Re: The Star Trek Utopia

In rec.arts.sf.tv Jeff Walther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If humans are freed from the necessity of workign for their needs
> ("necessity"; wanting to work is a whole other thing) and the economic
> system is such that folks have access to this "free" or nearly free
> wealth, then that may not be utopia, but it is certainly a fundamentally
> different life than anyone has lived so far.

> And without the handle of economic need, many methods of coercion drop
> away.   Human nature being what it is, there will always be folks who seek
> out avenues of power unpleasant to their neighbors, but removing economic
> necessity takes out a huge field of abuse.

> That's always been the "utopia" of Star Trek in my mind.

The thing is that it's nonsense. Economics is about choices. Things
which are scarce and which people would choose to have, will be valuable
if they cannot be provided at zero cost.

Now OK, if transporter technology makes food like that, then food isn't
scarce and is of no value. The same may apply to stereos, computers,
clothes, flying cars etc. If anyone can have them at no cost for the
asking then economics in that sphere vanishes too.

So what are we left with? Questions as to the sources of the matter for
this technology to provide all the food and flying cars. Is that matter
rare? If so then there's competition for it and economics rears its head
once more. How about Enterprise class spacecraft? Can anyone have one
free for the asking? If so, then why would the Federation ever be
outgunned? They'd have Enetrprises everywhere they're ever likely to
need one. If not, then we have economics again.

Suppose though that we have a gazillion Enterprises. How about crewing
them? It's implied regularly that there's a lot of training to be done
in Satrfleet before you get to crew one. This means that people with
this training are valuable and there's going to be competition for their
services. Economics rules again. What would a crewman take for wages
when even flying cars were worthless? It'd most likely be the services
of other trained people for whatever they wanted: haircuts, flying car
lessons, blowjobs...

The idea that the Trek Universe has somehow made economics outdated just
makes no sense.

There is one way that it might though: use the transporter technology to
replicate humans. That way you only need to train one crew and then
replicate them endlessly to crew the gazillion Enterprises. No more Star
Fleet of course since you don't need to train any more crew. No problem
about sending command staff on dangerous missions either. If they die,
you just make more for free. No need to rescue an Enetrprise that's
stuck in a Galactic Stomach: it's free to just get a new one. As for
planets which aren't up to Federation tech yet. No need to worry about
the Prime Directive: just replicate the planet and everyone on it. Then
you can both interfere with one and leave the other. A controlled
experiment!

Thus if economics really were outdated, it'd change a lot more than has
been changed in the Trek universe.

Of course it gets more interesting when the Klingons, Borg et al have
the same tech...

FoFP