The article actually acknowledges that point, stating that the Star Trek universe (and the Federation within it) is not really a post-scarcity society. There are lots of examples on the show indicating that scarcity, resource-allocation problems, and supply/demand crises still exist.
Yes, that's my point. In economics a scarce resource is a limited resource. Defining post-scarcity as an abundance of goods is a bad definition, unless the goods are truly unlimited. Neither us nor 24th century Star Trek has post-scarcity. Star Trek TNG has a post-capitalist, non-monetary economy, but it's not post-scarcity.
Post-scarcity in some ways, perhaps. In many other ways, they're not.
Star Trek still had merchants who sold various wares. That would not be profitable if nothing was scarce.
They still had planets that lacked necessary medicine, requiring The Enterprise or some other ship to go on mercy missions to deliver the meds.
The Star Trek universe had pleasure planets which had highly desirable things that other planets did not.
There was clearly a shortage of starships and crew, as The Enterprise explored alone and not in a fleet, and couldn't just create a hundred others to help it when it was attacked by some alien enemy.
The Enterprise couldn't even use their on-ship replicators to make themselves some dilithium crystals (fuel) when they ran low.
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
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Post-scarcity does not require all goods/services to be infinitely abundant.
The article forgot to mention that in the Star Trek timeline things didn't go so smoothly: a third World War eventually occurred and only the invention of warp drive and the first contact with the Vulcans turned things around.
But I think the point is another: for as much as I love Star Trek and advocate a smooth transition to a post-scarcity economy, I don't think Roddenberry and the writers that succeeded him are experts in currency, economics or even in the techologies that made that fictionary society a perfect post-scarcity economy.
There are, however, some interesting thoughts that could serve as a basis for a more deep look into the post-scarcity economics. Organizations such as the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement tend to advocate it under the "resource-based economy" name and I find their views interesting, relatively to this topic.
The core of the Star Trek post-scarcity is a) near-free energy, and b) ubiquitous access to matter replicators. The replicator is kind of magic, but not total impossibility, and rough approximations are within realm of conceivable "future technology".
But I think first and foremost, Star Trek is being brought as an example of post-scarcity so often because it's pretty much the only story that presented such society and reached general audience. It's pretty much a lone beacon of hope in the sea of dystopia.
Still, I agree with your point. Star Trek is a nice dream, but not a good source of information for reasoning about reality.
Even Star Trek TNG didn't have a true post-scarcity economy.
At least 5 things were key parameters in their economy and were scarce:
- dilithium crystals, which were used to power ships, and thus also powered the replicators
- Enterprise class ships were definitely scarce/precious
- labour
- land, especially on Earth
- hand-made goods
STTNG didn't have a money economy. That doesn't mean they were post-scarcity.
The closest analogy on today's Earth would be the unmetered water connections that some towns have. Just because the water isn't metered doesn't mean that the water supply is unlimited.
I take it when they say "Star Trek", they're actually talking about the United Federation of Planets, and Starfleet... with their supposedly "unlimited" resources.
Of course, they don't go into details otherwise they'd quickly realize that it's not really a post-scarcity economy. It might be a "post-scarcity" on a lot of resources that we currently find scarce, but not in the true definition. E.g. labor is scarce, property is scarce, and energy is scarce. Also, Remember they need a mined resource to power those giant warp-cores that make it seem like they have unlimited energy to "create" any resource.
Much like the laws of physics constrain us from creating a perpetual motion machine, they also constrain us from having a post-scarcity economy.
Star Trek doesn't really show a post-scarcity society. See Kirk's apartment in SF. He's clearly got an apartment with a view of the bay around the 30th floor of some building. Others don't get the view or the 30th floor since the both are scarce.
So are positions like "being the captain".
Replicators might lift everyone out of poverty but the won't change how people feel about others using their creative works.
Star Trek is very explicitly a post-scarcity society. There was an episode of Next Generation where they revive some Earthlings who had successfully frozen themselves in the 20th century.
One was a businessman who was excited to see how much the stock portfolio he had put together as a long term trust had fared. Picard had to gently explain to him wealth and money were no longer a thing.
The fundamental take-away here is that old systems die, whether proponents of the old system believe it's possible or not. I think parallels can be drawn between a lot of articles written by people so deeply embedded in the status quo they literally can't fathom their pet concept might go away at some point in the future. And sure enough, this one is written by a venture capitalist.
Of course, a post-scarcity world is inherently incomprehensible to people who are economists, in much the same way a rational world motivated by ethics is incomprehensible to a religious person. The first sign of this is vocabulary, they'll insist on a "post scarcity economy" or a "religion of science" respectively. While it's probably true that there will always be aspects of supply and demand, and it's likely also true that people will always believe in certain ideas, it's really questionable if these terms as they're being used still mean anything.
These word choices are a subconscious expression of the perceived impossibility of an idea. For example, a world with (almost) no manual labor. Or a world where things are so abundant that for practical purposes of daily life there is no shortage of supply.
When looking at Star Trek it's first and foremost important to keep in mind that these are stories intended to entertain. As such it's moot to try and incorporate every episode of every show into some kind of big common canon. The issue is not whether "Federation Credits" (must) exist, the trick here is to look at the broader concept presented.
There are scientific indications that the general idea of the Star Trek "economy" is valid. When a civilization gets access to advanced robotics, the ability to mine entire star systems for resources, and advanced 3d printers, it generates a setting that pretty much speaks for itself. The interesting aspect here is that this state of affairs is very likely in the cards for humanity's future.
Of course, there are extremely strong aspects of our society still prominent in Star Trek. This is grossly unrealistic, but probably necessary for storytelling purposes. For example, DS9 was really out of touch with the in-universe realities of manufacturing and labor, but it made for some pretty awesome stories.
I believe in the future we have a choice to make when it comes to scarcity, and the battle lines are already drawn today. People who are invested in the status quo will not only tell everyone it's impossible but they will go to great lengths in keeping scarcity alive. Artificial scarcity perpetrated by big powerful players is already a big staple in today's system, and that's only going to get more audacious with growing technical capabilities. I think a good argument could be made that this will lead to horrific social and economic pathologies, and it probably already has.
The big reason the alternatives are scary to a lot of people is not just because they fear a loss of traditional values and social cohesion. It's scary to them because this kind of future is inherently experimental and so far doesn't seem to yield itself to planning from on-high. This means there will most likely be a huge loss of power and influence in the turmoils ahead and it's going to be very difficult to port existing power structures to that new kind of society.
Whether this fundamental transformation is even stoppable in the long run is an open question. There are certainly scenarios imaginable where we just stagnate instead of moving on. It's also not inconceivable that the human civilization might fracture and split up into different groups pursuing their own trajectories - and at least one of them might elect to keep scarcity alive indefinitely.
If you want to look into it more, that situation is usually called a post-scarcity economy[1]. It's talked about and depicted in a few fictionalized places, including Star Trek.
Trekonomics is a nice non-fiction book about the utopian ideas presented in Star Trek and especially TNG. There, they treat the replicator as more of a metaphor for post-scarcity rather than recipe (i.e. Star Trek technology is sufficient but not necessary).
I would say I'm more optimistic than you about post-scarcity. Bertrand Russell makes a case for the insanity of modern society by noting that during WWI half of British populace was sufficient to produce enough for all of Britain. Even if we allow for some margin of error in his statement, since that time productivity in the US has increased 4.5x since then.
To me the show is increasingly relevant. For example, it presents a clear answer to a popular criticism to UBI: what is to prevent everyone from staying home to play video games and leeching off society?
The optimistic answer is that once society can produce enough goods for everyone, the traditional value system of society (material wealth => proxy for contributions to society => virtue) loses meaning and will be overtaken by new ones (contributing to society => virtue).
I agree with most of your summary except the end. What if the problems in the US and around the developed world are more due to how society is organized rather than technological? I think the Star Trek value system is appealing and IMO something we ought to strive for.
"Post-scarcity" doesn't mean nothing ever is scarce - that's impossible to achieve (simply because humans can invent new categories of things to want). "Post-scarcity" means all the things you need to survive, plus a good chunk of the things you'd reasonably want, are so cheap to make or in such abundance, that they become effectively free and unlimited. Thanks to fusion power and matter replicators, that is the case for humans in Star Trek universe.
The behavior of companies owning Star Trek IP stands in stark contrast with the values preached by the show. It's not just fictional post-scarcity vs. real-life market economy; the IP owners are aggressively and self-destructively greedy (much like the Ferengi of Star Trek). It's sad to watch, really - Star Trek has an extremely dedicated and creative fanbase that could be endlessly monetized if given a modicum of consideration. Instead, fan contributions are terminated with extreme prejudice.
Yes, I'm still sour about how they treated Stage9 - a fan recreation of the entire Enterprise-D in Unreal Engine. See [0], [1] for some visuals. CBS lawyers killed this, because of course they did. Would they lose money because of this project? Nope. Would they make money because of it? Sure, through renewed interest. They could've done a number of things, including officially subcontracting the developers and selling the work officially. But they didn't, they killed it. And they'll never produce anything that even comes close to this.
Post-scarcity is kind of a bad term. You’ll always have scarcity at some scale. I think as popularly used this refers to a society where the “floor” is at the level of say a US lower middle class person with some level of health coverage. This could be something like a society where tech driven deflation made most necessities dirt cheap, we started building housing again and reduced housing costs, and there is a UBI.
True post-scarcity would mean anyone could have their own private plane, spaceship, etc. That couldn’t happen without some kind of speculative singularity scenario where we get Mr. Fusion and benevolent superintelligent AI or something. Star Trek levels of post-scarcity are sci-fi.
No such thing as a post-scarcity economy, even in the fictional universe of Star Trek. When you have replicators that can produce any food or clothing or small pieces of equipment you need, you end up bartering over planets, star systems, or wormholes [1].
I always thought it's the agreed-upon explanation ;). I.e. Star Trek's post-scarcity society is enabled mostly thanks to the replicator technology. So food, clothing and basic construction materials are essentially free and unlimited. People do whatever they want - most civilians just go and live and further their passions; some do work for others (e.g. Sisko's dad and his restaurant), but they do this because they want to, not because they have to. Many join Starfleet, which basically offers people grand goals and adventure, and enforces structure and obedience based solely on non-monetary incentives.
Things like starships are pricey partially because they're huge (and thus reaching the limit of civilization's energy output) and partially because some things apparently just can't be replicated with their-era replicator technology.
The most important concept in that article is that of a gift economy. The economy provides people with their basic needs and allows them to do (just about) whatever they wish with their time. Some people will chose to produce goods in old fashioned ways, like fine wine produced by tradtional methods, and these goods would be given to others as gifts.
Such goods will always be scarce by definition, but they are all luxuries. An interesting case for this is looking at the markets that developed in POW camps during World War II and how they collapsed once the liberating armies arived with an abundance of goods.
"On 12th April, withthe arrival of elements of the 30th US. Infantry Division, the ushering in of an age ofplenty demonstrated the hypothesis that with infinite means economic organizationand activity would be redundant, as every want could be satisfied without effort." (Pg. 14 of the linked PDF)
Another thing to note is the shift in the means of production. If labor is basically unnecessary in the production of goods you get a shift in modes of production. I could see this happening in the near with the decentralized 3D printing of goods, combined with the massive energy of the sun and the shocking amounts of raw materials in the asteroids around the solar system.
This I think is a demonstration of Marx's biggest mistake. He thought the economic organization would shift without a change in the means of production. Unlike every other change in his economic theories.
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