You might be amused at the post at RealClearFuture by Robert Tracinski analyzing the economics of Star Trek:
You hear this sort of thing quite a lot, particularly from advocates of the basic income, who somehow think that the world of “Star Trek economics,” where robots will do all of the work for us (despite the fact that there are hardly any actual robots in the Star Trek franchise), is just around the corner.
The obvious error is in projecting the viability of a whole economic system based on a fictional technology that is nowhere near to being available. The less obvious error is the misuse of the term “scarcity.” Saadia and other boosters of this school of economic futurism use “scarcity” to mean something like “poverty”: the inability to afford certain basic necessities of life. So they look forward to a society that will be so technologically advanced that such poverty is unnecessary. It will be a “post-scarcity” economy.
But this is not what “scarcity” means in economics. “Scarcity” means the existence of an economic good in a finite, limited quantity. This is pretty basic economics and can be figured out in about five second on Google. As the Wikipedia entry for “scarcity” explains, “The notion of scarcity is that there is never enough…to satisfy all conceivable human wants, even at advanced states of human technology.” Make a note of that phrase, “all conceivable human wants.” I’ll return to that later.
Read the whole thing.
What I believe is disturbing to some people about the World According to Star Trek is that it’s not minarchist. Most people, at least here in the United States, are woefully ignorant about history, political philosophy, and economics and tend to conflate things like liberal democracy, the market system, capitalism, etc. into a single lump. They ought to read some early 20th century or Soviet science fiction. Before Robert Heinlein most science fiction assumed socialism.
I think it’s kind of obvious that Star Trek isn’t a post-scarcity world. We see again and again that the Federation trades, something it would have no need for if you could make anything you want with a voice command.
I also think it’s a mistake to try and separate the economics of Star Trek from its politics. Satisfying human needs is a product of political priorities rather than its genesis.
What kind of political system do they have? I would guess it’s a form of libertarian socialism. Very strong protections of individual rights, and an equal allocation of wealth, the output being determined by consumer choice. We could do it today if we wanted.
That we don’t is telling.
I’ll leave you to your Trekian utopia. But how do I get me one of them voice command gadget makers?
I have to take my Apex Pros to the first tee. But you will be happy to know that these irons have been equally allocated to all residents of Naples. Justice at last.
In the comment above Guarneri archly states something that economists phrase as you can’t compare utility functions.
Here’s a scarcity question: how do they decide who gets to live where when everybody gets a nice home? If 100 million wanted to build a house on Oahu, that’s obviously not possible.
Some sort of lottery?
Can’t resist commenting on Star Trek.
As a fan, I point out that the original Utopian vision that the article is talking about really exists only in the original series and the first 4 seasons of TNG. The last couple of seasons of TNG, DS9, Voyager abandoned the vision and there is plenty of greed (Quark on DS9) and trading (the whole point to Voyager was they didn’t have access to fantastic resources for exploration). I heard the writers mention utopia gets boring after a while.
And lets not talk about Enterprise and the “re-imagined” movies — abominations that are best forgotten.