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The Star Trek Economy

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Re: The Star Trek Economy

#21

Post by Gupie »

patio11 wrote: post #5
gress wrote: post #2

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.

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 w…

Good take, but the Enterprises have save the Federation from destruction on multiple occasions. With out them the Federation would have been assimilated, enslaved by the Klingons, destroyed by meglomanic advanced alien AIs...

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#22

Post by Xylakant »

tiatia wrote: post #13

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... 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!

> 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 :)

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#23

Post by Gupie »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

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_... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0 -- it…

"peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward"

This is the actuality for most people in the West or the Third World. Thinks sweat shops, paddy fields, StarBucks...

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#24

Post by diziet »

patio11 wrote: post #16
stormbrew wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Aside from the fact that Star Trek economics make no sense simply because there have been several ideological shifts in its fundamental nature over the last 50 years, this is by far the best and most obvious answer to any question of why there are still people flying around in spaceships. Post-scarcity doesn't mean post-danger. No one has to do luge in the Winter Olympics to survive, and not more than 4 years ag…

Yep. This means that when the Federation media covers the battle of Wolf 359 (11k dead, worst military disaster in centuries) it probably caused a brief flurry of controversy leavened with "Well at least they died doing what they loved: live-action role playing" and then it promptly went back to more interesting topics like which pop stars had just broken up. It naturally follows that Earth was never in serious dange…

This seems very much like the military situation in Iain Banks' The Algebraist.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#25

Post by noblethrasher »

Gupie wrote: post #23
thaumaturgy wrote: post #10

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_... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0 -- it…

"peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward" This is the actuality for most people in the West or the Third World. Thinks sweat shops, paddy fields, StarBucks...

But to the degree it's tolerated, it's arguable that it's due to a want of class consciousness, at least in the U.S.

Ironic that I got to use Marxism to attack communism.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#26

Post by patio11 »

Gupie wrote: post #21
patio11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Good take, but the Enterprises have save the Federation from destruction on multiple occasions. With out them the Federation would have been assimilated, enslaved by the Klingons, destroyed by meglomanic advanced alien AIs...

You know how high school football players think football is Really Important? Of course it is. Great sack, your team just won the championship, and the girls went wild about your heroic accomplishments. It was a terrible tragedy earlier in the year when that one kid died of a concussion, but that only underscores how Really Important football is.

In-universe evidence: despite being in a reality with infinite numbers of capricious demigods, Earth isn't dead yet. This is because Earthlings are essentially capricious demigods by the standards of more primitive cultures, but we really enjoy slumming it.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#29

Post by 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

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#30

Post by terranstyler »

tiatia wrote: post #13

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... 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!

> A capitalistic system can not be run without growth

I disagree. You are told we need to grow by X% p.a. and we need an inflation of Y% p.a. and we need to weaken our currencies to boost exports bla bla.

It is possible to show that this is BS if you thought it through.

BTW, I'd call "them" by their name if I knew it. BTW2, "Economics in one Lesson" was my eye opener, it was written in 1946 but it reads at if is was written yesterday.

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