Are Star Trek Economics the Future?

[southwest88]

Alright the Romulans then...

Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

[southwest88]

What many fail to understand is when economists speak of scarcity they don't really mean scarcity of products or even of resources but scarcity brought about by the allocation of resources, and products and services, for different uses.

Very simple example. There's a lot of space in the Universe. But only one person can occupy a space at a time. there's lots of time, but one can do only one thing at a time. The economic problem is how to allocate resources the uses of which are competed for in the production of goods and services. Mises called it the economic calculation problem. It doesn't matter that production is automated.

Yah, but if you can allocate essentially endless resources, What are the grounds for conflict?

As for space - if multiverses actually exist, folded up & co-existent with ordinary reality around us - then there's no limit there either. It's a possibility, & there are various high-level physicists looking @ the possibility. Nobody's working on the tech, TMK - they're still waiting for the math to jell. (& for some conceptual methodology to manufacture equipment that could operate on the various levels.)

It's not just that production would be automated. A replicator presumably taps into the constant energy flow in the physical universe, & allows the operator to assemble practically anything from the energy. Which is probably one of the reasons Roddenberry never elaborated on the topic - There's no real need for an economy, if you can simply whip up a thousand widgets, or uranium, or dilithium crystals, or ...

[Private Pickle]

Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

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[Peter1469]

No.

We are a "capitalistic" (the definition is very misleading too) and materialistic society, which means everything is done to make a profit and feed the 1% pig. It's why our technology is $#@!, our political, educational, everything else environments are $#@!.

There will always be poverty, pollution, corruption etc. because these are the tools the wealthy use to stay in power.

You are thinking in the economics of scarcity. Polly brings up an alternative (and we discussed it in another thread).

When the necessities are no longer scarce, there is no need for a free market to allocate scarce resources.

[Chris]

Yah, but if you can allocate essentially endless resources, What are the grounds for conflict?

As for space - if multiverses actually exist, folded up & co-existent with ordinary reality around us - then there's no limit there either. It's a possibility, & there are various high-level physicists looking @ the possibility. Nobody's working on the tech, TMK - they're still waiting for the math to jell. (& for some conceptual methodology to manufacture equipment that could operate on the various levels.)

It's not just that production would be automated. A replicator presumably taps into the constant energy flow in the physical universe, & allows the operator to assemble practically anything from the energy. Which is probably one of the reasons Roddenberry never elaborated on the topic - There's no real need for an economy, if you can simply whip up a thousand widgets, or uranium, or dilithium crystals, or ...

There's quantum physics and then there's the Newtonian reality we still live in and in which resources are finite.

[Dr. Who]

What many fail to understand is when economists speak of scarcity they don't really mean scarcity of products or even of resources but scarcity brought about by the allocation of resources, and products and services, for different uses.

Very simple example. There's a lot of space in the Universe. But only one person can occupy a space at a time. there's lots of time, but one can do only one thing at a time. The economic problem is how to allocate resources the uses of which are competed for in the production of goods and services. Mises called it the economic calculation problem. It doesn't matter that production is automated.

Well, if you have a replicator, depending on the science of the replicator, that may not be an issue. Say you only have to add water and dirt and it will make anything you want? No matter where you are on the planet, you can have water and dirt. The water can be extracted from the atmosphere and the dirt is everywhere. Then there is no resource allocation.

[Dr. Who]

Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

All of these species invented by Roddenberry were analogues of people on earth, sometimes in combination. The success of the series was predicated on the audience identifying the personality types and even the cultural types. The first series was entirely based on moral tales.

[Chris]

Well, if you have a replicator, depending on the science of the replicator, that may not be an issue. Say you only have to add water and dirt and it will make anything you want? No matter where you are on the planet, you can have water and dirt. The water can be extracted from the atmosphere and the dirt is everywhere. Then there is no resource allocation.

But it's not about the availability of resources, it's about allocating them for different uses. How do you decide how the dirt and water is allocated and what it is allocated for? You can't just dream up imaginary worlds where that's not a problem--well, you can, central planners have been dreaming that up for ages, and it's never worked.

[Dr. Who]

But it's not about the availability of resources, it's about allocating them for different uses. How do you decide how the dirt and water is allocated and what it is allocated for? You can't just dream up imaginary worlds where that's not a problem--well, you can, central planners have been dreaming that up for ages, and it's never worked.

If you have a machine that extracts water from the air, and dirt is everywhere, I don't see a problem. The replicator might be more sophisticated than that - perhaps it just extracts everything from the air. Every individual might have a replicator. I seem to recall an old discussion with you where you admitted that the advent of the replicator would spell the end of any need to buy and/or sell anything.

[southwest88]

There's quantum physics and then there's the Newtonian reality we still live in and in which resources are finite.

Well, sure, we're talking Roddenberry & Star Trek & replicators here. With basically free & endless energy, you can afford to assemble objects, food, cloth, what-have-you a molecule @ a time, if you want to. That's the pot o' gold @ the end of the rainbow - if we ever make the breakthrough on commercial fusion, for instance, to the point that a self-sustaining fusion reaction actually generates more power than it takes to contain the plasma & run all the control mechanisms - then we'll be in fat city. There won't be any resource allocation issues because there will be no need to allocate resources @ all - energy will be practically free & endless, & we can assemble any object we want.

We'll be able to pursue all the projects in the World, simultaneously.