🖖👽🛸⚖️ StarTrek Philosophy
The Star Trek Federation, explores philosophical concepts guided by the principle of Humanism, embracing diversity and social justice. Humanity must rely on its own resources and not expect supernatural guidance or intervention (Nietzsche, 1882).
Stoic philosophy is a common theme from the likes of Aristotle, advocating that a man’s function is to reason, and that this should be according to virtue ethics; Socrates taught that the more we learn, the more we learn how little we know; and Plato preached that when we repress irrational desires, we acquire the virtue of temperance. When faced with a challenging decision, the characters often find themselves in an ethical and moral dilemma, forcing to the need to evaluate the possible consequences of actions they may take.
Trekonomics… The economics of the future is somewhat different. Money doesn’t exist in the future, we work to better ourselves and humanity. The aquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.
I’ve been watching StarTrek since I was 3 years old… I thank my father for that one! 🖖 StarTrek combines adventure, discovery, entertainment, it has become the most valuable lifetime education while growing up, and has helped me to imagine alternative futures. I’ve always been fascinated with the economics behind StarTrek’s philosophy, and the components that would make a post-scarcity society practical. It may not be possible to achieve complete post-scarcity, however, we can reduce scarcity if we just changed our mindset towards abundance and automation.
As our population grows, we need to scale intelligently and plan for a prosperous future, while caring for the environment and leverage technology to solve real-world problems. Technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living. Let machines do our high risk or time consuming repetitive processes and move us, humans, up the value chain in order to focus on living the finite time we have on this earth. The most precious thing we have is our time, so let’s use it wisely to free humanity from being a slave to systems.
Our economic system is based around the mindset of scarcity, where resources are finite and limited at any given time. This makes it impossible to sufficiently provide for humanity as human needs and desires are endless. Therefore the system is designed to benefit an elite minority.
Marketers have done a fantastic job to turn human needs according to Maslow as a lure towards a desire for materialism and consumerism. Stuff we don’t really need 🤦♀️ I can’t think of anything worse than to spend your time shopping, being inside shopping centres or supermarkets. I would rather spend that time outdoors or having meaningful conversations with friends.
In StarTrek, the acquisition of money on earth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and humanity. This is achieved through automation and abundance in a post-scarcity world.
Fundamentals of Star Trek economy:
- Focus on self-improvement of yourself and others
- Don’t monopolise material things and resources
- Maintain Stockpile of objectively valuable resources for trade with alien governments
Bringing it back to our reality …
A post-scarcity world in a resource-based economy will work if we change our mindset towards:
- abundance of resources; safety & security; honest information; and,
- automation of human labour; moving from property/ownership towards open access; and open-source data.
AirBnb, Uber, Air Tasker, WeWork are examples of sharing economies enabling universal access. However, these systems are still controlled by a central entity, ripe for disruption towards a decentralised model enabled by blockchain.
Other business models are based on the thought that everyone has something in abundance, such as knowledge, goods or services that can be shared without mentioning money. Bringing back the concept of the library.
If we automate and produce goods without labour and use the sun to produce energy to fuel the infrastructure required for automation, then the goods produced can be offered close to free, thus raising the basic standards of living for everyone.
We can decentralise the process of manufacturing basic needs:
- the availability of solar and wind power used to power 3D printers
- the 3D printer can then print another 3D printer and anything else
- we just need raw materials to get to the 3D printer
- leverage AI to automate the process with self replicating robots to do mining on earth or asteroid that can source materials etc.
The consumption process will change from going to a store, creating a whole paradigm shift.
Rebooting the concept of Money
The concept of money is ~3000 years old. The Chinese ~1100BC used bronze in business bartering for goods at a later date.
Around 1600 BC, money shifted from being used to directly represent goods and became a basis for all transactions. People began viewing bargaining as a lengthy and unfair process. Then money became the new norm with an established valuation.
With money, people learned they could buy more than what was needed without giving up possessions. Evolving into the desire towards materialism we sadly see today…
Today, we are currently stuck in a circular rut, the only way to reach post-scarcity is to:
- Reboot money (Cryptocurrencies are the first step towards an alternative..)
- Change human values (this is a hard one…)
🤔 Both are as equally challenging. The global financial system is no doubt in trouble, the GFC is just the tip of the iceberg indicative of a crack in the system. And when the current legacy system collapses, please don’t try to resuscitate 🙅♀️ Current economic and governance systems are not working.. it’s time to try something new!
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