The Star Trek Economy

to tackle today. Now. Of course, this isn't the kind of ben Stein economics hopefully where we talk about what is it ben Stein talks about it? Don't voodoo economics? Yeah, no, this is uh, this is gonna be some sci fi economics here. So our listener, George wrote in, I believe from Facebook. No on at our email address, email, which is FW thinking at stuff works dot Com? We have email? Is the incredible future? You thinking at how stuff works? Dot COMW thinking dot Com FW thinking it how stuff

works dot No? No, no, no, no, no dot com dot com. Did George have to say, Lauren? George said, I would suggest that you do a podcast about the economic systems of the future, i e. Star Trek. Does anyone get paid for their work on enterprise for Voyager Deep Space nine? Obviously, our current economic system has had changes in the past a hundred years, electronic payments, online banking and the like. Thanks for reading this, George, Thank you George. And uh yeah, first of all, did you

guys recognize where the lyric came from? Now? That lyric is from the unsung unpublished to the general public lyrics to the Star Trek theme song and the original series. Yeah, great story about that involves economics. I'll tell you after the podcast because it doesn't really pertain to the actual discussion here. Fine, not cool. So the theme was written by a guy named Courage. He wrote the theme and he was getting residuals for that theme whenever Star Trek

was playing. Rod and Berry had an agreement with Courage that said that he could write lyrics to the theme. So after the fact, Rodd and Berry wrote lyrics knowing that they would never ever be sung because it meant that he got a cut of those residuals, which effectively had the amount of money that Courage was getting. So the future of the economy, well, let's look at the economy of Star Trek because I'm interested in this too. I think it's really cool. Uh And obviously, Star Trek

is a fictional system. It's not like we're reporting on something that has actually happened. But I do think he gives us a very interesting framework for imagining how certain types of future economies might play out. So what does money look like on Star Trek and the Star Trek universe, jobs, economies, cash, what does it all mean? Well, Gene Roddenberry, despite his apparently slightly problematic business practice, well we'll call it ethically questionable.

He he. He admittedly designed Star Trek partially as this utopia, this post scarcity utopia where everyone has what they need. Yeah he uh he. After the fact, after the first series started to air, began to kind of lay down some rules. But those rules were not hard and fast early on. So there are some contradictions. First of all, we have to admit that in the Star Trek universe

you have lots of different cultures. The one that the Enterprise is from is from the United Federation of Planets, which has Earth is kind of its central member, and so we often talk about their not being any money in Star Trek. What we're really referring to is that Federation. We're not talking about the universe as a whole, because there are other societies like the Farringhi that do still use money. So this isn't just cut and dry stuff.

They're actually contradictions within the Star Trek episodes themselves. So for example, at one point, Kirk offers to pay some miners on Rigel twelve for lithium crystals, not di lithium, just playing old lithium crystals. In another episode, he claims, quote the Federation has invested a great deal of money in our training end quote. And another one spot even goes so far as to start exactly saying how much how many Federation credits have been spent in his training.

It's one of those, you know, funny little moments. Do you have any idea how much money they spend on you? One of one of those Whagni mcady dudes um Scotty In Star Trek six the Undiscovered Country claims that he's going to go and buy a boat, So that suggests he's actually going to purchase something. You'd need to have something to purchase things with. He's going to go buy it from the Ferenghi maybe so. Uh. Even in Star

Trek the Next Generation we have mentioned of money. The Federation offers one point five million quote Federation credits end quote for the Bars and Wormhole in the episode The Price Uh, Cisco's father on Deep Space nine he owns a restaurant in New Orleans. So does he just open the doors and let people come on in and eat for free? Or are they paying for this food? Do they have to wash the dishes? There's no is there no root to do that? Yeah? Well, actually that's a

good point. In Star Trek the use of robots is criminally underrepresented. But well we'll get into that. So, well, what's the okay, So you've outlined the contradictions, but what is the party line? What's the real what do they say? Run Berry was saying that there wasn't going to be any actual money with the Federation, that that they had evolved beyond money, And in fact a lot of the

other references we find are along with that. So for example, Star Trek four the Voyage Home, Kirk at one point is talking with a person from our present who says don't they have money? Like, do you not have money in the twenty century, and he's like, no, we don't. Picard mentions that money quote doesn't exist in the twenty four century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. End quote. I'm being superior to you as only Jean loup Acard can be. You

should be ashamed of yourself. And then, according to Paris on Voyager, the economy of star Trek took shape in the twenty second century when quote money went the way of the dinosaur. In quote fort mix becomes a museum. So the money was killed by a combination of climate change in an asteroid impact. But it implies so um,

but yeah, like I said, asteroid. Sorry. And then then that when there when the gold standard for real, I know we were technically on it since the seventies, but still, uh so the fringy, like I said, they do still use money. There's actually some some direct quotes where they talk about how look, just because you gave up cash doesn't mean the rest of us did. Uh. In fact,

they value a rare liquid metal called latin um. Yeah, they frequently trade in gold pressed latinum because because latinum is liquid at room temperature, right, they have to find it with something like, for example, goal. Yeah, and that's what that's what allows it to be solid at room temperature. Uh. And conveniently, this metal can't be replicated because reasons, because plot reasons. Yeah, there's no like I'm sure someone somewhere has gone to the trouble to explain why you cannot

create latinum in a replicator. But maybe it's because of the quarks. Yeah, Well, up the issue of the replicator, which I think is sort of central to the way in which this economy is run. So in Star Trek they have replicators, these machines that can produce whatever you want out of base materials on demand. They essentially convert energy into matter. Yeah, and when you have something like this, it kind of makes sense that there would be no such thing as money, because what's the point if you

can make anything you need basically for free. Yeah, well except for for specialist goods, is the thing. Uh yeah, yeah, you could have what there might be a demand for things that are made the old fashioned way, because we're human and we value that, right. But in large part, you're talking about the ability to create anything you ever want, uh, you know, anything physical you ever want that fits within

the confines of the replicator. You can't like print a spaceship. Uh. In fact, there is a scarcity because there's a scarcity of spaceships. That actually happens after the Borg invasion. There's a problem that they don't have enough spaceships to combat the Borg, and so it becomes clear that there is a limitation on this ability to convert energy into matter. There's also obviously an energy cost. I mean, if you're using energy to turn energy into matter, the energy has

to come from somewhere. But we're at least lead to believe that in the future, at least on Earth and most of the colonies that are near Earth, there's an overwhelming energy surplus. So that's it's effectively a non factor. Yeah. Yeah, we can probably assume that most of the manual labor kind of jobs have been automated. Yeah, this is the problem that we have where one of the weirdest things about Star Trek is you don't see a lot of robots.

I mean, you've got data who's an android. Those doors open and close all on their own, and yeah, you got the doors, but then after that, like every time something goes wrong, they send Jordie LaForge into the Jeffrey tube. Yeah, he's like crawling on his elbows and knees, and like there's always that one panel that's four hundred feet down, this tiny little thing in your You don't have a robot to do that. We have robots now that can

do that and do it better, I guess. So. I mean, there's a lot of questions to come up from this, but I will I would suggest that perhaps one of the issues here is, well, Joe and I talked about this too. We we mentioned that, uh, this is bad for narrative obviously if you take the characters out of those situations. If we want to follow that same logic, really, like why are you having Sulu fire the weapons? Shouldn't you have an automated system that detects an incoming threat

and responds immediately automatically Take the automation out. I mean, but at that point, why is he I mean, we could ask infinite questions about this, like why is he pressing buttons on a panel when really Kirk should be able to just say okay, Glass fire the torpedo, Or why is Kirk making the decision when obviously an AI could make the decision faster and with more ethical consideration, and well, certainly with more ethical consideration than Kirk. I

love that that you. I mean that you went with the Google glass because now I'm thinking like engage warp drives, Like where are we going? I'm feeling lucky. Well, obviously this points out that the fact that's true a pretty much all science fiction, which is that their narrative requirements, in order to create a dramatic story, you have to have some elements that might not really make sense given the technological assumptions of the setting. Yeah, you just kind

of have to overlook that. It's like, the story is not going to be interesting if there aren't human characters doing things. And the fact that we're making it in our present means that we're limited somewhat by our our imagination of what our personal scope. Yeah, what the user interface can be. But there are some other things that that kind of throw monkey wrench into this. You know, no need for money, you know world. One of those

is that people appear to own personal property. Uh, for example, you've got Cisco's restaurant, got Chateau Pacard where they still his family still runs a vineyard, so you've got land. How did you get the land. Did you have a flag? Flag? You didn't have a flag. I think this points out a potential problem with the whole idea of post scare city, because there are some items with value that can't be replaced even by replicators. As we talked about the whole starships. Uh.

For example, high quality real estate would be one. You might say that by becoming a space faring species, we could extend the supply of real estate to an effective infinity where if you can say, terror form all these infinite number of planets out there and colonize them all, but there would still be a demand for quality real estate, the patches of land that are close to the other things you want to be close to or scenic, or the one that's right really close to that pleasure planet,

or if it's a restaurant at the street corner where people would actually walk in. I mean, it's no good building a restaurant on the moon and there's nobody, but there's there's no money being exchanged. That doesn't matter if anyone shows up or not. Well, I don't know that's a good question. I did we figure out whether money was being exchanged or well? Run Barry said that they had evolved beyond the need for money. But there's some

other economists who have different views on this. Yeah, let's look at what some some modern thinkers have said analyzing the Star Trek economy. So I read a series of three articles, uh that that were published in in various in different outlets, but they were each in response to like one one was an initial article, the next was a response to the first one. The third was response to the earlier two. So it's one of those fascinating things where you get a bunch of people who have

a lot to say on this issue. They're really well versed in both the economics and star Trek, and it becomes amazing. Uh So, Rick Webb and medium wrote the first piece, and it was probably it was the longest of the three um and it was all about the Federation being in a pro to post scarcity economy. Okay, so it's not quite post scarcity, but they're getting there exactly.

He says that the Earth is kind of poised between still being in that scarcity based economy where things like land, you know, you obviously have, especially if you're talking about land on Earth, you know, there's a limited amount of that, so there's still some things of scarcity. Spaceships are another example. Spaceships are not uh not unlimited, so not not your average person can't just go out and get a space sia. But other things are not scarce at all anymore because

you can make everything with no perceivable cost. So for example, food in the Star Trek, or clothing, or or houses or warmth, yeah, pretty much anything else. Yeah, anything you've ever seen being made on board the Enterprise. Imagine that someone has one of those in their home. They're capable

of doing the same thing. So he argues that to get from a priest you know, an actual scarcity based market to a post scarcity one will have this interim period in which some things are abundant in some places and other things will remain scared, either all over the place or in very particular places. Uh. And that's where the proto post scarcity comes in. So he talks about episodes of Star Trek where there are planets in the Federation that are dealing scarcely issues like famine and starvation.

And I don't I mean, I know that there have been episodes like that. It does make you wonder, all right, so why why are they in this situation? What led

to this problem? Well, it's been portrayed from the episodes that I remember at least as being like either their replicators malfunctioned or there was some kind of issue with the replicators, or they otherwise got cut off from civilization and some interesting plot there might be some energy crisis, for example, that whatever whatever they had been using to

produce energy had failed in some fundamental way. So he proposes that in this economy under normal circumstances, so like let's say the economy of Federation Earth, Uh, everyone is essentially on a welfare benefit and the benefits far exceed person's needs. He gave in the arbitrary example of it's like every single man, woman, and child is essentially gifted ten million dollars and they can do pretty much anything

they want. However, there are some social pressures that put people to, you know, cause people to avoid conspicuous consumption, so that no one goes out and buys everything that they don't need. And it's kind of funny because conspicuous consumption makes a lot less sense if everybody has access to tons of money. I mean, the whole idea of I'm going to buy a flashy sports car so people can see it is to show off your relative value compared to other people, right, and every everyone has that

same value, then there's no point in doing that. Like if if everyone has the capability of going out and and building that exact same sports car, uh, then it has no unique value to you anymore. Uh. So the accumulation of possessions doesn't actually what would cost something, and the government itself would keep track of it, according to his argument. He says that they would sort of look and see how much each person is using. And you you have an allotment, a limit to how much you

can use. But that limit is so high that under normal circumstances you would never ever deplete it. So you'll go through your entire life without ever running anything. Yeah, you'll, you'll you're operating at a surplus. Uh. But then he suggests that workers are quote unquote paid by having that welfare benefit increased by a small amount. In other words, they get a little bit more than someone who doesn't do anything. He says that there's probably gonna be some

jobs that people still need to do. He's he's seeing a future where we're never gonna have robots doing absolutely everything, they are gonna be some things that humans need to do. So how do you give an incentive to someone who has access to everything they need for their entire lives to go and do this job that other people don't want to do. He says, well, you actually, we do pay them. You give them a little more of that huge amount. So maybe they get ten million, one thousand dollars.

And he says, sure, in the long run, this doesn't mean anything because they already have more than what they require. However, on a subconscious level, we humans tend to think I want more, and that that would be enough of an incentive for people to go and get jobs, even though they would never they would never want for anything. Now, of course, this is assuming, as you said, that some

menial or unpleasant jobs remain in this future. If we're assuming this kind of thing we're actually enacted in the real world, I think we should take into consideration the possibility of what we talked about in the last podcast on robots replacing us, which is that it could very well be that robots can do all of these jobs, and especially any job, any job you wouldn't find people

wanting to do out of their own personal fulfillment. Sure. Sure, And and it's possible that all of the hallways and floors and ceilings of the enterprise are covered in self cleaning materials that are very advanced, and or that there are an army of of rumbas that are just off screen and every single shot cleaning everything. But you know, it's it's I think that that's one of those suspensions

of disbelief that we have to. Yeah, I agree, and I think I think that you know, once you take in the robots idea and the fact that there aren't any jobs that have to be done, then that problem

kind of goes away. It ends up being people do things for self enrichment, which is the way ron Berry pitched it is the idea that the people make choices that are all about, uh, what they find fulfilling themselves personally, and it's less it's not about what you get out of it monetarily, but what you get out of it

in personal satisfaction. Well that's what the next piece from Slate argued, right, yes, yes, uh, and uh so Slate goes that was Matthew Iglesias who wrote the piece and Slate and he specifically referenced this earlier piece, and he said that there's at least some sort of scarcity based economy in Star Trek, again pointing at Cisco's restaurant Picard's Family Vineyard as examples, uh, and said that that was historical production, which would have its own kind of scarcity

based value, because while you could go to the replicator and print out gallons of wine to your heart's content, uh, it would not be the same as going and getting a bottle of wine that was traditionally produced right, right, And we've talked about that on the show before. I think in our Food Replicators episodes wherein UH, there are characters on Star Trek, like Riker has this little uh dinner club sort of thing on on the enterprise to

show off his Riker skills at cooking. You know, I think this actually points to something that's really interesting that that I would like to suggest, is that robots and replicators might never be able to recreate those intangible things that we love most about life. Like a robot cannot create coolness, do you know what I mean? Like the fact like that you see an object James Dean bot, it can't A robot can't figure out what's cool about

a handcrafted artifact? That is cool. Well, and part of it also is just the the idea of someone making something for you or you making something for someone else. Well, that's part of the coolness is like the knowledge of where it came from. This this indetectable physically maybe, but by knowing where an artifact that was handcrafted came from,

it has this aura of specialness. Oh yeah, yeah, well, I mean it's it's why people pay millions of dollars for an actual ruby slipper that was worn by Judy Garland or or or why people are you know, oh yeah, that's a good point, or you can you can see and in pop culture these days a lot wherein people are are purchasing these these microcraft beers or uh, handmade things on Etsy rather than buying something that's been mass produced, because you know, if you it's this conception that if

you have the money to do it, knowing that a human hand crafted this thing, abuse it with some kind of property of awesome. It's a kind of lingering, magical thinking that we might not ever be able to get rich. Shake yeah. Now. Iglesia says that he envisions us as being sort of a gift economy as opposed to a welfare uh economy that that was proposed by web explain the difference there. So he's saying this as uh, you know, everything else is provided for you. It's it's because of

the replicators and the energy surplus. You're talking about, like basic needs like food and water and shelter, and then these these other sort of handcrafted items or whatever would

essentially be freely given away. So if you were to eat Cisco's restaurant, it would not cost you anything because the purpose of the restaurant is to bring joy to others, to have the joy of making food and serving it to people, as opposed to this is how I make my living, and that there might be some bartering going on depending upon who you are, Like you might be, Oh,

I got you this bottle of wine. I really like that chair you carved, that kind of thing, but that it would largely just be gift economy, and that you give the things you make away because the pleasure is in the making and the giving and not it's not motivated by a need for for resources. And that's that's a that's almost unimaginable. It's it's so it's so far out from the way that our world works right now. But I think it's a it's a really terrific and

interesting concept. It is easily imagined by me, but only because I've done a lot of theater work in Georgia where you don't necessarily have to get paid. You're not necessarily going to get paid. This is a commentary on on the arts in Georgia. No, but at any rate, maybe the people who are coming to the play aren't expecting to receive value. Well, I'm just getting despite the

fact they don't expect it. Uh So, Now in both of these cases, with both Webb and Iglesias, they have to acknowledge the fact that there is this thing called Federation credits, right, so that that becomes problematic because you say, well,

there's no money, but they mentioned federation credits. Well, websites the Federation credit as being a private currency, kind of like bitcoin, so it's not something that's government backed, and it was really, in his mind, used to help, uh facilitate really complex transactions that would not be easily managed

through barter those kind of systems. I mean, that's really why we've got currency in the first places that you know, I might grow chickens, and Joe, you might grow grapes, and Lauren has a bunch of cows, and I want some milk. But Lauren doesn't have need of chickens, but she would like some grapes. You'd like some chicken And it starts getting this complicated mess, whereas we all just agree, Hey, this piece of paper represents this amount of value for

which you can get all of these different things. Yeah, so credits he thinks of as being used as for these complex transactions, not day to day stuff. So he thinks you could still get away with the no money uh definition that run Barries set up. He also thought of it, well, it could be used for for trade between the Federation and other societies. Like you wouldn't necessarily

use this to buy something on Earth. You would use it when you are dealing with some other race like the Romula right right, or like on Deep Space nine when they had a bunch of different cultures interacting, and so you had to the members of the Federation crew there had to pay Quirk and Federation credits for whatever it which they wanted. Cork would sometimes accept and sometimes he didn't want to accept. Federation credits. He was so flighty. Uh, well, you know, you know for ran I do, I do.

I'm related to a few, um but yeah. Now, Iglesias sees credits as being a means of regulating government provided scarce products and services, because, like I said, not everyone has infinite access to everything. So if you needed to take a trip from Earth to some distant star system, you probably don't have your own starship, so you need to have a way of being able to negotiate that because there's a limited number of there's a limited starships.

Each starship has a limited amount of space on it, so that is a scarcity issue. And of course they're still real estate like we talked about earlier, exactly so that this would probably be the means of regulating that kind of stuff. And so it's not so much purchasing power as much as it is a limit on how much stuff you can demand from the Federation before you

run out of demand. So in a way, it's it's kind of restating what web It said earlier, this idea that you get a certain allotment of credits that you can use, uh, and you can't put so hard a demand that it would seed your credit limit. So, in other words, if I wanted to, you know, in in this if it was truly a post scarcity economy, there's no scarcity whatsoever. I could say I want a hundred spaceships and that would be a possibility, but that's clearly

not going on in Star Trek. So then you have Joshua Gans over at Digitopoly uh, and Gas points out that it's difficult to measure a thing's worth once that thing becomes freely available. Using the standards that we use today, we often a sign of value by how much it costs, right, which is not necessarily a good representation of an object's actual value. Uh. An object might be more valuable than what you paid for it depending upon your need, or it may be less valuable. But you're like, well it's

either that or nothing. Um, so it's interesting, but but it's still if it becomes freely available, how do you say it's worth something? Uh? You know. There and I've seen a lot of philosophical discussions about this particular issue that are really interesting. But uh. His conclusion was that the Star Trek economy is quote a well defined general equilibrium production exchange economy with a large government presence end quote. I'm not exactly sure what difference that makes from the

previous ones, but he seemed really emphatic about it. Okay, well, are there any other interesting science fiction economic systems? I was trying to think of others, and I couldn't. Really that weren't dystopian. Star Wars is not truly dystopian. Star Wars is incredibly complicated. They have the Trade Federation, whatever the heck that is, and I've seen those movies. If somebody wants to try to explain it to me, I'll

walk away. I'll run away. Well, well, there's there's a whole problem in Star Wars where it's not quite a dystopia, but I'd say that it's more or less equivalent to our current modern economy, in which we've got, uh, you know, various corrupt governmental presences in in the Galactic Empire, and in various people operating at various levels of honesty and legality throughout the system. So, you know, Star Wars essentially, you've got your your local currencies, your planetary currencies, your

system currencies, your galactic currencies. You've got smugglers who pick up the slack that's left when the empire says certain things are are permissible and certain things aren't forbidden. It seems to be imperfect but workable. Yeah. Now, granted we can also say that this isn't a future economic model, it's a past economics. Has it happened a long time ago? Yeah? And yeah. The other ones that I can think of that aren't quite dystopian are also along the same lines,

stuff like an in far Escape or Firefly. You know, things where they're do seem to be like interplanetary governmental systems that are that are at work. But you know, again for plot reasons. Where it becomes interesting in most of these stories is that there is a need for some kind of smuggler, some kind of black market, or something outside of society's norm. Yeah. I think we see a lot of where it's just basically some kind of regulated capitalism. You know, I'm wondering if there are any

good past or present analogies to the Star Trek system. Obviously, I mean, there's no such thing as a replicator, But is there is there anything we could look to in history and say, well, here's this case where they tried to create something like Star Trek. Again, depends upon whom you ask Rick. Web argues that comparing star Trek systems to earlier systems, like our earlier economic systems, is the wrong way to go, and that we're more or less

heading in that direction already. So he's he's arguing for a new economic model that is not directly analogous to something that we've already seen. So he argues that his version, this this proto post scarcity economy, is not akin to communism or socialism. Uh maybe it's closer to socialist capitalism.

So sort of the systems that you find in Europe where it's still a scarcity based market in Europe, but you also have a social uh safety net that's that underlies that, and that this would kind of be that crank to eleven. Right, there's free enterprise, but there's just uh plenty of government redistribution. Yeah, So he would argue that that is the closest the models that we see in Europe would be akin to what we see in

star Trek. There is a proposal out in Switzerland, uh, in which every adult citizen would be given two five hundred Swiss francs that's some two hundred American dollars every month. Everyone whether they're old or young, or healthier, sick or already rich or poor, whether they have a job or not, just for existing, for for being a citizen in Switzerland period.

And this this proposal was accepted by the government for an eventual vote after a petition of I believe a hundred and twenty six thousand signatures was collected that that asked for for consideration of the idea. And this kind of thing has been in fact considered and implemented in other places, and never quite to the scale, like for example,

once um Namibia. Instead of that, there was an experiment in which instead of distributing various aid workers supplies to a community, they handed out a flat sum to everyone, and the community basically pulled about half of their resources and and built what they thought they needed most, which was a post office, which was something that the aid workers had never considered before, so so it was a pretty rad thing, but but again on a on a

much smaller and experimental scale. And the idea in in Switzerland and with this experiment in Namibia was that you know, giving giving a kind of base pay to people will help remove clunky and potentially expensive government aid programs from from these places. But it removes a lot of the complaint that you would have saying that that any given governmental system is is favoring one portion of the population over every other one. And what you're talking about the

clunkiness of it. I mean, I think even if someone takes a you know, a very liberal political philosophy, typically you would still grant that. Yeah, well, sure, lots of government organizations tend over time to become kind of bloated and like they can they can become inefficient. Sure, and and there can be lots of problems in distributing more specific kinds of aid, and that you need to figure out who deserves it or doesn't deserve it. And all of those were in air quotes if you couldn't hear

them at home. Um And and that's problematic, and it's something it gives. It gives our lovely political sense system something to argue about at length, which can again lead to complication in getting that money to the people that need to receive it. Um. You know, experts say that this proposal that's out in Switzerland is pretty unlikely to be accepted. Um. And there's not even a date out

for a vote. Uh, this thing has been floating around for about a year and and they haven't even put it on the docket yet, so so it's not a high priority item. It's probably never going to happen. Um, But I think it's it's cool that that's one of the systems that people are talking about, is a way to fix the economic problems that we're having. Well, you said probably never going to happen. But I'm wondering, could we ever expect to instantiate a system like the Star

Trek economy in the future and what would really be required? Well, because sorry, just one thing is Lauren, you and I at least I think one time when Jonathan wasn't here, we talked about replicators and we talked about how molecular assemblers replicators. I don't know if that's going to happen. It's real technologically unlikely. Yeah, um, I mean you you can talk about smaller and smaller uh, programmable matter, but taking individual atoms or molecules and building stuff out of

them that that seems unlikely, especially to scale. You could do it on like a laboratory setting where you're doing Look, we we assembled these five molecules into this shape, like well, that's that's fantastic. Where's my slushy? Of course, anything is possible. I mean, we can never really predict. Sometimes sometimes technology outpaces our predictions. But it seems like a really tough

road to try to create Star Trek style replicator. I don't I don't think replicators are necessary for us to arrive at the same kind of economic status is Star Trek. I think post scarcity does not require replicators for it to happen. There are other routes that might lead us to post scarcity. In fact, we there's some who argue that we are already in a post scarcity world, at least for some items like food. And you might say, well, how can you say that with huge numbers of people starving?

And the fact is that you know, we have we have enough food to feed everyone. It's just that it's not equally distributed exactly, and so it would take effort and and energy and willpower to make that kind of distribution. It would also be very uh counter intuitive to certain economic systems like capitalism. Right, Well, we've trained our instincts

uh in systems where we were dealing with scarcity. I mean, for thousands of years we've been working on the assumption that there's not enough to go around, so you've got to compete really hard to get what's yours. And once you're in a system where there is enough to go around, you're still fighting that instinct that you've developed back when there was not enough for everybody. Wasn't a good idea

on a very small scale. This is why if someone if there is free pizza, I will eat way more free pizza than I want or need because it's free, and there's still part of my brain that's that she doesn't want me getting it. Hungry college students who's going like why, I will always be at the head of the line. And this is true. My coworkers can attest to it, like like, I'm there ten minutes before the food is being served. Jonathan's like a dog that runs to the other dog's bowl first and you have to

chase him away. I accept that it's I don't object at all, but yeah, it's it's obviously if we were to make this move, it would not I don't think it would be a gradual thing. I think this would have to be something where we reach a tipping point, right where we reach a point where we say no, the things that we need. We have more than enough of. There is no reason anyone should go wanting for these. There's there's no purpose unless you are just completely divorcing

yourself from any kind of compassion or empathy. And I don't think we've gone there. I hope we haven't gone there. And uh so I think that there could be a tipping point where we say, now it's undeniable, we have this.

There's a responsibility at some point to to figure out how to distribute it properly, which would buy necessity, uh involve a really big economic shakedown, because it's completely different from what we do today here in the United States, at least well tying into what we talked about in our last episode about about robots, you wouldn't necessarily need replicators,

and you wouldn't even necessarily need political action. You could have, I think, an organic realization of the post scarcity economy by a sudden, you know, rapid maybe over the course of five or ten years, acceleration in robot productivity, when suddenly robots can make everything we need and it totally takes us by surprise, and then what are you going to do? I mean, at that point, do the people who own the robots still say no, no, this is

all mine. That almost kind of becomes silly. I mean, I know they're people are greedy, But at the same time, once we're living in that world, wouldn't people kind of have a revelation. Wouldn't there be an epiphany? I think. I think that's what Star Trek presupposes, and I think it's a it's a lovely presupposition, you know. It's it's very nice to think that the kinds of problems that we're having due to greed right now are are going

to go away. Um, and I do think that it would have to be a paradigm shift culturally speaking, I think so too. And and not only that, but it would be so incredibly disruptive. I mean, we're talking about this and thinking about the the beautiful future where nobody wants for anything, you know, at least at as far

as the basic necessities go. But then you think, well, this world would also eliminate some big institutions that have been around for for centuries, like banks, you know, and that's you know, when you're talking about an institution that's been around that long, like the type of institution even if you're not talking about specific you know, branch or whatever. Then again, then again, now I don't want to police. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, Banker listeners and right.

But I don't know if anybody is really like I love banking so much. I love banking and Mary Poppins, I would be banking even if I didn't get paid for it. I kind of don't really think that. I don't know, As I said, maybe I'm assuming it's difficult to to put forth that opinion. I mean, being that all all three of us talking here are our artists and writers and and you know, amateur armchair philosophers, and so it's it's kind of difficult, I think, for us

particularly to to consider uh that level of love of banking. Anyway, So if I owned a bank, I guarantee you I would love it. No, no, no, I'm getting to the to the point I was trying to make us. If we imagine a scenario when society is flush with wealth, like we're talking about, there's enough for everybody to have tons of money without doing anything at all. Then even with that benefit, would bankers still want to preserve banking?

Wouldn't they rather be uh writers? And podcasters and arm chairfuhilosophers and restaurant No, I'm not saying that they might rather be chefs, or they might rather play golf, or they might rather do I don't know what I think I think that would be. I think there would be a an interroom period where there'd be a lot of turmoil. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so after that, I think we emerged to the world where everyone's a golfer. But before that, golf clubs

are being used for other purposes. So I'm just saying I think that. I think because because you're talking about you know, when we say paradigm shifts, it's those are simple words, but we're talking something really fundamental. Here is something that that is a huge, like a bigger change than anything that's been faced in well, at least in

our lifetimes, if not the human species. You could argue that there have been some pretty major ones like uh, you know, uh, the Industrial Revolution, but still is it's hard to think of something that would be more disruptive

than this particular tipping point moment. I'd say. The one last question, then, is one that we also had to deal with in in the previous podcast about robots, but um, is there a worry that in a post scarcity economy where people aren't forced to work, while people will choose not to work, but that will also make them miserable. I mean, we make decisions all the time that are guaranteed to make us less happy, just because in the short term it seems like the best thing to do.

I'm gonna eat these nachos because it seems really great now, and then an hour later, I'm like, wow, why did I wish? And it could be the same thing with with our laziness instinct. I I do lazy things where I really wish I'd made better use of that time. Uh,

and it kind of makes me sad. And then I wonder if I didn't have to work, would my entire life turn into one of those moments where well, I don't have to do anything right now, so I'm not gonna And then I'm near the nearing the end of my life, and I'm like, wow, what a waste of time. You're like, Man, that's twenty eight years that I spent

browsing Facebook really could have been used differently. I think, in my experience, the neat thing and I'm sure it's true for both of you as well, uh to some to some level at least, is that the thing that I like to do in my spare time back before I had this job, is what I'm doing now for my job. So I'd like to think that in this wonderful future where I no longer need to be paid for anything, I would be doing something akin to this for fun, because that's what I was doing before I

had the job. So I I am one of the incredibly lucky people who is legitimately doing what I love to do as my job. So I would imagine that my life would be not much different. I mean, obviously I would. I mentioned the technology to be better, so I could, you know, have a robot edit my podcast for me. But other than that putting all out of work, I'm just saying my personal podcast, not my work podcast,

because we've already established there's no work anymore. There is no robot that could make disgusting electronic music like NOL. That's true, beautifully disgusting electronic. No, it's great stuff. Those faces read from all the backhanded compliments we've been giving him. Okay, we just he just poked out and behind us speaker

it at us. We should wrap this up all right, So this was a ton of fun to look into, right, I mean, we have to thank George for the email and the suggestion because uh, we're all star Trek fans here, and the thought of going into the economics behind it as as vaguely described as they were, was a fun challenge.

So if you guys have any other suggestions something that you want to hear us talk about, whether it's science fiction related or just some sort of topic and you wonder what's that going to be like in the future, you should write us in. Let's know. Our email address is once again f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are f W Thinking. Just search fw Thinking and Facebook will

pop right up. Let us know what you think and we'll talk to you again really soon for more on this topic in the future, which technology I'll visit Forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places