.

Careful, having the capacity to do something does not mean you should do it.

An excellent way to grow a starving population from 80MM people to 800MM
people in about 80 years is to feed them (these numbers aren't made up).

Then all you have to do is just feed their children, and their children, and
their children, until that population hits some type of a pivotal point where
everything becomes great, they become independant, responsible, have a self-
sustaining economy, government, start having only 1.4 children, etc.

The chances of it all going horribly wrong is very high, but why not balloon
the population of the world, and have all those new soles competing over
limited resources.

~~~
philwelch
[http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth-
three](http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#section=myth-three)

~~~
powertower
So all we have to do to prevent the population booms by feeding the poor of
the world is to provide them education, housing, clean water, healthcare, a
good government, and about 12 other things (while praying hard to make sure
they don't get dependant on that outside help)?

And then after the initial exponential population run-up (which happens
anyways), it will all level out in the end (with lower birth-rates).

Seems kind of like the counter-argument is avoiding the issue at hand by re-
framing it in terms of future birth-rates (instead of accepting the immediate
reality).

~~~
jotm
Well, if you do provide all that, it would be smart to create a better
integration along the way, so it stops being 'outside help'...

------
loahou04
Human greed pretty much takes over. Social pressures won't work because people
will always want to "keep up with the jones" or show off what they have done.
The only way you could have post scarcity is if everything and anything in the
living reality could be created, which of course is just highly improbable if
not impossible due to the emotional nature of our species as well as
differences in individual needs and wants (I.e. Not everyone can fall in love
and be married or be just as popular or be just as good I sports). Personally,
I don't think there is a reason we can't have a better welfare system, I just
don't think we should care about those who do not contribute to society. If
all people in Star Trek are now in it for the bettering of the human race than
that would mean not a single person is thinking of themselves, which much like
greed, is a natural human state of mind. Do we know what/who is going to
better society, no we don't. However, with capitalism people democratically
choose what does and doesn't. To have government subsidize specific
items/ideas we leave capitalism and start having a centrally governed panel
who picks the winners, or at least subsidizes them. Let the free hand of
capitalism decide who can contribute the most to society and let the people
also decide who much they should be rewarded. If anything it's not economics
that needs to be changed, rather the human psychology that needs to be
reformed.

~~~
robryan
The problem emerges though where there is absolutely nothing of value left, or
at least minimum living standard value, left for a large group of people to
do.

No mater how willing these people are there is going to be very little
movement up as all the positions of value are covered.

What becomes of these people?

------
tian2992
I liked the overarching idea, however the author proves himself ignorant of
the basic economic ideas and concepts. The main keys of communism-socialism
are the redistribution of the surplus value and the control of the means of
production. Even private ownership of the land is not a requirement, even more
so in a highly developed society, where land is no longer a resource highly
sought to produce.

I'd suggest the writer reads his Marx and Engels, and even some Adam Smith
before venturing into writing on topics like this.

------
dec0dedab0de
I just wanted to chime in that his link that says _We have capitalism, of
course, the proverbial worst model except for every other one_ actually points
to
[http://wais.stanford.edu/Democracy/democracy_DemocracyAndChu...](http://wais.stanford.edu/Democracy/democracy_DemocracyAndChurchill%28090503%29.html)
which is about democracy. Democracy and Capitalism are not the same thing.
That is all.

------
dredmorbius
The fundamental problem with any post-scarcity economy is that it presumes a
world in which resources aren't fundamentally constrained. It's been argued
that this is in fact one of the limitations of orthodox / neoclassical
economics, in that it assumes that unlimited growth it possible.

That's a view that's championed, interestingly, by both the far Left (Marxist
and Socialist economists) and the Right (business lobbies, various cornucopian
ideologues, putatively much of the Koch-backed propogandasphere, and their
Libertarian sycophants). Curious bedfellows.

I've only recently run across an essay of Garrett Hardin's (of "Tragedy of the
Commons" and "Lifeboat Ethics", with whom I've long been acquainted), "The
Feast of Malthus"
([http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/feast_of_ma...](http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/feast_of_malthus.pdf))
which explores this idea further. He notes specifically:

 _I think that a single overarching view accounts for these and many other
invectives put forward by Marxists and liberals during the past century and a
half: this is the tightly held denial of limits in the supply of terrestrial
resources. Friedrich Engels, Marx 's collaborator and financial supporter,
asserted baldly that "The productivity of the land can be infinitely increased
by the application of capital, labour and science."_

Much of the essay continues on to discuss population. The upshot being: you
can accept unconstrained consumption (but limits on population), or
unrestricted procreation, with severe restrictions on individual consumption.

There is no universal freedom.

------
temuze
I think the logical conclusion in post-scarcity economy is that more things
will be determined as a basic human right.

Consider "the right to privacy", "the right to a job" or the "right to
healthcare". Less than a century ago, many of these rights didn't exist. Now,
some people are saying access to the Internet is a basic human right!

So here's my theory - in a society where technology advances so much that the
basic needs of humans are met with the need of little human interaction, two
things will occur: 1) More things will be determined as basic human rights. A
certain baseline for wealth, even. 2) We will shift more and more to being a
generation of artists. I believe an AI complete being that we create will
never be able to replicate a fundamental understanding of being human. Books,
plays, shows, art will be a human endeavor, for humans, by humans.

I believe that some sort of social capitalism will exist, where the baseline
is met and those who achieve great success through art (or rarely, science),
will have the opportunity to create more wealth.

------
Shivetya
The major problems with capitalism in Western economies is that the government
regulations corrupt the process and create artificial scarcity. There are lot
of areas where competition does not exist because regulatory hurdles prevent
or discourage it. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, if not
everywhere, game the system. The put in rules/roadblocks to help out favored
groups which in turn damages the system.

As for the planned economies, well we saw how well those worked. I know, I
know, the people coming up with ideas now will of course do better than THOSE
people. Yet that is the typical lack of hubris politicians always show, just
like ACA - of course it will be better than how those other people did it
because we are so smart.

Keep telling me about the EU safety net and I will keep pointing out Greece
and riots in other EU countries. Sorry but I tire of hearing about a safety
net then reading how bad off some of these people are. Whats the point of a
net when so many slip through or never had a chance to get caught.

------
stefanobaghino
The article forgot to mention that in the Star Trek timeline things didn't go
so smoothly: a third World War eventually occurred and only the invention of
warp drive and the first contact with the Vulcans turned things around. But I
think the point is another: for as much as I love Star Trek and advocate a
smooth transition to a post-scarcity economy, I don't think Roddenberry and
the writers that succeeded him are experts in currency, economics or even in
the techologies that made that fictionary society a perfect post-scarcity
economy. There are, however, some interesting thoughts that could serve as a
basis for a more deep look into the post-scarcity economics. Organizations
such as the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement tend to advocate it under
the "resource-based economy" name and I find their views interesting,
relatively to this topic.

------
firstOrder
> we have the centrally planned systems of Communism and Marxism, not
> particularly effective, as it turns out.

Sure, China only has the second biggest economy in the world.

Also for the USSR, once the civil war ended and the American soldiers and so
forth had been kicked out, and Stalin gained political control - the economy
had incredible growth. While the West was mired in Depression, Russia was
going gangbusters building steel works and such. European and American workers
went there to work, because there was work there and not the West. American
companies went there as well as they were hiring contractors while American
businesses were not. Russia's economy did very well under Stalin. People talk
about the stagnation during the Brezhnev years, which is true, but they ignore
the booming economy from the 1920s to the 1950s/1960s.

------
novalis78
It would be interesting to see how a complete planetary financial/economic
system would look like that was built on top of the blockchain:
[http://marscoin.org](http://marscoin.org)

An early Mars colony would probably resemble organizationally a family/village
but as soon as you get distinct locations that produce various raw materials
and are run by different communities you'd probably have to fall back to
facilitate free trading. It would be interesting to observe if the growing
planetary GDP tied to a deflationary cryptocurreny would lead to similar boom
and bust cycles as the 1870-1920s. On a planet that's close to the Asteroid
belt with its resources that might lead to fascinating trading opportunities
:-)

------
etler
>The big challenge here is how does society get someone to do the menial jobs
that cannot be done in an automated manner.

Are there examples of menial jobs in the Star Trek universe? I would imagine
by then there simply are no menial jobs. I'm not sure what menial job examples
there are that can't be automated.

The jobs left over are interesting jobs. I'd imagine the motivation to do so
are on par with the same motivation to get a phd. Few people get phds solely
to get better job prospects, but rather do it for personal enlightenment and
passion.

Also the same goes for the infinitely wealthy. If you accumulate billions of
dollars and die donating those billions to charity, you weren't motivated
solely to have more wealth, but something greater than that.

~~~
rasz_pl
I dont remember seeing any robots (other than Data) on Star Trek. How do you
propose to fix broken replicator? or a toilet? Best case scenario is you throw
whole thing away and put a new one - now someone has to unbolt the old unit,
get the new one out of storage, push it through half of the ship and mount it.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Maybe things didn't break. I would assume everything in the Star Trek universe
is super high quality and doesn't just break like things we have today.

~~~
philwelch
Considering how busy everyone is in Engineering I find that unlikely.

------
vinceguidry
I think the author overlooked a much more elegant solution to the problem of
menial labor. People simply don't do it, except when they want to, and rely on
automated / robotic solutions to do it for them. At some point, it will get
far easier and cheaper to design and implement robotic maids than it will to
convince a human to do anything resembling a good job at something people are
bound to shit on him for.

The economy will simply optimize all such tasks out of the system. Surfaces
won't need more than the quickest of spot cleaning, people will get used to
checking out their own groceries, they'll go get their own drink refills and
clean off their own tables.

~~~
canvia
If every item in the grocery store had an RFID type tag your whole cart could
be scanned instantly. Load the items right into bags as you shop and you're
good to go, no check out required.

It would making performing inventory checks a lot easier too.

------
patrickphilips
Reminded me of Krugman's Theory of Interstellar Trade
([http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf](http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf))

------
landryraccoon
Here's a problem with the post scarcity economy. There will be long lines
everywhere.

Let's suppose Sisko's restaurant is actually good. Now people want to eat
there. There are two options: either Sisko raises the price until the number
of people that can eat there matches the number of seats (supply and demand)
OR there's a huge line outside the restaurant until the wait time is high
enough that most people don't want to eat there anymore. Since there is no
money in this hypothetical society, option #2 is the only possibility. And in
fact, this is going to happen at every good restaurant in the Federation. The
only restaurants without lines will be the ones that suck, and the length of
the line will be exactly proportional to how desireable it is to eat there.

Now you could say that there are tons of restaurants as good as Siskos. But
unless human beings have radically changed and there are NO FOODIES
whatsoever, there will be some restaurants that are better than others, and a
significant fraction of people will prefer the better ones. And the absolute
quality of the restaurants relative to today doesn't matter AT ALL - all that
matters is that some are better than others. The only plausible reason for
Siskos to not have a line is that it is at best an average place to eat. (I
shudder to imagine how long the lines must be for the best restaurant in the
Federation on Valentine's Day! I think a black market based on Latinum would
emerge based just on that).

So, one thing that the article doesn't realize is that the absolute amount of
resources available is fairly tangential to the issue of money. The issue
really is that people have differing preferences. Even in a society where
nobody starves because you can produce an infinite amount of food, some people
will want to eat at a nicer place. "Nicer" is always relative to what is
commonly available so no matter how good the restaurants are, unless they are
all equally good, there will be higher demand for the better ones.

See, you don't get around this problem by making more of everything. Suppose
the Macdonalds of the future is the quality of a three star michelin
restaurant today. Some people will want to eat at the magical 4 star michelin
restaurants, but there won't be enough of them to go around. So there will be
a line, or a cost.

------
tiatia
Scarcity was a problem, is a problem and always will be a problem:
[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-
scale-e...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-
energy/)

And sorry to break the news to you: A capitalistic system can not be run
without growth and nobody has ever been able to show how it is possible to run
a "steady-state" economy,

The end is near. Enjoy the ride!

~~~
Xylakant
> nobody has ever been able to show how it is possible to run a "steady-state"
> economy

This is a non-argument. Before money was created, nobody had been able to show
that a non-barter economy would work. Or capitalism for that matter. The fact
that nobody has so far has figured out a way to make it work doesn't mean
anything. The only thing of interest would be conclusive proof that it's
impossible.

I'm fairly sure that at some point we need to move over to some sort of
steady-state economy due to the scarcity problem [1]. I'm also fairly sure
that the transition will happen in small steps and people will only notice
afterwards. Some pieces are already being discussed and some have been tried,
such as currencies with negative interest, basic income, ...

[1] The only other option being mass extinction. That's a bit meh, I don't
feel like being part of that. I'll rather choose Star Trek :)

~~~
tiatia
Question: What is money?

And something existed before "money" was "created". It was and is called
"debt".

~~~
Xylakant
There is a pretty well accepted definition of money: It's an object or record
that's accepted as a form of payment, often with very little value in itself.
Early forms of money included shells, for example. Coins are an evolution,
printed bank notes as well. The precursor to money is barter: I trade 5 goats
for one cow, that I can then trade for a horse. The money equivalent is that I
sell 5 goats for 10 money that I can use to buy the horse.

Debt is related to property and certainly related to money, since debts are
nowadays kept track of in terms of money, but debt is not the precursor to
money and certainly debt is not a requirement for a money-based system. It's
like saying "before money was created, there were the sun, the moon and the
stars".

~~~
tiatia
"but debt is not the precursor to money' There are people that would disagree.
Actually already 100 years ago:
[http://www.ces.org.za/docs/The%20Credit%20Theoriy%20of%20Mon...](http://www.ces.org.za/docs/The%20Credit%20Theoriy%20of%20Money.htm)

"and certainly debt is not a requirement for a money-based system." This is
kind of true. You could run a trade based economy on pre 1750 level with' lets
say gold or silver or sea shells as "money". But you CANT RUN A INDUSTRIAL
CAPITALISTIC society without debt. At least nobody has ever been able to show
that this is possible. We need growth, we need more energy. I am afraid this
will not end well. Read the links I posted in this thread.

------
facepalm
I'm not well versed in Star Trek, but it seems to me there is at least one
limited resource: jobs as captains of star ship Enterprise, for instance.

Another resource that will probably always be limited: attractive mates. I
think that is a good example to think about when you think about Utopia. Of
course plastic surgery will be free, too, as well as psychotherapy, so perhaps
we all can be perfect mates, too.

------
Udo
The fundamental take-away here is that old systems die, whether proponents of
the old system believe it's possible or not. I think parallels can be drawn
between a lot of articles written by people so deeply embedded in the status
quo they literally can't fathom their pet concept might go away at some point
in the future. And sure enough, this one is written by a venture capitalist.

Of course, a post-scarcity world is inherently incomprehensible to people who
are economists, in much the same way a rational world motivated by ethics is
incomprehensible to a religious person. The first sign of this is vocabulary,
they'll insist on a "post scarcity economy" or a "religion of science"
respectively. While it's probably true that there will always be aspects of
supply and demand, and it's likely also true that people will always believe
in certain ideas, it's really questionable if these terms as they're being
used still mean anything.

These word choices are a subconscious expression of the perceived
impossibility of an idea. For example, a world with (almost) no manual labor.
Or a world where things are so abundant that for practical purposes of daily
life there is no shortage of supply.

When looking at Star Trek it's first and foremost important to keep in mind
that these are stories intended to entertain. As such it's moot to try and
incorporate every episode of every show into some kind of big common canon.
The issue is not whether "Federation Credits" (must) exist, the trick here is
to look at the broader concept presented.

There are scientific indications that the general idea of the Star Trek
"economy" is valid. When a civilization gets access to advanced robotics, the
ability to mine entire star systems for resources, and advanced 3d printers,
it generates a setting that pretty much speaks for itself. The interesting
aspect here is that this state of affairs is very likely in the cards for
humanity's future.

Of course, there are extremely strong aspects of our society still prominent
in Star Trek. This is grossly unrealistic, but probably necessary for
storytelling purposes. For example, DS9 was really out of touch with the in-
universe realities of manufacturing and labor, but it made for some pretty
awesome stories.

I believe in the future we have a choice to make when it comes to scarcity,
and the battle lines are already drawn today. People who are invested in the
status quo will not only tell everyone it's impossible but they will go to
great lengths in keeping scarcity alive. Artificial scarcity perpetrated by
big powerful players is already a big staple in today's system, and that's
only going to get more audacious with growing technical capabilities. I think
a good argument could be made that this will lead to horrific social and
economic pathologies, and it probably already has.

The big reason the alternatives are scary to a lot of people is not just
because they fear a loss of traditional values and social cohesion. It's scary
to them because this kind of future is inherently experimental and so far
doesn't seem to yield itself to planning from on-high. This means there will
most likely be a huge loss of power and influence in the turmoils ahead and
it's going to be very difficult to port existing power structures to that new
kind of society.

Whether this fundamental transformation is even stoppable in the long run is
an open question. There are certainly scenarios imaginable where we just
stagnate instead of moving on. It's also not inconceivable that the human
civilization might fracture and split up into different groups pursuing their
own trajectories - and at least one of them might elect to keep scarcity alive
indefinitely.

------
motters
You don't need to speculate because there already is a model for post-scarcity
economics in the form of free and open source software. The free software
economy is more like an economy of attention or allegiance. It has sometimes
been called a "doocracy" in that those folks who do things tend to get the
most attention.

~~~
dkuntz2
A do-ocracy is just a form of governance. The economic system used in FOSS is
similar to a gift economy.

------
blueskin_
Amazing article. Explained it roughly how I always assumed it as being, but
far better than I ever could have.

Also, interesting link from there on The Culture, another of my favourite
scifi universes:
[http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm](http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm)

------
squozzer
My reading of history tells me the human hunger for wealth and power (what
some call greed) would easily adjust to any increase in prosperity, no matter
how large.

And some materials would still be scarce. They could not replicate dilithium,
it had to be mined. So like oil is today, such materials would become the new
next of power.

------
skyshine
I've recently gone public with a an economic system I've been developing that
can bridge the gap between a free market and a post scarcity economy.
[http://babblingbrook.net](http://babblingbrook.net)

------
Xdes
How do you give everyone a basic income without leading to overpopulation?

~~~
Retric
Don't give adjust the basic income for people with children and suddenly there
is a huge disincentive to having kids. Play with the numbers until the
population growth or shrinking balances out.

------
Tycho
_In reality,the market already basically dictates this, for who can claim that
a Wall Street banker works more than a teacher?_

Um...

------
johnrob
There will always be scarcity; if not we'll keep making more humans until
there is.

~~~
worldsayshi
Yes there will be scarcity as long as there is demand for more. More of the
basics like space and food/energy. If we stop reproducing and/or consuming to
the point of scarcity by choice - then we will no longer have scarcity. It's
not an impossible scenario. It has happened to some cultures.

------
bnolsen
this is pointless. star trek describes no real society and ther are conyinuity
holes everywhere from multiple series, writers and directors. a nice dream but
in no way deployable.

------
sdegutis
Very good points.

