Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He don't even welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that most of the future, and says, but tell
Speaker 1: him while he wanders his starry ce remember remember me.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Focan, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're tackling another listener request episode about economics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you listen to our last episode about will the
Speaker 1: robots take our jobs? You know already what we're going
Speaker 1: to tackle today. Now. Of course, this isn't the kind
Speaker 1: of ben Stein economics hopefully where we talk about what
Speaker 1: is it ben Stein talks about it? Don't voodoo economics? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is gonna be some sci fi
Speaker 1: economics here. So our listener, George wrote in, I believe
Speaker 1: from Facebook. No on at our email address, email, which
Speaker 1: is FW thinking at stuff works dot Com? We have email?
Speaker 1: Is the incredible future? You thinking at how stuff works?
Speaker 1: Dot COMW thinking dot Com FW thinking it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot No? No, no, no, no, no dot com
Speaker 1: dot com. Did George have to say, Lauren? George said,
Speaker 1: I would suggest that you do a podcast about the
Speaker 1: economic systems of the future, i e. Star Trek. Does
Speaker 1: anyone get paid for their work on enterprise for Voyager
Speaker 1: Deep Space nine? Obviously, our current economic system has had
Speaker 1: changes in the past a hundred years, electronic payments, online
Speaker 1: banking and the like. Thanks for reading this, George, Thank
Speaker 1: you George. And uh yeah, first of all, did you
Speaker 1: guys recognize where the lyric came from? Now? That lyric
Speaker 1: is from the unsung unpublished to the general public lyrics
Speaker 1: to the Star Trek theme song and the original series. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great story about that involves economics. I'll tell you after
Speaker 1: the podcast because it doesn't really pertain to the actual
Speaker 1: discussion here. Fine, not cool. So the theme was written
Speaker 1: by a guy named Courage. He wrote the theme and
Speaker 1: he was getting residuals for that theme whenever Star Trek
Speaker 1: was playing. Rod and Berry had an agreement with Courage
Speaker 1: that said that he could write lyrics to the theme.
Speaker 1: So after the fact, Rodd and Berry wrote lyrics knowing
Speaker 1: that they would never ever be sung because it meant
Speaker 1: that he got a cut of those residuals, which effectively
Speaker 1: had the amount of money that Courage was getting. So
Speaker 1: the future of the economy, well, let's look at the
Speaker 1: economy of Star Trek because I'm interested in this too.
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool. Uh And obviously, Star Trek
Speaker 1: is a fictional system. It's not like we're reporting on
Speaker 1: something that has actually happened. But I do think he
Speaker 1: gives us a very interesting framework for imagining how certain
Speaker 1: types of future economies might play out. So what does
Speaker 1: money look like on Star Trek and the Star Trek universe, jobs, economies, cash,
Speaker 1: what does it all mean? Well, Gene Roddenberry, despite his
Speaker 1: apparently slightly problematic business practice, well we'll call it ethically questionable.
Speaker 1: He he. He admittedly designed Star Trek partially as this utopia,
Speaker 1: this post scarcity utopia where everyone has what they need.
Speaker 1: Yeah he uh he. After the fact, after the first
Speaker 1: series started to air, began to kind of lay down
Speaker 1: some rules. But those rules were not hard and fast
Speaker 1: early on. So there are some contradictions. First of all,
Speaker 1: we have to admit that in the Star Trek universe
Speaker 1: you have lots of different cultures. The one that the
Speaker 1: Enterprise is from is from the United Federation of Planets,
Speaker 1: which has Earth is kind of its central member, and
Speaker 1: so we often talk about their not being any money
Speaker 1: in Star Trek. What we're really referring to is that Federation.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the universe as a whole, because
Speaker 1: there are other societies like the Farringhi that do still
Speaker 1: use money. So this isn't just cut and dry stuff.
Speaker 1: They're actually contradictions within the Star Trek episodes themselves. So
Speaker 1: for example, at one point, Kirk offers to pay some
Speaker 1: miners on Rigel twelve for lithium crystals, not di lithium,
Speaker 1: just playing old lithium crystals. In another episode, he claims,
Speaker 1: quote the Federation has invested a great deal of money
Speaker 1: in our training end quote. And another one spot even
Speaker 1: goes so far as to start exactly saying how much
Speaker 1: how many Federation credits have been spent in his training.
Speaker 1: It's one of those, you know, funny little moments. Do
Speaker 1: you have any idea how much money they spend on you?
Speaker 1: One of one of those Whagni mcady dudes um Scotty
Speaker 1: In Star Trek six the Undiscovered Country claims that he's
Speaker 1: going to go and buy a boat, So that suggests
Speaker 1: he's actually going to purchase something. You'd need to have
Speaker 1: something to purchase things with. He's going to go buy
Speaker 1: it from the Ferenghi maybe so. Uh. Even in Star
Speaker 1: Trek the Next Generation we have mentioned of money. The
Speaker 1: Federation offers one point five million quote Federation credits end
Speaker 1: quote for the Bars and Wormhole in the episode The
Speaker 1: Price Uh, Cisco's father on Deep Space nine he owns
Speaker 1: a restaurant in New Orleans. So does he just open
Speaker 1: the doors and let people come on in and eat
Speaker 1: for free? Or are they paying for this food? Do
Speaker 1: they have to wash the dishes? There's no is there
Speaker 1: no root to do that? Yeah? Well, actually that's a
Speaker 1: good point. In Star Trek the use of robots is
Speaker 1: criminally underrepresented. But well we'll get into that. So, well,
Speaker 1: what's the okay, So you've outlined the contradictions, but what
Speaker 1: is the party line? What's the real what do they say?
Speaker 1: Run Berry was saying that there wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: any actual money with the Federation, that that they had
Speaker 1: evolved beyond money, And in fact a lot of the
Speaker 1: other references we find are along with that. So for example,
Speaker 1: Star Trek four the Voyage Home, Kirk at one point
Speaker 1: is talking with a person from our present who says
Speaker 1: don't they have money? Like, do you not have money
Speaker 1: in the twenty century, and he's like, no, we don't.
Speaker 1: Picard mentions that money quote doesn't exist in the twenty
Speaker 1: four century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the
Speaker 1: driving force in our lives. End quote. I'm being superior
Speaker 1: to you as only Jean loup Acard can be. You
Speaker 1: should be ashamed of yourself. And then, according to Paris
Speaker 1: on Voyager, the economy of star Trek took shape in
Speaker 1: the twenty second century when quote money went the way
Speaker 1: of the dinosaur. In quote fort mix becomes a museum.
Speaker 1: So the money was killed by a combination of climate
Speaker 1: change in an asteroid impact. But it implies so um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like I said, asteroid. Sorry. And then then
Speaker 1: that when there when the gold standard for real, I
Speaker 1: know we were technically on it since the seventies, but still,
Speaker 1: uh so the fringy, like I said, they do still
Speaker 1: use money. There's actually some some direct quotes where they
Speaker 1: talk about how look, just because you gave up cash
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the rest of us did. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: they value a rare liquid metal called latin um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they frequently trade in gold pressed latinum because because latinum
Speaker 1: is liquid at room temperature, right, they have to find
Speaker 1: it with something like, for example, goal. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: what that's what allows it to be solid at room temperature. Uh.
Speaker 1: And conveniently, this metal can't be replicated because reasons, because
Speaker 1: plot reasons. Yeah, there's no like I'm sure someone somewhere
Speaker 1: has gone to the trouble to explain why you cannot
Speaker 1: create latinum in a replicator. But maybe it's because of
Speaker 1: the quarks. Yeah, Well, up the issue of the replicator,
Speaker 1: which I think is sort of central to the way
Speaker 1: in which this economy is run. So in Star Trek
Speaker 1: they have replicators, these machines that can produce whatever you
Speaker 1: want out of base materials on demand. They essentially convert
Speaker 1: energy into matter. Yeah, and when you have something like this,
Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense that there would be no
Speaker 1: such thing as money, because what's the point if you
Speaker 1: can make anything you need basically for free. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: except for for specialist goods, is the thing. Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could have what there might be a demand for
Speaker 1: things that are made the old fashioned way, because we're
Speaker 1: human and we value that, right. But in large part,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the ability to create anything you ever want, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, anything physical you ever want that fits within
Speaker 1: the confines of the replicator. You can't like print a spaceship. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is a scarcity because there's a scarcity
Speaker 1: of spaceships. That actually happens after the Borg invasion. There's
Speaker 1: a problem that they don't have enough spaceships to combat
Speaker 1: the Borg, and so it becomes clear that there is
Speaker 1: a limitation on this ability to convert energy into matter.
Speaker 1: There's also obviously an energy cost. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: using energy to turn energy into matter, the energy has
Speaker 1: to come from somewhere. But we're at least lead to
Speaker 1: believe that in the future, at least on Earth and
Speaker 1: most of the colonies that are near Earth, there's an
Speaker 1: overwhelming energy surplus. So that's it's effectively a non factor. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can probably assume that most of the manual labor
Speaker 1: kind of jobs have been automated. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: problem that we have where one of the weirdest things
Speaker 1: about Star Trek is you don't see a lot of robots.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got data who's an android. Those doors
Speaker 1: open and close all on their own, and yeah, you
Speaker 1: got the doors, but then after that, like every time
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, they send Jordie LaForge into the Jeffrey tube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like crawling on his elbows and knees, and like
Speaker 1: there's always that one panel that's four hundred feet down,
Speaker 1: this tiny little thing in your You don't have a
Speaker 1: robot to do that. We have robots now that can
Speaker 1: do that and do it better, I guess. So. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions to come up from this,
Speaker 1: but I will I would suggest that perhaps one of
Speaker 1: the issues here is, well, Joe and I talked about
Speaker 1: this too. We we mentioned that, uh, this is bad
Speaker 1: for narrative obviously if you take the characters out of
Speaker 1: those situations. If we want to follow that same logic, really,
Speaker 1: like why are you having Sulu fire the weapons? Shouldn't
Speaker 1: you have an automated system that detects an incoming threat
Speaker 1: and responds immediately automatically Take the automation out. I mean,
Speaker 1: but at that point, why is he I mean, we
Speaker 1: could ask infinite questions about this, like why is he
Speaker 1: pressing buttons on a panel when really Kirk should be
Speaker 1: able to just say okay, Glass fire the torpedo, Or
Speaker 1: why is Kirk making the decision when obviously an AI
Speaker 1: could make the decision faster and with more ethical consideration,
Speaker 1: and well, certainly with more ethical consideration than Kirk. I
Speaker 1: love that that you. I mean that you went with
Speaker 1: the Google glass because now I'm thinking like engage warp drives,
Speaker 1: Like where are we going? I'm feeling lucky. Well, obviously
Speaker 1: this points out that the fact that's true a pretty
Speaker 1: much all science fiction, which is that their narrative requirements,
Speaker 1: in order to create a dramatic story, you have to
Speaker 1: have some elements that might not really make sense given
Speaker 1: the technological assumptions of the setting. Yeah, you just kind
Speaker 1: of have to overlook that. It's like, the story is
Speaker 1: not going to be interesting if there aren't human characters
Speaker 1: doing things. And the fact that we're making it in
Speaker 1: our present means that we're limited somewhat by our our
Speaker 1: imagination of what our personal scope. Yeah, what the user
Speaker 1: interface can be. But there are some other things that
Speaker 1: that kind of throw monkey wrench into this. You know,
Speaker 1: no need for money, you know world. One of those
Speaker 1: is that people appear to own personal property. Uh, for example,
Speaker 1: you've got Cisco's restaurant, got Chateau Pacard where they still
Speaker 1: his family still runs a vineyard, so you've got land.
Speaker 1: How did you get the land. Did you have a flag? Flag?
Speaker 1: You didn't have a flag. I think this points out
Speaker 1: a potential problem with the whole idea of post scare city,
Speaker 1: because there are some items with value that can't be
Speaker 1: replaced even by replicators. As we talked about the whole starships. Uh.
Speaker 1: For example, high quality real estate would be one. You
Speaker 1: might say that by becoming a space faring species, we
Speaker 1: could extend the supply of real estate to an effective
Speaker 1: infinity where if you can say, terror form all these
Speaker 1: infinite number of planets out there and colonize them all,
Speaker 1: but there would still be a demand for quality real estate,
Speaker 1: the patches of land that are close to the other
Speaker 1: things you want to be close to or scenic, or
Speaker 1: the one that's right really close to that pleasure planet,
Speaker 1: or if it's a restaurant at the street corner where
Speaker 1: people would actually walk in. I mean, it's no good
Speaker 1: building a restaurant on the moon and there's nobody, but
Speaker 1: there's there's no money being exchanged. That doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: anyone shows up or not. Well, I don't know that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I did we figure out whether money
Speaker 1: was being exchanged or well? Run Barry said that they
Speaker 1: had evolved beyond the need for money. But there's some
Speaker 1: other economists who have different views on this. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: look at what some some modern thinkers have said analyzing
Speaker 1: the Star Trek economy. So I read a series of
Speaker 1: three articles, uh that that were published in in various
Speaker 1: in different outlets, but they were each in response to
Speaker 1: like one one was an initial article, the next was
Speaker 1: a response to the first one. The third was response
Speaker 1: to the earlier two. So it's one of those fascinating
Speaker 1: things where you get a bunch of people who have
Speaker 1: a lot to say on this issue. They're really well
Speaker 1: versed in both the economics and star Trek, and it
Speaker 1: becomes amazing. Uh So, Rick Webb and medium wrote the
Speaker 1: first piece, and it was probably it was the longest
Speaker 1: of the three um and it was all about the
Speaker 1: Federation being in a pro to post scarcity economy. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not quite post scarcity, but they're getting there exactly.
Speaker 1: He says that the Earth is kind of poised between
Speaker 1: still being in that scarcity based economy where things like land,
Speaker 1: you know, you obviously have, especially if you're talking about
Speaker 1: land on Earth, you know, there's a limited amount of that,
Speaker 1: so there's still some things of scarcity. Spaceships are another example.
Speaker 1: Spaceships are not uh not unlimited, so not not your
Speaker 1: average person can't just go out and get a space sia.
Speaker 1: But other things are not scarce at all anymore because
Speaker 1: you can make everything with no perceivable cost. So for example,
Speaker 1: food in the Star Trek, or clothing, or or houses
Speaker 1: or warmth, yeah, pretty much anything else. Yeah, anything you've
Speaker 1: ever seen being made on board the Enterprise. Imagine that
Speaker 1: someone has one of those in their home. They're capable
Speaker 1: of doing the same thing. So he argues that to
Speaker 1: get from a priest you know, an actual scarcity based
Speaker 1: market to a post scarcity one will have this interim
Speaker 1: period in which some things are abundant in some places
Speaker 1: and other things will remain scared, either all over the
Speaker 1: place or in very particular places. Uh. And that's where
Speaker 1: the proto post scarcity comes in. So he talks about
Speaker 1: episodes of Star Trek where there are planets in the
Speaker 1: Federation that are dealing scarcely issues like famine and starvation.
Speaker 1: And I don't I mean, I know that there have
Speaker 1: been episodes like that. It does make you wonder, all right,
Speaker 1: so why why are they in this situation? What led
Speaker 1: to this problem? Well, it's been portrayed from the episodes
Speaker 1: that I remember at least as being like either their
Speaker 1: replicators malfunctioned or there was some kind of issue with
Speaker 1: the replicators, or they otherwise got cut off from civilization
Speaker 1: and some interesting plot there might be some energy crisis,
Speaker 1: for example, that whatever whatever they had been using to
Speaker 1: produce energy had failed in some fundamental way. So he
Speaker 1: proposes that in this economy under normal circumstances, so like
Speaker 1: let's say the economy of Federation Earth, Uh, everyone is
Speaker 1: essentially on a welfare benefit and the benefits far exceed
Speaker 1: person's needs. He gave in the arbitrary example of it's
Speaker 1: like every single man, woman, and child is essentially gifted
Speaker 1: ten million dollars and they can do pretty much anything
Speaker 1: they want. However, there are some social pressures that put
Speaker 1: people to, you know, cause people to avoid conspicuous consumption,
Speaker 1: so that no one goes out and buys everything that
Speaker 1: they don't need. And it's kind of funny because conspicuous
Speaker 1: consumption makes a lot less sense if everybody has access
Speaker 1: to tons of money. I mean, the whole idea of
Speaker 1: I'm going to buy a flashy sports car so people
Speaker 1: can see it is to show off your relative value
Speaker 1: compared to other people, right, and every everyone has that
Speaker 1: same value, then there's no point in doing that. Like
Speaker 1: if if everyone has the capability of going out and
Speaker 1: and building that exact same sports car, uh, then it
Speaker 1: has no unique value to you anymore. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: accumulation of possessions doesn't actually what would cost something, and
Speaker 1: the government itself would keep track of it, according to
Speaker 1: his argument. He says that they would sort of look
Speaker 1: and see how much each person is using. And you
Speaker 1: you have an allotment, a limit to how much you
Speaker 1: can use. But that limit is so high that under
Speaker 1: normal circumstances you would never ever deplete it. So you'll
Speaker 1: go through your entire life without ever running anything. Yeah, you'll,
Speaker 1: you'll you're operating at a surplus. Uh. But then he
Speaker 1: suggests that workers are quote unquote paid by having that
Speaker 1: welfare benefit increased by a small amount. In other words,
Speaker 1: they get a little bit more than someone who doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything. He says that there's probably gonna be some
Speaker 1: jobs that people still need to do. He's he's seeing
Speaker 1: a future where we're never gonna have robots doing absolutely everything,
Speaker 1: they are gonna be some things that humans need to do.
Speaker 1: So how do you give an incentive to someone who
Speaker 1: has access to everything they need for their entire lives
Speaker 1: to go and do this job that other people don't
Speaker 1: want to do. He says, well, you actually, we do
Speaker 1: pay them. You give them a little more of that
Speaker 1: huge amount. So maybe they get ten million, one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And he says, sure, in the long run, this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything because they already have more than what they require. However,
Speaker 1: on a subconscious level, we humans tend to think I
Speaker 1: want more, and that that would be enough of an
Speaker 1: incentive for people to go and get jobs, even though
Speaker 1: they would never they would never want for anything. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, this is assuming, as you said, that some
Speaker 1: menial or unpleasant jobs remain in this future. If we're
Speaker 1: assuming this kind of thing we're actually enacted in the
Speaker 1: real world, I think we should take into consideration the
Speaker 1: possibility of what we talked about in the last podcast
Speaker 1: on robots replacing us, which is that it could very
Speaker 1: well be that robots can do all of these jobs,
Speaker 1: and especially any job, any job you wouldn't find people
Speaker 1: wanting to do out of their own personal fulfillment. Sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: And and it's possible that all of the hallways and
Speaker 1: floors and ceilings of the enterprise are covered in self
Speaker 1: cleaning materials that are very advanced, and or that there
Speaker 1: are an army of of rumbas that are just off
Speaker 1: screen and every single shot cleaning everything. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's I think that that's one of those suspensions
Speaker 1: of disbelief that we have to. Yeah, I agree, and
Speaker 1: I think I think that you know, once you take
Speaker 1: in the robots idea and the fact that there aren't
Speaker 1: any jobs that have to be done, then that problem
Speaker 1: kind of goes away. It ends up being people do
Speaker 1: things for self enrichment, which is the way ron Berry
Speaker 1: pitched it is the idea that the people make choices
Speaker 1: that are all about, uh, what they find fulfilling themselves personally,
Speaker 1: and it's less it's not about what you get out
Speaker 1: of it monetarily, but what you get out of it
Speaker 1: in personal satisfaction. Well that's what the next piece from
Speaker 1: Slate argued, right, yes, yes, uh, and uh so Slate
Speaker 1: goes that was Matthew Iglesias who wrote the piece and
Speaker 1: Slate and he specifically referenced this earlier piece, and he
Speaker 1: said that there's at least some sort of scarcity based
Speaker 1: economy in Star Trek, again pointing at Cisco's restaurant Picard's
Speaker 1: Family Vineyard as examples, uh, and said that that was
Speaker 1: historical production, which would have its own kind of scarcity
Speaker 1: based value, because while you could go to the replicator
Speaker 1: and print out gallons of wine to your heart's content, uh,
Speaker 1: it would not be the same as going and getting
Speaker 1: a bottle of wine that was traditionally produced right, right,
Speaker 1: And we've talked about that on the show before. I
Speaker 1: think in our Food Replicators episodes wherein UH, there are
Speaker 1: characters on Star Trek, like Riker has this little uh
Speaker 1: dinner club sort of thing on on the enterprise to
Speaker 1: show off his Riker skills at cooking. You know, I
Speaker 1: think this actually points to something that's really interesting that
Speaker 1: that I would like to suggest, is that robots and
Speaker 1: replicators might never be able to recreate those intangible things
Speaker 1: that we love most about life. Like a robot cannot
Speaker 1: create coolness, do you know what I mean? Like the
Speaker 1: fact like that you see an object James Dean bot,
Speaker 1: it can't A robot can't figure out what's cool about
Speaker 1: a handcrafted artifact? That is cool. Well, and part of
Speaker 1: it also is just the the idea of someone making
Speaker 1: something for you or you making something for someone else. Well,
Speaker 1: that's part of the coolness is like the knowledge of
Speaker 1: where it came from. This this indetectable physically maybe, but
Speaker 1: by knowing where an artifact that was handcrafted came from,
Speaker 1: it has this aura of specialness. Oh yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's why people pay millions of dollars
Speaker 1: for an actual ruby slipper that was worn by Judy
Speaker 1: Garland or or or why people are you know, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point, or you can you can see
Speaker 1: and in pop culture these days a lot wherein people
Speaker 1: are are purchasing these these microcraft beers or uh, handmade
Speaker 1: things on Etsy rather than buying something that's been mass produced,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you it's this conception that if
Speaker 1: you have the money to do it, knowing that a
Speaker 1: human hand crafted this thing, abuse it with some kind
Speaker 1: of property of awesome. It's a kind of lingering, magical
Speaker 1: thinking that we might not ever be able to get rich.
Speaker 1: Shake yeah. Now. Iglesia says that he envisions us as
Speaker 1: being sort of a gift economy as opposed to a
Speaker 1: welfare uh economy that that was proposed by web explain
Speaker 1: the difference there. So he's saying this as uh, you know,
Speaker 1: everything else is provided for you. It's it's because of
Speaker 1: the replicators and the energy surplus. You're talking about, like
Speaker 1: basic needs like food and water and shelter, and then
Speaker 1: these these other sort of handcrafted items or whatever would
Speaker 1: essentially be freely given away. So if you were to
Speaker 1: eat Cisco's restaurant, it would not cost you anything because
Speaker 1: the purpose of the restaurant is to bring joy to others,
Speaker 1: to have the joy of making food and serving it
Speaker 1: to people, as opposed to this is how I make
Speaker 1: my living, and that there might be some bartering going
Speaker 1: on depending upon who you are, Like you might be, Oh,
Speaker 1: I got you this bottle of wine. I really like
Speaker 1: that chair you carved, that kind of thing, but that
Speaker 1: it would largely just be gift economy, and that you
Speaker 1: give the things you make away because the pleasure is
Speaker 1: in the making and the giving and not it's not
Speaker 1: motivated by a need for for resources. And that's that's
Speaker 1: a that's almost unimaginable. It's it's so it's so far
Speaker 1: out from the way that our world works right now.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a it's a really terrific and
Speaker 1: interesting concept. It is easily imagined by me, but only
Speaker 1: because I've done a lot of theater work in Georgia
Speaker 1: where you don't necessarily have to get paid. You're not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to get paid. This is a commentary on
Speaker 1: on the arts in Georgia. No, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: maybe the people who are coming to the play aren't
Speaker 1: expecting to receive value. Well, I'm just getting despite the
Speaker 1: fact they don't expect it. Uh So, Now in both
Speaker 1: of these cases, with both Webb and Iglesias, they have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the fact that there is this thing called
Speaker 1: Federation credits, right, so that that becomes problematic because you say, well,
Speaker 1: there's no money, but they mentioned federation credits. Well, websites
Speaker 1: the Federation credit as being a private currency, kind of
Speaker 1: like bitcoin, so it's not something that's government backed, and
Speaker 1: it was really, in his mind, used to help, uh
Speaker 1: facilitate really complex transactions that would not be easily managed
Speaker 1: through barter those kind of systems. I mean, that's really
Speaker 1: why we've got currency in the first places that you know,
Speaker 1: I might grow chickens, and Joe, you might grow grapes,
Speaker 1: and Lauren has a bunch of cows, and I want
Speaker 1: some milk. But Lauren doesn't have need of chickens, but
Speaker 1: she would like some grapes. You'd like some chicken And
Speaker 1: it starts getting this complicated mess, whereas we all just agree, Hey,
Speaker 1: this piece of paper represents this amount of value for
Speaker 1: which you can get all of these different things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so credits he thinks of as being used as for
Speaker 1: these complex transactions, not day to day stuff. So he
Speaker 1: thinks you could still get away with the no money
Speaker 1: uh definition that run Barries set up. He also thought
Speaker 1: of it, well, it could be used for for trade
Speaker 1: between the Federation and other societies. Like you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: use this to buy something on Earth. You would use
Speaker 1: it when you are dealing with some other race like
Speaker 1: the Romula right right, or like on Deep Space nine
Speaker 1: when they had a bunch of different cultures interacting, and
Speaker 1: so you had to the members of the Federation crew
Speaker 1: there had to pay Quirk and Federation credits for whatever
Speaker 1: it which they wanted. Cork would sometimes accept and sometimes
Speaker 1: he didn't want to accept. Federation credits. He was so flighty. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you know for ran I do, I do.
Speaker 1: I'm related to a few, um but yeah. Now, Iglesias
Speaker 1: sees credits as being a means of regulating government provided
Speaker 1: scarce products and services, because, like I said, not everyone
Speaker 1: has infinite access to everything. So if you needed to
Speaker 1: take a trip from Earth to some distant star system,
Speaker 1: you probably don't have your own starship, so you need
Speaker 1: to have a way of being able to negotiate that
Speaker 1: because there's a limited number of there's a limited starships.
Speaker 1: Each starship has a limited amount of space on it,
Speaker 1: so that is a scarcity issue. And of course they're
Speaker 1: still real estate like we talked about earlier, exactly so
Speaker 1: that this would probably be the means of regulating that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And so it's not so much purchasing
Speaker 1: power as much as it is a limit on how
Speaker 1: much stuff you can demand from the Federation before you
Speaker 1: run out of demand. So in a way, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of restating what web It said earlier, this idea
Speaker 1: that you get a certain allotment of credits that you
Speaker 1: can use, uh, and you can't put so hard a
Speaker 1: demand that it would seed your credit limit. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, if I wanted to, you know, in in
Speaker 1: this if it was truly a post scarcity economy, there's
Speaker 1: no scarcity whatsoever. I could say I want a hundred
Speaker 1: spaceships and that would be a possibility, but that's clearly
Speaker 1: not going on in Star Trek. So then you have
Speaker 1: Joshua Gans over at Digitopoly uh, and Gas points out
Speaker 1: that it's difficult to measure a thing's worth once that
Speaker 1: thing becomes freely available. Using the standards that we use today,
Speaker 1: we often a sign of value by how much it costs, right,
Speaker 1: which is not necessarily a good representation of an object's
Speaker 1: actual value. Uh. An object might be more valuable than
Speaker 1: what you paid for it depending upon your need, or
Speaker 1: it may be less valuable. But you're like, well it's
Speaker 1: either that or nothing. Um, so it's interesting, but but
Speaker 1: it's still if it becomes freely available, how do you
Speaker 1: say it's worth something? Uh? You know. There and I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of philosophical discussions about this particular issue
Speaker 1: that are really interesting. But uh. His conclusion was that
Speaker 1: the Star Trek economy is quote a well defined general
Speaker 1: equilibrium production exchange economy with a large government presence end quote.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what difference that makes from the
Speaker 1: previous ones, but he seemed really emphatic about it. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: are there any other interesting science fiction economic systems? I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of others, and I couldn't. Really
Speaker 1: that weren't dystopian. Star Wars is not truly dystopian. Star
Speaker 1: Wars is incredibly complicated. They have the Trade Federation, whatever
Speaker 1: the heck that is, and I've seen those movies. If
Speaker 1: somebody wants to try to explain it to me, I'll
Speaker 1: walk away. I'll run away. Well, well, there's there's a
Speaker 1: whole problem in Star Wars where it's not quite a dystopia,
Speaker 1: but I'd say that it's more or less equivalent to
Speaker 1: our current modern economy, in which we've got, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: various corrupt governmental presences in in the Galactic Empire, and
Speaker 1: in various people operating at various levels of honesty and
Speaker 1: legality throughout the system. So, you know, Star Wars essentially,
Speaker 1: you've got your your local currencies, your planetary currencies, your
Speaker 1: system currencies, your galactic currencies. You've got smugglers who pick
Speaker 1: up the slack that's left when the empire says certain
Speaker 1: things are are permissible and certain things aren't forbidden. It
Speaker 1: seems to be imperfect but workable. Yeah. Now, granted we
Speaker 1: can also say that this isn't a future economic model,
Speaker 1: it's a past economics. Has it happened a long time ago? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And yeah. The other ones that I can think of
Speaker 1: that aren't quite dystopian are also along the same lines,
Speaker 1: stuff like an in far Escape or Firefly. You know,
Speaker 1: things where they're do seem to be like interplanetary governmental
Speaker 1: systems that are that are at work. But you know,
Speaker 1: again for plot reasons. Where it becomes interesting in most
Speaker 1: of these stories is that there is a need for
Speaker 1: some kind of smuggler, some kind of black market, or
Speaker 1: something outside of society's norm. Yeah. I think we see
Speaker 1: a lot of where it's just basically some kind of
Speaker 1: regulated capitalism. You know, I'm wondering if there are any
Speaker 1: good past or present analogies to the Star Trek system. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no such thing as a replicator, But
Speaker 1: is there is there anything we could look to in
Speaker 1: history and say, well, here's this case where they tried
Speaker 1: to create something like Star Trek. Again, depends upon whom
Speaker 1: you ask Rick. Web argues that comparing star Trek systems
Speaker 1: to earlier systems, like our earlier economic systems, is the
Speaker 1: wrong way to go, and that we're more or less
Speaker 1: heading in that direction already. So he's he's arguing for
Speaker 1: a new economic model that is not directly analogous to
Speaker 1: something that we've already seen. So he argues that his version,
Speaker 1: this this proto post scarcity economy, is not akin to
Speaker 1: communism or socialism. Uh maybe it's closer to socialist capitalism.
Speaker 1: So sort of the systems that you find in Europe
Speaker 1: where it's still a scarcity based market in Europe, but
Speaker 1: you also have a social uh safety net that's that
Speaker 1: underlies that, and that this would kind of be that
Speaker 1: crank to eleven. Right, there's free enterprise, but there's just
Speaker 1: uh plenty of government redistribution. Yeah, So he would argue
Speaker 1: that that is the closest the models that we see
Speaker 1: in Europe would be akin to what we see in
Speaker 1: star Trek. There is a proposal out in Switzerland, uh,
Speaker 1: in which every adult citizen would be given two five
Speaker 1: hundred Swiss francs that's some two hundred American dollars every month.
Speaker 1: Everyone whether they're old or young, or healthier, sick or
Speaker 1: already rich or poor, whether they have a job or not,
Speaker 1: just for existing, for for being a citizen in Switzerland period.
Speaker 1: And this this proposal was accepted by the government for
Speaker 1: an eventual vote after a petition of I believe a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six thousand signatures was collected that that
Speaker 1: asked for for consideration of the idea. And this kind
Speaker 1: of thing has been in fact considered and implemented in
Speaker 1: other places, and never quite to the scale, like for example,
Speaker 1: once um Namibia. Instead of that, there was an experiment
Speaker 1: in which instead of distributing various aid workers supplies to
Speaker 1: a community, they handed out a flat sum to everyone,
Speaker 1: and the community basically pulled about half of their resources
Speaker 1: and and built what they thought they needed most, which
Speaker 1: was a post office, which was something that the aid
Speaker 1: workers had never considered before, so so it was a
Speaker 1: pretty rad thing, but but again on a on a
Speaker 1: much smaller and experimental scale. And the idea in in
Speaker 1: Switzerland and with this experiment in Namibia was that you know,
Speaker 1: giving giving a kind of base pay to people will
Speaker 1: help remove clunky and potentially expensive government aid programs from
Speaker 1: from these places. But it removes a lot of the
Speaker 1: complaint that you would have saying that that any given
Speaker 1: governmental system is is favoring one portion of the population
Speaker 1: over every other one. And what you're talking about the
Speaker 1: clunkiness of it. I mean, I think even if someone
Speaker 1: takes a you know, a very liberal political philosophy, typically
Speaker 1: you would still grant that. Yeah, well, sure, lots of
Speaker 1: government organizations tend over time to become kind of bloated
Speaker 1: and like they can they can become inefficient. Sure, and
Speaker 1: and there can be lots of problems in distributing more
Speaker 1: specific kinds of aid, and that you need to figure
Speaker 1: out who deserves it or doesn't deserve it. And all
Speaker 1: of those were in air quotes if you couldn't hear
Speaker 1: them at home. Um And and that's problematic, and it's
Speaker 1: something it gives. It gives our lovely political sense system
Speaker 1: something to argue about at length, which can again lead
Speaker 1: to complication in getting that money to the people that
Speaker 1: need to receive it. Um. You know, experts say that
Speaker 1: this proposal that's out in Switzerland is pretty unlikely to
Speaker 1: be accepted. Um. And there's not even a date out
Speaker 1: for a vote. Uh, this thing has been floating around
Speaker 1: for about a year and and they haven't even put
Speaker 1: it on the docket yet, so so it's not a
Speaker 1: high priority item. It's probably never going to happen. Um,
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's cool that that's one of
Speaker 1: the systems that people are talking about, is a way
Speaker 1: to fix the economic problems that we're having. Well, you
Speaker 1: said probably never going to happen. But I'm wondering, could
Speaker 1: we ever expect to instantiate a system like the Star
Speaker 1: Trek economy in the future and what would really be required? Well,
Speaker 1: because sorry, just one thing is Lauren, you and I
Speaker 1: at least I think one time when Jonathan wasn't here,
Speaker 1: we talked about replicators and we talked about how molecular
Speaker 1: assemblers replicators. I don't know if that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's real technologically unlikely. Yeah, um, I mean you you
Speaker 1: can talk about smaller and smaller uh, programmable matter, but
Speaker 1: taking individual atoms or molecules and building stuff out of
Speaker 1: them that that seems unlikely, especially to scale. You could
Speaker 1: do it on like a laboratory setting where you're doing Look,
Speaker 1: we we assembled these five molecules into this shape, like well,
Speaker 1: that's that's fantastic. Where's my slushy? Of course, anything is possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can never really predict. Sometimes sometimes technology
Speaker 1: outpaces our predictions. But it seems like a really tough
Speaker 1: road to try to create Star Trek style replicator. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think replicators are necessary for us to
Speaker 1: arrive at the same kind of economic status is Star Trek.
Speaker 1: I think post scarcity does not require replicators for it
Speaker 1: to happen. There are other routes that might lead us
Speaker 1: to post scarcity. In fact, we there's some who argue
Speaker 1: that we are already in a post scarcity world, at
Speaker 1: least for some items like food. And you might say, well,
Speaker 1: how can you say that with huge numbers of people starving?
Speaker 1: And the fact is that you know, we have we
Speaker 1: have enough food to feed everyone. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: not equally distributed exactly, and so it would take effort
Speaker 1: and and energy and willpower to make that kind of distribution.
Speaker 1: It would also be very uh counter intuitive to certain
Speaker 1: economic systems like capitalism. Right, Well, we've trained our instincts
Speaker 1: uh in systems where we were dealing with scarcity. I mean,
Speaker 1: for thousands of years we've been working on the assumption
Speaker 1: that there's not enough to go around, so you've got
Speaker 1: to compete really hard to get what's yours. And once
Speaker 1: you're in a system where there is enough to go around,
Speaker 1: you're still fighting that instinct that you've developed back when
Speaker 1: there was not enough for everybody. Wasn't a good idea
Speaker 1: on a very small scale. This is why if someone
Speaker 1: if there is free pizza, I will eat way more
Speaker 1: free pizza than I want or need because it's free,
Speaker 1: and there's still part of my brain that's that she
Speaker 1: doesn't want me getting it. Hungry college students who's going
Speaker 1: like why, I will always be at the head of
Speaker 1: the line. And this is true. My coworkers can attest
Speaker 1: to it, like like, I'm there ten minutes before the
Speaker 1: food is being served. Jonathan's like a dog that runs
Speaker 1: to the other dog's bowl first and you have to
Speaker 1: chase him away. I accept that it's I don't object
Speaker 1: at all, but yeah, it's it's obviously if we were
Speaker 1: to make this move, it would not I don't think
Speaker 1: it would be a gradual thing. I think this would
Speaker 1: have to be something where we reach a tipping point,
Speaker 1: right where we reach a point where we say no,
Speaker 1: the things that we need. We have more than enough of.
Speaker 1: There is no reason anyone should go wanting for these.
Speaker 1: There's there's no purpose unless you are just completely divorcing
Speaker 1: yourself from any kind of compassion or empathy. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we've gone there. I hope we haven't gone there.
Speaker 1: And uh so I think that there could be a
Speaker 1: tipping point where we say, now it's undeniable, we have this.
Speaker 1: There's a responsibility at some point to to figure out
Speaker 1: how to distribute it properly, which would buy necessity, uh
Speaker 1: involve a really big economic shakedown, because it's completely different
Speaker 1: from what we do today here in the United States,
Speaker 1: at least well tying into what we talked about in
Speaker 1: our last episode about about robots, you wouldn't necessarily need replicators,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't even necessarily need political action. You could have,
Speaker 1: I think, an organic realization of the post scarcity economy
Speaker 1: by a sudden, you know, rapid maybe over the course
Speaker 1: of five or ten years, acceleration in robot productivity, when
Speaker 1: suddenly robots can make everything we need and it totally
Speaker 1: takes us by surprise, and then what are you going
Speaker 1: to do? I mean, at that point, do the people
Speaker 1: who own the robots still say no, no, this is
Speaker 1: all mine. That almost kind of becomes silly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they're people are greedy, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: once we're living in that world, wouldn't people kind of
Speaker 1: have a revelation. Wouldn't there be an epiphany? I think.
Speaker 1: I think that's what Star Trek presupposes, and I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's a lovely presupposition, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: very nice to think that the kinds of problems that
Speaker 1: we're having due to greed right now are are going
Speaker 1: to go away. Um, and I do think that it
Speaker 1: would have to be a paradigm shift culturally speaking, I
Speaker 1: think so too. And and not only that, but it
Speaker 1: would be so incredibly disruptive. I mean, we're talking about
Speaker 1: this and thinking about the the beautiful future where nobody
Speaker 1: wants for anything, you know, at least at as far
Speaker 1: as the basic necessities go. But then you think, well,
Speaker 1: this world would also eliminate some big institutions that have
Speaker 1: been around for for centuries, like banks, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, when you're talking about an institution that's
Speaker 1: been around that long, like the type of institution even
Speaker 1: if you're not talking about specific you know, branch or whatever.
Speaker 1: Then again, then again, now I don't want to police.
Speaker 1: Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, Banker listeners and right.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if anybody is really like I
Speaker 1: love banking so much. I love banking and Mary Poppins,
Speaker 1: I would be banking even if I didn't get paid
Speaker 1: for it. I kind of don't really think that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, As I said, maybe I'm assuming it's difficult
Speaker 1: to to put forth that opinion. I mean, being that
Speaker 1: all all three of us talking here are our artists
Speaker 1: and writers and and you know, amateur armchair philosophers, and
Speaker 1: so it's it's kind of difficult, I think, for us
Speaker 1: particularly to to consider uh that level of love of banking. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So if I owned a bank, I guarantee you I
Speaker 1: would love it. No, no, no, I'm getting to the
Speaker 1: to the point I was trying to make us. If
Speaker 1: we imagine a scenario when society is flush with wealth,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about, there's enough for everybody to have
Speaker 1: tons of money without doing anything at all. Then even
Speaker 1: with that benefit, would bankers still want to preserve banking?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't they rather be uh writers? And podcasters and arm
Speaker 1: chairfuhilosophers and restaurant No, I'm not saying that they might
Speaker 1: rather be chefs, or they might rather play golf, or
Speaker 1: they might rather do I don't know what I think
Speaker 1: I think that would be. I think there would be
Speaker 1: a an interroom period where there'd be a lot of turmoil. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so after that, I think we emerged to the
Speaker 1: world where everyone's a golfer. But before that, golf clubs
Speaker 1: are being used for other purposes. So I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I think that. I think because because you're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, when we say paradigm shifts, it's those are
Speaker 1: simple words, but we're talking something really fundamental. Here is
Speaker 1: something that that is a huge, like a bigger change
Speaker 1: than anything that's been faced in well, at least in
Speaker 1: our lifetimes, if not the human species. You could argue
Speaker 1: that there have been some pretty major ones like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, the Industrial Revolution, but still is it's
Speaker 1: hard to think of something that would be more disruptive
Speaker 1: than this particular tipping point moment. I'd say. The one
Speaker 1: last question, then, is one that we also had to
Speaker 1: deal with in in the previous podcast about robots, but um,
Speaker 1: is there a worry that in a post scarcity economy
Speaker 1: where people aren't forced to work, while people will choose
Speaker 1: not to work, but that will also make them miserable.
Speaker 1: I mean, we make decisions all the time that are
Speaker 1: guaranteed to make us less happy, just because in the
Speaker 1: short term it seems like the best thing to do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat these nachos because it seems really great now,
Speaker 1: and then an hour later, I'm like, wow, why did
Speaker 1: I wish? And it could be the same thing with
Speaker 1: with our laziness instinct. I I do lazy things where
Speaker 1: I really wish I'd made better use of that time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it kind of makes me sad. And then I
Speaker 1: wonder if I didn't have to work, would my entire
Speaker 1: life turn into one of those moments where well, I
Speaker 1: don't have to do anything right now, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna And then I'm near the nearing the end of
Speaker 1: my life, and I'm like, wow, what a waste of time.
Speaker 1: You're like, Man, that's twenty eight years that I spent
Speaker 1: browsing Facebook really could have been used differently. I think,
Speaker 1: in my experience, the neat thing and I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: true for both of you as well, uh to some
Speaker 1: to some level at least, is that the thing that
Speaker 1: I like to do in my spare time back before
Speaker 1: I had this job, is what I'm doing now for
Speaker 1: my job. So I'd like to think that in this
Speaker 1: wonderful future where I no longer need to be paid
Speaker 1: for anything, I would be doing something akin to this
Speaker 1: for fun, because that's what I was doing before I
Speaker 1: had the job. So I I am one of the
Speaker 1: incredibly lucky people who is legitimately doing what I love
Speaker 1: to do as my job. So I would imagine that
Speaker 1: my life would be not much different. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I would. I mentioned the technology to be better, so
Speaker 1: I could, you know, have a robot edit my podcast
Speaker 1: for me. But other than that putting all out of work,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying my personal podcast, not my work podcast,
Speaker 1: because we've already established there's no work anymore. There is
Speaker 1: no robot that could make disgusting electronic music like NOL.
Speaker 1: That's true, beautifully disgusting electronic. No, it's great stuff. Those
Speaker 1: faces read from all the backhanded compliments we've been giving him. Okay,
Speaker 1: we just he just poked out and behind us speaker
Speaker 1: it at us. We should wrap this up all right,
Speaker 1: So this was a ton of fun to look into, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to thank George for the email
Speaker 1: and the suggestion because uh, we're all star Trek fans here,
Speaker 1: and the thought of going into the economics behind it
Speaker 1: as as vaguely described as they were, was a fun challenge.
Speaker 1: So if you guys have any other suggestions something that
Speaker 1: you want to hear us talk about, whether it's science
Speaker 1: fiction related or just some sort of topic and you
Speaker 1: wonder what's that going to be like in the future,
Speaker 1: you should write us in. Let's know. Our email address
Speaker 1: is once again f W Thinking at how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter
Speaker 1: or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are
Speaker 1: f W Thinking. Just search fw Thinking and Facebook will
Speaker 1: pop right up. Let us know what you think and
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you again really soon for more on
Speaker 1: this topic in the future, which technology I'll visit Forward
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