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A review by brizreading
Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek by Manu Saadia
3.0
So-so writing about a topic I'm passionate about: Star Trek, specifically The Next Generation, as a utopian model of a post-scarcity world.
The book starts strong, with some chapters on the replicator (as the source of post-scarcity-ness), absence of money (this hilarious scene!), and the Ferengi as ultra-capitalists and paragons of greed. I learned a couple new things: like how that pizza scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was when the writers went all-in with the idea that the 24th century is a post-scarcity, money-less utopia; and how TNG and Deep Space Nine were intentional explorations of that idea.
I think the most interesting chapter was about how a post-scarcity world necessarily leads to a reputation-based currency (this is also explored in my OTHER favorite post-scarcity sci-fi, Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), and that a reputation economy kinda has two options: either endless popularity contests, or cold, cruel meritocracy. The latter would necessarily lead to a big lump of mediocre people (hello!) and then a striving few (Starfleet super-people). The author notes the interesting pressures this would have on people who aspire to greatness. When there's no advantages beyond your own talents and things are crystal clear meritocratic, life can be pretty brutal. The advantaged no longer have the illusion that they "made it" on their own hard work; the disadvantaged no longer have the illusion that the only thing holding back their genius is the system. The author talks about the wonderful Lt. Barclay (my favorite TNG character!) and his relatable anxieties, and about the (spoilery) background of Dr. Bashir on Deep Space Nine.
But then... beyond this stuff... there's some chapters about the origins of science fiction (huh?), there's a long digression into economics 101, and then there's a kinda incorrect-feeling description of the ways that robots are going to displace labor now. While I agree with Manu Saadia's general point that increased automation/efficiency leads us to question why we seek full employment, and how the future is here but unequally distributed and we should just have a universal basic income and be done with it. But I feel like Saadia's descriptions of robot job displacement is still only focused on manufacturing jobs. He talks about how this will suck for "random countries like Uganda and Tanzania" (! okay, his writing was kinda tactless :/) where there are huge populations of low-skill workers, but he seems to glaze over the fact that even service economies - like the US and Europe - are going to get screwed by artificial intelligence. Self-driving cars will displace all the Uber drivers; chatbots are replacing customer service representatives; there's a real threat that machine learning will be able to displace even "knowledge work". This'll eat way up into the middle class.
Anyway, it just felt like a pretty shallow exploration of all these things: Star Trek, economics, and job displacement by robots.
The book starts strong, with some chapters on the replicator (as the source of post-scarcity-ness), absence of money (this hilarious scene!), and the Ferengi as ultra-capitalists and paragons of greed. I learned a couple new things: like how that pizza scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was when the writers went all-in with the idea that the 24th century is a post-scarcity, money-less utopia; and how TNG and Deep Space Nine were intentional explorations of that idea.
I think the most interesting chapter was about how a post-scarcity world necessarily leads to a reputation-based currency (this is also explored in my OTHER favorite post-scarcity sci-fi, Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), and that a reputation economy kinda has two options: either endless popularity contests, or cold, cruel meritocracy. The latter would necessarily lead to a big lump of mediocre people (hello!) and then a striving few (Starfleet super-people). The author notes the interesting pressures this would have on people who aspire to greatness. When there's no advantages beyond your own talents and things are crystal clear meritocratic, life can be pretty brutal. The advantaged no longer have the illusion that they "made it" on their own hard work; the disadvantaged no longer have the illusion that the only thing holding back their genius is the system. The author talks about the wonderful Lt. Barclay (my favorite TNG character!) and his relatable anxieties, and about the (spoilery) background of Dr. Bashir on Deep Space Nine.
But then... beyond this stuff... there's some chapters about the origins of science fiction (huh?), there's a long digression into economics 101, and then there's a kinda incorrect-feeling description of the ways that robots are going to displace labor now. While I agree with Manu Saadia's general point that increased automation/efficiency leads us to question why we seek full employment, and how the future is here but unequally distributed and we should just have a universal basic income and be done with it. But I feel like Saadia's descriptions of robot job displacement is still only focused on manufacturing jobs. He talks about how this will suck for "random countries like Uganda and Tanzania" (! okay, his writing was kinda tactless :/) where there are huge populations of low-skill workers, but he seems to glaze over the fact that even service economies - like the US and Europe - are going to get screwed by artificial intelligence. Self-driving cars will displace all the Uber drivers; chatbots are replacing customer service representatives; there's a real threat that machine learning will be able to displace even "knowledge work". This'll eat way up into the middle class.
Anyway, it just felt like a pretty shallow exploration of all these things: Star Trek, economics, and job displacement by robots.