You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century

[Welf]

At the Comic Con in New York there was a panel about the post-scarcity universe of Srat Trek. It is a quite interesting read and is gives insight how a post scarcity society would look.

Quite surprising was for me that this future society would be basically a mix of high school and post-doc. In a world past material scarcity social skills are more important than technical skills. The ability to grant or get access to important social events like parties or concerts will be more valuable than any ability to repair computers or create statistical analysis.

There is also an argument that western societies are about to reach a state of post scarcity. Physical goods are increasingly produced offshore, with western economies mostly adding services. In a way a container from china is a bit like a replicator creating food and other tools.

But read for yourself.

"You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century"

As any good Trekkie will tell you, the economics of the 24th century are somewhat different. Why? Because the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in people’s lives. They — Ferengi excluded — work to better themselves and the rest of humanity.

Except, the bummer is, that’s probably a major over-simplification.

A post-scarcity economy — a.k.a. the economic reality of an abundant system — may not necessarily lead to a utopian world. At least if we go by the meritocratic example of the fictional Star Trek society.

In other words, here’s a post about how I attended a New York Comic Con panel on the economics of abundance — featuring Paul Krugman and Brad Delong, Annalee Newitz (i09), Chris Black (Enterprise writer), Felix Salmon and Manu Saadia, author of the new book Trekonomics — and learnt that even if we did have it all one day, chances are, highly-popular cosplaying events would still be capped by the natural limits of space-time.

Thus, while the acquisition of wealth might not drive people, the acquisition of access rights to highly prestigious events (a comic-con ticket commodity forward curve of its own, if you will) will continue to do so. And if not that, the more basic acquisition of connections to people who “know the right people who know the secret passwords that can sweet-talk you through the gate-keepers”. Plus ca change.

Yes. Sometimes it’s very good indeed to be an FT Alphaville reporter.

Here follows a truncated transcript from the panel, purposefully excluding our very ridiculous question to the panel about whether or not the Federal Reserve will have finally raised rates by the 24th century.

[IK- Also, see here for the corrected version of the transcript for inaudibles and general transcript errors introduced from a poor quality really quiet recording, having to transcribe whilst on a booming jet plane over the Atlantic, and unfamiliarity with Iain M Banks. Thanks to Brad Delong. I have corrected Kardashians for Cardassians, but it certainly made sense either way.]

MANU: The project for the book, it started out drinking beer with Chris. We were discussing about whether there is a book about Star Trek economics because there is a book about everything to do with Star Trek.

In the book I’ve tried to step out of that mindset, and tried to actually describe how it works. And I’ve discovered some very surprising things.

The biggest thing, I believe, that I got out of researching the book and writing it, is that the post scarcity in Star Trek is not driven by technology but a policy choice. And this is where having such a stellar economic panel to discuss this comes in.

FELIX: What is post scarcity?

BRAD: Well 400 years ago, in almost all human societies being rich relative to your neighbours mattered a lot. If you were poor, especially poor and female, chances were you weren’t getting the calories you needed to reliably ovulate, and chances were your children weren’t getting the nutrients that they needed for their immune systems to be protected against the common cold. 400 years ago the great bulk of humanity lived lives that were nasty, brutish, short and they were hungry pretty much all the time. And when they weren’t hungry they were wet, because the roof leaked, and when they weren’t wet they were probably cold because damp proofing hadn’t been invented.

Now we, here, in the prosperous middle class in the North Atlantic are moving into another society and Gene Roddenberry tried to paint our future by saying wait a minute what’s going to happen in three centuries? In three centuries we are going to have replicators. Anything material, gastronomic that we want indeed anything experiential with the holo-deck we we want we are going to have. What kinds of people will we be then and how will we live? And indeed, we are quite ahead on that transition already.

Whenever I go say, to the middle of the country, I find myself terrified because I’m rarely the fattest person in the room, which means right now in the United States what used to be the principle occupation of the human race — farming — we are down to 1 per cent of our labour force growing essential nutrients because time spent growing four-inch egg plants which are harvested isn’t really food that’s art, and we have about three times as many people in our medical and health support professions working to try and offset the effects of excessive calories. We are now rapidly approaching a post scarcity economy not just for food but if you go and look at containers coming in from China with respect to things physically made as well. And that’s one of the things Star Trek is about.

ANNALEE: One of things I find interesting about Star Trek is that it does try to imagine a post-scarcity economy with no money, people don’t work because they have to but because they want to, but there are all these hints that we get — especially in Star Trek the next generation, my favourite series — that there’s a lot of ways that the post scarcity economy is supported by other types of economies.

Economies that we might consider to be part of the past, and that’s why one of the most interesting episodes to think about is “measure of a man” from the second season of Next generation where the question comes up whether Data, our favourite android with a positronic brain, is actually his own person or is in fact property. And this is a question which comes up again in Voyager when the holographic doctor who is unquestionably an autonomous human being is also considered property and he writes basically the communist manifesto, and encourages all these other holograms which are being horribly oppressed and enslaved to have a revolution. And this is going on at the periphery of Star Trek all the time.

Any time you get off the Enterprise, the wonderful utopian Enterprise, which did in fact inspire me to become a Marxist as a student because I did believe “wow, we really could get to a world which was better than this one” – we are constantly being reminded that there may be other systems of labour, like slavery or things that are closer to wage-slavery, which are supporting this wonderful life that the Federation enjoys and which Picard and team enjoy on their really clean ship. So that’s one of the things about Star Trek is that it allows us to have that kind thought experiment of what would it be like if we did get past capitalism?

Or if we did have a system of capitalism which was more restrained by government and regulation — whatever the hell the Federation is, the government, UN — but at the same time, forced to recognise that there are these differences in what people have access to, and intense labour they perform and some of them are being treated like property. Some of them are chattel. So that’s always the good part of the thought experiment?

FELIX: Is that what the writers were thinking about? Or how did people come up with these interpretations.

CHRIS: Yes. Well. It’s funny. We didn’t think about a lot of that stuff consciously. And I worked on Enterprise, so it was at the end of the long-run of the franchise. That universe had been well established. To hear this conversation, to hear this book has been written so thoughtfully and profoundly is really gratifying. There were larger issues that came into play than people even consciously thought about. The practical reality of trying within the production schedule hours of network television a year, you were just always scrambling to get good entertaining scripts written in front of the camera. We were first and foremost trying to write what we thought were thoughtful exciting adventure stories for Captain Archer and the crew so we weren’t consciously thinking about how these characters were being motivated by the needs of a post scarcity economy. But because that universe had already been established, and we all wanted to be respectful of that universe, and grateful — we took the responsibility of keeping Gene’s vision intact and moving it forward. Very conscious of not violating those rules. The answer is no. But we were very conscious of keeping those characters in the world they were established.

FELIX: Does post-scarcity economics even make sense?

PAUL: I watched the original series and a bit of the next generation and then dropped off. I’m more of an Asimov guy, what can I say. But, the question is… do we accept the premise of a post-scarcity society? First of all there’s a long history of people saying, we’re much richer than our ancestors were and if you go just a little bit further you’ll get to the point where there won’t be any economic question, post scarcity. Keynes wrote an essay about that saying that if the world got as rich as it is right now there would no longer be money, and John K Galbraith wrote that in a new industrial state that the standard of living of the average American would be so high that it’s basically only propaganda that would make them want more, to which Robert Solow responded, well it doesn’t look that high to me but maybe those things look different from where Galbraith vacations.

So, in Star Trek they have a replicator that can make any thing you want. But it makes any thing you want. Even now, we spend only 30 per cent of our income on goods the rest is for services, and the replicators won’t help with that. We have fewer manufacturing workers but lots and lots of nurses, so. So that’s the point. We can imagine a world where all services are provided as well. We have robots or something to do the services. But in order to do the full range of stuff we want they have to be very intelligent things in which case aren’t those then people? So the actual issue is that a world where you have servitors of some kind who will give you everything you want is a world where it’s very hard to tell the difference between servitors and slaves. So I think there’s arguably a dark side to the abundance theory.

The other thing to say, there’s this great section where Picard lectures a man from the 21st century, saying we’ve moved to a world where people don’t seek money they seek reputation and honour. Well Brad and I live in the academic world, where pretty much that’s how it works….

FELIX: So the post-scarcity economy is not utopian, it’s actually not that pleasant this meritocracy of the Federation.

MANU: It’s horrible.

It’s not horrible horrible. But I always thought Star Trek looked like a weird cross between a faculty club and the Red Cross. It’s very humanitarian, but I know for a fact the professors here know what I’m talking about. The world of meritocracy and academia is extremely harsh and cut throat. You’re on top one day, but you’re always afraid and watching your back because someone else is going to come and unseat you. So what you see on the show, the next generation, is really the 1 per cent. Those who are the ultra achievers in that sense. You barely see the other side of it, the 99% who lead lives of comfort and abundance but not necessarily the most interesting. So it seems to me to be very harsh. I always thought that as a kid watching the Next Generation, I always identified very much with Wesley Crusher, because he lived in a world where he had to achieve and he had to become the person that the adults wanted him to become and he actually didn’t want to. That’s the part that’s hard. You’re driven to achieve but it’s not at all clear you will achieve. Which is the problem of a meritocratic world. It’s not all fun and games.

FELIX: It’s very hard for a meritocratic world to be utopian, so what about the 99% of people who live on earth, are they happy?

CHRIS: Are they happy? I don’t know. What we focused on was the adventures of the people on the ship. This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but in terms of the meritocracy of it all you are seeing people at the top of their game. This is the 1/1000th of the 1 per cent who get to go to out of space. That was the mandate of the show. The funny thing was that there was an inherent conflict in trying to write the show, you had a group of people — Star Fleet officers — and this was a mandate given to us — that these people have a singular purpose in mind, they get along and they don’t get into petty conflicts and arguments which immediately took the drama out of the show, meaning everything had to come from an external source. And you didn’t exactly want every threat every week and week out to be about some hostile greedy or malicious alien race. What you wanted the drama to come from within the ship, from conflict between these characters that didn’t always get along. If you look at the original series, Spock and McCoy didn’t get along at all. McCoy would sometimes say the most outrageous racist things to him. There was mutual respect and friendship at the end of the day, but there was also amazing conflict.

FELIX: Is there anything utopian about meritocracy? 2016 is not the only anniversary of Star Trek, but also the 500th anniversary of Utopia by Thomas Moore. Are we, as far from utopia today as we were 500 years ago? Or is it just this thing that there’s always going to be this conflict. Or is there something different now? Thanks to star trek there are policy choices which mean we can get through it?

BRAD: First let me put in a plug for hyper intellectualised prosperous academic meritocracies. My career nadir, when Larry Summers looked at me across the table at the Treasury in early 1995 and said how did you get what the demand for pesos would be after NAFTA so wrong Brad? The worst analysis I have ever conducted as an economist. That burns considerably less than watching your children starve to death. We are problem solving, puzzle solving, status seeking creatures, who fortunately very much like to get involved in gift exchange relationships with each other so that we can all hang together in a 7.2bn society.

So we will find puzzles to solve and we will find sources of stresses and conflict. But the sharp point of what we’re all afraid of is very different in a post scarcity society. The plutocracy of New York are more interested right now in who happens to have the best apartment with a better view of central park than in where the next meal is going to come from. That is a considerable gain. We will make our status differences important and powerful to us psychologically, but we should be able to move beyond that. As Adam Smith wrote, the interesting thing about humanity and the strivers is that the strivers work like dogs their entire life, so that when they are retired they can sit in the sun so and be happy and comfortable and they could have done that anyway in their 20s, and they would have got more fun out of it.

FELIX: Are we always going to be competing for positional goods? Or could a post-scarcity world change human psychology?

PAUL: I think. First of all. When listening to Brad I think of the old line about how fights in academia are so bitter because the stakes are so small. And when the stakes are small. Aside from ego there is nothing at all. And even that is always going to be a really restrictive universe. So even people who are engaged in ferocious status competition, these are the people that are going to be featured on a TV show because it’s interesting, but the 99.9 per cent of the Federation are people who are doing other things and what exactly — I’m not sure it makes good drama — but it’s kind of interesting to ask what exactly would they be doing? So where Picard explains what motivates us, that’s actually what motivates people like him. And there are very few people like him. So what is the rest of the civilised universe doing? They’re enjoying life and doing cosplay and things. But it would probably be an interesting thing.

BRAD: But even that would be a source of status. Have you seen the stuff Annalee has been posting?

ANNALEE: And I’m cosplaying as an economist right now.

One of the things that’s really interesting about what you were raising Paul with what happens with ordinary people is that there’s this really funny story about a timeline in Star Trek which is established in the next generation era, there is a whole different timeline, so what happens is that earth is plunged into a war and in the first episode of next generation Q torments the crew by saying we’re going to go back to the world of our future, which is a medieval world, ruled by religious creepozoids. It’s basically this cyclical view of history, where this highly industrial organisation has fallen back to a medieval state, they’re living in extreme poverty, there’ disease and famine, and then some white dude figures out how to build a rocket ship by the skin of his teeth, erupting out of this medieval world of scarcity. Not coming out of a hyper industrial society, and then the Vulcans arrive. So I am left wondering is whether what really happens to humans as we transition to this post scarcity world, that basically we are colonised by Vulcans. So really it’s not that humanity evolves, it’s basically we’re colonised.

BRAD: It’s not colonisation, we’re pets.

ANNALEE: That’s colonisation, buddy.

FELIX: I was colonised by my cat a long time ago.

MANU: I always took the more optimistic view that we are the Vulcans, or we have to become the Vulcans. If we are going to be colonised I’d rather be colonised by Vulcans anyway.

BRAD: Nimoy always said he played Spock not as a being without emotions but a being whose emotions were so terribly suppressed he could not give into them at all. So Vulcans were a civilisation that was desperately trying to figure out how to actually behave in a civilised manner.

CHRIS: I think the interesting thing about Spock was that he was only half Vulcan. You had the best of both worlds, this character in conflict. This sense of what humans wanted to be and what they were fighting against being. This character is not devoid of emotions but needs to keep them under control, needs to keep them in check.

FELIX: Is that utopian or not? This world where we have emotions but we are constantly trying to keep them tacked down and never showing them doesn’t sound very utopian to me.

CHRIS: Conflict is the source of drama, and Spock was always in conflict with himself.

PAUL: People have an amazing capacity to be unhappy. If you look at utopia the problem isn’t scarcity, it’s people.

ANNALEE: The Iain M Banks culture novels are another example of a post-scarcity world driven by a lot of the same problems we see in Star Trek, where at the edges of these beautiful ships there’s slavery and imperialism and racism, and people are constantly struggling with those issues even thought they can transcend them at any time.

PAUL: Iain M Banks, the culture novels are amazing. Everyone should read them.

BRAD: Reuse your weapons first.*

*Oops, what we should have said: “Read Use Your Weapons first”. Not familiar with the Culture series.

PAUL: All the novels are really concerned with the fringe of the fringe of the fringe. Special circumstances, which is that the one part of society which isn’t functioning like the rest. But it does do what Star Trek does, have someone who is recruited from outside who gets to wander around one of these ships and gets to see what life is like for ordinary people, which is, to have life without slavery, there are in fact these super-intelligent minds, who can basically supply all the needs for the organic guys by basically — it barely requires a finger nail’s worth of attention. They can give you everything you need without worrying about it. People do seem to be somewhat more balanced in that kind of environment than they probably would be in reality.

ANNALEE: But also everyone’s a cyborg. They all have neural nets. They can restrain their emotions.

MANU: To understand Star Trek’s economics you need to go back to Asimov, because it’s very much very directly connected, not so much the Foundation part but the robot stories. In the sense that at least if you read the Robots of Dawn and the later novels, Asimov describes a society beyond earth where robots take care of everything and you have these people living on their gigantic estates, and are enjoying life and not doing much.

PAUL: And they’re completely neurotic screwed up people. The luxury and role of that situation.

BRAD: Those who are not maladjusted people become Star Trek officers and compete for status. Perhaps if you really want to be looking at what their lives are like we should be looking at regency romances. A previous culture of abundance where people find very important and interesting things for themselves to do. Even though there is no serious conflict in a regency romance world. If you want to you can say there are three spheres of regional conflict: fear of violent death, scarcity of resources and who is going to sleep with whom. But what you’ll find in a society of abundance, like in a regency novel about the aristocracy, is that who is going to sleep with whom becomes the focus of the plot. The secondary focus being a demonstration of human excellence via proper appreciation of fashion.

PAUL: It’s cosplay, just a slightly different version.

ANNALEE: But don’t you think it’s possible Brad that what most ordinary people are doing is living on [inaudible] after having been screwed over by the Cardassians and now the Federation is there screwing them over — or maybe that’s more what society is like?

BRAD: No, that’s no longer a society of abundance. That’s the world we have today, in which we have the upper middle class of America. In the 7.2bn lives 2bn of them lead lives which are frankly indistinguishable from those of our pre-industrial ancestors, and the other 4.5bn live lives that look to us like the standard of life people had in the 1970s and 1950s, 1920s and 1880s, but with all their TVs and smartphones they can see us. So I got off the plane today from Lima, Peru. A wonderful city, a wonderful culture, lots and lots of people — all of them working at least as hard as anyone in New York, only about 1/8th as rich. And we may be approaching material abundance in terms of manufactured goods, and calories and nutrients, but they are certainly still very far from that.

[Guardsman Bass]

It's a very interesting. I think even in a situation like that, you'd either need some really strong conditioning to not abuse access to replicators (possibly helped by selectivity in crew selection for starships), or some type of rationing measure. The Star Trek universe had something like that in the beginning (the "Federation Credit" mentioned on Memory Alpha), but Roddenberry eventually eliminated it in TNG.

I could almost buy the shift towards status-seeking as the new "scarce" thing to compete over, although it seems like at the lower level it would be a difficult motivation with the aforementioned conditioning or something else to motivate people. Being a captain or officer might result in a lot of status, but what about being the third assistant engine technician or some other post like that? And you'd basically need access to holodecks, hologram services, and replicators to be near universal if they have ubiquitous, virtually free access to goods and services in civilian and starship life.

The Culture did it better in Consider Phlebas. It came across as the Minds essentially providing everyone who was a member of the Culture with the equivalent of an incredibly generous "stipend" of goods and services, although going beyond that with a project would either require trade or convincing them to give you more resources.

[LadyTevar]

BRAD: Reuse your weapons first.*

*Oops, what we should have said: “Read Use Your Weapons first”. Not familiar with the Culture series.

Actually, the novel is "Use OF Weapons".

This has always been interesting to me, as I've never quite believed the idea of "post-Scarcity". Somewhere, somehow, someone was doing the work and not getting paid or recognized for it.
At least with The Culture, you had The Minds doing all the service work. They provided the goods and services, and all the 99% had to do was sit back and enjoy the Bread & Circuses. The 99% didn't even have to worry about dying, they'd be efficiently uploaded into a new body. It was Special Circumstances that had all the power, and even then it was all Minds acting in (mostly) unison. "Master of Games" shows how Special Circumstances is willing to lie, cheat, and manipulate a Citizen, in order to give a whole planet a Out Of Context problem. "Consider Phelbas" shows (in the background) what happens when Special Circumstances fucks up.

[Jub]

Actually, the novel is "Use OF Weapons".

This has always been interesting to me, as I've never quite believed the idea of "post-Scarcity". Somewhere, somehow, someone was doing the work and not getting paid or recognized for it.
At least with The Culture, you had The Minds doing all the service work. They provided the goods and services, and all the 99% had to do was sit back and enjoy the Bread & Circuses. The 99% didn't even have to worry about dying, they'd be efficiently uploaded into a new body. It was Special Circumstances that had all the power, and even then it was all Minds acting in (mostly) unison. "Master of Games" shows how Special Circumstances is willing to lie, cheat, and manipulate a Citizen, in order to give a whole planet a Out Of Context problem. "Consider Phelbas" shows (in the background) what happens when Special Circumstances fucks up.

"Master of Games" should be "The Player of Games".

That aside I don't think Gurgeh was manipulated entirely to speed along the process of destabilizing the Azadian Empire. As we see in the opening he was dissatisfied and just sort of coasting through life, even the idea of just winning at games wasn't enough for him which is part of what Gurgeh took Mawhrin-Skel up on the offer to cheat in order to get a perfect game. How much of his dissatisfaction was due to him and how much was due to manipulation is up for debate, but it can't be said that Gurgeh didn't return from his adventure a happier and more well-rounded person.

What I'm getting at, is that for all their manipulation both the Empire of Azad and Gurgeh himself were better off for the events of the novel. The minds used the best tool for the job and in doing so improved the tool itself.

[Adam Reynolds]

Other than Federation propaganda, as touted by Picard and others, is there actually any indication that the Federation is post-scarcity? We certainly see evidence to the contrary. Tasha Yar's homeworld falls into civil war and is kicked out of the Federation.

[Nephtys]

Post-Scarcity seems to only align with Earth and the core worlds. Yet on Earth, Cadet Sisko was talking about blowing his energy credits or transporter vouchers or whatever to beam home on weekends to eat food. And his dad having a restaurant suggests that his skills as a cook are still in demand and provide a degree of prestige.

Meanwhile, think of all those crappy colonists who are always either abandoned by the federation or attacked by wilderness-type threats of their world or other civilizations. Giving up territory, occupied and colonized territory in fact, to the Cardassians during their peace treaty.

Holodeck time seems certainly to be a commodity of trade, even during TNG as well. There's still limits to that sort of stuff that people would vie for.

[FaxModem1]

Not kicked out, they left the Federation. If you really want worlds that were kicked out, look at the Cardassian DMZ because a treaty was signed.

As for post-scarcity UFP? According to wikipedia, post-scarcity is universal access to goods, services and information.

There's the numerous references to how disease, war, poverty, etc. are gone. We never see any homeless, starving, mentally ill, or people who are forgotten by the UFP. Knickknacks, food, and spare parts are made via replicator, but there are things the replicator can't make. Everyone seems to have access to information that isn't classified, such as books, holo-programs, history, science, etc. without paying a fee, meaning free access to information. Jake even mentions to Quark that he won't be making money by writing his novels and getting them published.

But then, we also see rough living out on the frontier, with them needing Starfleet to come by and fix problems, upgrade some technology, or deliver some disease or medicine after something has gone wrong, so it isn't universal, or at least in development. Even then, Starfleet is sent out to fix almost every problem a colony has.

It's not as if Caldos III, when they had malfunctioning weather management equipment, was told, "Gee, all you can offer our crew is a home cooked meal in exchange? Well screw you, we want something in exchange for our services."

[Purple]

Yet on Earth, Cadet Sisko was talking about blowing his energy credits or transporter vouchers or whatever to beam home on weekends to eat food.

This might have an ulterior source than real scarcity though. It might just be that the academy restricts the use of its transporters to students on the grounds that they don't want them spending too much time away from campus.

[Simon_Jester]

Other than Federation propaganda, as touted by Picard and others, is there actually any indication that the Federation is post-scarcity? We certainly see evidence to the contrary. Tasha Yar's homeworld falls into civil war and is kicked out of the Federation.

The physical technology exists to make the Federation post-scarcity and we rarely see evidence of any economic hardship on Federation worlds.

Turkana IV is a huge exception to this. But the thing is, on Turkana IV it appears that what happeend first was that the political system fell apart. A civil war started. Then the Federation withdrew rather than treat with the fragmented warring factions of what used to be the planetary government, then the economy fell apart and the political system dissolved into chaos.

The one thing that can screw up any post-scarcity economic paradise is, essentially, politics... and that appears to be what happened on Turkana IV.

Post-Scarcity seems to only align with Earth and the core worlds. Yet on Earth, Cadet Sisko was talking about blowing his energy credits or transporter vouchers or whatever to beam home on weekends to eat food. And his dad having a restaurant suggests that his skills as a cook are still in demand and provide a degree of prestige.

A cadet might very well have his travel, leave time, and other access to energy-intensive services limited as a matter of personal discipline. A cook's services may be valued even though everyone can have nutritious and reasonably tasty meals, if the cook's meals are tastier than what the replicator can create. Just because the economy is post-scarcity doesn't mean there's no such thing as luxury goods.

Meanwhile, think of all those crappy colonists who are always either abandoned by the federation or attacked by wilderness-type threats of their world or other civilizations. Giving up territory, occupied and colonized territory in fact, to the Cardassians during their peace treaty.

If you physically leave the places that have infrastructure advanced enough to be post-scarcity, yes, you will face conditions of economic scarcity. Just like how in real life, if you deliberately leave the areas that have electricity and running water, you find yourself in places that do not have these things. It's still accurate to say "the US has electricity" even though if you choose to live in a shack fifty miles from the nearest town and in the heart of a howling wilderness, you personally may not have electricity.

Likewise, things like having the Federation cede territory to Cardassians are political acts which have nothing to do with the condition of their economy. As noted above, politics can always screw up any economy, including one so productive that there are enough goods for everyone.

Holodeck time seems certainly to be a commodity of trade, even during TNG as well. There's still limits to that sort of stuff that people would vie for.

Holodeck time is certainly limited on a Starfleet ship, especially given that realistically there would be important legitimate uses for it that take precedence over using it for entertainment. Things like running training simulations.

[biostem]

The problem is, we have very little information regarding civilian life in Star Trek. For instance, we know that Picard's family owns a vineyard, and Sisko's father owns a restaurant. What if, for instance, I decided to leave home, and wanted to start a vineyard of my own? Would the Federation furnish me with arable land, a house, and all the other equipment I would need, or would I have to "earn" all that stuff some way? What if you were living in a very desirable location, but now I move into town and I want to live in the location? How are things like land or equipment divvied out?

Yes, you can replicate almost anything, but someone has to build, operate. and maintain that replicator, someone has to do the same for its power source, and so on. Really, the commodities boil down to the energy to power the equipment, physical items that cannot be replicated, (latinum, certain vaccines/chemicals, etc), habitable land, and skills/personnel that can't be automated, (I'm assuming here that the Federation can build robots, but chooses not to use them widely or cannot use them for other tasks for some reason - like how they repurposed all those Mk 1 EMHs to scrub conduits or somesuch).

[Adam Reynolds]

Holodeck time is certainly limited on a Starfleet ship, especially given that realistically there would be important legitimate uses for it that take precedence over using it for entertainment. Things like running training simulations.

That would in many ways be a terrible idea. Because the danger is wholly simulated, it would not give Federation soldiers the combat effectiveness they could otherwise have. That is not to say that it would have no value, but if that is what the Federation considers training, we can see why their military has problems. Under SOD, this would explain why redshirts are so easily overwhelmed while the combat veteran main characters are frequently not.

While the modern US military does use similar ideas like MILES gear(high-tech laser tag), they also regularly use live fire drills. And the US Navy uses damage control simulators that actually fill the virtual ship with water, simulating the experience of being on a ship that is actually sinking. Not to mention that the US Navy also regularly engages in live fire drills in which weapons are fired under conditions virtually identical to those in wartime. Danger that feels simulated only gives so much experience. It has to be supported by training that actually has a risk of death, otherwise green soldiers will lock up when they first engage in combat.

[FaxModem1]

You also don't want your soldiers killed because of a training accident. Having them try out maneuvers, scenarios, and different ways of combat will help out a lot rather than throwing them into a meat grinder. Holodecks also seem to be a way for a lot of Starfleet officers to exercise, as we saw Worf's and Tasha's exercise programs on the holodeck. It was only as the technology became more mainstream(somewhere in the first three seasons of TNG) that it seemed to become the newest version of a video game, where you play holo-novels, play baseball, as Sherlock Holmes or Dixon Hill, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, there were Sherlock Holmes and Dixon Hill episodes in the first season. But there were also examples like Worf and Yar's highly realistic combat or martial arts simulations.

That would in many ways be a terrible idea. Because the danger is wholly simulated, it would not give Federation soldiers the combat effectiveness they could otherwise have. That is not to say that it would have no value, but if that is what the Federation considers training, we can see why their military has problems...

What, do you think real armies actually train by shooting real bullets at each other? Shelling each other with live bombs? Not often, for obvious reasons! The danger is ALWAYS fictional in a combat exercise or training course, if only so you don't wind up actually killing off 10-20% of your soldiers in every period of intense training.

Holodecks would make an excellent training tool for combat, because they are infinitely diverse, you can tailor the opposition to your needs with one or two sentences to the computer, and you have detailed computer records of everything that happened.

Plus, and you may not be aware of this, but the military does a lot of training for things other than infantry combat. Like maintaining equipment, like how to construct field fortifications, like how to operate sensor and communication equipment. You can simulate all those things in a holodeck too. So instead of having engineering trainees working on the warp core directly, they work on a simulated warp core so that if they "blow up the ship," the consequence is that they get their ass kicked by their petty officer, not that the ship literally blows up. Instead of working on sensitive communications equipment that can be damaged by mishandling, trainees work on simulated equipment that still acts like the real thing from the user's point of view. Junior officers in the command track can practice running a starship bridge from the holodeck, instead of the real bridge. Nurses and surgeons can practice operations in the holodeck, instead of on live patients who bleed and die if you hold the weird-buzzing-wound-sealer-thing wrong.

Under SOD, this would explain why redshirts are so easily overwhelmed while the combat veteran main characters are frequently not.

Appalling redshirt casualties were most common in the original series, when they had no holodecks...

While the modern US military does use similar ideas like MILES gear(high-tech laser tag), they also regularly use live fire drills. And the US Navy uses damage control simulators that actually fill the virtual ship with water, simulating the experience of being on a ship that is actually sinking.

A holodeck can duplicate both those things. We see holographic tommy guns that cause real gunshot wounds on real Borg, and holograms can certainly simulate water because we see lots of bodies of water in the holodeck.

There are many instances where holograms 'with the safety off' cause real, life-threatening emergencies for the users. So clearly there is no problem with holodeck training 'not being dangerous enough' to be effective.

Not to mention that the US Navy also regularly engages in live fire drills in which weapons are fired under conditions virtually identical to those in wartime.

Which Starfleet is quite capable of doing anyway- but for every real warp-capable antimatter torpedo you expend on training, wouldn't it be nice to expend a few dozen simulated ones too? And have those simulations be good?

Danger that feels simulated only gives so much experience. It has to be supported by training that actually has a risk of death, otherwise green soldiers will lock up when they first engage in combat.

Come to think of it... are you so obtuse you didn't notice that I never said holodecks were the only training tool on the ship? What holodecks do very well is act as a multiplier for the overall level of 'practical' training someone can receive. Instead of practicing something once in a high-stakes environment after 100 hours of lecture, you can practice it once in a high stakes environment after fifty hours of lecture and fifty hours of low risk hands-on training that still feels as real as Holo-Moriarty's punch in the face.

[Starglider]

And again with the flailing attempts to show some kind of military knowledge that end up being the literal opposite of intelligent discussion. Let me guess, you read Starship Troopers last week and are currently fixated on the boot camp chapter.

While the modern US military does use similar ideas like MILES gear(high-tech laser tag), they also regularly use live fire drills. And the US Navy uses damage control simulators that actually fill the virtual ship with water, simulating the experience of being on a ship that is actually sinking. Not to mention that the US Navy also regularly engages in live fire drills in which weapons are fired under conditions virtually identical to those in wartime. Danger that feels simulated only gives so much experience. It has to be supported by training that actually has a risk of death, otherwise green soldiers will lock up when they first engage in combat.

Obviously holodecks can do the exact same thing, with much more flexibility and fine control. Phasers can be set to 'stun and/or hurt like hell'. Fake explosions can use carefully controlled force that will bruise and wind but not kill people. In the very first episode in which the holodeck appeared, we saw it make real water that made Wesley actually wet. If the Federation wanted to simulate something sinking, for some reason, they could do so, with the refinement that the water would be removed if someone loses consciousness. Of course they could disable the safeties completely and make it just as deadly as the real thing, but they don't (on purpose) because they're not idiots. Neither the US military nor the Federation is psychopathic and while it realises that training needs to have risk, in the sense that it can seriously hurt when you screw up, it would prefer to avoid killing recruits. No one learns anything from being dead and if the US military could remove the risk of actual death from training (while keeping the experience otherwise equivalent), it would.

The major reason for live-fire training in Starfleet is not because holodecks are not realistic enough to train personnel, it's to test the physical equipment and ship systems integration under realistic use. After all diagnostics can only do so much, and you need a performance baseline to calibrate the simulations.

[Lord Revan]

With Holodecks you could have training exercises that are alot more like to real but "safe" since we know that there has to a way to "hide" person within the holo deck as the illusion doesn't break if 2 persons walk away from each until their distance is greater the physical size of the holodeck or if one of those people walks behind a wall.

so it's possible to have group exercises where if one of the members "dies" he or she is replaced with a holografic "corpse" while the actual person is hidden from view to not break the illusion.

[Adam Reynolds]

The problem with holodeck training is that it is too easy for it to become a game. Without any serious combat experience, which the Federation clearly lacks in the time of TNG before the Borg and Dominion threats, it would be likely that Federation officers would cheat at training as a means to gain prestige. When we saw a serious attempt at training in TNG it featured the Enterprise against an eighty year old ship. This is not indicative of a mindset that would lead to effectiveness in training. While it is technically possible to use the holodeck in a fashion that would lead to realistic training, it is less likely that it would be, given the cultural refusal to consider Starfleet a military. When you are dealing with a more realistic experience, it is harder to cheat and easier for mistakes to have real problems.

This was, historically, a problem in the US Navy just before WW2. It was why, off Guadalcanal, the IJN did far better at night actions initially. The US Navy never properly trained for that environment while the IJN did. When the US Navy did train, it was usually in conditions that allowed officer to more easily gain prestige rather than properly test tactics.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If you're referring to "Peak Performance" with that "E-D versus eighty year old ship" remark, wasn't the whole point of that to give Riker and go a challenge of facing down a massively superior foe? Just they would have to do against the Borg?

Kolrami (sp?) said as much, that the Zak'dorn word for "mismatch" was "challenge." Using "Peak Performance" to say that Starfleet combat training is really bad is an extremely weak argument.

[Adam Reynolds]

If you're referring to "Peak Performance" with that "E-D versus eighty year old ship" remark, wasn't the whole point of that to give Riker and go a challenge of facing down a massively superior foe? Just they would have to do against the Borg?

Kolrami (sp?) said as much, that the Zak'dorn word for "mismatch" was "challenge." Using "Peak Performance" to say that Starfleet combat training is really bad is an extremely weak argument.

Would the US Navy test its officers by making a captain take a 1950s era destroyer against an Arliegh Burke as a challenge? That would have no value for either side.

[Batman]

In other words, the holodeck not being real isn't the problem, the mindset of the people using it is. Since you just admitted this happened in the real world (and the pre-WW2 USN is far from the only example), how exactly would not using the holodeck change that? Their 'live fire' exercises would be just as rigged.
The holodeck offers far better training possibilities than any real world alternative, because it can be set to 'really really hurt but not actually injure'. The People abusing those possibilities would manipulate any other form of exercise too.

[NoXion]

Would the US Navy test its officers by making a captain take a 1950s era destroyer against an Arliegh Burke as a challenge? That would have no value for either side.

They might if they were facing the prospect of fighting a massively superior foe in open warfare. Since the US Navy has never faced a comparable threat, it's no surprise that they haven't done so.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Would the US Navy test its officers by making a captain take a 1950s era destroyer against an Arliegh Burke as a challenge? That would have no value for either side.

They might if they were facing the prospect of fighting a massively superior foe in open warfare. Since the US Navy has never faced a comparable threat, it's no surprise that they haven't done so.

This. Your analogy is utter bollocks.

[Guardsman Bass]

Looks like the topic has drifted a bit, but I found this interesting essay that touches on the whole "no money utopia" idea even if it's not precisely about Star Trek:

Utopia is thus a situation where goods and services are absolutely plentiful, there is no scarcity, and we can take as much of them as we like.

Now, some may stop me right there: this will never happen, they will say. But let’s not go that fast. Notice that when I go to my local Starbucks I have already entered a bit the “coast of Utopia”. I can get there an unlimited quantity of water, ice cubs, water cups, paper napkins, honey and milk, all for free. They are all laid out for all customers (and even for those who are not customers but just walk in) to take in unlimited amounts. There are other goods that have almost entered this cornucopia in our lifetimes: water, electricity. When I need to recharge my laptop I can count on getting free electricity from practically every store, train, or airport. There are of course other services like museums and open-air concerts that one can enjoy for free but they are a bit different because somebody else has paid for them. But I want to mention it here because we shall find them useful in a moment.

So, there is, I think, already now a limited, but growing, number of goods and services whose marginal cost of production is so low that they are practically free. (The average cost of production is not zero, but to an individual consumer these goods appear as free.) Consider now the behavior of people. Do they go to Starbucks stores and fill their pockets with free paper napkins or grab free ice cubes? No. Do they go to free open-air concerts day after day and fight for the spots? No. Once you know that such goods will be plentiful and free, you do not keep an unreasonable stock of them, nor do you fight to get them. You know they will be around when you need them.

So far we have I think made two important conclusions: there are goods that fall into the category of “Utopian goods” and behavior that people exhibit towards these goods does not include hoarding, wanton destruction or wastefulness.

Can we imagine that with economic progress more and more goods begin to fulfil this condition of Utopian goods? I think we can. Surely 40 or 50 years ago, you had to pay for the smallest piece of paper or paper napkin, not get it for free as now. (There is still a difference between the US and Europe in this: European Starbucks stores make it more difficult to get free paper napkins.) You even had to pay for a cup of water in an inn on a dirt road. Not today. So perhaps one day we shall walk into a Starbucks store and be given as much coffee for free as we like in the expectation that we shall buy some other, new fanciful product. But notice that when this happens, coffee will have joined paper napkins and ice cubes on our list of Utopian goods. So the list will be growing.

Extend this many years forward and assume that lots of the goods that we consume today eventually become Utopian. But who is going to produce them? Will not people have to be given some money-like coupons showing how many hours of work they did, coupons that would entitle them to goods and services? This does not make sense however because all goods, in any quantity, will be free to all, so coupon or no coupon you can get as much as you like. This then means that labor has to be entirely voluntary and free, not “paid” in any form. That too is not impossible to imagine. I am writing this blog for free. Of course, I hope to enhance my reputation (or to drive into the ground) but there is not a single good or service that I will get from this writing. You will also read it out of interest, not for any pecuniary reason. Many activities can be done for free, simply because people like to do them. Many other boring, repetitive or hard jobs that people do today will be done by robots. Controlling robots will require a minimum of work—perhaps writing a software code about how they (the robots) should do certain tasks, a thing, which I am sure, thousands of smart young people will compete to do for free.

When I go to a restaurant, who is going to make the food or serve me? Partly robots, and partly people who like to be chefs or to provide good service. Actually, the quality of some goods and services may go up compared to what it is today simply because people do a better job at something which they like rather than at something they are (merely) paid to do.

But here I think we run into our first problem. There will be always better and worse restaurants simply because the chefs will not be the same. But since the price paid at every restaurant is the same (zero), there will be no mechanism to distribute customers between better and worse restaurants except through queues. So we shall have shortages for certain goods and services. The shortages will be, like in a centrally-planned economy, “solved” through queueing..

The second problem appears at the level of jobs. We may be able to fill 90% of jobs by robots, 9% of jobs by people who simply like to do these jobs, but 1% of jobs that are hard or done under unpleasant conditions and cannot be mechanized will be always difficult to fill. So, we shall have to give something to people who do these jobs: we shall have to attract them to do the work. But how to attract them if everything is free anyway? So, money under the guise of some special coupons would reappear. Perhaps we could give these latter-day Stakhanovites coupons which would allow them to jump the queue in the restaurants. Perhaps something else. But whatever we do, a rationing mechanism, implied by money, will be back in that segment of the system.

Finally, technological progress. If we assume that technological progress has stopped, I think the idea of moneyless Utopia is ultimately, at least conceptually, almost possible. But if technological progress continues with people inventing new things simply out of curiosity, that is without any material interest, these new goods, always scarce in the beginning, will have to be rationed. So to ration them, we shall need money or quasi money too.

In a stationary economy, the range of goods that are available for free and in unlimited quantities, and the range of jobs that are performed for free can be very high. We may have a 99% Utopia. But not a hundred percent Utopia.

But in a growing economy, Utopia becomes much less realistic. The faster we grow the greater the number of Utopian goods and closer we seem to be coming to Utopia; but also, the faster we grow the more we invent new goods that are necessarily short in supply, and simultaneously the further we get from Utopia. Thus the fundamental nature of economic progress reveals itself in Leif’s question: economic progress is making us richer daily, but leaves us equally unsatisfied. For full happiness is possible only in stagnation.

Obviously, the "free stuff" in restaurants is being offset by the cost of products people purchase in real life, but it's an interesting point. If you didn't want to waste a ton of resources, you'd need a pretty incredibly powerful and responsive computer system/network to constantly adjust production and distribution in response to utilization, and a means of quickly recycling resources back into the system to be used again if they go unused. It's easier to see how that might be done in Star Trek. If folks don't use stuff anymore but don't want to have them as keep-sakes, you dump them back into the replicator system to recycle into resources for future products. In civilian life, the computer systems are constantly monitoring to adjust the amount of resources that need to be available in particular areas for replicator and other usage.

Some stuff would still be scarce, though, and you'd probably have to ask the Federation for extra resources (or if they had a market economy to go with it, you'd use credits to buy it). As brought up above, land in particular areas would still be scarce - maybe the Federation has nationalized all land and rents/lends it out as needed, allowing people to queue for particularly valuable plots of land. You'd also want some way to input new information and designs into the Replicators if you want new stuff.

[biostem]

Regarding the mention of the holodeck; There was the episode where Wesley encountered a situation where he had to choose between helping a starfleet person who was injured and trapped, vs another that was safe, but too scared/cowardly to save themselves - he saved the injured person, and the whole thing turned out to be a simulation. There was also that episode where they transported a group of primitive people that Worf's brother had integrated himself with, to the holodeck, and simulated a journey, until they found them a new planet to live on, and similarly transported them down to the planet. Thus, they can, at at least in some circumstances, do use holodeck technology for training or other purposes, without all the involved parties being aware of it.

[FaxModem1]

Actually, the simulation for Wesley was all stagecraft, as shortly afterward, the supposedly doomed guy left after the simulation was after with a short nod to Wesley. It was all a test to see if Wesley would do the right thing after having similar circumstances with the death of his dad.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes- but as I understand it, holodeck technologies may have been involved in crafting the stage. They certainly could be, and that's the point, that a holodeck makes a great training tool because you can do literally anything with it.

Counselor diagnoses a crewman with social phobia and wants to help them work it out? There's a holodeck program for that. Chief of security wants to train redshirts to shoot straight? Turn Holodeck Three into a firing range. Want the junior ensign to get some practice commanding ships against terrible odds? Load the Kobiyashi Maru scenario into the holodeck. Want to practice a complex surgical operation? Holo-operation. Et cetera, et cetera.

The point is, there are an infinite array of things the crew of a warship might use holodecks for as part of routine everyday business. Personal entertainment is the least of the applications even if it gets the most face time on the series.

The problem with holodeck training is that it is too easy for it to become a game. Without any serious combat experience, which the Federation clearly lacks in the time of TNG before the Borg and Dominion threats, it would be likely that Federation officers would cheat at training as a means to gain prestige.

ALL training becomes this in a military that gets complacent. You're still not thinking things through, and you're still attributing to holodecks problems that have nothing to do with holodecks.

When we saw a serious attempt at training in TNG it featured the Enterprise against an eighty year old ship. This is not indicative of a mindset that would lead to effectiveness in training

By contrast, two senior security officers use the holodeck to train for personal combat training against very nasty opponents, either armed or unarmed, and others join them in such activities. Maybe you should be taking a closer look instead of just deciding you know everything and everything will fit your preconceptions.

While it is technically possible to use the holodeck in a fashion that would lead to realistic training, it is less likely that it would be, given the cultural refusal to consider Starfleet a military. When you are dealing with a more realistic experience, it is harder to cheat and easier for mistakes to have real problems.

How is this NOT an issue with other kinds of training? By your own arguments, people who do all their training in real life are just as vulnerable to having their training be 'gamified' and abstract.

By contrast, at least the people with lots of holodeck time have lots of experience at something that looks like real combat, subject to the (nearly limitless) ability of the holodeck to simulate reality.

This was, historically, a problem in the US Navy just before WW2. It was why, off Guadalcanal, the IJN did far better at night actions initially. The US Navy never properly trained for that environment while the IJN did. When the US Navy did train, it was usually in conditions that allowed officer to more easily gain prestige rather than properly test tactics.

The US did a great deal of training and maneuvers prior to World War Two, and the IJN routinely did training maneuvers that were idiotic wankfests designed to support Japan's preconceived ideas about how a war with the US would go. What actually happened is nowhere near as simple as you appear to believe.