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The Star Trek Economy

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Re: The Star Trek Economy

#141

Post by ItendToDisagree »

EliAndrewC wrote: post #113
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 blo…

Oh agreed on all counts. Was just pointing out you need to have at least a like minded set of people to 'do battle' with the other LARPers!

Also I thought the Klingons were part of the Federation at one point during DS9 era? Or perhaps that was just an alliance...

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#142

Post by splitrocket »

skylan_q wrote: post #133
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43

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 loc…

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 t…

The problem is that for certain goods, the demand becomes completely inelastic for individuals: water, food, shelter, security. The starving are not, and cannot be, rational economic actors. Slightly redenominating prices would be a small price to pay for millions of new, actually rational economic actors.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#143

Post by ItendToDisagree »

patio11 wrote: post #128
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many enemies in the universe so Star Fleet is important. Yes, but they're not enemies like Nazi Germany was an enemy, or like Al Qaeda was an enemy, or even like Bonnie and Clyde were enemies. They're enemies like a hornet's nest is an enemy. (If you're really cynical, they're enemies like the Protoss are an enemy, seen from the perspective of an American playing Starcraft. They exist to make your universe…

Totally agreed! With the exception of The Founders there isn't much competition out there besides The Q. But the Federation needs to have LARPers to LARP with the rest of the civs right? :D

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#144

Post by TheCoelacanth »

yozhik wrote: post #121
harshreality wrote: post #7

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 printi…

I've been playing with the idea of a 'karma economy': everyone starts with 1.0 karma. If someone uses a service or product you made, your karma increases by c * (user's karma), where c is some coefficient. Karma also decays over time, but never drops below 1.0. Creators of expensive (scarce) items could hold onto those items until someone with high karma wants one, thus maximizing their own karma gain. I'm no an econ…

That sounds very similar, though I believe that giving someone whuffie is a voluntary action that you do when you like a service/product/etc that you got from them rather than being automatic and you can also decrease their whuffie if they do something you don't like.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#145

Post by TheCoelacanth »

philwelch wrote: post #124
dkuntz2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, Voyager completely destroyed its own credibility as an interesting story to establish the post-scarcity angle. If you count all the shuttles and torpedoes they lost throughout the series and the continual damage and repair to the ship, it's obvious that one tiny ship must somehow have the capability to produce nearly unlimited output, because otherwise they wouldn't have a ship left after seven years.

They also seem to be able to produce an unlimited supply of red-shirt crewmen.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#146

Post by talmand »

patio11 wrote: post #128
ItendToDisagree wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many enemies in the universe so Star Fleet is important. Yes, but they're not enemies like Nazi Germany was an enemy, or like Al Qaeda was an enemy, or even like Bonnie and Clyde were enemies. They're enemies like a hornet's nest is an enemy. (If you're really cynical, they're enemies like the Protoss are an enemy, seen from the perspective of an American playing Starcraft. They exist to make your universe…

Red Shirts by John Scalzi touches on some of these ideas.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#147

Post by rickwebb »

nhaehnle wrote: post #6

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 jus…

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.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#148

Post by [deleted] »

skyshine wrote: post #132
transfire wrote: post #118

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)…

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 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…

[deleted]

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#149

Post by egypturnash »

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…

So basically the fleet is EVE, the LARP. With all that entails: breathless accounts of massive, important battles, which are completely incoherent to people outside the culture of the fleet.

I love it.

Re: The Star Trek Economy

#150

Post by nickff »

philwelch wrote: post #123
WalterBright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Cheating by definition leads to undeserved reward. Greed by definition leads to maximal reward.

>"Greed by definition leads to maximal reward."

Greed attempts to attain maximal reward, but this does not mean the reward is achieved. Greed is neither necessary or sufficient to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

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