Re:Why Peter Thiel Fears Star Trek
by squarefoot on Friday January 20, 2017 @03:35PM
(#13446784)
"Star Trek doesn't tell us how their economy is managed or their internal politics. Sure they have replicators, but their are still things that need to be done by people, and resources that can't be replicated."
They probably assume that resources are so widely available (unexplored planets etc) that one doesn't need to live anymore like us to afford basic needs such as food, shelter, medical care, and education.
What is very different from our society is we often need to live near big populated cities to get a job that allows us to pay the above. In the ST world they take it almost for granted: you can settle a small colony on a distant planet and still fulfill at least basic needs for everyone with no need for a medium like money. So where's the convenience? Just suppose there are also no patent laws. If you discover something extremely useful you can share it with anyone else because you don't need any bloody "protection" because you already have the resources to extract/transform it, so no need to "invest" time (ie preventing others from knowing about it). Not easy, I'm clearly just speculating, but makes sense to me.
Of course I would sign up in a second to live in such a society, but I'm not sure it's entirely viable, neither now nor in a thousand years. The problem is not money, it's power.
Money is not power per se but just a way to reach it in a context where money has value (like sea shells in some islands etc). If and when we reach the point of inventing LFTL (ludicrously faster than light) drive and finding planets literally stuffed with any possible resource we need, we still need to consider human nature.
People want power. Every time someone wants you to do something for them, he/she needs to exercise some pressure on you, be it psychological or using their power to take away what you have or prevent you to get it. My point is that eliminating money wouldn't solve any problem because the problem isn't money per se. The problem is power, or to be more precise the abuse of it by people who use part of it to escape accountability for what they do.
What is not clear in the ST universe is how the heck they reached this point. I fear time (evolution) alone isn't enough. Probably, as someone I don't recall said once, the secret is: "never ever give any powers to anyone who wants them".
If the above wasn't clear, please blame the language barrier:)
They probably assume that resources are so widely available (unexplored planets etc) that one doesn't need to live anymore like us to afford basic needs such as food, shelter, medical care, and education. What is very different from our society is we often need to live near big populated cities to get a job that allows us to pay the above. In the ST world they take it almost for granted: you can settle a small colony on a distant planet and still fulfill at least basic needs for everyone with no need for a medium like money. So where's the convenience? Just suppose there are also no patent laws. If you discover something extremely useful you can share it with anyone else because you don't need any bloody "protection" because you already have the resources to extract/transform it, so no need to "invest" time (ie preventing others from knowing about it). Not easy, I'm clearly just speculating, but makes sense to me.
Of course I would sign up in a second to live in such a society, but I'm not sure it's entirely viable, neither now nor in a thousand years. The problem is not money, it's power. Money is not power per se but just a way to reach it in a context where money has value (like sea shells in some islands etc). If and when we reach the point of inventing LFTL (ludicrously faster than light) drive and finding planets literally stuffed with any possible resource we need, we still need to consider human nature.
People want power. Every time someone wants you to do something for them, he/she needs to exercise some pressure on you, be it psychological or using their power to take away what you have or prevent you to get it. My point is that eliminating money wouldn't solve any problem because the problem isn't money per se. The problem is power, or to be more precise the abuse of it by people who use part of it to escape accountability for what they do. What is not clear in the ST universe is how the heck they reached this point. I fear time (evolution) alone isn't enough. Probably, as someone I don't recall said once, the secret is: "never ever give any powers to anyone who wants them".
If the above wasn't clear, please blame the language barrier:)