Post Monetary Society

[RuralEngineer]

I was watching Star Trek TNG reruns (no, I don't have fake Vulcan ears or any other Trekkie paraphernalia), and the idea of a post monetary society where the cost of life's necessities has essentially gone to zero got me thinking.  Because we have a least a couple people who aspire to something similar on these boards, I had a couple questions regarding the application of such a concept.  Star Trek is the only example of this type of society in popular media I'm aware of, so please bear with me.

Non distributable goods:

In TNG there is talk of farms and vineyards occasionally as well as the concept of colonies.  These both require what is essentially a non distributable good, land.  Land could be owned communally, but the lifestyle associated with owning or running a farm is not something that can be shared equally by an entire civilization once it's reached a certain size.  Today in our society we have many people who aspire to a country lifestyle and owning land, but lack the means to achieve it.  In a post-monetary society how would such things be distributed?  Purely through historical ownership?  In TNG there is always the potential to pack up and move to a colony where such things are more readily available.  However, even this doesn't account for the fact that not all land is created equally.  If everyone wants a diet coke, we could conceivably deliver on that desire and everyone would have an equal experience.  If everyone wants a vineyard in the south of France, a tiny minority can be satisfied.  Money is currently the means by which we determine who gets to fulfill their desires for finite goods.  What system would replace this?

Jobs not suitable for automation:

Some would disagree and perhaps would argue that all but a very few jobs are capable of being automated, however, there are some jobs in our society, such as teaching, where automation is not currently feasible.  Nor would we necessarily want to automate them, even if it were.  In such an instance, how do we determine who is forced to continue working to support the lifestyle of those of us who do not work?  Short of some massive societal restructuring, I can't imagine the human race will be able to satisfy our need for teachers with only those willing to do so for pure enjoyment.  This is exactly the solution proposed by TNG, but I find it unlikely when we consider the real world.  Another example is farming, which is a very hard profession, but is rendered pointless in TNG by use of the replicator, which can feed an infinite population granted sufficient power, which is apparently also free in the future.  Since we don't have access to such technology, the immense work of growing sufficient food for billions of humans will have to continue.

So, these were my questions and I was curious if there were any proponents for such a system and whether they had given any thought to these issues.

[MachineGhost]

There was still money, as used by the Ferengi, which was gold-pressed latinum which was non-replicatable.  I believe the Federation used gold until it became replicatable and replaced by the gold-pressed latinum.  It's a bit hazy in the canonical on how the transition from gold to no money was made.

Short of some massive societal restructuring, I can't imagine the human race will be able to satisfy our need for teachers with only those willing to do so for pure enjoyment.  This is exactly the solution proposed by TNG, but I find it unlikely when we consider the real world.

Why not?  Passionate people are the best teachers.  If you have a Citizen's Dividend or all of life's basic necessities provided for by automation, only passionate people will do what they will do best.  It would be a superior division of labor.  All of the ST:NG crew were there because they wanted to be, not because they had to work for a living.

As to farming, just read this:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-575 ... ing-weeds/

[Pointedstick]

I find this to be fascinating too. In fact, I started a similar thread many months ago!

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/in ... topic=2639

The conundrum I always butted up against was the same one you did: the impossibility of truly banishing all scarcity. Even if small consumer products could be replicated apparently for free, and experiences could be created at will on the holodeck, there were always a limited number of holodecks and replicators on the ships. How was it determined who got to use them first? In the absence of money, what sort of rationing or queuing mechanism developed? We see a bit of this in Voyager where "replicator rations" and "holodeck privileges" were bartered among the crew, but then again Voyager had limited energy, so the scarcity made more sense. In other shows, it's rarely explained how this process worked with unlimited energy but limited energy conception facilities, if it was formalized.

There's also the problem of comparing input and output costs without money. When the Federation wants to build a spaceship, they can't just replicate the whole thing. They may be able to replicate many/most of the components, but it still costs time and labor to fit them together. This time and labor may be accomplished by machines, but some people need to run and maintain those machines, with their own scarce time.

How is the federation to determine the most efficient use of these people's time? Is it more efficient to build a single Galaxy-class ship, or a few smaller Nebula or Ambassador-class ships? Do they even need any more starships at all? Would those resources be more efficiently used to construct new space stations? What if all the suitable new space station sites are far away? Without a clear method to compare input and output costs--money or something else--it's impossible to answer these types of questions in a manner other than pure speculation or executive fiat. It's why the Soviet economy was such a shambles.

[RuralEngineer]

There was still money, as used by the Ferengi, which was gold-pressed latinum which was non-replicatable.  I believe the Federation used gold until it became replicatable and replaced by the gold-pressed latinum.  It's a bit hazy in the canonical on how the transition from gold to no money was made.

Short of some massive societal restructuring, I can't imagine the human race will be able to satisfy our need for teachers with only those willing to do so for pure enjoyment.  This is exactly the solution proposed by TNG, but I find it unlikely when we consider the real world.

Why not?  Passionate people are the best teachers.  If you have a Citizen's Dividend or all of life's basic necessities provided for by automation, only passionate people will do what they will do best.  It would be a superior division of labor.  All of the ST:NG crew were there because they wanted to be, not because they had to work for a living.

As to farming, just read this:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-575 ... ing-weeds/

First off, you'll have to forgive my ignorance, I never watched much DS9.  I do clearly remember in TNG it was explained that they used no money.  In fact there was an episode where they find some frozen people from our time and one of them is some hot shot banker or something, who's concerned about his funds.  He gets all crazy when they explain that money doesn't exist anymore.  Now, the Federation may have used money when interacting with species that still use it, although I wonder how they got around the fact that hard currency for anyone else was always fiat money when a replicator was around.  But within the Federation, there was no money as I understand it.

I suppose if one could imagine that all the horrible things pushing teachers out of the profession today could be banished, I suppose finding enough passionate teachers might be possible.  But first the students will have to stop being brats, the parents will need to actually care about their children's education, and the administration will need to get a clue as they currently have none.

I concede that a future in which farming is automated is possible and probably a prerequisite for a post-monetary society.

[Gumby]

It's called "Post Scarcity". See...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

[MachineGhost]

John C. Wright's novel The Golden Age deals with a future voluntary libertarian society spanning the solar system called the Golden Oecumene. Due to technology, nearly everyone is immortal and tremendously wealthy except those living outside society due to exile or by choice. The Sophotechs, a superior line of computer intelligences, do most of the work, research, and simulations required by the society. Throughout the book the main character, Phaethon, has to face off against a technologically superior and unknown enemy while also dealing with a post-scarcity society which is afraid of death and instability more than anything else and does not believe his plight.

If I had to lay down bets for our future, this would be the one.

[TripleB]

I've never seen Star Trek. From a economists perspective, the concept of a post-monetary society is ridiculous on the basis that:

A) There are always limited resources
B) There are always unlimited desires

It's not possible in any world to meet all the desires of man given the resources of that world, regardless of how good technology is. Money is necessary to allow people to choose what desires they want to fulfill given their limited resources.

If you give me two Porches, I'll want three. If you give me three, I'll want four. Then a helicopter or two or twenty. A different colored helicopter for each day in the lunar cycle. A few submarines.

Suppose all "necessary" desires were able to be met for free using automation. Such as food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, etc. Who's definition of necessary would be used to decide who gets what? Oatmeal and a protein bar could be necessary food 3x a day and fulfill the needs of life. What if someone doesn't want to eat Oatmeal and a protein bar 3 times a day forever? What if they want steak? Will there be free unlimited steak for everyone too?

Realistically, it might be possible to meet all "necessary" desires for free as a society, but when people want a luxury item or service (not in the economics sense), they will have to pay for it somehow. And if many products/services are automated, there won't be jobs to earn the money to pay for it, however other people with their unlimited desires will be willing to trade someone else (with in effect is money).

[edsanville]

I recently finished watching every episode of Deep Space Nine in order.  The idea of a "post-scarcity society" truly makes very little sense, even on the show itself.  For example, people would have to schedule holo-suite time, because there were a limited number of holo-suites on the station.  In fact, they would also have to pay for that holo-suite time, because the holo-suites themselves were owned and operated privately by Quark, the resident Ferengi entrepreneur.

Even though the economics of the Star Trek universe did irritate me at times, Deep Space Nine was still a wonderful series.  In fact, there were one or two episodes that lampshaded the idea of a post-scarcity society, by logically poking holes in it.  Here's a clip that comes to mind from the episode "In The Cards:"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo

[Pointedstick]

You're absolutely right, edsanville. DS9 comes closest to exploring these themes, but it's still terribly incoherent. For example, Quark charges patrons in latinum for their drinks at his bar, yet Starfleet officers regularly consume the same beverages despite having no money! It's highly unlikely this is charity. And at one point Sisko discusses Quark's rent on the space he uses for his bar which is unequivocally denominated in latinum; what would Sisko do with it? He has no use for it! Does he distribute it among the senior staff so they can buy drinks at the bar?

Another issue is the available crew quarters on the station. Since Starfleet is basically a military organization, Sisko unilaterally determines who gets quarters when visitors or colonists arrive; how does this work in the civilian parts of the Federation? Real estate is never unlimited, and especially real estate in desirable areas. How thes the Federation determine who gets the most desirable land and/or dwellings?

In the end, I've concluded that it's a much more fun series if you avoid thinking about this kind of stuff. I mean, the aliens all look like Humans with putty on their faces… the universal translator apparently also translates their lip movements into looking like they're speaking English, and so on and so forth. 

[edsanville]

In the end, I've concluded that it's a much more fun series if you avoid thinking about this kind of stuff. I mean, the aliens all look like Humans with putty on their faces… the universal translator apparently also translates their lip movements into looking like they're speaking English, and so on and so forth. 

Indeed.  You really have to relegate Star Trek economics under "suspension of disbelief,"  along with warp drives, time travel, and aliens that just happened to evolve to look like humans.

When watching, I've found that it's best to confine your thinking to the episode's main theme rather than the economic/scientific plausibility of Federation society. 

Unfortunately, some episodes see fit to press the "money is evil" angle, such as the grating "Neutral Zone" TNG episode mentioned by RuralEngineer, (the one with the hotshot banker).

[Xan]

First or second season TNGs (like that one) are generally grating anyway.

[RuralEngineer]

Maybe I can't see it because I don't actually have the prospect of fulfilling all of my desires, but I can't think of anything that I want an infinite amount of.  My aspirations are occasional travel and to have a small farm with enough wooded ground for serious hunting without worrying about other hunters...a couple hundred acres.  Obviously this aspiration takes a good bit of money to realize, but it's not of an infinite nature.  If I had an enormous farm such that I could run 500 ewes rather than the 30 I want, my time would be consumed with maintaining the flock.  If I had so much ground that it was hard to access all of it, I'd worry about trespassers or poachers.

I don't think post-scarcity is workable because not all human desires can be fulfilled, even if shares were modest.  Some goods that we currently spend money on will always be scarce.  However, I don't think that all humans have unlimited desires that could never be fulfilled.  I believe contentment is possible for some of us.

[edsanville]

First or second season TNGs (like that one) are generally grating anyway.

No argument here, the first season was especially horrible.  I can't believe it had enough viewers not to get canceled.

[TripleB]

Maybe I can't see it because I don't actually have the prospect of fulfilling all of my desires, but I can't think of anything that I want an infinite amount of.  My aspirations are occasional travel and to have a small farm with enough wooded ground for serious hunting without worrying about other hunters...a couple hundred acres.  Obviously this aspiration takes a good bit of money to realize, but it's not of an infinite nature.

I understand where you're coming from and why you feel you may think that way, however I disagree. It's human nature to always want to better your position. Even if your position is great, it can always be better.

As a gun owner, with the new gun control talks, do you feel like you have enough ammo and magazines stored up? I have a significant number, probably double than I can realistically use in my entire life, and I still don't feel I have enough mags and intend to buy more once the hysteria dies down.

If you had 10,000 rounds of rifle ammo would that be enough? To me, no, because if I could afford it and had a backyard with a backstop in a rural area with no neighbors, I would shoot 200 to 300 rounds of ammo each day. That's $100 of ammo a day. That's 100k rounds of ammo per year. If I live another 40 years I'd need 4 Million rounds of ammo stockpiled to accomplish that.

And if I had 4 million rounds of ammo, I'd probably want 5 just to be sure. And if I had 5, I'd probably want 6.

If I had 3 AR15s, I'd probably want a fourth as a backup. Or a 5th buried in a cache site. Heck, why not a 6th and 7th in different cache sites as well.

A 100 acre farm sounds nice, but a 101 acre farm sounds better because what if I need that extra acre later?

A 4WD pickup truck is a good addition to the vehicle shed but there's several sizes so maybe I'll get 3 different ones so I can take out the best one at the time. And spare parts for all of the vehicles. Maybe double spare parts in case one of the spare parts turns out to be faulty.

While I feel like I am "content" with low amounts of money and material possessions, if someone offered me an infinite amount of money, I'd be able to spend it. Once the amount of money got to the point where I couldn't reasonably figure out how to spend it myself, I'd pay someone to subcontract out the spending. "Joe, go figure out what the best 100 rifles are and buy 2 of each... and figure out how to build a fortified building to store them... and find spare parts for them... and heck, go find a machinist, buy a CNC machine, and have the machinist make CAD drawings of all the spare parts just in case I need more."

[doodle]

Maybe I can't see it because I don't actually have the prospect of fulfilling all of my desires, but I can't think of anything that I want an infinite amount of.  My aspirations are occasional travel and to have a small farm with enough wooded ground for serious hunting without worrying about other hunters...a couple hundred acres.  Obviously this aspiration takes a good bit of money to realize, but it's not of an infinite nature.

I understand where you're coming from and why you feel you may think that way, however I disagree. It's human nature to always want to better your position. Even if your position is great, it can always be better.

As a gun owner, with the new gun control talks, do you feel like you have enough ammo and magazines stored up? I have a significant number, probably double than I can realistically use in my entire life, and I still don't feel I have enough mags and intend to buy more once the hysteria dies down.

If you had 10,000 rounds of rifle ammo would that be enough? To me, no, because if I could afford it and had a backyard with a backstop in a rural area with no neighbors, I would shoot 200 to 300 rounds of ammo each day. That's $100 of ammo a day. That's 100k rounds of ammo per year. If I live another 40 years I'd need 4 Million rounds of ammo stockpiled to accomplish that.

And if I had 4 million rounds of ammo, I'd probably want 5 just to be sure. And if I had 5, I'd probably want 6.

If I had 3 AR15s, I'd probably want a fourth as a backup. Or a 5th buried in a cache site. Heck, why not a 6th and 7th in different cache sites as well.

A 100 acre farm sounds nice, but a 101 acre farm sounds better because what if I need that extra acre later?

A 4WD pickup truck is a good addition to the vehicle shed but there's several sizes so maybe I'll get 3 different ones so I can take out the best one at the time. And spare parts for all of the vehicles. Maybe double spare parts in case one of the spare parts turns out to be faulty.

While I feel like I am "content" with low amounts of money and material possessions, if someone offered me an infinite amount of money, I'd be able to spend it. Once the amount of money got to the point where I couldn't reasonably figure out how to spend it myself, I'd pay someone to subcontract out the spending. "Joe, go figure out what the best 100 rifles are and buy 2 of each... and figure out how to build a fortified building to store them... and find spare parts for them... and heck, go find a machinist, buy a CNC machine, and have the machinist make CAD drawings of all the spare parts just in case I need more."

It's funny, but my nature is exactly the opposite  . Granted, Im a bit strange, but my urges are to have less and less. I figure that if I don't have anything, then I don't have to worry so much about protecting it. I'm not going to be able to take anything with me when I go, so I figure why spend my days worrying about protecting this stuff that doesn't really "belong" to me anyhow.

I like this quote:

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau

[RuralEngineer]

TripleB,

I think humanity is a spectrum in all things.  You and doodle seem to be fair approximations of the extreme ends of the spectrum with respect to the desire for material possessions.  I just think I fall somewhere in the middle, probably closer to your end since my dream lifestyle would require millions to pull off.  However, if I had billions of dollars I'm not going to go buy 6 houses.  My home wouldn't be 10,000 square feet with more bathrooms than bedrooms.  Who would clean it?  I don't want strangers in my home so it has to be maintainable by myself.  I have no desire for a private yacht, although I'd take a reasonable fishing boat to try and snag the occasional tuna or red snapper.  Perhaps its because I was raised on a small farm, but I know how much work that lifestyle takes.  I wouldn't have the time to enjoy billions of dollars, even if I had it.

[Gumby]

From a economists perspective, the concept of a post-monetary society is ridiculous on the basis that:

A) There are always limited resources

Yes. However, post scarcity fiction tries to find ways to minimize those limits. For instance....

As for the raw materials and energy needed as input for such automated production systems, self-replicating automated mining plants set loose in the asteroid belt (see asteroid mining) or other areas of space with huge amounts of untapped raw materials could cause the prices of these materials to plummet. New power sources such as fusion power or solar power satellites could do the same for energy, especially if the power plants/power satellites could themselves be constructed in a highly automated way, so their number would be limited only by raw materials and energy.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarc ... technology

B) There are always unlimited desires

It's not possible in any world to meet all the desires of man given the resources of that world, regardless of how good technology is. Money is necessary to allow people to choose what desires they want to fulfill given their limited resources.

Post-scarcity isn't about everything being free.

Some things would remain limited in supply even in a post-scarcity society. There is a practical limit to the number of people who can live in any specific, 'in-demand' locale. However, hypothetical machines such as a nanofactory are envisioned as being able to produce any real-world artifact, and some fictions even envision the physical creation of new living space (orbitals or ringworlds) to reduce this scarcity. This would likely further reduce (though not fully eliminate) the value of an 'original' item or a specific locale to live in. Engineers have suggested megascale structures such as an Alderson disk or Dyson sphere to provide abundant living space and energy.

If immersive virtual reality were to develop to simulate reality so accurately that one could not distinguish it from the physical world, the amount of available virtual space would be vastly increased. Since one need not simulate the world to a quantum level to make it appear completely real, a simulated reality which appears completely real to a user could be simulated on a computer much smaller than the simulated space.

Population growth, if it continued long enough, would also lead to unavoidable scarcity. As pointed out by Thomas Robert Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, Albert Allen Bartlett, and others, exponential growth in human population has the capacity to overwhelm any finite supply of resources, even the entire known universe, in a remarkably short time. For example, if the human population continued to grow indefinitely at its 1994 rate, in 1,900 years the mass of the human population would equal the mass of Earth, and in 6000 years the mass of the human population would equal the estimated mass of the observable universe Although this would imply the invention of faster than light travel, necessary for humanity to spread throughout the universe as fast as population growth, even at lower growth rates these levels would still be reached in readily imaginable times. So a plausible post-scarcity scenario must imply zero population growth or relatively low population growth, even though possible future technologies such as self-replicating spacecraft could theoretically maintain exponential growth far beyond earth's carrying capacity.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarc ... e_scarcity

Keep in mind that, post scarcity is paradoxical and science fiction. And there are plenty of examples of post scarcity beyond Star Trek...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarc ... my#Fiction

[doodle]

Gumby,

I would posit that reaching post scarcity is realistic but that it is to be found by the meeting of two seperate phenomena: improving technology and a shift in consumer conciousness. We have had a disagreement on whether the second part, a change in consumer conciousness can be brought about through a culture shift in values. I think its possible and if population growth were to stabilize, something close to a post scarcity type "leisure" economy would start to emerge. Ultimately i think that post scarcity hinges on humans self control with relation to their "wants". Isnt early retirement extreme and mr money mustache an example of how if you adjust your wants that you are already able to live in a semi post scarcity manner?

[MachineGhost]

Unfortunately, some episodes see fit to press the "money is evil" angle, such as the grating "Neutral Zone" TNG episode mentioned by RuralEngineer, (the one with the hotshot banker).

My impression was that it was how the love of money was the root of all evil, or how unrestrained greed is relatively infantile from the perspective of the 24th centurey, not that money is evil per se.

[edsanville]

Unfortunately, some episodes see fit to press the "money is evil" angle, such as the grating "Neutral Zone" TNG episode mentioned by RuralEngineer, (the one with the hotshot banker).

My impression was that it was how the love of money was the root of all evil, or how unrestrained greed is relatively infantile from the perspective of the 24th centurey, not that money is evil per se.

That might have been an acceptable message to impart.  The problem was that first-season TNG episodes definitely crossed the line into the "money is evil" zone on more than one occasion.  And, what made it super-hypocritical of the Enterprise crew, was that they would constantly berate the 20th-century humans for worrying about wealth and the division of resources.  Yeah, that's pretty easy to do when you've never needed to worry about resources for a single minute since the day you were born.  Unfortunately, citizens of the 20th century didn't have that luxury.

That issue aside though, there were plenty of other aspects of first-season TNG that were just asinine.  The first season included both the most sexist TNG episode ever produced and the most racist TNG episode ever produced.  But, that's a bit off-topic for this thread .

[TripleB]

If it wasn't for desire and pursuit of money and riches, we'd all be living in huts in Africa right now.

Columbus didn't come to the US to make the world a better place. He came here to F--- B*tches and Stack Paper.

The same can be said about nearly all men who created or discovered something that benefited society.

[Pointedstick]

If it wasn't for desire and pursuit of money and riches, we'd all be living in huts in Africa right now.

Actually, I have to take issue with that. Having lived in a hut in Africa, I can say that lack of desire for money and riches isn't the primary thing stopping tribal villagers from creating modern industrial civilization today. Plenty of African villagers dream of driving around in a big fancy car and having a stable food supply. The real problem today is the corrupt nature of their institutions; whenever anyone does achieve some measure of wealth, the police/soldiers/warlord's militia steals it, and probably kills the creator, rapes his wife, and maybe kidnaps his children to turn them into child soldiers. This is partly a product of modernity, but it's also an ancient tradition.

The desire for wealth and riches are very important, but they can't be acted upon in the presence of extractive and predatory institutions that confiscate any wealth that does get created. Why create it in the first place if someone's just going to take it from you?

[Gumby]

I would posit that reaching post scarcity is realistic but that it is to be found by the meeting of two seperate phenomena: improving technology and a shift in consumer conciousness.

Perhaps you might be talking about a post-scarcity "utopia." It's possible to have a post-scarcity distopia. If you read the Wikipedia article you would have seen that clear distinction.

There are many post-scarcity distopian and utopian fictions. But both are examples of post-scarcity. For instance, the Pixar movie WALL*E  is a post-scarcity distopian fiction that examines human overconsumption from a robot's perspective.

Ultimately i think that post scarcity hinges on humans self control with relation to their "wants". Isnt early retirement extreme and mr money mustache an example of how if you adjust your wants that you are already able to live in a semi post scarcity manner?

There is nothing "post-scarcity" about restraining your consumption Mr. Money Mustache style. The whole point of restraining yourself is so that you can survive with the available scarcity. In order to understand post-scarcity, you need to understand what a "post-scarcity distopia" means.