Scan barcode
A review by barrosd12
Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek by Manu Saadia
4.0
Definitely an interesting book, made me want to revisit a lot of the Trek shows I used to watch as a kid. Saadia delves into the economic topics you'd want him to - how does post-scarcity work? What are the technologies that enable this? What is it about the show that allowed these ideas to come to fruition?
There's a lot of good researched material vis-a-vis the show in the book. What content the book is light on is my favorite topic, which is proto-post-scarcity economics. Saadia believes that given our current rate of economic advancement this will "just happen". While that premise on its face seems plausible, it glosses over the more interesting conversation about how we get human beings to collaborate on the level required to make something like money not be required any longer. Also, how are we to deal with issues of extreme inequality between countries in the modern era to reach this glorious conclusion? Saadia does not have many words in this regard.
Overall, if you're a Trek fan, the book is a good read - and you might even be able to skip a chapter or two like I did because they're mostly recaps of the shows we know and love. As a tribute to Star Trek, this deep dive is really well executed, as a prescriptive document for how we get from the modern times to this post-scarcity, it fails to address a variety of issues that would've made for some very interesting reading.
There's a lot of good researched material vis-a-vis the show in the book. What content the book is light on is my favorite topic, which is proto-post-scarcity economics. Saadia believes that given our current rate of economic advancement this will "just happen". While that premise on its face seems plausible, it glosses over the more interesting conversation about how we get human beings to collaborate on the level required to make something like money not be required any longer. Also, how are we to deal with issues of extreme inequality between countries in the modern era to reach this glorious conclusion? Saadia does not have many words in this regard.
Overall, if you're a Trek fan, the book is a good read - and you might even be able to skip a chapter or two like I did because they're mostly recaps of the shows we know and love. As a tribute to Star Trek, this deep dive is really well executed, as a prescriptive document for how we get from the modern times to this post-scarcity, it fails to address a variety of issues that would've made for some very interesting reading.