The Star Trek economy

[Pointedstick]

Extreme geek alert! This post concerns Star Trek; you have been warned.

Something that's always bugged me about the Star Trek universe was their treatment of the galactic economy. I mean, the entire series' central premise is that Humans have achieved near cornucopia technology through matter replication, recycling, and energy generation, so there's no poverty, hunger, or want. But okay, it's a sci-fi show, I can believe that. Disbelief: suspended.

Then another theme is that due to this, Humans have moved beyond material wants and now primarily concern themselves with what's essentially the "self-actualization" part of the pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Okay, I can even stretch and believe that.

But even with replicators, and vast energy stores, and no more greed or self-interest, something that's been bugging me is how they manage to coordinate the production of things like starships and space stations without money. Even if I accept that the project managers have transcended self-interest, how are they to calculate the efficiency of their enterprises if they're unable to compare input and output costs?

Money isn't just used in retail, it's crucially important for resource extraction and production... for everything! It seems like the basic economic unit would be energy, which can be used to replicate matter, but without money, how are they supposed to figure out of if any new energy generation system will produce more energy than is needed to create it? Surely the Federation is interested in pursuing efficiency in these matters, but how can they quantify their gains without money? It just seems like the Federation would fall apart eventually once their resources actually became taxed due to the waste inherent in an economy with no money.

I can't be the only total geek who's thought about this!

[moda0306]

You are not... I've thought the idea of moving beyond material wants is a bit ridiculous.  These people still have to study extremely hard to learn how this stuff works, and it sounds much more fun to do... well, whatever it is that's more fun than learning particle physics.

I've always thought the politics of Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, Firefly and other nerdgasm-inducing productions are far more interesting and based in reality.

Actually, one of the best political commentaries (as well as cinematic achievements) that I've seen is in the form of a future where women can't have kids, and the earth's youngest person is something like 20 years old.  While that aspect is a bit far fetched, it drives some of the tensions we see in Europe to some very authoritarian behavior.  Children of Men is that movie.... it's very good, but often overlooked.

[Gosso]

IMO, the only way a Star Trek economic system could work is if corruption is eliminated, or extremely limited.  The people will need to trust the leaders, and that trust cannot be abused.  We may evolve to that level at some point, but I doubt it.

Here is an interesting video from Peter Joseph, where he presents an introduction to a "Resource Based Economy" which sounds very similar to a Star Trek system (10:25):

http://youtu.be/4qKAse8388k

[MachineGhost]

Dialogue in TNG: "The Last Outpost" and "The Perfect Mate" suggests that at least as late as 2368, Ferengi considered gold valuable. In "Little Green Men", Quark says to a 20th-century Human that "gold is good". However, by the time of "Who Mourns for Morn?", Quark describes gold as "worthless".

One explanation for this apparent devaluation of gold is the fact that the Ferengi had only recently made First Contact with the Federation. Replicator technology, if introduced to a gold-based economy, could send markets plunging. This may have happened to the Ferengi, who would have experienced a massive gold market crash as a result. Then again, gold may have lost value for some other reason. The comment in "Little Green Men" may be in the context of a pre-replicator economy.

According to the script for "Emissary", the Cardassians playing Dabo in Quark's were winning gold, although it is later stated that it was worthless.

...

Latinum is a rare silver liquid used as currency by the Ferengi Alliance and many other worlds. It cannot be replicated. For ease of transaction, latinum is usually suspended within gold to produce "gold-pressed" latinum. (DS9: "Who Mourns for Morn?")

Denominations of gold-pressed latinum, in order of increasing value, include the slip, the strip, the bar and the brick.

Star Trek: Armada II depicts the natural form of latinum occurring in sparse nebulae in a form that can be harvested. The Federation uses it for trade, while the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, and Cardassian Union also use latinum for research. The Borg do not use it, and Species 8472 converts it into biomatter.

[Pointedstick]

The Ferengi economy makes much more sense to me, and I think some of the more interesting explorations of this theme occur in DS9 where the money-less Federation officers commonly interact with a for-profit bar owned by a Ferengi who very much uses and values money, and not just a fiat money but a hard asset (the aforementioned gold-pressed latinum)

That said, I still don't understand how the Federation economy doesn't come to a crashing standstill. Even if I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that humans have somehow magically transcended greed, self-interest, and corruption, the lack of money still makes comparison of input and output costs impossible. Without humans also being omniscient (and therefore perfectly able to understand the most efficient uses of resources for any given task), I don't see how they'd manage to coordinate any kind of production without rapidly running into the inability to discover whether any productive enterprise was producing more than it was consuming. Resource overconsumption would run rampant. Even if you didn't have any malicious moochers, the noble, well-intentioned self-actualized people would still accidentally overconsume all the time.

[WildAboutHarry]

Somehow this popped into my mind...

The information superhighway showed the average person what some nerd thinks about Star Trek.

[Tortoise]

But even with replicators, and vast energy stores, and no more greed or self-interest, something that's been bugging me is how they manage to coordinate the production of things like starships and space stations without money. Even if I accept that the project managers have transcended self-interest, how are they to calculate the efficiency of their enterprises if they're unable to compare input and output costs?

I agree, money is a necessary part of any functioning economy. The word "money" comes with a lot of emotional baggage these days, but it's really just an abstract symbol for scarce resources. In a world with at least some type of scarcity--whether it be energy, material, or time--there is no avoiding the use of money or its equivalent ("energy units," for example).

The only world in which money is completely unnecessary is a world of total abundance: unlimited energy, unlimited materials, unlimited time, etc. Even in the Star Trek universe, I believe time is limited. And to the extent that the attainment of knowledge requires time, knowledge is scarce in the Star Trek universe. If it weren't, the Star Trek universe would have no conflicts or misunderstandings.

[Storm]

I find this a fascinating concept as well.  I think some of the science fiction authors have proposed that if we move from a scarcity-based economy to a post-scarcity based economy, what people will actually value will be social currency, in much the same way that people with large numbers of twitter followers try to get more.

If you want to read an interesting and short work of fiction about how this might play out, I recommend "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," by Cory Doctorow.  You can download his book for free here:  http://craphound.com/down/?page_id=1625

It's a fascinating glimpse into the phenomenon that you mentioned earlier about people shifting their efforts further up Maslow's hierarchy of needs into self-actualization vs. survival.

Personally, just give me a replicator that can manufacture viagra and a holodeck loaded with every female actor in the IMDB and I'll self-actualize until the cows come home... LOL!

[Xan]

Personally, just give me a replicator that can manufacture viagra and a holodeck loaded with every female actor in the IMDB and I'll self-actualize until the cows come home... LOL!

Interestingly, Storm, that isn't far from the plot of the pilot episode of Star Trek back in 1964.  (The one with Captain Pike instead of Kirk!)  The Telosians had developed the ability to create "reality" with their minds, and so had retreated into them, letting their world decay around them.

[Storm]

Personally, just give me a replicator that can manufacture viagra and a holodeck loaded with every female actor in the IMDB and I'll self-actualize until the cows come home... LOL!

Interestingly, Storm, that isn't far from the plot of the pilot episode of Star Trek back in 1964.  (The one with Captain Pike instead of Kirk!)  The Telosians had developed the ability to create "reality" with their minds, and so had retreated into them, letting their world decay around them.

I can definitely see that happening.  Look at how addictive games like World of Warcraft are already, and the effect they have on people that spend their entire lives playing them.  In 10 or 20 years the games will be so realistic that a large percentage of the population will retreat into digital universes and leave the rest of us to keep the lights on.  If a sufficiently advanced population created robots that could do most real world tasks for us, we could theoretically all retire and do whatever we chose, at least, as long as the robots kept working and knew how to repair themselves, and didn't become self aware and rise up in revolution against their fleshy masters.

[Tortoise]

In 10 or 20 years the games will be so realistic that a large percentage of the population will retreat into digital universes and leave the rest of us to keep the lights on.  If a sufficiently advanced population created robots that could do most real world tasks for us, we could theoretically all retire and do whatever we chose, at least, as long as the robots kept working and knew how to repair themselves, and didn't become self aware and rise up in revolution against their fleshy masters.

The robots can fight our wars for us, too! We'll just send them off to destroy each other on our behalf while we live together in peace in our virtual world

[Lone Wolf]

I can definitely see that happening.  Look at how addictive games like World of Warcraft are already, and the effect they have on people that spend their entire lives playing them.  In 10 or 20 years the games will be so realistic that a large percentage of the population will retreat into digital universes and leave the rest of us to keep the lights on.

It's amazing when you consider just how primitive and repetitive even top-drawer gaming experiences like World of Warcraft really are.  I don't know if it'll happen in 10 or 20, but the digital experiences (gaming and otherwise) that will be available in 50 years are going to be transformative.

Or maybe everyone will still be mindlessly clicking around in Farmville.