The Star Trek Economy

[Sonic Glitch]

Mr. Rick Webb describes the Federation economy as a proto-post-scarcity economy. It makes some sense to me, how 'bout you all?

Link

[Platonian]

A most interesting article, Sonic Glitch. Thank you for posting it!

I'd like to expand the scope of consideration a bit.

I wonder how much this model of a proto-post scarcity economy applies to other Alpha Quadrant Great Powers? I think we can agree that it does not apply to the Ferengi (although this may be by cultural choice rather than by necessity.) How about, for example, the Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans? Are there canon references to these states using money (or some equivalent) within their own borders?

Let me add that I am talking about economic transactions within a state, rather than among states or between individuals in different states. (The article describes some instances of commercial proceedings between individuals in different states.)

Those interested might like to see an earlier post "The economics of interstellar flight" and subsequent (all too short) discussion.

[Teaos]

I think having a post scarcity economy is actually pretty rare, one of the defining characteristics of the Cardassian union is that it is resource poor and thus has to be highly militaristic and take over places like Bajor ect.

The Federation on the other hand has commited itself to providing a post scarcity society for everyone.

The other power fall somewher inbetween

The Romulans can, but they seem slightly communist, they only allw a certain quality of life if you contribute to the state.

[Platonian]

Interesting, Teaos. Thanks.

Your assessment of the Cardassian Union seems spot on. I recall Damar commenting to Weyoun that there were no unimportant planets in the Cardassian Union. This was undoubtedly partly national pride, but may also have reflected a real need for the government to extract every last resource out of every single planet.

I, too, have always gotten the feeling that the Romulans were reasonably well off. It would be interesting to know how the Star Empire managed its economy and resources during their (self-imposed?) isolation subsequent to the Treaty of Algeron. Perhaps they were implementing some kind of economic autarky, building up their resources before re-emerging on the galactic stage? Whatever the case, your assessment of a quid pro quo scenario seems very likely -- very "Romulan."

Any thoughts on the Dominion? There were certainly trade-oriented species in the Dominion (the Karemma), but I don't recall the internal economy of the Dominion being discussed.

I wonder if the notorious Breen privateers reflect some kind of orientation towards wealth accumulation in Breen society? There are (non-canon?) sources that describe trade between the Breen and the Ferengi.

Then there are the Klingons....

[sunnyside]

To an extent I think the Trek writers demonstrate their wisdom by not attempting to explain how utopia works.

But, as the writer says, speculating is fun.

Now if I'm remembering correctly there aren't just "Federation credits". I think Sisko spoke of using up all his transporter credits visiting his father when he first went to the academy. And in some TNG episode I remember someone talking about replicator credits or something like that when getting a gift (maybe Data?) That, along with Gene strongly stating there is no money, seems to indicate that they function as a ration. And they may not be transferable as money, rather their use may be tracked and people "spending" more somewhere like Sisko's restaurant may just indicate it merits continual support.

I speculate that maybe based on their accomplishments civilians can have something like the ranks and corresponding powers and privileges as we see in the not at all egalitarian starships.

[McAvoy]

Honestly Gene Roddenberry's vision of the 24th century was a bad idea from the start. You can make a bright future with all of human faults that Gene thought would be gone by then. Economy is one such thing. It is as old as human civilization.

[Teaos]

If there are rations and people trade them, you basically have a form of barter system... A less efficent economy than monetary ones.

[sunnyside]

If there are rations and people trade them, you basically have a form of barter system... A less efficent economy than monetary ones.

Yeah, hence why I had to come up with a mechanism where they aren't truely tradeable or storable.

Anyway its fiction (and deliberately obfusicated).

Thinking about it, the hardest thing to explain might be enlisted ranks. I could see people trying to get into the captain's seat or at least a senior officer spot and putting up with being in the lower ranks for a while to get your shot at it. However being enlisted seems to combine banal monotony, all the things people hate about being in the modern Navy, and surreal nightmares that they probably often don't even explain to the enlisted. Your day on the Enterprise might be cleaning out plasma conduits, then you get transformed into a lemur, your friend gets eaten by a beastial version of Worf, and then everything's back to normal and they expect you to get back at it and make that plasma conduit shine. And then you keep at it until some day you get broasted by that plasma conduit in some fight or other.

[McAvoy]

If there are rations and people trade them, you basically have a form of barter system... A less efficent economy than monetary ones.

Which is why I think the money less society is Earth and perhaps core world's like Vulcan where there is no need for money. The money less societyiisn't widespread throughout the Federation and I would assume it to not be part of the membership process.

[sunnyside]

Speculating on how Trek might actually "work" economically is fun (actually I feel like we've had a thread or two on that.)

However if we want to get more serious I think there are some real issues for our socity to face as we approach the singularity or at least a continuing rapid increase in technology. I suspect that is ultimately the driver for the increasing income inequality we see. In the past if you wanted something done, a person had to do it. Increasingly you can replace that job with a machine of some sort. On the one hand I can see how it could be all around better to have everyone running automated systems instead of doing those mind numbing labor intensive jobs themselves. We certainly produce a lot more and work conditions are much better physically and mentally.

However it's also easy to imagine a growing class of people who simply have very little to offer and are paid accordingly when in the past they might be well enough paid for their manual labor. And I can see even those with technical skills being edged out soon enough.

[Teaos]

I think the only way to have a system that is sort of moneyless, if to have money, but have hard rules that everyone gets about the same amount, so you do need to buy stuff, but everyone has more than enough to get by with disposable extra for hobbies. Sort of communist...

[Graham Kennedy]

The only really sensible depiction of a moneyless society that I've ever seen is in the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks.

Essentially, his argument was that money is a way to apportion limited resources. In the culture resources are virtually unlimited, so money doesn't need to exist. The same principle meant that authority-based government all but ceased to exist in the culture. He argued that it's an outgrowth of interstellar flight - the idea was that on planetbound societies, any given dwelling (house, town, city, whatever) always needs more resources than it has itself, it always has to import something like food, water, coal or oil, or something. That means that there has to be some sort of bureaucracy in place, which is always authoritarian to some extent, and there is always some form of regulation of resource exchange - money.

But an interstellar spacecraft must necessarily be independent of any outside resource. It HAS to be able to provide for itself in totality, because it literally cannot trade with the outside for decades at a time. Any interstellar spacecraft must be able to generate colossal amounts of energy, gather large amounts of matter, and be able to use them to create anything it needs. Thus it has no reason to rely on anybody else, no need for trade or any kind of bureaucracy to regulate it. And as the technology that makes that possible becomes commonplace and miniaturised, it's applied throughout society. So the result is a near anarchist society in which anybody can do pretty much anything they want, because when there's a machine in your basement that can power itself forever on energy drawn directly out of hyperspace and manufacture any physical object you want in any quantity you want, nobody is beholden to the utility company, wal-mart, or anything else. "The means of production so comprehensively outweighed the demands of even their most imaginative citizens that the idea of rationing it no longer made any sense."

And without any of that, there's very little need for government.

Perhaps that attitude is best personified by an exchange in Player of Games, where a non Culture guy from a primitive planet is chatting to a Culture guy about their laws and police.

"What if somebody murders somebody?"
"They're slap-droned."
"Sounds nasty! What is it?"
"Oh, a drone follows them around for the rest of their life and makes sure they never hurt anybody again."
"...that's all?!"
"Of course. What more would you want?"

On a grander scale, even things like living space are in almost unlimited supply because they build things called Orbitals. Think of an Orbital as a miniature Ringworld, 3 million km in diameter and 6,000 km across, giving each an area about 120 times the surface area of the Earth. But an Orbital masses a tiny fraction of what a planet does - you can make hundreds of Orbitals for the mass of one planet, so the living space per person in the Culture is gigantic. Want to live in a mansion on a vast estate, want your own personal ocean? It's all there, just lying around for whoever wants it.

Actually in one of the books, there was a famous musician who was going to perform a new composition on an Orbital. And although anybody could attend via a completely convincing VR link, lots of people wanted to actually attend in person - more than their largest stadium could hold. So people started promising favours to one another if they'd give up a seat, and then writing these favours down on IOUs, at which point they started trading the IOUs, and then printing up notes to keep track of who was trading what with who... reinventing money. But it was largely done in a very "oh, we're using money now, isn't this fun!" way, for the novelty value.

You could argue that the Federation could have a similar setup... basement fusion reactors providing essentially unlimited power, home replicators letting anybody manufacture anything. But it's not nearly as well thought out and implemented as Banks does in the Culture novels.

[McAvoy]

Of course Trek' own concept isn't that well thought out. Usually things like that isn't. I even doubt Gene had it all thought out. He figured it just was like that.

[John Wain]

All very good opinions, here. If we look now at what TOS portrayed as the 23rd century, I think we would agree it was nowhere bold enough. I believe we are going to be much more technologically advanced by then, unless something catastrophic happens to us before. And even that would only limit the scale at which technology is implemented, without actually wiping out the technology itself. So I guess it is fair to assume that we will eventually get to a point where money is not needed, because technology will provide us with everything we want, in whatever supply we want.

Only a few years back, I was reading articles about 3D printing and it was being presented as a very ambitious 'thing of the future'. Now I think I come by articles on this issue every week without searching for them specifically. When this will eventually lead to matter replication, we won't need to buy anything anymore, we will just make it at home. There will be no more inventories, no more wasteful production, every thing will be created as it is needed.

So yeah, money may become obsolete for us, but there still remains a problem. How do we trade with alien races which use money? The Ferengi, for instance, were paying in gold-pressed latinum. This problem was most apparent in DS9, where humans just did not have anything to offer in exchange for what they needed. Would we do barters instead? This seems very backwards to me.

[Coalition]

Trade still involves resources. Money is just a way to measure a scarce resource (scarce as in not enough for everyone). If it is electronic, that makes it faster to trade (since the transfer is just changing numbers in a spreadsheet, rather than loading/unloading cargo).

This money/measurement could be IOUs for seats to a special concert, being allowed to go to a restaurant where Gordon Ramsey and Emeril are doing a special for that night, or getting one of the hundred seats to see a special phenomenon (an alignment of a supernova and a black hole that creates a wonderful show, but can be best seen in a single direction).

As for 3D printing, the fun question is about economy of scale. If more expensive 3D printers produce better objects for lower cost per object, you will still have factories. If it is cheaper to make an item using a lathe than it is for a 3D printer (cheaper raw materials, lower power usage, or similar), you will still see regular factories. 3D will provide us with more options, but replacing everything is another issue.


One thing I would like to see is that the Federation encourages children or anyone living in the Federation to 'do what you can, with what you have, where you are, to help others'. You might not be the best plasma engineer. But you are taking over a job that a better plasma engineer is forced to do, so they can do something better. This cascades up the line so the best plasma engineer has the time to perform new research. The key is that each person at each level is honestly thanked for doing a job that frees up someone with more skills to do something better. People can just goof off, but someone producing for others is more respected. It could be producing a play, artwork that is appreciated, cleaning up after a top level researcher, but anything that produces a useful output would be thanked.

In gaming terms, assume you have five jobs that need to be done by a sentient being, each requiring a skill of 1-5.
Rank 1 - maintenance kit cleaner/stocker
Rank 2 - Plasma conduit maintenance tech
Rank 3 - Plasma conduit quality control
Rank 4 - Plasma conduit manufacturing chief engineer
Rank 5 - Theoretical plasma research.

You also have five people, each with ranks 1-5. A Rank 3 person can do any job of ranks 1-3, but cannot do a rank 4 or 5 job.

So if the Rank 1 person decides to goof off, then the Maintenance tech has to shift down to doing basic kit maintenance. The Quality control person has to do maintenance, aso. The top level researcher cannot do any research, because the chief engineer is stuck doing another job. But once the Rank 1 person starts doing their job again, everyone can go back to the job they are capable of doing.

This would also work for the higher Ranks, with the same result of Rank 5 job not being done.


Each person in the economy would be encouraging others to improve themselves, as a single person improving means the Federation as a whole can improve. You'd have to find a way to link value to effort, and not just skill. The person doing the maintenance kit cleaning might not be able to handle Plasma tube maintenance (claustrophobia, the light/sound/EM field affecting them, aso), but they make sure all the kits are good to go. Like Jarvis in the Avengers comic book, where he feeds the horse, does the laundry, aso, because him doing so allows the Avengers to focus on saving the world.

The federation leadership might try for the European noble/servant relationships, where the servant did their best to make sure their boss was in excellent shape, and their boss made sure to reward the servant for doing so (good paycheck and lifetime employment for the servant and family). Similarly in the Federation you might have a to--level researcher who keeps a certain assistant for a while, but eventually realizes that the assistant could do more, and encourages the assistant to do their own research. Star trek might even borrow from military officer training, where one of the critical goals is to make sure that everyone is replaceable. If there is a senior researcher, the understudies would be encouraged to learn her job and be able to mostly take it over.