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For the truly geeky amongst us....

https://medium.com/editors-picks/29bab88d50

The Economics of Star Trek
The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy I promise this is about Star Trek. Sort of. Bear with me a moment.

Of course, it could also be a lesson for our own future. How long can a Capitalist model endure when people are no longer producers and are only consumers? Is there a tipping point?

The transfer from scarcity based economic systems to post-scarcity economic systems will likely be one of the biggest problems that faces the world in the 21st century.

As the article mentions, usually it's an all or nothing affair, in that either we're in a capitalist system or (in fiction) we've already transferred to a post-scarcity system. I'm sure both some non-fiction and fiction literature deals with the shift, but I haven't looked into it close enough.

The issue, of course, is that if you've got a scarcity based economy in a post-scarcity world, there's going to be a huge gap of people who the workforce simply doesn't need or have the capacity to use, but who still need the money from a job to support themselves.

I think there are solutions to this, but they are complex, requiring the tackling of issues from many different angles, something our global political system seems wholly incapable of doing without gakking it up something fierce.

Interesting article, very utopian and i think not possible until we crack nuclear fusion, but certainly something to think about.
To echo the above post, politics tends to make a mess of most good ideas and so would need to be bypassed in some way to make the transition.

In the original series there was still money and trading going on. Within Starfleet there wasn't much use for money, but outside of it there still was, and Starfleet was a much smaller organization.

Have we forgotten about the Ferengi and their rules already... and the latinums?

If you've cracked fusion or have a similarly efficient energy source, and have developed devices like replicators, you don't have much use for money.

The western world clearly already has a problem of too many people and not enough jobs, combined with enough productivity to support the jobless, but there is a lack of social/political will to admit the situation, leading to the widespread vilification of the unemployed for being lazy, feckless and so on, and consequent attacks on their welfare.

 whembly wrote:
Have we forgotten about the Ferengi and their rules already... and the latinums?

Ferengi aren't part of the Federation and have no desire to join as a society because there's no money in it.

Also Latinum:



I don't remember the exact value in that glass, but we know Morn kept ~100+ Gold Pressed Bricks worth of the liquid in his second stomach. Gold being worthless except as a binder.

Stupidest episode ever. Just saying.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
If you've cracked fusion or have a similarly efficient energy source, and have developed devices like replicators, you don't have much use for money.

Its not really the energy source that is the limiting factor, its actually creating a device that can transform energy into any known form of matter. And not only that, but complex forms of matter too.

The idea that such a device will come along within the next 300 years is silly.

The best you could hope for would be "Computer! 500 grams of Carbon.",

not "Computer! 4oz Steak, medium well, with 6oz garlic mashed potatoes"


Not to mention countless accidents while trying to build the basic replicators in the first place. I see lots and lots of messy explosions.

So you might end up with a device capable of creating basic elements in large quantities. Still extremely useful, but you won't be getting anything more complex out of it for a while.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
If you've cracked fusion or have a similarly efficient energy source, and have developed devices like replicators, you don't have much use for money.

Its not really the energy source that is the limiting factor, its actually creating a device that can transform energy into any known form of matter. And not only that, but complex forms of matter too.

The idea that such a device will come along within the next 300 years is silly.

The best you could hope for would be "Computer! 500 grams of Carbon.",

not "Computer! 4oz Steak, medium well, with 6oz garlic mashed potatoes"


Not to mention countless accidents while trying to build the basic replicators in the first place. I see lots and lots of messy explosions.

So you might end up with a device capable of creating basic elements in large quantities. Still extremely useful, but you won't be getting anything more complex out of it for a while.

Really? You watch Star Trek and the replicator is the part you can't swallow?

Personally, I think that the idea of the virtually currency-less society is a dream, nothing more. The replicators, the energy sources, and all that happy claptrap are just literary vehicles to explain the quasi-utopian society away without too detailed of an explanation. I think Star Trek works better as an example of the better nature of our species given narrative form, rather than a roadmap to our economic future. Still, replicators would be dope.

Plenty of other things are also far fetched. the replicator was simply the most pertinent.

There be no dollars. peso, yen, ruble, won, baht, euro or pound. It'll all be credit. SO many credit for this. So many credit for that.

Hell we have 3D printers now. Wonder what we have in another 30 years on our desks.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
If you've cracked fusion or have a similarly efficient energy source, and have developed devices like replicators, you don't have much use for money.

Its not really the energy source that is the limiting factor, its actually creating a device that can transform energy into any known form of matter. And not only that, but complex forms of matter too.

The idea that such a device will come along within the next 300 years is silly.

The best you could hope for would be "Computer! 500 grams of Carbon.",

not "Computer! 4oz Steak, medium well, with 6oz garlic mashed potatoes"


Not to mention countless accidents while trying to build the basic replicators in the first place. I see lots and lots of messy explosions.

So you might end up with a device capable of creating basic elements in large quantities. Still extremely useful, but you won't be getting anything more complex out of it for a while.

In 20 years,

"Food printer, steak product 4oz"
"Food Printer, potato product 6oz"

It will all be made out of textured soy protein

And it will taste like ***

I'll pay out for the real thing thank you.

Wasn't it explained at some point that the replicators don't actually create matter, they just take raw materials from store rooms somewhere else on the ship and assemble/convert it into the finished product that you're wanting?

In TNG, it is overtly stated that the invention of the matter replicator rendered the capitalist economy obsolete, and the casting aside of dogmatic religion was the final barrier to the Starfleet's utopia. (the former I think occurs when the Ferengi are first introduced, and latter is in the episode where Picard breaks the Prime Directive in order to rescue Riker, who went undercover in a developing society)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The western world clearly already has a problem of too many people and not enough jobs, combined with enough productivity to support the jobless, but there is a lack of social/political will to admit the situation, leading to the widespread vilification of the unemployed for being lazy, feckless and so on, and consequent attacks on their welfare.

That's actually something that's beginning to be proposed seriously in economics circles.
http://equitablegrowth.org/2013/11/16/759/this-mornings-must-watch-larry-summers-on-the-danger-of-a-japan-like-generation-of-secular-stagnation-here-in-the-north-atlantic

Absent speculative bubbles fueling excess demand, the default state of the economy is consumption and investment levels that are unable to produce full employment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The idea that such a device will come along within the next 300 years is silly.

I think the idea of predicting the next 300 years of technological development is silly. You think anyone alive in 1713 would have predicted the modern world with any kind of accuracy? And given that the rate of technological advance is accelerating, prediction is only going to get harder.

 sebster wrote:


I think the idea of predicting the next 300 years of technological development is silly. You think anyone alive in 1713 would have predicted the modern world with any kind of accuracy? And given that the rate of technological advance is accelerating, prediction is only going to get harder.

I'm sure that someone from back then would have predicted that the Church would still be the large, driving force for society that it was back then, they may have predicted better rifles/muskets, but probably not anything like the AK-47 or M-16 and if they saw people walking around town, talking to no one apparently in particular, they'd be crying Heretic! and Witch! (I am, of course, referring to the use of bluetooth devices)

 Jihadin wrote:
There be no dollars. peso, yen, ruble, won, baht, euro or pound. It'll all be credit. SO many credit for this. So many credit for that.

Your credits are no good here, I need something more real.

I doubt money will disappear. It'll remain useful as a baseline for measuring value and there will continue to be a need of such even if that need becomes limited to the cost of land and energy for our replicators

Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 sebster wrote:


I think the idea of predicting the next 300 years of technological development is silly. You think anyone alive in 1713 would have predicted the modern world with any kind of accuracy? And given that the rate of technological advance is accelerating, prediction is only going to get harder.

I'm sure that someone from back then would have predicted that the Church would still be the large, driving force for society that it was back then, they may have predicted better rifles/muskets, but probably not anything like the AK-47 or M-16 and if they saw people walking around town, talking to no one apparently in particular, they'd be crying Heretic! and Witch! (I am, of course, referring to the use of bluetooth devices)

Who still uses Bluetooth? Get some Google Glass and get with the times. Also: case in point.

 LordofHats wrote:
I doubt money will disappear. It'll remain useful as a baseline for measuring value and there will continue to be a need of such even if that need becomes limited to the cost of land and energy for our replicators

Well, the thing is, if you couple replicator technology with efficient solar capture operating on a vast scale, then there's enough energy for anyone to create anything they want, and then there's simply no value to measure. Money becomes meaningless as everyone can simply have whatever they want.

And another way to get more or less the same thing is through manipulating the brain directly. Ultimately what we're chasing is not the things, but the effect that acquiring those things has on us. It isn't the flash car that makes us happy, but the feeling in our brain from owning the flash car. We're not that far off being able to replicate that feeling entirely artificially, and then who knows how things will turn out? Who would spend their life working in some cubicle to earn enough to buy a two week holiday on some island, when you can just use a combination of electrical impulses and some chemicals to give you the same feeling as that holiday?

Post Humanism will be the death of humanity and the birth of Slaanesh.

 sebster wrote:


Well, the thing is, if you couple replicator technology with efficient solar capture operating on a vast scale, then there's enough energy for anyone to create anything they want, and then there's simply no value to measure. Money becomes meaningless as everyone can simply have whatever they want.

I imagine we won't be increasing the size of the planet anytime soon Land, even with space faring, will always be at a premium at the least.

 LordofHats wrote:
I imagine we won't be increasing the size of the planet anytime soon Land, even with space faring, will always be at a premium at the least.

Well, a post-scarcity world in every other area is pretty far in the future as well. And if you assume major changes like stopping population growth or moving all of your farming/factories/etc underground land becomes much less of a factor. It might not be an infinite resource, but it won't necessarily be enough to keep an economy in existence.

Plus, even if land is still scarce it's pretty much the only resource that is scarce. So what are you going to use to buy land? You can't offer anything but land since everyone can live in their small allocation of low-value land and have anything they want besides land. In fact, it's pretty questionable how you'd even enforce a claim to land beyond what you're currently using to live on when the concept of property rights in an investment/wealth context has been so thoroughly undermined.

 LordofHats wrote:
I imagine we won't be increasing the size of the planet anytime soon Land, even with space faring, will always be at a premium at the least.

In terms of physical space occupied by people, the globe is pretty close to empty. All the cities on Earth were put together at New York densities, you'd fill up Texas. If it was as broadly spaced as Houston, then it'd fill up about half of the continental US.

Most space is taken up by agriculture and other resources, or is left to nature. That land is no longer needed in this future with replicators. As you pointed out it land might still be at a premium for whatever the hell makes replicators and super efficient solar capture work, but it also might not. We just don't know.

Even then, just raw land, even stuff used in agriculture and industry, isn't that large of a cost compared to CBD locations, and those drive their value in part from convenience (being in the city locates you close to everyone else who's in the city) and status (having an office in Manhattan looks great on the letterhead). But in a far future where we are replicating goods, its entirely possible that there simply is no need to locate yourself near other companies (especially if communication tech continues to advance as it has) and material goods may not even be a source of status anymore (when anyone can replicate anything at any time, who is going to be impressed by someone owning something?)

So will land continue to be traded at a high value? If a bunch of this future tech develops then who knows?

Energy is the base cost of pretty much every activity of mankind. Producing cheap or free energy means the cost of everything else should come down... or everyone in charge will pocket the savings while laying off the workforce

3d printers will be the first step. What happens when you can print out that tool, washing machine part, car part or even construction parts? All you will need is a 3d pattern and a printer, job done.

The world of Judge Dredd where you get 97% unemployment, menial small task jobs and a megacity full of bored people looking for the next big fad. Pick up the drokking can citizen.

 Easy E wrote:
For the truly geeky amongst us....

https://medium.com/editors-picks/29bab88d50

The Economics of Star Trek
The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy I promise this is about Star Trek. Sort of. Bear with me a moment.

Of course, it could also be a lesson for our own future. How long can a Capitalist model endure when people are no longer producers and are only consumers? Is there a tipping point?

The tipping point is now. Bring forth the cheetahs.