Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek is a 2016 book by French economist Manu Saadia. The book deals with the topic of the scarcity in the economy by looking at it in reverse. The author describes the 24th-century Star Trek universe in which scarcity does not exist at all. The book explores a post-scarcity age and how our society would need to change to adapt itself to such an environment. It looks at the expectations regarding automation and artificial intelligence and takes readers through a journey of the fictional, moneyless world of Star Trek. It also looks at the challenges to the Star Trek economy.
Saadia concludes that "Post-scarcity is not so much a matter of material wealth or natural bounty, but an organizational option for society".[1]
In 2017 the Trekonomicsaudiobook was a finalist for an Audie Award in the "Business/Personal Development" category.[2]
Summary
Throughout human history, most people in the world had and still have to deal with scarcity of resources. Yet new technologies promising reduction or even elimination of scarcity are on the horizon. We must think about how to deal with this technological change. In the future of post-scarcity, we will not have to worry about money. We may not need to work to earn resources, which will be abundant, so we can escape from the fear of scarcity. Instead of that, we will work to get reputation and respect.
Star Trek is the most famous example of the post-scarcity society. Saadia analysed the economics of Star Trek, based on various comments and observations related to this aspect as seen in various episodes of the show. He asks the readers "What would the world look like if everyone had everything they wanted or needed?"[3][4]
The first chapter focuses on Star Trek's universe (primarily, the United Federation of Planets, or Federation for short) and the absence of currency in it. In a society where the economic problems have been overcome, money is meaningless. It explains how that nation functions without the pricing mechanism and the results of eliminating money as both a unit of account and as an information signal.
The status of human labor in the Star Trek universe is the topic of the second chapter. The Star Trek universe is a utopia because people do not have to work, but yet the ones we see on the show are all paradoxically very busy. The motivations of people who chose to work are analyzed.
The third chapter talks about the replicator, the machine that makes Star Trek's post-scarcity possible. Post-scarcity's meaning is the infinite social wealth. The replicator is as a metaphor for automation, and an endpoint of the industrial revolution. Crucially, in the Star Trek's society it and its products are public good.
The fourth chapter focuses on natural limits of growth. In particular, it deals with the issue of whether resources are indeed limited, and how can different societies coexist if some view resources as limited and others, like the Federation, much less so. It also tackles examples to examine that Star Trek's universe follows the economic theory.
The fifth chapter is focused on negative externalities, such as whether different alien species (and their governments) can manage common resources. This chapter analyses the Star Trek-themed prisoner's dilemma game, and discusses whether rational and well-governed societies, like the idealistic and utopian Federation, can react appropriately when faced with an uncooperative foreign power. This chapter considers the theories of Elinor Ostrom who discusses methods of solving similar scenarios by using mutually beneficial collective action.
A simple history of Star Trek and Trekonomics is introduced in the sixth chapter.
The seventh chapter explains human behavior and nature. Some Star Trek characters, such as Spock and Captain Picard, are completely different from 21st-century humans. They live free from economic necessity, so they devote their lives to science and justice. The chapter highlights how economic behaviours and psychology change under the post-scarcity.
The eighth chapter deals with the Ferengi, an economically powerful alien species in the Star Trek universe, with an economy based on trade and capitalism. They are profit seekers, and all profit seekers can change. Deep Space 9, the third show, tells about how the Ferengi abandon their old ways and evolve into Keynesian social democrats.
The final chapter reveals how the Star Trek society already exists in some local and unevenly distributed forms. The expanding world prosperity, combined with the spread of public goods on a global scale, and the rise of "free" goods and services makes society approach ever closer to Trekonomics, the challenge being mainly distributional rather than technological.[6]
Factions
The Federation: Humans are one of the main races in this political entity. Future humans, however, are completely different from the 20th century humans when it comes to a conventional way of living. The post-scarcity age has influenced them in a way where in some of their motivations they are nothing like us. Being untroubled by belongings makes them have no interest in conspicuous consumption. They are most likely interested in things of a much higher nature such as the cultivation of the mind, education, love, art and, of course, discovery.[7]
The Ferengi: These are imaginary extraterrestrial species that still charges money for the use of certain products, including replicators. They are a parody of the 1990s or 2000s American acquisitive businessman. The Ferengi are viewed as the lowest of the societies, primitive barbarians of the future, and seen as sad but funny at the same time. The Ferengi do change over time, due to contact with the Federation, and eventually we witness their transformation into Keynesian social democrats. Saadia thinks that the Ferengi becoming more humanitarian is a metaphor for us becoming better by watching Star Trek.[7]
The Borg: This is one of the most powerful extraterrestrial species. The Borg are one of the most efficient species in the Star Trek series and look a lot like the Federation. They have perfect allocation of goods, a perfect assignment to supply and demand. This is another society of the Star Trek universe that could be viewed as living in a post-scarcity economy. Every Borg drone has no needs or wants for anything; everything is provided by the collective of beings. Saaida thinks the Borg are a mirror image to what such a society could look like, but in a darker, dystopian form, and thinks the Borg society is a result of writers of Star Trek trying to incorporate criticism of the otherwise utopian society they present.[7]
In the Science Advances article, the interdisciplinary team finds that when economic actors are allowed to take on meaningful social identities, these agents adopt a risk-averse, in-group favoring strategy consistent with social identity theory in psychology under conditions of economic decline or rising inequality. This is important because it leads to affective political polarization as a natural consequence of human cognition and capitalist organization. Political polarization is when people and groups (e.g., Democrats and Republicans) move apart emotionally or ideologically.
Trekonomics mainly focuses on the cultivation of human capital as a motivation for redistribution of productive resources. However, little attention is given to how the utopianFederation might address the evolutionary psychology of social identity theory and its consequences for economic and political behavior. This is important because in-group favoritism (e.g., home country bias[10]) is incompatible with the assumption of orthodox macroeconomics that humans are rational maximizers of individual utility.
Optimum currency area theory describes the conditions necessary for a region to benefit maximally from adoption of a common currency, as the European states have with the euro.[12] One determinant of currency area performance is political solidarity,[13] or the attachment of peoples to the states issuing a currency. Universal basic income may facilitate secure attachment of persons to states, increasing solidarity and decreasing polarization.
As money is canonically obsolete in the Federation, greater scientific attention must be given to the trekonomics of how currency areas might transition to a moneyless mode of operation. This may require consideration of basic income by scholars as a monetary policy, rather than a fiscal policy. As an institutional innovation, basic income may solve collective action problems caused by social identity (e.g., racism, sexism, or nepotism) in a manner consistent with classic liberalism.
Critical reception
Johann K. Jaeckel writes that Trekonomics presents an unconventional contribution to the long-standing concern in economic thought regarding the impact of continuous automation on the role of human labor in social reproduction.[14] Philip M. Duclos notes that the book discusses the utopian Star Trek universe, based on Gene Roddenberry's belief that "humans are indeed altruistic and can work together to improve the quality of life".[1]
A New York Times review stated that Trekonomics can help us understand what it would take to create such a world as in Star Trek where technological advances would allow the whole society to lead more comfortable and meaningful lives, rather than the inequality that exists now which enriches only a few lucky people.[5] A Washington Post review notes that the book goes deep into the better understanding of our economy and society without scarcity. Through that we can better understand how the society works under scarcity.[15]
Economics is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Keynesian economics are the various macroeconomic theories and models of how aggregate demand strongly influences economic output and inflation. In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy. It is influenced by a host of factors that sometimes behave erratically and impact production, employment, and inflation.
In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers.
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets (UFP) is the interstellar government with which, as part of its space force Starfleet, most of the characters and starships of the franchise are affiliated. Commonly referred to as "the Federation", it was introduced in the original Star Trek television series. The survival, success, and growth of the Federation and its principles of freedom have become some of the Star Trek franchise's central themes.
This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:
The Ferengi are a fictional extraterrestrial species in the American science fiction franchise Star Trek. They were devised in 1987 for the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, played a prominent role in the following series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and have made brief appearances in subsequent series such as Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Picard.
Rom is a recurring character on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He is played by Max Grodénchik.
An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.
Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor needed, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.
Surplus product is a concept theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Roughly speaking, it is the extra goods produced above the amount needed for a community of workers to survive at its current standard of living. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's Elements of political economy.
The law of the value of commodities, known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with reference to David Ricardo's economics. Most generally, it refers to a regulative principle of the economic exchange of the products of human work, namely that the relative exchange-values of those products in trade, usually expressed by money-prices, are proportional to the average amounts of human labor-time which are currently socially necessary to produce them within the capitalist mode of production.
Post-capitalism is in part a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.
Economic systems as a type of social system must confront and solve the three fundamental economic problems:
Labour vouchers are a device proposed to govern demand for goods in some models of socialism and to replace some of the tasks performed by currency under capitalism.
In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good." If the conditions of scarcity didn't exist and an "infinite amount of every good could be produced or human wants fully satisfied ... there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce..." Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual's lack of resources to buy commodities. The opposite of scarcity is abundance. Scarcity plays a key role in economic theory, and it is essential for a "proper definition of economics itself".
"The best example is perhaps Walras' definition of social wealth, i.e., economic goods. 'By social wealth', says Walras, 'I mean all things, material or immaterial, that are scarce, that is to say, on the one hand, useful to us and, on the other hand, only available to us in limited quantity'."
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics:
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.
Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap.
PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future is a 2015 book by British journalist and writer Paul Mason.
In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has largely become obsolete due to technological progress.
↑ Eichengreen, Barry J. (2019). Globalizing capital: a history of the international monetary system (Thirded.). Princeton, NJ. ISBN978-0-691-19458-5. OCLC1103804386.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Marrewijk, Charles van; Daniel Ottens; Stephan Schueller (2007). International economics: theory, application, and policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-928098-8. OCLC74649040.
↑ "A Fansite". www.starfleetparty.org. Retrieved 2022-05-23.
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