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Star Trek is make believe, just like a cashless society. Our rancher leaders are going to try to digitize money and make a cashless society, but I have a feeling it will fail. There will be something the people will use for currency amongst themselves.
I recommend David Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5000 Years" for a great historical overview of money, its historical developments and cashless and credit societies around the world throughout history. The examples Graeber provides go into a lot more depth than the Star Trek shows do about the Federation economy (tho prolly not the books!). The Federation is vaguely post-capitalism but in using the Borg as a stand-in for the USSR it's clearly not any kind of collectivist society and retains some kind of private property (think of Picard's vineyard and chateau for example) so is less post-capitalist than it purports to be. Graeber's book is far more concrete lol and is incredibly interesting. The business papers like the Economist and Financial Times all gave it stellar reviews
Did you avail yourself of YT Premium? I heard it's not worth it to avail.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream
I'm not really seeing anything about Star Trek that maps out what a future economy would look like. When they do talk about money it's just used as what they call a " plot device."
Here's a quickie definition of what a plot device is:
A plot device or plot mechanism is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. A clichéd plot device may annoy the reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelief.
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See ... the main problem here is that they couldn't keep their story straight. A few examples:
1: The Federation uses credits:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Federation_credit
2: Art imitates life and later on in the series they're talking about a meritocracy because that's a popular thing with the far left intelligentsia these days.
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/geeks-...rek-economics/
3: The Ferengi are a caricature of today's capitalists. (They are usually painted in a negative light.) They use a hard currency called gold pressed latinum.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Latinum
Bottom Line:
I don't think you can tell anything about what future economic systems would look like from the Star Trek series. I think it does tell something about the writers of the show and where their heads are at though.
It's more likely that they are center left progressive types.
On the opposite side of the coin ... you've got stories like " Atlas Shrugged " that expound the virtues of Capitalism. It was a fantasy story that was hugely popular back in the day.
Lol .... anyway ... time to get to work.
I owe .. I owe .. so off to work i go !
Useless fact: Gold pressed latinum was the currency used in DS9 to buy Synthehol at Quarks bar. Gold pressed latinum was in The Next Generation also. Danm Ferengie lol
EDIT: I seen Hills mentioned this already. Beg my pard