I read a more detailed explanation of the star trek economy. I can't find the link now [1] but it answered some of the questions raised in this post. Since I can't find it I'm not sure if it was canon or just fan theorizing, but it was interesting all the same. I understand that this is a highly nerdy topic, but it's an example of how a a Proto Post Scarcity economy could work.
As I understood it, every year in the star trek universe citizens would request what they wanted and say what they were going to contribute to the economy in exchange for thaose things. ie, Captain Picard might say "I want to make improvements to my farm in france, a new personal transportation device for a relative, X number of paid for vacations and the daily luxuries of being a starfleet officer. In exchange for that, I'm willing to be a starship captain for the next year". Then an elected committee would review the request and approve it or deny it. I remember that it was noted that the committee had to be from a different area or state than the applicant. ie, a committee in Florida would review requests from Texas. Essentially it was a "That sounds fair" economy, based on judgement instead of currency.
As I recall, daily needs like food, shelter, medicine were taken care of for everyone, at various levels of luxury based on what the person was expected to contribute. Starfleet officers frequently talked about credits, either when gambling or visiting a bar on a non-federation or non-participating planet. I imagine this was a sort of legal black market system that would allow people to exchange money between one another to settle debts and to spend in other cultures, not really for routine living expenses. Post scarcity does mean post money, but there still has to be a way to maintain personal ledgers (maybe the credits were a year 2364 version of bitcoins?)
I think that Gene Roddenberry and other science fiction writers envision post scarcity societies for two reasons: 1) Money causes problems and 2) Economies function more efficiently without money.
We all love money, but think of the harm it can cause. Crime, ruined relationships, greed and the general oppression if not outright murder and enslavement of millions of people throughout history. As we all know, whenever someone says "It's not about the money", it's about the money. A moneyless world would solve a lot of these social problems. It's not that wealth is a bad thing. It's great to be rich. But a lot of problems arise when people need money for their daily sustenance. Food, housing, clothing, entertainment. All of these things should be taken care of at a low level, with compensation from contribution providing nicer and more desirable lifestyles. And it's quite possible that getting rid of daily dependence on individual spending is the best way to supercharge an economy. We don't see the waste in modern capitalism because we're primarily concerned with our own wealth, but it's there. Think about how much is wasted on a national (or galactic) scale. The efficiency gained through improved economic function would be more than enough to pay for all the replicator time that everyone on multiple worlds would need to live well.
Like many great things, the idea of post scarcity / post capitalism started in science fiction. But it doesn't have to stay there. We can start building a world where everyone has comfort and the rich have luxury. There are things we can do today to move us closer to this ideal and move people away from a system that's designed to make us all slaves to small amounts of wealth. I'm looking at you, Basic Income.
[1] Why hasn't someone made a startup to solve this problem? I'm constantly thinking of things I read and potentially bookmarked years ago, but google is a black hole. I would pay for this.
I think your heart is in the right place, but your economics are off - by a lot.
It's hard to rectify that in a quick comment though, as it's a complicated, interesting and fascinating subject.
Just to pick one thing, you mention 'efficiency'. Capitalism is not very efficient in a lot of ways. However, it happens to be more efficient for large groups of people than all the other systems people have tried, if you don't mind me poaching Churchill's quote about democracy.
And another: money. Money is merely a means of trading scarce goods. Looking at it as a problem is a red herring. The actual problem is the availability and distribution of scarce resources like food and shelter and iphones and other things people want.
Here's a book I'm fond of - it's fairly mainstream economics.
> Just to pick one thing, you mention 'efficiency'. Capitalism is not very efficient in a lot of ways. However, it happens to be more efficient for large groups of people than all the other systems people have tried, if you don't mind me poaching Churchill's quote about democracy.
It's worth pointing out that even a lot of ideologists putting forward alternative future societies does not see their future societies as likely to be more efficient than capitalism.
A key aspect for Marx, for example, is that the efficiency of capitalism and industrialisation acts as an enabler for socialism by bringing society to a post-scarcity level (at least in terms of basic needs), where it is possible for society to redistribute without leaving everyone in poverty, and where it is possible to as a result leave people free to make more choices surrounding how and how much they work.
Capitalism is more efficient than older systems because of the level of competition, and more efficient than most proposed future systems because most of these future systems are not expecting to be subject to the same constraints and requirements.
In Marx case, one of his arguments for why he believed a socialist revolution will eventually happen is in fact that he believed that capitalism will necessarily become so efficient that the revenue base starts shrinking as unemployment increases, while production capacity keeps increasing. That level of efficiency would necessitate drastic societal changes, and you could, if we reach that point, afford substantial extra inefficiencies and still most people would be better off.
The problem is the ingrained definition of efficiency. If people are happy and the society is moving forward culturally and scientifically, I'd say that's an efficient society; but american capitalism has a built-in definition that isn't necessarily tied to those values. It so happens that because of dynamics of the markets and people, it's had a pretty good alignment with the former values (when coupled with western democracy) -- cruically, better than the comunism alternatives -- but it's becoming clear we can do better with a more engineered approach specially in low scarcity scenarios.
Capitalist culture is essentially a Darwinian zero-sum game. Winners win big, losers lose freedom, basic necessities, and ultimately their lives - directly through a life of quasi-slavery working for someone else's benefit, and also through drastically shortened lifespan.
Money is the game counter. Decisions about how much money is available, who has access to it under what circumstances, and how much freedom they get in return for that access, define the game. But they're not set democratically - they're declared by a fiat, by a priestly caste of economists and bankers who administer the game.
The big difference between a Star Trek economy and this one is that in Star Trek, the game doesn't exist. Nor does the priestly caste.
What happens instead is that individuals trust the culture to do everything it can to look after them, and in return the culture trusts individuals to contribute voluntarily without freeloading, or without having some kind of semi-psychotic 'use all the things' fit of pointless public consumption.
It's effectively a trust economy, instead of a top-down planned economy like the capitalist system.
Wait - capitalism is a planned economy? Uh huh. Didn't you notice? It's as planned as the Soviet economy was, but instead of the Politburo, the planning is coordinated by the priestly caste which sets the rules of commerce (e.g. 'corporations must maximise profits and growth at all costs, even at the expense of long-term social stability'.)
In Star Trek, the economists have been replaced by planners who treat individuals like adults. The individuals act like adults, because they understand that the social benefits of volunteering time and talent vastly outweigh the personal costs, even if it costs them their lives.
In capitalism individuals are forced to compete for essentials. This makes volunteering impossible for most of the population. It also turns the culture into a bear pit, and wastes a lot of energy on pointlessly damaging individual competition.
In fact, I'd suggest even beyond that... just think about that claim. Love it or hate it or anything in between, wealth of all kinds has absolutely exploded under capitalism since the Industrial Revolution. If individual transactions in the world of capitalism are intrinsically exploitative and there is always a winner and a loser and a net loss of societal wealth... how can you explain the modern world, in which the poorest residents of the industrialized countries consider their birthright many things that the Kings of old could literally not have gotten at any price? Don't just read the propaganda, think. This is self-evidently a ludicrous claim if you take it seriously. It is absurd that the net effect of multiple trillions (quadrillions?) of net-loss transactions could somehow sum to something so net positive. Bridge the gap between theory and reality... don't just let people babble on and on about economics without ever asking them to be correct, think about what it would actually produce in the real world if it were true.
Capitalism has its problems. There may be better economic organizations. Capitalism may yet have a long term flaw in it as technology progresses (a lot of chatter about that case on HN in the past couple of years, there's a lot of interesting questions there). There's all sorts of avenues of "attack", or, better yet, all sorts of ways to just think about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. However, it's a sort of basic "you must be at least this tall to ride the ride" sort of thing that your theories must be able to explain how wealth has exploded under capitalism, and why it didn't explode under the older systems, and why it doesn't explode even more under any of the several attempts to use another system that have been really tried in the real world. (i.e., don't try to claim that many of the obvious "fixes" to capitalism have never been tried when in fact they've all been tried numerous times, and so far have not generated the best track records. Theories should include and explain real-world data, not ignore it when it is convenient to do so.)
And should you be tempted to explain away the wealth, or claim with varying degrees of obfuscation that its distribution negates the wealth explosion entirely because it isn't to your exact tastes (an obviously absurd claim when spelled out clearly but a popular dodge when slathered over with enough words to mask the logic), I strongly recommend spending some time with 18th century medical case notes, or reading about the opulence of 16th century royalty with an eye to what simple things we have today that they would (quite literally) kill for, or something else that will simply rub in your face how unbelievably wealthy we are today compared to the past. The past is poor. You can have theories about how it could be better, but if your theories become so powerful they explain why the wealth explosion didn't happen at all, it's time to throw the theory away and find a better one.
(Incidentally, I do have ways I'd improve things myself. If you're reading this as a paean to the status quo and anyone criticizing it should just shut up, you've probably got a bad case of the propagandas rendering you unable to understand different ideas. I've got my criticisms. However, my criticisms and yours still need to take the all of the above facts into account.)
Thanks for writing all that down. TheOtherHobbes' comments are another example of the bullshit asymmetry principle: refuting them takes a fair amount of time and energy, whereas it's easy to just write that kind of nonsense.
> how can you explain the modern world, in which the poorest residents of the industrialized countries consider their birthright many things that the Kings of old could literally not have gotten at any price?
Technology advances. I agree with the point you were trying to make (capitalism is not a zero sum game), but people expounding the benefits of capitalism tend to attribute to it the success of everything that it has touched. That's not necessarily correct. If an economic system controls 90% of the resources, we would expect it to have 90% of the success (even 90% of the growth!) under the null hypothesis that economic system doesn't matter.
> Don't just read the propaganda, think.
Oh no, the sheeple! Cut it out. Accusing your debate opponent of not thinking is beyond lazy.
> wealth has exploded under capitalism, and why it didn't explode under the older systems
Capitalism isn't an 18th century invention.
> why it doesn't explode even more under any of the several attempts to use another system that have been really tried in the real world
>how can you explain the modern world, in which the poorest residents of the industrialized countries consider their birthright many things that the Kings of old could literally not have gotten at any price?
You mean the world in which regulation and enforced redistribution of profits created a thriving middle class and spurred a boom in tech innovation? The world which started dying around 1980, when regulation began to be eroded?
The world which is now over, leaving a working population crippled by debt, unable to afford basic housing even on a way-above-average salary?
Tech is an exception. Kind of. Some of the time. For now. The important word there being 'exception.'
What made kings kings wasn't a pile of stuff, it was the ability to set policy.
How much influence do you have over national and international policy?
Do you think the question is ridiculous? It's not. It's the fundamental question that defines democracy.
How big is your area of interest? You? Your family? Your friends? Your company? Your country? The world?
How wide and detailed is your predictive horizon?
>Don't just read the propaganda, think.
Don't just think and persuade yourself that you're right - research, fact-check, and challenge your own beliefs.
Talk to people outside your comfort zone and usual circles. Go find out what's happening on the streets, in other countries, in the areas of the planet that are becoming increasingly inhospitable and difficult to live in.
Then we can talk about the modern world means to the people who live in it. You may find not everyone is as comfortable as you are.
Capitalism is a naive, wasteful way to run an economy. It explodes regularly in boom/bubble/bust cycles, it wastes human and natural resources with insane abandon, and it enforces a tacit caste system which puts a huge brake on social mobility.
My iPhone is nice. So is medical care. The Internet is definitely a win. Last time I looked science and engineering invented most of these things. Capitalism tried to sell them to me, not always in a good way. Sometimes it kept me from trying to find better alternatives. (Richard Gabriel is good on this.)
So I'm not yet convinced everyone couldn't have equivalent things - perhaps much better things - without having to pay a wrenchingly high price in avoidable economic instability, and questionable, sometimes corrupt, policy.
I don't believe "zero-sum" is the term you want, there. A better one might be "winner-take-all"; for more information, see the work of Robert Frank: http://www.robert-h-frank.com/
> In Star Trek, the economists have been replaced by planners who treat individuals like adults. The individuals act like adults, because they understand that the social benefits of volunteering time and talent vastly outweigh the personal costs, even if it costs them their lives.
You almost had me going here. And then you remember how desperate ensigns are in Star Trek. The explanation : a sense of duty ... That's supposedly the explanation for 8 years of "scrubbing conduits". The explanation for in group walking through a dominion minefield. The explanation for putting up with getting sent to a listening post, 2 months away from human contact, your function is to repair any circuit shorts ...
I don't buy it. No way.
> In Star Trek, the economists have been replaced by planners who treat individuals like adults. The individuals act like adults, because they understand that the social benefits of volunteering time and talent vastly outweigh the personal costs, even if it costs them their lives.
In one sentence you've stated that the entire premise of economics is wrong. Rational actors ? Pfew ! What do we need that for ?
> In capitalism individuals are forced to compete for essentials. This makes volunteering impossible for most of the population. It also turns the culture into a bear pit, and wastes a lot of energy on pointlessly damaging individual competition.
That's must be why there was such an explosion of volunteering in the Soviet union then. Or why there is such a rich and diverse volunteering tradition among the unemployed.
I'd say there's a few holes in this thinking. But don't get me wrong : I sincerely hope you, or anyone, will convincingly fill them. But I've never seen decent arguments here.
There are things we can do today to move us closer to this ideal and move people away from a system that's designed to make us all slaves to small amounts of wealth. I'm looking at you, Basic Income.
I don't understand. On the one hand, you believe money is harmful, and all we need to do is properly distribute resources. On the other hand, you advocate distributing money.
It seems more in the spirit of the rest of your post to advocate a "basic survival" program. For anyone who needs it, dormitories, nutritious food, comfortable uniforms and entertainment can be directly provided. Then no one will need money for their daily sustenance.
> I don't understand. On the one hand, you believe money is harmful, and all we need to do is properly distribute resources. On the other hand, you advocate distributing money.
I think the OP is intending to make money less relevant. The fastest way to do that would be to give everyone a base amount of it to the point they don't really want or need anymore.
In all honesty, if you knew you had enough money to have quality food, shelter, education, health and some luxuries for the rest of your life and your children, how long would it be before you never again looked at your bank balance? Not long.
I'd look. I'd wonder whether I could afford still more luxuries. I wouldn't stress about it much, though I don't stress about it all that much presently.
There are probably several "more detailed explanation" not just one. Although OPs article was a nice one. I have miserably failed at finding my personal favorite article using Google, may have been pre-internet or dead tree only (anthology book essay topic?)
Anyway the one I'm looking for had an extremely detailed "shopping list" of everything ever mentioned in cannon trek series as of that time, and how much it cost in credits, and I don't remember the exact spec but one credit seemed quite reasonable around one megawatt-hour, plus or minus a lot of star trek technology scaling.
It also had a lot of commentary about ratios between products and capital goods and stuff like that.
The kind of "cash" flow Quark had in credits seemed somewhat reasonable to run his vegas style establishment, plus or minus replicator charges especially for food.
The essay did discuss how the economic system didn't seem to work numerically in general unless replicators squirted out free food on demand, or at least gave everyone a fixed caloric diet as a baseline and more credits for slightly fancier synthesis.
So federation people technically didn't have money, as in tokens minted by a central bank to maximize wealth of the elite and obtain a semi-stable inflation rate at a cost of greatly increased economic cycle volatility. But they did have money in that they bartered megawatt-hours of energy (presumably electricity) but called them credits.
If it helps anyone remember, the essay explained they called them credits instead of MWH or whatever because the exact amount of MWH was based on some tiny SI prefix of antimatter in a 100% efficient reactor (thermal, I guess) gives off about 1 MWH of total (heat) energy. However, again, there is no such thing even in star trek world as a 100% efficient reactor and not everyone needs raw heat (although its handy) so they bartered energy as in megawatt-hours delivered.
In practice, any way to generate electricity, a reactor or a solar array or whatever, was a private mint.
This also explained some economics of star ship life, the ship itself actually generated "pay" for the crew right out of the reactor.
There was also some discussion in the essay about cross species, based on very limited evidence the Ferengi were fairly poverty stricken when comparing the average federation officer vs the average Ferengi when you analyze the somewhat theoretical accouting.
The essay did gloss over the Klingons... other than fealty labor I have no idea how they handled their economy and the essay I'm thinking of had no idea either.
As I understood it, every year in the star trek universe citizens would request what they wanted and say what they were going to contribute to the economy in exchange for thaose things. ie, Captain Picard might say "I want to make improvements to my farm in france, a new personal transportation device for a relative, X number of paid for vacations and the daily luxuries of being a starfleet officer. In exchange for that, I'm willing to be a starship captain for the next year". Then an elected committee would review the request and approve it or deny it. I remember that it was noted that the committee had to be from a different area or state than the applicant. ie, a committee in Florida would review requests from Texas. Essentially it was a "That sounds fair" economy, based on judgement instead of currency.
As I recall, daily needs like food, shelter, medicine were taken care of for everyone, at various levels of luxury based on what the person was expected to contribute. Starfleet officers frequently talked about credits, either when gambling or visiting a bar on a non-federation or non-participating planet. I imagine this was a sort of legal black market system that would allow people to exchange money between one another to settle debts and to spend in other cultures, not really for routine living expenses. Post scarcity does mean post money, but there still has to be a way to maintain personal ledgers (maybe the credits were a year 2364 version of bitcoins?)
I think that Gene Roddenberry and other science fiction writers envision post scarcity societies for two reasons: 1) Money causes problems and 2) Economies function more efficiently without money.
We all love money, but think of the harm it can cause. Crime, ruined relationships, greed and the general oppression if not outright murder and enslavement of millions of people throughout history. As we all know, whenever someone says "It's not about the money", it's about the money. A moneyless world would solve a lot of these social problems. It's not that wealth is a bad thing. It's great to be rich. But a lot of problems arise when people need money for their daily sustenance. Food, housing, clothing, entertainment. All of these things should be taken care of at a low level, with compensation from contribution providing nicer and more desirable lifestyles. And it's quite possible that getting rid of daily dependence on individual spending is the best way to supercharge an economy. We don't see the waste in modern capitalism because we're primarily concerned with our own wealth, but it's there. Think about how much is wasted on a national (or galactic) scale. The efficiency gained through improved economic function would be more than enough to pay for all the replicator time that everyone on multiple worlds would need to live well.
Like many great things, the idea of post scarcity / post capitalism started in science fiction. But it doesn't have to stay there. We can start building a world where everyone has comfort and the rich have luxury. There are things we can do today to move us closer to this ideal and move people away from a system that's designed to make us all slaves to small amounts of wealth. I'm looking at you, Basic Income.
[1] Why hasn't someone made a startup to solve this problem? I'm constantly thinking of things I read and potentially bookmarked years ago, but google is a black hole. I would pay for this.