"Star Trek" Economics
Posted: 08-19-2015 02:55 AM
One big, obvious thing is absent in the future society depicted in ST:TNG. No one is doing business.
There is nearly no buying and selling, save for a few species for whom commerce is a form of traditional religion. Food and luxuries are free, provided by “replicators.” Recreation, provided by virtual reality, is infinite in scope. Scarcity - the central defining concept of economics - seems to have been eliminated.
Is this really the future? Is it possible? Is it something we want? When we talk about Star Trek economics, what we’re really talking about is how to get to economic utopia. It’s an important question economists and economics writers struggle with.
One theory is as society gets richer and richer, capitalism and free markets will still exist, but will simply recede into the background. Others describe Star Trek not as a socialist paradise, but as a libertarian one. The future may have a far more radical transformation in store for us - technological advances will actually end economics as we know it, and destroy scarcity, by changing the nature of human desire.
FULL STORY
There is nearly no buying and selling, save for a few species for whom commerce is a form of traditional religion. Food and luxuries are free, provided by “replicators.” Recreation, provided by virtual reality, is infinite in scope. Scarcity - the central defining concept of economics - seems to have been eliminated.
Is this really the future? Is it possible? Is it something we want? When we talk about Star Trek economics, what we’re really talking about is how to get to economic utopia. It’s an important question economists and economics writers struggle with.
One theory is as society gets richer and richer, capitalism and free markets will still exist, but will simply recede into the background. Others describe Star Trek not as a socialist paradise, but as a libertarian one. The future may have a far more radical transformation in store for us - technological advances will actually end economics as we know it, and destroy scarcity, by changing the nature of human desire.
FULL STORY