Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Star Trek Economy

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 240 posts

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#111

Post by dkuntz2 »

pekk wrote: post #91
etler wrote: post #50

>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 motiv…

There was a Star Trek episode where Picard sees an alternate future where he ended up with low rank. He was desperate to get back to the interesting higher-rank jobs

His desperation may have only been because he previously had a higher-ranking position.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#112

Post by macspoofing »

mempko wrote: post #94

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…

>When you sit at the dinner table and ask for the salt, you get it.

Actually, it's you who has a fundamental misunderstanding of communism, and yes, this probably shows the sad state of our education system. Communism is not cooperation. Sitting down to dinner with family, is not Communism. Working on a project with your friend is not Communism. Donating money, time or skills is not Communism. Communism is a particular way of allocating scare resources (which also implies a particular government structure). Capitalism is another. Communism has been shown in practice to be a devastating, corrupt and wasteful system. It doesn't work in theory either because it creates huge incentives to cheat and lie (because if you don't inflate your need, your neighbor will and he'll get more - after all you have to prove your need before you get yours). I have more, but I think I made my point.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#113

Post by EliAndrewC »

ItendToDisagree wrote: post #90
stormbrew wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really enjoying patio11's really irreverant take on the subject, but it's not really necessary that their work be completely useless to support the thesis. Self-actualized people may perform useful work as well. But it's also possible that robots have saved the Federation as many times as human-captained ships. I'd rather believe this than that it's because of the spirit-killing Section 31 being sneaky assholes b…

Bringing up Section 31 is a good pull! There are many enemies in the universe so Star Fleet is important. To name a few there are The Borg, The Makers, The Cardassians, The Romulans, And even the Klingons who are federation members. War-like cultures would still exist even if the Federation believes they themselves have moved beyond that type of thing.

> War-like cultures would still exist even if the Federation believes they themselves have moved beyond that type of thing.

An alternate take compatible with patio11's irreverent theory: war-like cultures exist only in the sense that some cultures have different LARP preferences.

Supporting evidence: how did the Klingon Empire (who are not actually part of the Federation) make it through their nuclear age without blowing up their planet? How do they continue to keep pace technologically with other species? They steal a lot of technology, e.g. they never invented the warp drive themselves, but that would only get them so far and wouldn't keep them competitive with the Federation.

Patio11's oddball theory of Star Trek as a documentary about a future LARP may not be correct, but it explains away these kinds of questions better than any "real" theory that I've seen!

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#114

Post by Retric »

Xdes wrote: post #97

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

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.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#116

Post by gaius »

eru wrote: post #48
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 [...] Several states (eg in Europe) have been running with contracting or stagnant economies for a while. It's not pretty, but they run. Or what do you mean by "can not be run"?

Steady state means stopping all research, just in case you discover something that upsets the applecart. More accurate to say that no modern economy can be run without trying to grow, whether it succeeds or not.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#117

Post by Nicholas_C »

rasz_pl wrote: post #62
etler wrote: post #50

>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 motiv…

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.

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.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#118

Post by 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.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#119

Post by canvia »

vinceguidry wrote: post #77

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 eco…

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.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#120

Post by Blahah »

dkuntz2 wrote: post #103
Blahah wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting SciFi exploration of economics is the Unincorporated Man ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4025200-the-unincorporat... ). 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.

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 p…

Agree on all points. The second book was just god awful.
Post reply on HN