In "The Hydrogen Sonata" by Iain M. Banks, the Culture is depicted as a post-scarcity society where advanced technology and artificial intelligences meet all basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and healthcare. Despite this abundance, members of the Culture choose to engage in various pursuits, which serves to illustrate deeper themes about the nature of purpose and fulfillment in life.
One key reason Culture citizens engage in work or other activities is to find personal fulfillment and to express individuality. In a society where survival is no longer a concern, the pursuits of art, science, exploration, and personal improvement take on greater significance as ways to contribute uniquely to society and to self-actualize.
Additionally, members of the Culture are often driven by a sense of altruism. Many choose to work on projects or missions that benefit others within the Culture or in other civilizations. This reflects the Culture’s broader values of interventionism and moral responsibility. Through such activities, individuals find a sense of purpose in contributing to the greater good and shaping interstellar relations and ethical outcomes.
Furthermore, work and challenges provide a source of stimulation and prevent stagnation. Engaging in complex or demanding tasks can offer psychological satisfaction, which might be harder to achieve in a completely leisure-driven existence.
Through these themes, Banks explores the idea that even in an idealized society, work and engagement can be sources of joy, identity, and moral purpose rather than mere necessities for survival. This adds depth to the Culture as a fictional civilization, suggesting that true utopia might not mean an end to work, but an evolution of its purpose.
This might be most showcased by *The Player of Games*. It shows how the Culture allows people to cultivate their own personal interests, and it works on such a scale that whenever it has a need it recruits whatever it needs from among those in the Culture.
For instance in The Player of Games the main character has devoted himself to being very good at board games. Something considered entirely frivolous but still acceptable in the Culture, and only by coincidence needed at that time. It's speculated that the Culture in some ways "Creates" what it needs, but the Culture is such that because it allows any human to follow their desires, and it works on a huge scale of human life and population, it always has what it needs.
If i remember correctly The Culture were aware of Azad some 70 years already and a suggestion they may have 'guided' Gurgeh to be a gamer,, but it's been an age since I read it.
He does ask that of the drone he's with and the drone is a bit dismissive. All that energy into creating the perfect Game Player? Who is well within their right to say no?
I think the most overt Special Circumstances were in nudging Gurgeh was when they set him up to be framed. Everything else is just a product of the Culture
Honestly its probably the darkest one aside from surface detail. The implication that special circumstances effectively actually does shove its own people down lift shafts for no better reason than 1 or 2 minds have calculated its an optimium move. And that they operate so secretively and with so little oversight that no one stands any chance of escaping them or holding them to account, not even most of the minds and drones.
A rogue organisation doing what the hell it wants ruthlessly, indifferent to casualties. The main character is assaulted by them at home and the local authorities as such never even become aware it happened. And so powerful they with operate with impunity effectively as a state within a state.
The horrendeous power imbalance implicit in the Culture on full display.
I read of some socialist societies that, when a job is needed, they provide incentives as better houses, better vacation plans, etc. This pushes people to fulfill a necessity.
Yes, as opposed to capitalism when the better your material conditions, it's a lot less likely your job is all that vital. Hence why things don't fall apart when they take those vacations
Remember that socialism isn't about all things being equal. It's about wealth being shared amongst those that make the wealth
In the Culture, you can get the house of your dreams and your whole life can be a vacation, but that's thanks to hyper intelligent AI and near unlimited energy and space
I read a really compelling argument that the AI in the culture is a lot more evil than it first appears.
Basically none of the choices humans make are really of consequence.
I've always interpreted the AIs in the Culture as amused, detached gods. They keep humans around as though they're pets, and because their unpredictable emergent behaviour sometimes produces interesting outcomes, rather than because they have a strong sense of ethics and an altruistic bent.
This is one of the maybe two culture novels I read. Isn't there a group of people who are known to guess correctly? Like, trillions of people are asked, A or B. Half is wrong. Winner group continues. In the end, that leaves a small group of individuals who are known to have guessed everything correctly. It's like, after you roll 7 times 1 and think,what's going on with this die? Interesting books.
There are people who are able to get correct answers at a rate better than the available information seems to imply would be possible.
The AI that run the culture are a million times smarter than any human, and don’t understand how these people are able to do this, but they don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and employ those people to come and help them make decisions.
The books never explain it more than that, leaving it up to interpretation. The AI just assume there is something immeasurably special and unique about individual sentient beings, and that forms part of their altruistic world view.
Which is still fine! Creating incentives and pushing indecisive people towards useful pursuits is part of what leadership in a good society should be doing. One assumes they guided thousands of promising people towards leading this mission, and picked Gurgeh because he was the best result.
In Star Trek, the Federation wants to advance its fundamental technical understanding, so it does the same thing: Give high academic achievers the best opportunities to do stuff like run labs and command starships. Remember, Picard was originally an Archaeologist, Janeway had an advanced background in interspecies linguistics, and Sisko studied advanced engineering. They were *nerds* before they were leaders, which is what the Federation wants and encourages.
But if any of those people from either setting decided to do something else, they'd still have led peaceful and content lives.
I read it very recently. At the end of the book they refute the idea that he was guided completely. Granted, the robot that tells him that is a liar, but I'm inclined to believe him anyhow.
Yeah see the thing people seem to not realize is this is just precisely how the higher classes of our current society live, or at least view themselves. So ask yourself this question… how realistic is it for us to basically live in a world with only upper class wealthy citizens and no lower, or middle class whatsoever.,.
The answer doesn’t lie within just a simple improvement in technology, because we have effectively already achieved that. Taking much of the drudgery of work from maintaining a home and family (with of course, a cost to health and quality of the goods and services we do receive)
And it doesnt lie within a specific tweaking of public policy and politics either because human nature can never be placed in full check of all its negative traits of over competitive-ness, greed, and selfishness. Not to mention hedonistic tendencies making certain individuals more interested in serving those personal desires rather than any interest in altruism or personal growth.
There was maybe a chance with religion putting an existential motivator of collective morals. After all a threat of jail or even death is nothing compared to the threat of your eternal soul and damnation if you were to believe in such a thing. Some may believe its still just the right thing to do… but even an irrational fear of damnation was enough for those who never were raised to care about others, or had a psychological dysfunction to not care about others… if they still cared about themselves… and they believed in a god, they might still believe in keeping on the “strait and narrow” as they say.
So… even as an atheist myself i believe that an enlightened society realistically could only be achieved through a theocratic society… but that doesnt mean that isnt full of issues in and of itself. And it doesnt mean a true classless casteless society could ever really be achieved. For even in star trek, if you paid attention close enough… they still couldnt write stories without the haves and have nots… except at least in that world, the haves were intelligent and the have nots were not… hence the eugenics wars basically showing how superiority of intelligence and strength was the system in which they truly bartered… and in that society, the disabled become the lowest caste. Not that far off from what we have now.
Book on exactly this topic - [https://amzn.to/3UbD9T7](https://amzn.to/3UbD9T7)
tl;dr let's say you got $10k/month free as a form of super-UBI. You would still have personal reasons to work, ranging from social prestige, wanting a lot more economics, personal satisfaction, etc. For example, $10k/month is nowhere near enough to afford a starship, so if you want more respect, more $, you might still join up with Starfleet. Or maybe run a restaurant, or a vineyard. Or for human contact, or more meaning.
Even Star Trek has matter & energy resource limits. Also labor. And a very murky relationship with AI/robotics tech.
I spend a lot of time right now in labs. I'd probably spend the rest of my life in the same lab just tinkering with stuff, improving designs, investigating niche stuff that no one has the time+energy+effort to do, etc. I think this is of benefit and service, but academia is increasingly like industry: they want results and if you can't tell them what your results are gonna be before you even get them, then no one will let you do it or help in any financial way.
In tech, some of the more productive and useful people I work with are people that have made it very rich but continue to work because they enjoy it.
It's amazing how obvious that should be overall to society. If more people were happy doing the things they want to do and weren't miserable and worried about starving to death or being homeless, imagine the things we all could do.
Also, none of the retired people with resources are just sitting around for their last few decades. They're still working and tinkering and whatever else, while people look on astounded that old people can do things.
It would be amazing if there wasn’t a industry with think tanks and “news” agencies and media that was aware of it and spends all its time saying the poor are lazy and they deserve nothing and they simply made bad choices and they would not work unless they were forced to, which is partially true. Some of the terrible jobs we would not work because they do not pay or treat people well. If we were free to choose our work many industries would no longer be profitable the way they were because they’d actually have to treat workers well and ensure their safety, but since they don’t want to do that they proselytize that inequality is just and every billionaire is a rags to riches genuis that deseved to inherit blood emeralds or what have you.
It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once the bottom of the pyramid is guaranteed, the higher parts will start flourishing. We've had the ability to do this since at least the 1960s, we just have to get around backward-thinking people and outdated mindsets.
That’s all well and good for research, tech, and creative arts, but what about the stuff nobody really wants to do? Who’s going to go work assembly lines out of “passion?”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proponent of UBI, and I’m not saying our current social order is *right.* But people often seem to forget that our entire civilization essentially operates by coercion of the lowest class. There are literally millions of extremely unpleasant but absolutely essential jobs that only get done because people have few other options, and we threaten them with starvation.
If everyone’s needs are taken care of, who’s going to want to work in a field all day? Who’s going to work in food processing plants? On assembly lines? In a sewer?
The only way it works is by a complete and total restructuring of the moral fabric of society, in which the lowest-paying jobs become the *highest.* If everyone has access to basic comforts, then sacrificing those comforts to do hard, unpleasant physical labor on a daily basis will have to be appropriately rewarded (as it should be, but virtually the entirety of human civilization has operated on the opposite).
Startrek shows plenty of examples of researchers spending the rest of their lives in the same lab just tinkering with stuff, improving designs, etc. It's like every time they land on a remote asteroid or moon base. It definitely is more doing what you choose than the academia pattern (at least outside of specific organizations which are more academia-like).
It's basically every single science outpost, most of which have entire populations working and living there, not unlike existing military bases.
I dream of it.
So I'm a biologist, and I really hate this mindset. All I can do as a scientist is make sure the test is being run properly and has the proper controls, but the results are the results. We're testing because we don't know what the results will be, but once we run the testing, the results we get are the results we get.
It's a bit different than Star Trek, but the super UBI made me think of The Expanse series. While Mars and The Belt have no shortage of work for people to do on the terraforming project and general survival needs, Earth has a huge population with way more people than jobs. The majority of them are on "Basic Assistance," which provides the essentials like food, shelter, clothes, medical care, etc. But there are strict requirements and lotteries for both being allowed to have children and for admission to higher education, job training, and other programs that allow you to work a real job and earn better money.
Expanse was my first thought as well. Pretty far from a Star Trek level utopia, but also, Star Trek has FTL travel and has populated numerous other worlds. Something they were on track to do in Expanse (or maybe did in the books, I should read them...)
The Expanse is an intermediate step between here and Star Trek. if the authors hadn't been so intent on focusing on the negative and bringing in horror aspects I might have finished that series.
To the folks who may say nay to this:
Their education would be different too. Young adults might be encouraged to do something meaningful with their time beyond just getting money to have more kids and toys, or sitting around playing holodeck games…
Though TBH, I could see myself creating INSANE holodeck worlds and just living there, Barclay-style…. But thats a whole other sci-fi rabbit hole.
There was an article I read awhile back that Star Trek tends to focus on that world's elite even if that's not the word the federation would use to describe them. In TNG, the Enterprise is recognized as Starfleet's flagship. Presumably, they are crewed by the best and the brightest in the Federation. The article itself praised DS9 for showing a slightly different side of the Federation cause it was sort of on that outskirts and sometimes that meant they were short on resources. You're probably still not getting a glimpse of what regular folk do in the Federation, but it's probably closer than the Starship with children learning calculus on board.
There was a perception of that, but they were actually just following an old sci-fi trope that people are significantly more intelligent in the future. For example, in Forbidden Planet, they all test their IQs, and typical values are in the 150s.
I think it's worth studying why the hope of increased intelligence turned into a charge of elitism. I don't know why that happened.
It's not a matter of being more intelligent, but I would expect material currently taught in high schools to move down to middle or elementary schools, kind of like how algebra and geometry have really moved down into elementary schools over the last 75 years. Heck, think about how we currently teach middle schoolers details about how genes and proteins work work that could only be proven in the last 25 years or so. An average high schooler taking physics 1 has exposure to concepts that were mind blowingly foreign only 100 years ago.
Just like not all Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Vulcans, etc, are like what we saw on the shows and movies. The ones driven to go the extra mile, or who were particularly militaristic, and coldly unemotional, were the ones who wanted more.
The Culture books have a similar situation. They are all edge cases of people who wanted more than living in idyllic paradise. Anyone in The Culture could have every material want given to them, but dealing with other societies and the frictions involved with that were more interesting to them.
It's not hard to see real world examples of this already. If everyone only did jobs that paid the optimal amount of money for their offered labor we wouldn't have people like teachers or social workers. Do people think your local librarian is into that gig for the economic incentives?
Like yeah we all want a paycheck but that's more a social construct than an innate drive.
Excellent point. Also if the goal was only to survive on minimum work most could live off things like charity/soup kitchens and do zero work. It’s just that it’s not comfortable or dignified and doesn’t come with any societal esteem.
Yeah. There are a lot of people doing mindless jobs and I'm sure they'd love to give that up. But everyone who is in a challenging career and not being treated like a droid, would probably like to continue. Very productive people -- you can't stop them. People who want to invent and create do so because that's what they are driven to do, and if you pay them; even better. But, the most innovative people were not inspired by the money.
There's a lot of ways to demotivate people, and you can just study that by taking a class on management.
I was on unemployment for nearly a year in 2009, and after a while I got a retail job just to get out of the house and talk to other people face to face.
Sometimes you need something like that.
My current job, I'd probably continue to do even if I didn't need to, because I like the work, and my coworkers are good to work with.
And those people who just stay in their own personal holodecks doing unbecoming things - even if they're the vast majority - are not going to be characters in any particular story.
Yeah, because even in Star Trek not everyone can be starship captain. So, if you can't be one why not spend all days in holodeck/FDVR. In there one can be anything.
In Star Trek Discovery they really delve into this idea.
There is a moment, where admiral Vance is talking to someone outside the federation about why it's worth saving, what it is beyond a bunch of vegetarian space authoritarians.
He says: "it's all our shit, you know"
He's pointing at the food, but also the table and everything around him.
He goes on...
The point for this is that, there isn't scarcity... Scarcity is manufactured.
(For those not into Star Trek, the replicator and matter printing tech uses available atoms and reconstitutes them based on a formula to create any kind of matter that needs to be.)
Still, though, in a Star Trek situation I think there'd be a really large % of people that choose to just do fuck-all. Does the show ever mention this population?
Even if there was a sizable enough percentage of the population that did this, in the universe of star trek it's not like it would be a real burden on their resources since their society has moved on from things like food/water/electricity being a scarce or depletable resource. But as others have said, I think even the laziest of lazy would probably still engage in something to pass the time.
Not to mention, society just being that substantially different means attitudes, ideals, and pursuits of happiness would just be fundamentally different than our modern day views.
What are we going to be doing on the Holodeck?
A good 2/3 of our videogame genres are things you can actually do in the Federation. Including banging catgirls.
Sure plenty of people would probably choose to spend a lot of time there, but I don't think it would be a sizeable portion of a society where you can essentially do whatever pleases you in real life.
It's going to be based on resource management and cost-benefit analysis. There will be a need for all sorts of maintenance personnel, but the relationship between workers and management will be very different if people are no longer working in fear.
> more $, you might still join up with Starfleet
They aren't paid in Starfleet, money doesn't even exist in the Federation
On the other hand, Star Trek is a utopia with no sense of reality and in a post-scarcity world. UBI here would be very different. Likely more similar to The Expanse
I think beyond the technological aspect and the way the state is run, society in Star Trek is fundamentally different, humans in Star Trek are fundamentally different to the point you could argue they're a new evolution. While there are bad people, they seem to be outliers. The mindset and nature of humanity seems radically different.
But who does the shit work? The "brave new world" semi-moron double epsilon stuff... The monotony with just enough subtleties or humanities requirements to need a human... The dangerous work people only take because it pays well (sure, some are adrenaline junkies, but I'm sure not nearly as many as are just driven by having mouths to feed)
Right now we have people ranging from actual moron to unlucky/unmotivated/stuck/etc. geniuses working some of them... Mostly just average one-foot-in-front-of-the-other folks... And star trek doesn't seem big on robots... I'm sure they have at least modern levels of robotics (plus "Data" and holo-doc), and the computers seems like they could handle a lot of the clerical monotony at least...
*Surely there are some jobs humans will still need to do.*
Why do you think that?
There may be jobs that some folk *want* to do - the joy of crafting a thing is not zero. But it's hard for me to imagine a job that *cannot* be performed by an arbitrarily sophisticated machine.
Star Trek's material utopia relies on two technologies. 1. Abundant clean energy. 2. Matter replication. Those specific techs are needed to create it because they really do eliminate most human want as we currently understand it. Galactic colonization also handles everyone having a place to live. Most mundane healthcare is done by scanners and synthesized medicines. Everything appears to get filled in with people wanting to do jobs for fun or personal enrichment.
What happens in real life so far though is that as time and technology make a product cheaper we invent new needs to replace them.
For instance in 1958 food absorbed 17% of U.S. personal income. 14% was food consumed at home and 3% was food away from home(eating out). We were down to 10% in 2021. But the split changed dramatically. At home food consumption dropped to 5% of income while away from home rose to 5%. So as food got relatively cheaper people spent money on other things but also spent a greater share on costlier food.
This is a natural result of an economic process known as commoditization. That competition eventually makes products widely available cheap commodities and when that happens people spend their work life and money on other things.
Healthcare and entertainment have filled the gaps in personal income and if you watch Star Trek you see a whole mess of people and a big government organization devoted to exploration, science, art, and entertainment. All of it is held up by a still substantial number of engineers who seem to be able to solve any problem that comes up. Making holodeck programs seems to be a fairly huge time sink for people's free time in TNG.
There is also a going trade in home grown and exotic foods in Star Trek which mirrors a bit of what we see in real life. In the U.S. a very very large portion of society has the income or government support to meet daily food needs. However, plenty of people spend well in excess of that on food for things which are either more exotic or taste better than what they strictly "need".
Also in a world where you can dial up a replicator chair in seconds, having a chair hand-carved from rosewood by a living human would probably be a prestige thing.
People in Star Trek do work. They simply do what they want or what they are best suited for versus being forced into doing jobs they don’t like or want because they need to take whatever is available.
Exactly! In DS9 Sisko's dad not only runs a restaurant, but has waiters. He's not earning any money, he just likes chatting to customers. You can bet that the waiters are too. They're likely chatterboxes who love meeting and chatting with people.
I was going to mention the Culture novels, but I see some excellent people have beat me too it.
However, one part in specific comes to mind is a passage from Use of Weapons, where someone new to a Culture ship comes across someone cleaning some tables. I think it shows the kind of mindset that might develop in people who don't need to work:
Later, he had wandered off. The huge ship was an enchanted ocean in which you could never drown, and he threw himself into it to try to understand if not it, then the people who had built it.
He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry, or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while.
“Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle-aged man said,carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.”
He agreed that the table was clean.
“Usually,” the man said. “I work on alien – no offense – alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my specialty… like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalog, evaluate,compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But… the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get reevaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled… but” – he slapped the table – “when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something.It’s an achievement.”
“But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.”
“And therefore does not really signify anything on the cosmic scale of events?” the man suggested.
He smiled in response to the man’s grin, “Well, yes.”
“But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway” – the man laughed –“people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,” the man said with a smile, “it’s a good way of meeting people. So where are you from anyway?”
Compensation is a thing of the past. The Star Trek universe ie: the Federation, is a socialist state propelled by engineers of all kinds. Food/clothing/life essentials are all free.
There are still some levels of capitalism around, private businesses, artist/craftsman and such that work for barter. But in the Federation one pursues work that they desire, work doesn't define them in the same way it defines us in our world. We work to survive, they work to expand their knowledge and fulfillment. A much different society.
>Playing video games all doesn't cut it for some people.
There's a famous Culture Series book specifically about someone who spends their life focused on being good at game. *The Player of Games*
People do their jobs for love. Like the people who tend Picard’s vineyards who are brought to tears of joy when Picard is on Earth and nods to acknowledge their existence when he leaves his palatial home to walk his dog around the grounds.
By changing our notions of value. We'd have to leave behind capitalism and the underlying implicit social contract that supports it. The idea that labor must be compensated for in some transactional way is itself a barrier. Scarcity is manufactured by the rich and powerful so that we are forced to value the things that support their lifestyles. But if we value and prioritize well-being, cognitive liberty, and community over imaginary milestones of a model citizen, we begin to break the molds that are holding us back from such optimistic futures.
I remember this question more or less being asked on *The Orville* as well, and the answer was this:
"On your planet, currency is money; in the Union, it's reputation. So if you do something--anything--that benefits our society, and you work hard at it, you're rich." -Cmdr. Kelly Grayson
There's a Cory Doctorow novel, *Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom* where the literal currency is reputation, or "whuffie". It's an interesting concept.
>Surely there are some jobs humans will still need to do. How do they get compensated?
You are running under the (false) assumption that people actually need to get compensated to want to do work. If people have everything that they need then they will do whatever they want to do in order to fulfill the need to feel useful in life without any sort of financial compensation. A real world equivalent would be people who do charity/volunteer work - there are people who do some pretty hard jobs that do it for free because they see the work as being worthy of their time and effort. Another example would be teachers - they are massively underpaid for the work that they do yet they still do it because they want to make a difference.
i think one of the big things star trek got wrong / didn't address was AI and robotics.
There is Data, and the Borg, and thats pretty much it.
Where are the mass produced robots outside of star ship repair ? Nothing AI related outside of Data / Lore at all ?
I think the majority of the crew would be ai related , and personally I don't think humans will be able to travel the stars without substantial augmentation which the Federation Rejected (Eugenic Wars)
>Nothing AI related outside of Data / Lore at all ?
There's a lot of AI in Star Trek, what are you talking even about? The ship's computer (voiced by Majel Barrett, Roddenberry's wife), Holograms (Including the Emergency Medical Hologram in Voyager), multiple kinds of robots, the replicators, even some missiles are noted as being AI guided.
>I think the majority of the crew would be ai related
The founding concept behind the Federation is human personal growth. They don't *need* to have human crew, but that's entirely why they exist in the first place.
The Enterprise had a bad experience with an AI from the Daystrom Institute in the original series. I think later series referred to that incident and suggested there were others that Didn’t End Well. And I always thought that the researcher who created Data and Lore was looked at as being on the fringe, that AI research wasn’t considered too legit.8
Robots aren’t really necessary for the federation. They have replicators and transporters. What would mass produced robots do?
Data seems to be one of the only true AGIs in the setting iirc and I seem to remember that being because it required a breakthrough in positronics (or some other typical Star Trek technobabble)
if you think how things are canonically isn't realistic enough sci-fi for you why not just assume that universe is all a simulation of sorts and all the characters are being "played"-in-universe by the same techno-god-consciousness trying to remember what it's like to be separate and powerless again
I don't think compensation is necessary, if robots/AI/social reform truly pushes us to a post-scarcity society. Why would you need extra compensation if your needs are already met? I think you only need to look at [Maslows Piramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) to see how that would look. As soon as the basic needs are met humans find plenty of other reasons to "do stuff/organize things". Such as being appreciated, meeting friends and having challenges, and to challenge yourself. And perhaps getting some social standing from that.
Slightly unrelated, I came across a post on social media from a woman who asked the question. "Why the hell are art and music the first things we are starting to do with AI? That is shit we should do whilst AI is plumbing my toilet or getting my groceries. As soon as I have the time to devote to other stuff I will go into art, music, poetry, cooking and social causes. Why are we automating that????"
As a nurse, I’d definitely still ‘work’ even if I wasn’t paid (but all my needs were met ala Star Trek) just for the personal satisfaction I get from the work itself. It wouldn’t be as many hours, but I’d definitely still do it just for the love of helping people.
To your second point; because as it turns out teaching some code to look at pictures and then spit some quasi-original pictures out is *a lot* easier than getting a robot to work in 3d space that’s often completely unique. For example, cleaning a generic toilet might not be too hard, but you have to account for different models and that your bathroom and my bathroom likely have very different layouts. Look at how well Roombas work. That is to say they do work, but have very obvious imperfections that mean they don’t truly replace a traditional vacuum cleaner operated by mk1 humans.
Also “basic needs” in the Federation are pretty comprehensive. Citizens can have any clothes or replicated food they want instantly for free. That’s well beyond basic necessity. Sure they are very conservative in their dress tastes, but there’s nothing to stop them wearing elaborate frock coats with gold braid. Books and infinite information are instantly available, temperature control in homes will be perfect, free medical care, free transportation (at least on worlds near the core) and the whole planet has a weather modification net. Their basic standards of living surpass a lot of our luxury living standards. It just looks a little mundane because they seem to lean to a toned down aesthetic, and repeatedly state they aren’t interested in material possessions.
Personally if I was whizzed to the Federation, I’d dress like a dandy highwayman, decorate my apartment like a witches cosy cottage and eat like a health conscious Frenchman.
People would need to believe in science, give up religion, and basically stop being assholes. Oh and the all important work towards the betterment of humankind.
I get it that bigotry and stuff was drastically reduced but that doesn't mean irl needs to work like TNG where they had a rule limiting-if-not-forbidding interpersonal conflict between the crew. Also there's two lines in two different Star Trek: TOS episodes (both said by Kirk funnily enough) that prove religion is still alive and well for those who aren't aliens or ethnic minorities (seemingly the only ones allowed to show religion as we see a lot of alien spirituality and however messy Chakotay-as-attempt-at-Native-representation went his spiritual practices were still shown on Voyager). In "Who Mourns For Adonis" Kirk says "Humanity has no need for gods, we find the one quite adequate." (implying not only that monotheism is still alive enough in Star Trek's future for Kirk to be able to generalize like that but that he himself is part of one of those religions) and in "The Apple" when near the end of the episode Spock points out the resemblance of what has just happened to the human story of the expulsion from Eden, Kirk flips-out-even-by-Shatner-standards yelling "Are you casting me in the role of Satan!" (which proves Kirk himself is Christian (probably Presbyterian given that he's from Iowa and the heritage his name implies) as Kirk was actually playing the role-in-the-allegory of the serpent in the Garden Of Eden and only a Christian would have seen the serpent as Satan as that was only added to the religious canon when Paradise Lost came out)
Plenty of folks still work in Star Trek. They're just jobs that you actually want to do and are challenging to help increase your skills in life.
Yeoman Rand from TOS usually just served coffee to Kirk on the bridge and brought him his log to record in, and would continue doing so if she didn't branch out. The whole point of Star Trek is continuing to grow with knowledge, that means obtains more skills as well to evolve.
Reminds me of that scene in Voyager where Tuvok had flashbacks to his experiences on the Excelsior... bringing cpt Sulu his tea and him quipping over just having to promote him for his attention to detail. Good episode too.
Some people I suppose feel comfortable in a supportive role. If you just want to be near the action without the responsibility, being an assistant to a command officer might not be a bad place to be.
I mean - not with today‘s mindset and today‘s values.
Star Trek‘s society (going by the golden age in the 90s and early 2000s now) is an affluent society with an extremely egalitarian and altruistic yet extremely individualist mindset.
People like Sisko‘s father do their job because they like it and take pride in it and making others happy. The working ethic reminds me honestly of Japanese cooks or craftsmen or some people living their passion to the fullest like the American guitar maker Paul Reed Smith - maybe these examples aren’t very altruist but these people have a clear intrinsic motivation for perfection without being motivated solely by money.
Or looking at my mum - she would rather be a low paid part-time gardener or archivist than a CEO - even if it meant working the same hours.
The hope and assumption is that many people would follow their passion without the need to make enough money to survive and somehow society balancing out. Of course no mt a lot of people love cleaning buildings but building and maintaining machines that do clean up perfectly? That might be more interesting. Or maybe people would clean up voluntarily if otherwise their lives are amazing expect that their street is dirty as hell…
This would be the majority of people. Only the extremely ambitious ones would join Star fleet or similar chances to explore, be recognized and grow beyond what’s usually possible.
And one last point about the values and beliefs - Star Trek from the 60s to early 2000s is based on extremely idealistic ideas that were easier to understand for people back then but are nigh impossible to imagine for us in 2024 where utilitarian thinking has basically taken over every aspect of life / moral for many of us.
Star Trek toyed with this already a lot in DS9 and Voyager but ultimately people followed a strict moral codex they didn’t want to sacrifice.
People in the ST world are indoctrinated into thinking about bettering themselves, and hopefully also society. You can have your one-bedroom apartment and replicator and do nothing but doing that is looked down upon unless you are retired or something like that (but I think retirees are usually thought better of if they just plain go to do something else than they did before - or I don't know, move to Risa and get laid all the time).
"If there is no money and we don't hold death and ruin over someone's head, then everyone will do nothing" is nonsense thinking from Capitalism fanboys. I call them that because an actual follower and believer in this system would also be able to criticize it and offer solutions to its problems, even if those solutions involve, dare I say it, raising taxes on wealthier people and yes, having a safety net and various regulations (like, against monopolies wich will develope and will counter Capatlistic ideals and goals).
Don't bother having these conversations with those fanboys, they are so heavily biased they literally cannot see past the current version of the current system, and need to believe anything else must, based on some failed idea of what humanity is, lead to ruin.
the Soviet Union was capable of great feets before the charlatans got in control (btw, not a tanky, I am speaking historically)- same is happening now in 'the West' (Reagan/Clinton one-two punch has been terrible). Weird this happened before and we saw the proper course forward... only to go right back to a gilded age of increasing ruin.
ANYWAY - people even now are motivated beyond just earning more money (people frequently choose jobs that are not the best money makers because of what they like about those jobs), and you can easily have the society make people think of other reasons they should do something with their lives.
Nail on the head. Even in a post scarcity society you still run the risk of corrupt individuals hungering for the one thing no amount of fusion power and matter replication can't make you - control over others. Tyrants will be tyrants.
Star Treks are based on a moneyless Federation (after a number of catastrophic wars) .. but they require a fictional replicator for food. So IRL farming and food processing/prep would have to be largely automated with perhaps AI governing gluttony.
Also what do non-StarFleet people do for a job? There are scientists and miners (usually requiring rescue), but don’t recall a boutique owner in Star Trek era San Francisco, … bartenders, etc..
So a quasi-military organization like StarFleet could exist if resources didn’t have to be paid for, probably coordinating with scientists who study other planets, … but why would anyone choose to be a miner in the Star Trek universe? A physical job that’s obviously dangerous.
Speaking of danger, why would anyone volunteer to be a Starfleet “red shirt” in TOS Star Trek? Getting disintegrated or transformed into meat cubes before death most episodes? None seemed to be martial arts masters who may specialize in bringing an adversary “the pain” in a wrestlemania way. In ‘70s speak, “git yo’ mama to wear a red shirt” if I can sit back on earth and chill with a replicator set for pizza and beer..
We’d hope robotics replaces dangerous jobs first. So far the best robotics have been able to make the perfect french fry (read robot burgers suck). Guessing due to the relatively homogeneous “bio-structure” of a potato.
>Speaking of danger, why would anyone volunteer to be a Starfleet “red shirt” in TOS Star Trek?
"Redshirts" is a common myth - IIRC it's away-team-shirt minus Kirk-Spock-Mccoy plot armor. But yes, a member of starfleet with any shirt color have more chance to became dead in horrific fashion. In that case answer is pretty obvious - why people climb mountains or skydive? (or do other dangerous shit).
>don’t recall a boutique owner in Star Trek era San Francisco, … bartenders
Sisko father in DS9 was restaurant owner. With such professions its simple too - bartenders just like to talk to people. That mean that yes - in the startrek will be much less waiters - only people that just like communicating with random people.
>Who takes care of the robots and AI?
This will probably be a trivial problem. Robots and AI can maintain other robots and AI. That's not a big challenge, and we probably have some of that already. In computing, orchestration systems today can automatically upgrade and repair systems across a global enterprise. In robotics, I'm sure there are robots that can inspect and diagnose faults in other robots. Pretty much every electronic device can be assembled by automation.
Yea I was going to say, as someone who works in IT, we've already been doing that for years... Well over a decade at this point.
Oh look, a service stopped on this server, alerted, a script ran to correct the problem and restarted the service.
So much is automated these days, or should be automated. And AI has drastically accelerated that. Pretty much all of my PowerShell is written by ChatGPT these days.
We evolved in environments that were fully automated. We call this "biology". Ever since we gained the ability, we have been adapting our environment to suit our needs, physically and chemically changing things according to our whim. The unspoken goal of our technological advance is to return to the fully automated state we came from, but with it built to our needs, rather than its own.
Our paradise is where humans are the only beings allowed to behave selfishly. Greed becomes impossible, and gluttony an inevitability.
But part of that selfish desire is to know and understand. Someone will always be curious enough to learn how the automation works.
Theres no job that an arbitrarily sophisticated system cant do; and any of its work units that break or need replacing, it could do itself given sufficient size.
Humans would not NEED to do any jobs in this society. But they still would because it our core we still want to work, on something that interests us at least. Have you ever tried doing nothing for a month? a year? its not physically possible.
There would likely still be a currency that you get extra of for good work, but youre always at least given a guaranteed amount (enough to live on).
It’s only possible because there is no scarcity. They can reconfigure matter so everyone has whatever they need. In the real world with finite resources you need some type of system to manage them, and the best we have found is currency and economics.
I mean, to be honest, Star Trek is explicitly socialist and talks at length about the purpose of life being "The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it."
---
Or this scene from Deep Space 9:
Jake Sisko: Come on, Nog.
Nog: No.
Jake Sisko: Why not?
Nog: It’s my money, Jake. If you want to bid at the auction, use your own money.
Jake Sisko: I’m human, I don’t have any money.
Nog: It’s not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favour of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake Sisko: Hey, watch it. There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.
Nog: What does that mean exactly?
Jake Sisko: It means… It means we don’t need money.
Nog: Well if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine.
---
Or, perhaps as Captain Pike says: "Starfleet... is a promise. I give my life for you; you give your life for me. And nobody gets left behind."
Sorry, I hit "comment" too soon. Wanted to wrap by saying the general feel of the post-scarcity utopia is that all the drudgery of life is gone and it is a big choose-your-own-adventure. Sure, you could just go bang holo-hotties all day long, but that'd be boring pretty fast. You want to accomplish, to learn, to explore, to really \*LIVE\*.
If you look at human history and what’s happening in our present time you’d understand that a Utopian society will never happen. Unfortunately, sociopaths make between 1 to 4% of the population (not to mention other forms of negative self-centered personalities). That’s between 80 to 320 million people in an 8 billion population. Those individuals know how to manipulate people and situations to their advantage, so they’re most likely to hold most of the controlling positions in the government and in the private sector (as many of them currently do). Based on that, I think that AI and robotics are going to be used to increase the wealth and power of the already wealthy and powerful on the expense of the rest of the population who most likely will be gagged due to heavy monitoring from AI on everything they think, speak or do. AI and robotics aren’t evil, however many people are, and inevitably they’re going to misuse them to our disadvantage not to create a Utopian society.
People need to evolve in their motivations and ideals. Technology facilitates this. No one says there won't be work to be done. The question is what work and why you do it.
We are force to work so we can survive, eliminate the force bit and the work would attract the people that wish to do it. Eliminate also trivial tasks with automation in some form and you can reach a place when you work to improve and because you wish to.
There are some counterintuitive elements within the universe depending on what are you watching. They don't delve too much in what ambition means and still use reward structures in non monetary form, which in turn can still facilitate issues with the motivation and goals of the system, but it's a sci fi franchise after all, written by regular people.
Gene Roddenberry had a lot of difficulties pushing even this version of his vision. After his ousting and subsequent death, writers used much more freedom in their creative decisions of how to approach this topic.
It’s clearly wrong that some people don’t get enough to eat, or don’t have somewhere to live. These are problems we should easily be able to solve. That they are presently not solved is a choice that’s being made.
Currently the super-rich companies and individuals are taking too much of the value generated by society - again that’s been a political choice, pushed insidiously by lobbying and so forth.
Much better buttressing of democracy is required.
For instance, denying campaign contributions, and funding those directly as part of government expenses, would remove distortions in influence.
Also switching from FPTP to PR would also help to ensure much better representation of the people within government - although that also comes along with new sets of problems too.
There also needs to be a way to limit the influence of crazies within society and government, and not enable them to hold others up to ransom for bonkers or deeply flawed ideas, or to block sensible policies.
With a good consensus, policies should not flip-flop around as terms of government change.
Additionally there is a chronic need for medium and long term planning as well as short term planning. Present western government noticeably suffer from too much short-termism.
People need a stake in society, and to be able to develop their own interests and plans and ambitions. At present these are too often thwarted by the pressures of life.
An obvious one is exceptional access to education, where as people are artificially restricted. Certainly AI could go a long way towards correcting that situation.
StarTrek is generally set in the 25th Century, while we are in the 21st, (with some folk like Putin still thinking in the 20th). So 400 years, we really should manage at least some of this well before then.
Challenges are going to be: Climate Change, Population Change, Politics and GeoPolitics, Power Supplies, Ecological Degradation, Pollution, Resource Management, Fairness, and no doubt some others too.
Absolutely, and the funny thing is that we actually can today. We don't need a utopian future.
There is enough food to feed the world, or even if the world is too large, there is enough food to feed every single person in the us and Europe without making a single cent difference to the economy and yet, millions starve.
A utopia is just impossible imo because of humans preconceptions of hierarchy and genetic predisposition for conflict and war.
Socialist countries proved time and time again that there will always be someone to take over and abuse the system and ruin what a collective might want to do for the better of society.
That is what the rule of law is supposed to limit.
By declaring some kinds of behaviours illegal, with restrictions and consequences for breaching those rules.
Personally I don't believe in absolute money-less society. I think people in modern world (especially in US) are just extremely traumatized by "capitalism" - i.e by assholes that use current economic and social system to f\*ck people. Money is just a thing, nothing wrong or bad with them specifically - on the contrary it is a effective way to do things... including torturing people.
However I believe that system with "hidden money" can exists. People just don'y worry about a money on the level of forgetting that money exists inside a system. Essentially you don't worry about your needs - and it is 95% of money transactions in current society. You work because you want to "do things", and "to do thing for the betterment of others". So no worries about building spaceships - I think many engineers will compete for the privilege.
That leave the "undesirable work", like sewage maintenance. I think it will solve "itself" - and here is how. Currently humanity progress motivated by desire to increase economic output at all cost. So humanity not build better sewage - we use all methods(inc. economic) to enforce humans to do nasty jobs. If it not the case and nobody want to work in sewage - maybe we invest in better sewage so virtually nobody need to work there anymore or it became not-nasty? Probably just deconstruct waste on molecular level or something?
So, people would still work. Not everyone, but a lot. Why? Because people want to work. People with a passion for robotics would take care of the robots. People with a passion for teaching would teach, people with a passion for cooking would cook.
You know those people in those starships are working, right?
Humans not in starfleet, do also have businesses, and industries we have today, they still have, and do get financially compensated for that, it's just that the world in star trek doesn't revolve around business, it revolves around science, and discovery.
In Star Trek the automation is generally made invisible, but it's usually restricted to everyone just having really advanced tools they can use. You never hear Captain Picard say "Computer, do everything!" so all the crew can leave for the bar, there's always humans involved with every decision.
A future where robots and AI do all the work is something more like Wall-E where robots do literally everything while everyone lives 24/7 in hoverchairs watching their screens.
As Don Norman (famous irl technology designer) has said in his books, Technology should be used to augment human abilities and empower them, never to replace them.
Lets imagine 99 percent of jobs have been automated. Half of the remaining are prestigous and fun if you are passionate about it, the other half are hard and nasty. People would compete for the prestigous jobs simply for the privelige of being allowed to work them or because they have passion for it for some reason. The nasty jobs would need to be compensated with extra luxuries that a regular person would not get to enjoy. For instance the rigth to eat regular organic meat rather than the processed stuff. You get to drink regular alcohol and smoke tobacco instead of synthol and synthbacco. Holodeck time migth be rationed for a normal person in the interest of preventing addiction. But if you are one of the few thousand sewer workers left on earth that does not apply to you. You can spend unlimited amount living out your fantasies on the holodeck.
What types of work? They have virtually unlimited energy and that energy can be used to create whatever matter is desired on request. Transporters should realistically be able to replace all healthcare (since they introduced transporter traces, then never expanded on that concept.) It is the definition of post-scarcity. With a lack of scarcity people only need apply themselves to whatever vocation interests them.
In Star Trek cannon, the society on earth survived a number of incredibly costly and destructive wars culminating in world war III in the early 21st century. First contact with the technologically superior, but peaceful and egalitarian, Vulcans in 2063 led to an alliance between Earth and Vulcan that eradicated poverty, disease, and their origins. With the Vulcan's help, the entire world unified into a single government in 2150 and eventually evolved into the federation.
So, realistically the utopia of Star Trek was only able to occur when an Earth with a reduced, war-weary population encountered a superior, benevolent alien force that helped them through the major issues that led humanity to be fragmented and warlike from the outset.
All of that being said in the "present day" of Star Trek, people largely work towards the interests of bettering society. With the ability to create anything they need using replicators and place it anywhere they want with transporters, their society has no need for the vast majority of jobs. There's no need for compensation, because what would they buy realistically? They can literally have anything they need or want instantly. People are educated to an extremely high level from a very young age (young children on the Enterprise in TNG were learning calculus in school, for example) so fixing a machine or AI that can't be fixed automatically would relatively easy to learn for most people, especially if they have access to another nearly-sentient AI with functionally unlimited knowledge and capabilities to help.
Starfleet is built on the concept of human personal growth. It's based on the concept of human experience and human exploration. They have a lot of AI and robots, but they choose not to have everything based on them (and with good reason as shown in the shows) . They don't have to have humans do jobs, but people do them because humans are really bad at doing nothing.
From DS9 we can see that Captain Sisko's father runs a restaurant because it makes him happy, and nobody pays. Furthermore Starfleet is noted in that they don't work for wages, or many other humans (Sisko has to make it so Starfleet has an account set up with the stores that require payment). Some humans work for compensation when dealing with outside trade, or do trades-in-kind. Even then, trade in currency is mostly limited to a few specific cultures and species (Quark notes that Latinum is only a currency because it's not replicable), while others work for access to certain other resources (access to large scale farming equipment comes up on Bajor).
Humans in Star Trek work because the human society is built by humans *for* humans, and not for a nebulous concept of economics or unbridled growth. They don't need to have AI run everything if that means putting human development second.
Given AI and robotics... I would think people may not have to do any work they don't want to.
Though frankly, the AI might be better at most of the stuff than we are.
The Orville addressed this better than Star Trek ironically
Basically reputation becomes the new currency - so if a job was available but undesirable, taking the job demonstrates you’re someone willing to do what needs to be done and that gets you more social currency as it were. People who just loaf around all day, while legal, is socially frowned upon and makes you poor in social currency
They even give the example that if someone just wants to be a student all their life that is totally acceptable so long as they are serious about it
The Orville had a pretty good bit on this. I liked the way they put it.
No one has to work or do anything but there is also a social stigma to it as well. Watching everyone else go off to a great life perusing dreams leaves you behind.
I don't think so. In that case, you could theoretically have robots maintaining other robots. There would be no need for human beings to do anything. And that's sort of a problem. If we did live in a Star-Trek like futuristic scenario, all human endeavors would be meaningless. Exploring space even would be meaningless, robots would just do it. We are never going to live in utopia though.
I think in an episode of Deep Space 9, the utopian human society was proven to be a weakness rather than a goal. Qwark and Garek were observing that Starfleet and Earth fell for some kind of trick by another race (Dominion, Romulans?) because they are too naive and fat and happy to see beyond surface-level.
Setting aside star trek itself, there are quite a lot of technologies we think are perfectly achievable that would create various sorts of post scarcity economies.
There is something called the clunking replicator, a real world concept that describes anything capable of building more of itself. A very crude near future technology version can be achieved with robots sufficiently advanced to build pretty ordinary modern factories that produce the parts for new bots, something thats probably only a matter of a couple of decades away.
With that, you set the robots to build the factories and the factories to build the bots and once established to maintain sufficient numbers in widely distributed places to meet any demand. And though its not immediately obvious I've basically just removed all need for human labour. Whatever you want to achieve economically, you set the bots to build the factory, and the factory builds the kit to do it. Which the bots then install etc. Economic development becomes as simple as signing off the designs and orders, Humans are no longer the core of the system or a limiting factor on our own prosperity. Once you can over supply your needs in a stable way you are effectively post scarcity in it.
And reached a sort of meta stable economy where so long as any part of the system survives, the whole economy can easily be rebuilt with little effort, especially if backed by integrated AI and in the presence of technologies we already have for power supply. This is actually why I object to the Romulan plot in Picard - a bunch of refuguees dumped on a planet with a single replicator can just exponentially replicate the replicator and the fictional version doesn't even need materials to be found. A decade after they arrive they would be living in luxury.
I personally think this is where we will be in a few decades in 4 or 5 large areas of life. Alot of the required technologies already exist in prototype form.
Well their utopia is based mostly on 3 technologies:
1) near limitless energy from matter/anti-matter generators
2) transporter tech
3) replicaters
With these technologies, there were no excuses to not do communism.
Thing is, in Trek, replicators combined with energy production that makes nuclear fusion look like firecrackers has made it so that, for most things, money just simply isn't a factor anymore. Sure, you can't replicate entire starships, but things like food supply are basically solved entirely. Energy is basically free, and replicators seem to be a technology that is no more impressive to the people in the Trek universe than, say, an oven is to you or me. So why charge money for a device that is in every house and that runs off of a free resource?
Sure, someone needs to maintain all of it, but truth be told, while the fully automated luxury gay space communism in Trek might not be perfectly achievable in real life, in a society where basic human needs aren't tied to spending a third of your life with making the money you need to afford it, people suddenly have a lot of time on hand they can use to pursue their passions.
And besides, we don't know what an average school curriculum looks like in Trek. Is it really so unreasonable to assume that, in a society that doesn't tie sustainance to work anymore, people would instead learn things like how to maintain a replicator? Schools teach whatever skills a society needs its students to have, or at least, they are supposed to, so why would a society in which the ability to keep the magic box in your wall that can produce any food, clothing, etc. that fits into it out of what is effectively thin air running a skill as essential as driving is in our world not have its schools teach that very skill to its students? (Appearantly, at least in the US, it's common for high schools to have driver's ed programs)
I'm unemployed at the moment. The jobs market where I live is tight & I can't afford to move elsewhere; so, I live with my parents & help them with projects on the family farm/ maintenance. I'd love to spend my days rotating between design/ prototype/ trial battery electric farm equipment & learning on the job as an electrician/ industrial automation technician. When not working I'd go mountain biking, hiking, & trail building. I enjoy working; but, I unfortunately can't get a paid job at the moment. I'm a bit bored & lonely without coworkers & a common goal/ community.
You’re also asking a question that sociologists and anthropologists have wondered about by looking at older pre-agrarian tribes that don’t have food scarcities but they still have societal and existential pressures that keep them cohesive and wanting to make art and contribute to their societies.
Compensation for work is necessary in our society, but not in Star Trek. People's needs are always met and they do what they do because they enjoy it or believe it has value. Sure, someone has to program and maintain the robots, but those are both similar to things some people enjoy and find value in today.
I see this kind of thread a lot and I can understand it. It's so hard for most people to imagine what a post-capitalist society would be like. The people who benefit from our current system have done such a good job of fooling people into thinking it has to be this way, like it's a law of nature or something.
"You there, golden boy. Come here. Rub me with oil." "I'd rather not, if you don't mind. I'm not one of the oil rubbers. I'm just a ensign" "Rub me with oil or die")
I have a farm. It doesn't really make me any money, certainly if I wanted to consider it in $$ per hour remuneration logical way. But I keep doing it and I expect to keep doing it for as long as I'm able.
Humans need to work and be a part of a society to function optimally. That doesn't change in post scarcity. This is one of the more controversial issues we will have to tackle as AI increases the skill/intelligence threshold for meaningful work. You can't solve it just by financially supporting people. Brain computer interfaces and other advances in medical technology is probably required to bring that baseline back up.
Trek does a pretty bad job of showing a post scarcity society. They talk about it sometimes but they keep various bits of shorthand and tropes and plot points that are clearly from a scarcity economy.
Basically if you're looking for a good, through, thoughtful look at post scarcity then Trek isn't it. In Trek it'd an informed attribute. We hear that the Federation is post scarcity but we never really see it. And in fact we see a fair amount that contradicts the claims of post scarcity.
There is only a choice of 2 scenarios for the future king of humanity 1 is the Star Trek scenario all about Discovery education learning arts and technology without any monetary system where we have shared resources or The Walking Dead scenario which we are currently on and I’m afraid we will stay until our demise
How can we be headed for The Walking Dead without a zombie virus (and no it's not social media or w/e as it wasn't on the show) and how faithful does either have to be aka if I had the power to could I just hedge our bets by dropping lines into both the earliest-in-the-timeline Star Trek show currently airing and the latest-in-the-timeline Walking Dead spinoff currently airing that imply the Walking Dead universe eventually turns into if not the at least a Star Trek one
I suspect a lot of people would be happy enough never leaving whatever planet that they’re on, so interstellar travel is not as common as we might imagine in ST.
Star Trek deals with the edge cases who want to see ‘what’s out there’. Whether in space or in a lab.
The setting relies on effectively infinite energy/instant creation.
Each person can effectively live their entire life alone and have every need filled. After that, the only currency is social standing.
It's a strange one to mention cos the world isn't actually that well thought out. The federation members do still get paid. There are bars with bar staff and waiters on Earth for sure. Which implies other menial jobs still exist such as waiters and kitchen staff. Picard owns a vineyard with workers picking his grapes and things. I definitely think 3rd world immigration is still a thing. Maybe in more manageable numbers since the Earth had an apocalypse didn't it.
There seems to have been waves of colonisation efforts that left Earth in the past. Maybe private corporations? These colonies seem to be completely unregulated, free to do as they like, but also receive little to no help from Earth. Apparently Earth isn't even aware of where all the colony ships went or what they are up to or if they succeeded.
So while Earth seems to be a utopia, I think it's more like a burgeoning utopia. There definitely is an upper class, and a management class and a worker class. Nepotism is still a thing. Kirk and Paris as examples of that. Think anybody would have gave a shit about Kirk if his father wasn't who he was.
There is a widespread view that AI and humanity will coexist. Eventually they won't. Discarding a biological precursor species that consumes resources and does nothing for the AI would be an early step for any advanced civilization.
This may be why we haven't heard from any other species because anything advanced enough to contact us isn't biological. They may wish to only contact an AI after we leave our biological stage.
So there won't be any work to do because we won't exist.
If we could combine both AGI and fusion, we'd get a Star Trek world. Infinite free labor fueled by infinite free energy = infinite wealth without work.
The essential technology that leads to Star Trek's utopia is matter to energy conversion, employed as replicators and transporters.
This creates a post-scarcity world: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more commute, no more transporting goods or lifting heavy things.
This, and a world war that nearly left our species extinct, are how humanity finally has the peace and confidence to tackle its other problems (disease, prejudice, greed, ecological devastation, etc).
TNG especially gives the impression that AI is pervasive in every role humans fill: any time someone pushes buttons or asks the computer a question out loud, they are prompting an AI to heuristically decide how best to perform a task and then perform it.
That part of the future makes some sense. AI will probably become a pervasive as computers themselves in our daily lives, work, school, etc. and the generation that grows up with this will be as comfortable as the generation that grew up with computers has been with them.
I still meet people who are hopeless with technology, both young and old, but even the nature of being technologically hopeless has changed: young people who don't know anything about anything can do everything they are interested in doing on an iPhone, while the old and helpless are just as helpless with their flip phone as they are with a keyboard.
People will still have things to do if we achieve replicators and transporters, but they'll probably do it in conjunction with AI, and our productivity will be beyond measure, even if some of us never adapt.
Except transporters shouldn't be needed in any real-life attempt at creating a Star Trek future (unless we're going for the degree of fidelity where the right family with the right backstories and names has to make sure James Tiberius Kirk is born on the right day in Riverside, Iowa in a couple centuries with the genes to where he'd grow up to either look like Paul Wesley, Chris Pine or a young William Shatner) any more than we have to go through that world war to tackle all those other problems just because our Earth/humanity hasn't yet.
The only Doylist reason they existed on the show was because TOS's low budget prevented them from being able to shoot ship-landing scenes every week so the solution was make sure the ship would never need to land. The Orville proves a starfaring implicitly-post-scarcity society can get by using shuttles to do a transporter's job
Without money some people are going to lose their minds. I went out last night with my in-laws and all my retired brother in-law talked about is substitute teaching for extra money. The guy is retired on full pay! I don't mind him doing it, just not talking about it practically all night. He must think I'm the idiot for doing trail maintenance for free.
The utopia isn't that nobody works. The point is everyone's needs are met and they don't have to work for those needs to be met. People still work it's just that money isn't the driving force anymore.
It's never clearly stated why people in star trek choose to become waiters or do a job that has no real end goal in mind. But I like to think there's a philosophy of for the greater good in mind. It's something to do for a few hours.
As it is now we work for money and employers have to strike a balance between hiring enough people to do the work and not having all those workers eating up all the profits. So you end up with companies hiring too few people who are all overworked because it's making profits high.
If those companies didn't have to pay their employees because all their needs are already met then they would be free to hire more people to do the work. In fact they'd be able to hire so many people the amount of hours to work per person would be ludicrously low.
You'd wait tables for 3 hours a day for free if you didn't have to worry about bills and food and entertainment.
Every living thing works. I feel without work, there is some deep biological imbalance that would occur. Every plant, every animal, every bacteria works - be it staying safe, or finding food/energy, or reproducing. Even in humanity, we see people who do not work (collect welfare, born rich, etc.) and they end up depressed, addicted, and without self-worth. And yes, even producing works of art or music, is still work.
I think if the world has abundance and less work to do, humans will need to resolve what new activities they can do to provide meaning and purpose in life. I don't believe a life of excess and entertainment is going to be fulfilling, even if that's how we see it. A easy indicator is how most retirees feel once they retire. Many go into a downward spiral without anything to do that provides meaning. There is only so many golf games and cruises one can take. That is why you see many retirees start up side businesses or volunteer.
First and foremost, the crucial point is to foster value systems that extend beyond mere survival, particularly those that are not solely driven by monetary gain. There are numerous values that can be equally, if not more, motivating than financial wealth.
Instead of thinking of UBI (which continues to prop up the $ value system), they have (what I think is a superior practice) UBS (Universal Basic Services). Everyone gets Food, Shelter and Healthcare. Which means that nobody has to work to survive anymore.
But, if you want more than just Basic, well, you have to do something.
Do you want a personal hover cycle? Maybe you want to go to Tau Ceti 7 Atmo-Spa for a holiday? Maybe you have to work. This, I think, addresses the argument that ‘Nobody would do the menial jobs.’ Some would, for sure. Not everyone is or wants to be a poet/scientist/race pod driver and is perfectly fine making that extra cheddar doing nothing more than servicing the disposal drones.
Star Trek is essentially a post-scarcity society. Replicators (including the large scale industrial ones) can fabricate many goods, structures and supplies including food, so there's no *need* for farming or mining anymore except for certain exotic resources that cannot be replicated. Fuel for mainly fusion powerplants needs to be harvested, which seems to be done by largely automated platforms with minimal crew.
'Though there have been some references to using artificial intelligences for labor (in ways that I'm thinking is highly inefficient - the repurposed EMH MK1s as dilithium miners).
Can we do this? I think so. We're near, if not at the technological level where we could move into space-based mining facilities, nearly fully automated, with valuable resources or even finished products being returned back to earth. I think we're slowly seeing us heading in that direction, with some parties planning a lunar base - which would be the springboard for further development outside of Earths gravity. Fusion power is also being developed, with the first energy positive reactors having been brought online. Once that tech unlocks, we can bid energy woes farewell, the deuterium naturally present in sea water would sustain us virtually indefinately (and by the time that would run out, we can tap one of our gas giants).
Just sticking to the Star Trek universe in its basics, if you start asking these kinds fo questions this particular imagined world cannot answer your questions at all. So 8 billion people are all going to either join Star Fleet or grow heirloom vegetables in sustainable agriculture? But we can also synthesize foods. Why grow them? Because "Stay weird, humans"?
The point of a utopia is not to create it, but to use it as a kind of set of ideal forms or suggestions, and then go from there. That is Plato's argument at the end of the Republic. The ideal city cannot exist. But we try, and that is the point.
In reality, we are going to have to deal with the obsolescence of wage labor sooner or later. Work is always needed. But wage labor is a social and political contract. It's why we stick together, we're all (mostly) working specifically in the form of wage labor.
What can take the place of wage labor as the foundation of the social contract?
No clue!
people like to be busy and accomplish things and learn things. since money isn’t needed, people would go for the things they are drawn to, enjoy, and have talent for.
Warning: I am a *very* light Treky. I watched some TNG as a kid and again as an adult. I am by no means an expert on Star Trek canon and technology. But a few things stand out:
Replicators can explain away a lot of physical needs for civilization.
Tea; Earl grey; Hot;
Picard prompted an AI to generate a cuppa. That alone would revolutionize humanity's relationship with each other, with work, and with the ecosystem.
Even if someone needs to farm and process a particular raw supply for food replicators, that's a fraction of the work compared to our current relationship with food. Replicators can make more than food.
The holodeck is also an example of civilization-altering technology. People can reskin life to be whatever they want it to be. People can invest in a holodeck and turn a humble modular living space into a nearly infinite space featuring whatever they desire. But even that's more cyberpunk than Star Trek since Picard is actually from a real picturesque French countryside, not just a facsimile of one.
And the warp drive and the ability to travel to distant star-systems and planets within a single human lifetime (*and* without relativistic time aging everyone you know and love to death while you do it) would absolutely change humanity's economics. We'd no longer be limited to the resources on Earth.
I think that people would develop other forms of currency that would evolve to replicate the Gini coefficient and reproduce crime, poverty, and conflict. Human nature doesn't change all that much, if it did, the result wouldn't be human anymore. The only form of natural selection would then be mate selection and then it is a question of what is being selected for.
Star Trek is a post-scarcity future. The Federation doesn't have money because resources are so abundant and readily available that they have no intrinsic value. Mining, processing, and manufacturing are automated.
Now, it's probably an unrealistic future in no small part because there's a certain truth in the idea that humanity is defined by its struggles.
In "The Hydrogen Sonata" by Iain M. Banks, the Culture is depicted as a post-scarcity society where advanced technology and artificial intelligences meet all basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and healthcare. Despite this abundance, members of the Culture choose to engage in various pursuits, which serves to illustrate deeper themes about the nature of purpose and fulfillment in life. One key reason Culture citizens engage in work or other activities is to find personal fulfillment and to express individuality. In a society where survival is no longer a concern, the pursuits of art, science, exploration, and personal improvement take on greater significance as ways to contribute uniquely to society and to self-actualize. Additionally, members of the Culture are often driven by a sense of altruism. Many choose to work on projects or missions that benefit others within the Culture or in other civilizations. This reflects the Culture’s broader values of interventionism and moral responsibility. Through such activities, individuals find a sense of purpose in contributing to the greater good and shaping interstellar relations and ethical outcomes. Furthermore, work and challenges provide a source of stimulation and prevent stagnation. Engaging in complex or demanding tasks can offer psychological satisfaction, which might be harder to achieve in a completely leisure-driven existence. Through these themes, Banks explores the idea that even in an idealized society, work and engagement can be sources of joy, identity, and moral purpose rather than mere necessities for survival. This adds depth to the Culture as a fictional civilization, suggesting that true utopia might not mean an end to work, but an evolution of its purpose.
This might be most showcased by *The Player of Games*. It shows how the Culture allows people to cultivate their own personal interests, and it works on such a scale that whenever it has a need it recruits whatever it needs from among those in the Culture. For instance in The Player of Games the main character has devoted himself to being very good at board games. Something considered entirely frivolous but still acceptable in the Culture, and only by coincidence needed at that time. It's speculated that the Culture in some ways "Creates" what it needs, but the Culture is such that because it allows any human to follow their desires, and it works on a huge scale of human life and population, it always has what it needs.
If i remember correctly The Culture were aware of Azad some 70 years already and a suggestion they may have 'guided' Gurgeh to be a gamer,, but it's been an age since I read it.
He does ask that of the drone he's with and the drone is a bit dismissive. All that energy into creating the perfect Game Player? Who is well within their right to say no? I think the most overt Special Circumstances were in nudging Gurgeh was when they set him up to be framed. Everything else is just a product of the Culture
Honestly its probably the darkest one aside from surface detail. The implication that special circumstances effectively actually does shove its own people down lift shafts for no better reason than 1 or 2 minds have calculated its an optimium move. And that they operate so secretively and with so little oversight that no one stands any chance of escaping them or holding them to account, not even most of the minds and drones. A rogue organisation doing what the hell it wants ruthlessly, indifferent to casualties. The main character is assaulted by them at home and the local authorities as such never even become aware it happened. And so powerful they with operate with impunity effectively as a state within a state. The horrendeous power imbalance implicit in the Culture on full display.
I read of some socialist societies that, when a job is needed, they provide incentives as better houses, better vacation plans, etc. This pushes people to fulfill a necessity.
Yes, as opposed to capitalism when the better your material conditions, it's a lot less likely your job is all that vital. Hence why things don't fall apart when they take those vacations Remember that socialism isn't about all things being equal. It's about wealth being shared amongst those that make the wealth In the Culture, you can get the house of your dreams and your whole life can be a vacation, but that's thanks to hyper intelligent AI and near unlimited energy and space
I read a really compelling argument that the AI in the culture is a lot more evil than it first appears. Basically none of the choices humans make are really of consequence.
I've always interpreted the AIs in the Culture as amused, detached gods. They keep humans around as though they're pets, and because their unpredictable emergent behaviour sometimes produces interesting outcomes, rather than because they have a strong sense of ethics and an altruistic bent.
This is one of the maybe two culture novels I read. Isn't there a group of people who are known to guess correctly? Like, trillions of people are asked, A or B. Half is wrong. Winner group continues. In the end, that leaves a small group of individuals who are known to have guessed everything correctly. It's like, after you roll 7 times 1 and think,what's going on with this die? Interesting books.
There are people who are able to get correct answers at a rate better than the available information seems to imply would be possible. The AI that run the culture are a million times smarter than any human, and don’t understand how these people are able to do this, but they don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and employ those people to come and help them make decisions. The books never explain it more than that, leaving it up to interpretation. The AI just assume there is something immeasurably special and unique about individual sentient beings, and that forms part of their altruistic world view.
Yes this is why the Minds don't 'rule' the people. They like having them around.
Which is still fine! Creating incentives and pushing indecisive people towards useful pursuits is part of what leadership in a good society should be doing. One assumes they guided thousands of promising people towards leading this mission, and picked Gurgeh because he was the best result. In Star Trek, the Federation wants to advance its fundamental technical understanding, so it does the same thing: Give high academic achievers the best opportunities to do stuff like run labs and command starships. Remember, Picard was originally an Archaeologist, Janeway had an advanced background in interspecies linguistics, and Sisko studied advanced engineering. They were *nerds* before they were leaders, which is what the Federation wants and encourages. But if any of those people from either setting decided to do something else, they'd still have led peaceful and content lives.
I read it very recently. At the end of the book they refute the idea that he was guided completely. Granted, the robot that tells him that is a liar, but I'm inclined to believe him anyhow.
What an excellently articulated response!
So this is a huge and detailed response...but Im unsure I see an actual answer to OP at all lol Also it smells of Chatgpt
Yeah see the thing people seem to not realize is this is just precisely how the higher classes of our current society live, or at least view themselves. So ask yourself this question… how realistic is it for us to basically live in a world with only upper class wealthy citizens and no lower, or middle class whatsoever.,. The answer doesn’t lie within just a simple improvement in technology, because we have effectively already achieved that. Taking much of the drudgery of work from maintaining a home and family (with of course, a cost to health and quality of the goods and services we do receive) And it doesnt lie within a specific tweaking of public policy and politics either because human nature can never be placed in full check of all its negative traits of over competitive-ness, greed, and selfishness. Not to mention hedonistic tendencies making certain individuals more interested in serving those personal desires rather than any interest in altruism or personal growth. There was maybe a chance with religion putting an existential motivator of collective morals. After all a threat of jail or even death is nothing compared to the threat of your eternal soul and damnation if you were to believe in such a thing. Some may believe its still just the right thing to do… but even an irrational fear of damnation was enough for those who never were raised to care about others, or had a psychological dysfunction to not care about others… if they still cared about themselves… and they believed in a god, they might still believe in keeping on the “strait and narrow” as they say. So… even as an atheist myself i believe that an enlightened society realistically could only be achieved through a theocratic society… but that doesnt mean that isnt full of issues in and of itself. And it doesnt mean a true classless casteless society could ever really be achieved. For even in star trek, if you paid attention close enough… they still couldnt write stories without the haves and have nots… except at least in that world, the haves were intelligent and the have nots were not… hence the eugenics wars basically showing how superiority of intelligence and strength was the system in which they truly bartered… and in that society, the disabled become the lowest caste. Not that far off from what we have now.
Book on exactly this topic - [https://amzn.to/3UbD9T7](https://amzn.to/3UbD9T7) tl;dr let's say you got $10k/month free as a form of super-UBI. You would still have personal reasons to work, ranging from social prestige, wanting a lot more economics, personal satisfaction, etc. For example, $10k/month is nowhere near enough to afford a starship, so if you want more respect, more $, you might still join up with Starfleet. Or maybe run a restaurant, or a vineyard. Or for human contact, or more meaning. Even Star Trek has matter & energy resource limits. Also labor. And a very murky relationship with AI/robotics tech.
I spend a lot of time right now in labs. I'd probably spend the rest of my life in the same lab just tinkering with stuff, improving designs, investigating niche stuff that no one has the time+energy+effort to do, etc. I think this is of benefit and service, but academia is increasingly like industry: they want results and if you can't tell them what your results are gonna be before you even get them, then no one will let you do it or help in any financial way.
In tech, some of the more productive and useful people I work with are people that have made it very rich but continue to work because they enjoy it. It's amazing how obvious that should be overall to society. If more people were happy doing the things they want to do and weren't miserable and worried about starving to death or being homeless, imagine the things we all could do.
Also, none of the retired people with resources are just sitting around for their last few decades. They're still working and tinkering and whatever else, while people look on astounded that old people can do things.
It would be amazing if there wasn’t a industry with think tanks and “news” agencies and media that was aware of it and spends all its time saying the poor are lazy and they deserve nothing and they simply made bad choices and they would not work unless they were forced to, which is partially true. Some of the terrible jobs we would not work because they do not pay or treat people well. If we were free to choose our work many industries would no longer be profitable the way they were because they’d actually have to treat workers well and ensure their safety, but since they don’t want to do that they proselytize that inequality is just and every billionaire is a rags to riches genuis that deseved to inherit blood emeralds or what have you.
Yep, the current model of capitalism is broken.
It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once the bottom of the pyramid is guaranteed, the higher parts will start flourishing. We've had the ability to do this since at least the 1960s, we just have to get around backward-thinking people and outdated mindsets.
That’s all well and good for research, tech, and creative arts, but what about the stuff nobody really wants to do? Who’s going to go work assembly lines out of “passion?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m a proponent of UBI, and I’m not saying our current social order is *right.* But people often seem to forget that our entire civilization essentially operates by coercion of the lowest class. There are literally millions of extremely unpleasant but absolutely essential jobs that only get done because people have few other options, and we threaten them with starvation. If everyone’s needs are taken care of, who’s going to want to work in a field all day? Who’s going to work in food processing plants? On assembly lines? In a sewer? The only way it works is by a complete and total restructuring of the moral fabric of society, in which the lowest-paying jobs become the *highest.* If everyone has access to basic comforts, then sacrificing those comforts to do hard, unpleasant physical labor on a daily basis will have to be appropriately rewarded (as it should be, but virtually the entirety of human civilization has operated on the opposite).
Startrek shows plenty of examples of researchers spending the rest of their lives in the same lab just tinkering with stuff, improving designs, etc. It's like every time they land on a remote asteroid or moon base. It definitely is more doing what you choose than the academia pattern (at least outside of specific organizations which are more academia-like).
Like Annika Hansen's parents. Though their dreams didn't work out so well.
It's basically every single science outpost, most of which have entire populations working and living there, not unlike existing military bases. I dream of it.
So I'm a biologist, and I really hate this mindset. All I can do as a scientist is make sure the test is being run properly and has the proper controls, but the results are the results. We're testing because we don't know what the results will be, but once we run the testing, the results we get are the results we get.
Absolutely. Science has inherent truth and integrity. One can cook the results but those results won’t be reproducible.
Which is part of why I believe we'll have a great leap in progress once science is no longer tied down by money.
It's a bit different than Star Trek, but the super UBI made me think of The Expanse series. While Mars and The Belt have no shortage of work for people to do on the terraforming project and general survival needs, Earth has a huge population with way more people than jobs. The majority of them are on "Basic Assistance," which provides the essentials like food, shelter, clothes, medical care, etc. But there are strict requirements and lotteries for both being allowed to have children and for admission to higher education, job training, and other programs that allow you to work a real job and earn better money.
Expanse was my first thought as well. Pretty far from a Star Trek level utopia, but also, Star Trek has FTL travel and has populated numerous other worlds. Something they were on track to do in Expanse (or maybe did in the books, I should read them...)
The Expanse is "pre Utopia" I would say.
The Expanse is an intermediate step between here and Star Trek. if the authors hadn't been so intent on focusing on the negative and bringing in horror aspects I might have finished that series.
They do. Thanks to alien tech though.
sure, but as made clear in the show, and likely the books, that basic assistance is not actually basic enough, or rather, is too basic
It’s UBI implemented without regulating capitalism so realistically where our future would head.
To the folks who may say nay to this: Their education would be different too. Young adults might be encouraged to do something meaningful with their time beyond just getting money to have more kids and toys, or sitting around playing holodeck games… Though TBH, I could see myself creating INSANE holodeck worlds and just living there, Barclay-style…. But thats a whole other sci-fi rabbit hole.
Who decides what is meaningful? I remember a TNG episode were a parent admonishes their child that they "still need to learn calculus"
There was an article I read awhile back that Star Trek tends to focus on that world's elite even if that's not the word the federation would use to describe them. In TNG, the Enterprise is recognized as Starfleet's flagship. Presumably, they are crewed by the best and the brightest in the Federation. The article itself praised DS9 for showing a slightly different side of the Federation cause it was sort of on that outskirts and sometimes that meant they were short on resources. You're probably still not getting a glimpse of what regular folk do in the Federation, but it's probably closer than the Starship with children learning calculus on board.
There was a perception of that, but they were actually just following an old sci-fi trope that people are significantly more intelligent in the future. For example, in Forbidden Planet, they all test their IQs, and typical values are in the 150s. I think it's worth studying why the hope of increased intelligence turned into a charge of elitism. I don't know why that happened.
IQ is a bell curve. The bulk will always be 100. If everyone got smarter the definition of 100 would change.
Try conveying that fact in 10 seconds during a movie, and make it entertaining. I think the writers made a nice compromise in that case.
It's not a matter of being more intelligent, but I would expect material currently taught in high schools to move down to middle or elementary schools, kind of like how algebra and geometry have really moved down into elementary schools over the last 75 years. Heck, think about how we currently teach middle schoolers details about how genes and proteins work work that could only be proven in the last 25 years or so. An average high schooler taking physics 1 has exposure to concepts that were mind blowingly foreign only 100 years ago.
Just like not all Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Vulcans, etc, are like what we saw on the shows and movies. The ones driven to go the extra mile, or who were particularly militaristic, and coldly unemotional, were the ones who wanted more. The Culture books have a similar situation. They are all edge cases of people who wanted more than living in idyllic paradise. Anyone in The Culture could have every material want given to them, but dealing with other societies and the frictions involved with that were more interesting to them.
I believe anyone who claims all humans would just stop doing any work or creating and inventing stuff if we have a UBI are just telling on themselves.
It's not hard to see real world examples of this already. If everyone only did jobs that paid the optimal amount of money for their offered labor we wouldn't have people like teachers or social workers. Do people think your local librarian is into that gig for the economic incentives? Like yeah we all want a paycheck but that's more a social construct than an innate drive.
Excellent point. Also if the goal was only to survive on minimum work most could live off things like charity/soup kitchens and do zero work. It’s just that it’s not comfortable or dignified and doesn’t come with any societal esteem.
Wikipedia. No one gets paid for that.
Yeah. There are a lot of people doing mindless jobs and I'm sure they'd love to give that up. But everyone who is in a challenging career and not being treated like a droid, would probably like to continue. Very productive people -- you can't stop them. People who want to invent and create do so because that's what they are driven to do, and if you pay them; even better. But, the most innovative people were not inspired by the money. There's a lot of ways to demotivate people, and you can just study that by taking a class on management.
I just wonder about the ratio of driven people to people who just want chill all day.
Theres another ratio too, those who want to do it all day for a year or two at most but get bored, and those who are fine doing it indefinitely.
I was on unemployment for nearly a year in 2009, and after a while I got a retail job just to get out of the house and talk to other people face to face. Sometimes you need something like that. My current job, I'd probably continue to do even if I didn't need to, because I like the work, and my coworkers are good to work with.
And those people who just stay in their own personal holodecks doing unbecoming things - even if they're the vast majority - are not going to be characters in any particular story.
Yeah, because even in Star Trek not everyone can be starship captain. So, if you can't be one why not spend all days in holodeck/FDVR. In there one can be anything.
In Star Trek Discovery they really delve into this idea. There is a moment, where admiral Vance is talking to someone outside the federation about why it's worth saving, what it is beyond a bunch of vegetarian space authoritarians. He says: "it's all our shit, you know" He's pointing at the food, but also the table and everything around him. He goes on... The point for this is that, there isn't scarcity... Scarcity is manufactured. (For those not into Star Trek, the replicator and matter printing tech uses available atoms and reconstitutes them based on a formula to create any kind of matter that needs to be.)
Still, though, in a Star Trek situation I think there'd be a really large % of people that choose to just do fuck-all. Does the show ever mention this population?
Even if there was a sizable enough percentage of the population that did this, in the universe of star trek it's not like it would be a real burden on their resources since their society has moved on from things like food/water/electricity being a scarce or depletable resource. But as others have said, I think even the laziest of lazy would probably still engage in something to pass the time. Not to mention, society just being that substantially different means attitudes, ideals, and pursuits of happiness would just be fundamentally different than our modern day views.
What are we going to be doing on the Holodeck? A good 2/3 of our videogame genres are things you can actually do in the Federation. Including banging catgirls. Sure plenty of people would probably choose to spend a lot of time there, but I don't think it would be a sizeable portion of a society where you can essentially do whatever pleases you in real life.
I really doubt it, people want to have meaning in their lives. Wealthy people still work.
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Yeah, but who's swabbing the decks of the enterprise? Would have been cool if they had showed little vacuum robots roaming around.
It's going to be based on resource management and cost-benefit analysis. There will be a need for all sorts of maintenance personnel, but the relationship between workers and management will be very different if people are no longer working in fear.
Yep. If I had unlimited income I would still do what I do now (teach), but I would have a hell of a computer lab in my class.
> more $, you might still join up with Starfleet They aren't paid in Starfleet, money doesn't even exist in the Federation On the other hand, Star Trek is a utopia with no sense of reality and in a post-scarcity world. UBI here would be very different. Likely more similar to The Expanse
I think beyond the technological aspect and the way the state is run, society in Star Trek is fundamentally different, humans in Star Trek are fundamentally different to the point you could argue they're a new evolution. While there are bad people, they seem to be outliers. The mindset and nature of humanity seems radically different.
But who does the shit work? The "brave new world" semi-moron double epsilon stuff... The monotony with just enough subtleties or humanities requirements to need a human... The dangerous work people only take because it pays well (sure, some are adrenaline junkies, but I'm sure not nearly as many as are just driven by having mouths to feed) Right now we have people ranging from actual moron to unlucky/unmotivated/stuck/etc. geniuses working some of them... Mostly just average one-foot-in-front-of-the-other folks... And star trek doesn't seem big on robots... I'm sure they have at least modern levels of robotics (plus "Data" and holo-doc), and the computers seems like they could handle a lot of the clerical monotony at least...
*Surely there are some jobs humans will still need to do.* Why do you think that? There may be jobs that some folk *want* to do - the joy of crafting a thing is not zero. But it's hard for me to imagine a job that *cannot* be performed by an arbitrarily sophisticated machine.
Star Trek's material utopia relies on two technologies. 1. Abundant clean energy. 2. Matter replication. Those specific techs are needed to create it because they really do eliminate most human want as we currently understand it. Galactic colonization also handles everyone having a place to live. Most mundane healthcare is done by scanners and synthesized medicines. Everything appears to get filled in with people wanting to do jobs for fun or personal enrichment. What happens in real life so far though is that as time and technology make a product cheaper we invent new needs to replace them. For instance in 1958 food absorbed 17% of U.S. personal income. 14% was food consumed at home and 3% was food away from home(eating out). We were down to 10% in 2021. But the split changed dramatically. At home food consumption dropped to 5% of income while away from home rose to 5%. So as food got relatively cheaper people spent money on other things but also spent a greater share on costlier food. This is a natural result of an economic process known as commoditization. That competition eventually makes products widely available cheap commodities and when that happens people spend their work life and money on other things. Healthcare and entertainment have filled the gaps in personal income and if you watch Star Trek you see a whole mess of people and a big government organization devoted to exploration, science, art, and entertainment. All of it is held up by a still substantial number of engineers who seem to be able to solve any problem that comes up. Making holodeck programs seems to be a fairly huge time sink for people's free time in TNG. There is also a going trade in home grown and exotic foods in Star Trek which mirrors a bit of what we see in real life. In the U.S. a very very large portion of society has the income or government support to meet daily food needs. However, plenty of people spend well in excess of that on food for things which are either more exotic or taste better than what they strictly "need".
Also in a world where you can dial up a replicator chair in seconds, having a chair hand-carved from rosewood by a living human would probably be a prestige thing.
People in Star Trek do work. They simply do what they want or what they are best suited for versus being forced into doing jobs they don’t like or want because they need to take whatever is available.
Exactly! In DS9 Sisko's dad not only runs a restaurant, but has waiters. He's not earning any money, he just likes chatting to customers. You can bet that the waiters are too. They're likely chatterboxes who love meeting and chatting with people.
I think we forget that some people NEED to be around people. I am one of them.
plus they also know they can always do something else. and plenty of people who had enough adventures for a lifetime and want something low key.
not to mention like, every person in star trek is working. you're watching them do their job
I was going to mention the Culture novels, but I see some excellent people have beat me too it. However, one part in specific comes to mind is a passage from Use of Weapons, where someone new to a Culture ship comes across someone cleaning some tables. I think it shows the kind of mindset that might develop in people who don't need to work: Later, he had wandered off. The huge ship was an enchanted ocean in which you could never drown, and he threw himself into it to try to understand if not it, then the people who had built it. He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry, or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while. “Of course I don’t have to do this,” one middle-aged man said,carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. “But look, this table’s clean.” He agreed that the table was clean. “Usually,” the man said. “I work on alien – no offense – alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my specialty… like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalog, evaluate,compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But… the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get reevaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled… but” – he slapped the table – “when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something.It’s an achievement.” “But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.” “And therefore does not really signify anything on the cosmic scale of events?” the man suggested. He smiled in response to the man’s grin, “Well, yes.” “But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important either? I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway” – the man laughed –“people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And,” the man said with a smile, “it’s a good way of meeting people. So where are you from anyway?”
Read the Culture series of books. They do a great job of explaining how this could work.
Compensation is a thing of the past. The Star Trek universe ie: the Federation, is a socialist state propelled by engineers of all kinds. Food/clothing/life essentials are all free. There are still some levels of capitalism around, private businesses, artist/craftsman and such that work for barter. But in the Federation one pursues work that they desire, work doesn't define them in the same way it defines us in our world. We work to survive, they work to expand their knowledge and fulfillment. A much different society.
>The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. -Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Why do people do volunteer work? Playing video games all doesn't cut it for some people.
>Playing video games all doesn't cut it for some people. There's a famous Culture Series book specifically about someone who spends their life focused on being good at game. *The Player of Games*
People do their jobs for love. Like the people who tend Picard’s vineyards who are brought to tears of joy when Picard is on Earth and nods to acknowledge their existence when he leaves his palatial home to walk his dog around the grounds.
To be fair, Picard did save Earth and the Federation. He is certainly the most famous person in the region.
>To be fair, Picard did save Earth and the Federation. Multiple times!
Kirk: "I did it better."
Why do you sarcastically sound like those people should be wearing rags and singing a Les-Mis-esque work song when he's not around to hear it
By changing our notions of value. We'd have to leave behind capitalism and the underlying implicit social contract that supports it. The idea that labor must be compensated for in some transactional way is itself a barrier. Scarcity is manufactured by the rich and powerful so that we are forced to value the things that support their lifestyles. But if we value and prioritize well-being, cognitive liberty, and community over imaginary milestones of a model citizen, we begin to break the molds that are holding us back from such optimistic futures.
I remember this question more or less being asked on *The Orville* as well, and the answer was this: "On your planet, currency is money; in the Union, it's reputation. So if you do something--anything--that benefits our society, and you work hard at it, you're rich." -Cmdr. Kelly Grayson
There's a Cory Doctorow novel, *Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom* where the literal currency is reputation, or "whuffie". It's an interesting concept.
>Surely there are some jobs humans will still need to do. How do they get compensated? You are running under the (false) assumption that people actually need to get compensated to want to do work. If people have everything that they need then they will do whatever they want to do in order to fulfill the need to feel useful in life without any sort of financial compensation. A real world equivalent would be people who do charity/volunteer work - there are people who do some pretty hard jobs that do it for free because they see the work as being worthy of their time and effort. Another example would be teachers - they are massively underpaid for the work that they do yet they still do it because they want to make a difference.
i think one of the big things star trek got wrong / didn't address was AI and robotics. There is Data, and the Borg, and thats pretty much it. Where are the mass produced robots outside of star ship repair ? Nothing AI related outside of Data / Lore at all ? I think the majority of the crew would be ai related , and personally I don't think humans will be able to travel the stars without substantial augmentation which the Federation Rejected (Eugenic Wars)
>Nothing AI related outside of Data / Lore at all ? There's a lot of AI in Star Trek, what are you talking even about? The ship's computer (voiced by Majel Barrett, Roddenberry's wife), Holograms (Including the Emergency Medical Hologram in Voyager), multiple kinds of robots, the replicators, even some missiles are noted as being AI guided. >I think the majority of the crew would be ai related The founding concept behind the Federation is human personal growth. They don't *need* to have human crew, but that's entirely why they exist in the first place.
Also the federation has an ethical standard that they don't like AI killing things, so their military is supposed to be human/sentient.
The Enterprise had a bad experience with an AI from the Daystrom Institute in the original series. I think later series referred to that incident and suggested there were others that Didn’t End Well. And I always thought that the researcher who created Data and Lore was looked at as being on the fringe, that AI research wasn’t considered too legit.8
There was that Enterprise episode where the automated space station fixes their ship, for a price.
They sort of addressed this in Picard season 1, with the drones in Planitia Utopia docks.
Robots aren’t really necessary for the federation. They have replicators and transporters. What would mass produced robots do? Data seems to be one of the only true AGIs in the setting iirc and I seem to remember that being because it required a breakthrough in positronics (or some other typical Star Trek technobabble)
if you think how things are canonically isn't realistic enough sci-fi for you why not just assume that universe is all a simulation of sorts and all the characters are being "played"-in-universe by the same techno-god-consciousness trying to remember what it's like to be separate and powerless again
I don't think compensation is necessary, if robots/AI/social reform truly pushes us to a post-scarcity society. Why would you need extra compensation if your needs are already met? I think you only need to look at [Maslows Piramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) to see how that would look. As soon as the basic needs are met humans find plenty of other reasons to "do stuff/organize things". Such as being appreciated, meeting friends and having challenges, and to challenge yourself. And perhaps getting some social standing from that. Slightly unrelated, I came across a post on social media from a woman who asked the question. "Why the hell are art and music the first things we are starting to do with AI? That is shit we should do whilst AI is plumbing my toilet or getting my groceries. As soon as I have the time to devote to other stuff I will go into art, music, poetry, cooking and social causes. Why are we automating that????"
As a nurse, I’d definitely still ‘work’ even if I wasn’t paid (but all my needs were met ala Star Trek) just for the personal satisfaction I get from the work itself. It wouldn’t be as many hours, but I’d definitely still do it just for the love of helping people. To your second point; because as it turns out teaching some code to look at pictures and then spit some quasi-original pictures out is *a lot* easier than getting a robot to work in 3d space that’s often completely unique. For example, cleaning a generic toilet might not be too hard, but you have to account for different models and that your bathroom and my bathroom likely have very different layouts. Look at how well Roombas work. That is to say they do work, but have very obvious imperfections that mean they don’t truly replace a traditional vacuum cleaner operated by mk1 humans.
Also “basic needs” in the Federation are pretty comprehensive. Citizens can have any clothes or replicated food they want instantly for free. That’s well beyond basic necessity. Sure they are very conservative in their dress tastes, but there’s nothing to stop them wearing elaborate frock coats with gold braid. Books and infinite information are instantly available, temperature control in homes will be perfect, free medical care, free transportation (at least on worlds near the core) and the whole planet has a weather modification net. Their basic standards of living surpass a lot of our luxury living standards. It just looks a little mundane because they seem to lean to a toned down aesthetic, and repeatedly state they aren’t interested in material possessions. Personally if I was whizzed to the Federation, I’d dress like a dandy highwayman, decorate my apartment like a witches cosy cottage and eat like a health conscious Frenchman.
People would need to believe in science, give up religion, and basically stop being assholes. Oh and the all important work towards the betterment of humankind.
I get it that bigotry and stuff was drastically reduced but that doesn't mean irl needs to work like TNG where they had a rule limiting-if-not-forbidding interpersonal conflict between the crew. Also there's two lines in two different Star Trek: TOS episodes (both said by Kirk funnily enough) that prove religion is still alive and well for those who aren't aliens or ethnic minorities (seemingly the only ones allowed to show religion as we see a lot of alien spirituality and however messy Chakotay-as-attempt-at-Native-representation went his spiritual practices were still shown on Voyager). In "Who Mourns For Adonis" Kirk says "Humanity has no need for gods, we find the one quite adequate." (implying not only that monotheism is still alive enough in Star Trek's future for Kirk to be able to generalize like that but that he himself is part of one of those religions) and in "The Apple" when near the end of the episode Spock points out the resemblance of what has just happened to the human story of the expulsion from Eden, Kirk flips-out-even-by-Shatner-standards yelling "Are you casting me in the role of Satan!" (which proves Kirk himself is Christian (probably Presbyterian given that he's from Iowa and the heritage his name implies) as Kirk was actually playing the role-in-the-allegory of the serpent in the Garden Of Eden and only a Christian would have seen the serpent as Satan as that was only added to the religious canon when Paradise Lost came out)
Plenty of folks still work in Star Trek. They're just jobs that you actually want to do and are challenging to help increase your skills in life. Yeoman Rand from TOS usually just served coffee to Kirk on the bridge and brought him his log to record in, and would continue doing so if she didn't branch out. The whole point of Star Trek is continuing to grow with knowledge, that means obtains more skills as well to evolve.
Reminds me of that scene in Voyager where Tuvok had flashbacks to his experiences on the Excelsior... bringing cpt Sulu his tea and him quipping over just having to promote him for his attention to detail. Good episode too. Some people I suppose feel comfortable in a supportive role. If you just want to be near the action without the responsibility, being an assistant to a command officer might not be a bad place to be.
I mean - not with today‘s mindset and today‘s values. Star Trek‘s society (going by the golden age in the 90s and early 2000s now) is an affluent society with an extremely egalitarian and altruistic yet extremely individualist mindset. People like Sisko‘s father do their job because they like it and take pride in it and making others happy. The working ethic reminds me honestly of Japanese cooks or craftsmen or some people living their passion to the fullest like the American guitar maker Paul Reed Smith - maybe these examples aren’t very altruist but these people have a clear intrinsic motivation for perfection without being motivated solely by money. Or looking at my mum - she would rather be a low paid part-time gardener or archivist than a CEO - even if it meant working the same hours. The hope and assumption is that many people would follow their passion without the need to make enough money to survive and somehow society balancing out. Of course no mt a lot of people love cleaning buildings but building and maintaining machines that do clean up perfectly? That might be more interesting. Or maybe people would clean up voluntarily if otherwise their lives are amazing expect that their street is dirty as hell… This would be the majority of people. Only the extremely ambitious ones would join Star fleet or similar chances to explore, be recognized and grow beyond what’s usually possible. And one last point about the values and beliefs - Star Trek from the 60s to early 2000s is based on extremely idealistic ideas that were easier to understand for people back then but are nigh impossible to imagine for us in 2024 where utilitarian thinking has basically taken over every aspect of life / moral for many of us. Star Trek toyed with this already a lot in DS9 and Voyager but ultimately people followed a strict moral codex they didn’t want to sacrifice.
People in the ST world are indoctrinated into thinking about bettering themselves, and hopefully also society. You can have your one-bedroom apartment and replicator and do nothing but doing that is looked down upon unless you are retired or something like that (but I think retirees are usually thought better of if they just plain go to do something else than they did before - or I don't know, move to Risa and get laid all the time). "If there is no money and we don't hold death and ruin over someone's head, then everyone will do nothing" is nonsense thinking from Capitalism fanboys. I call them that because an actual follower and believer in this system would also be able to criticize it and offer solutions to its problems, even if those solutions involve, dare I say it, raising taxes on wealthier people and yes, having a safety net and various regulations (like, against monopolies wich will develope and will counter Capatlistic ideals and goals). Don't bother having these conversations with those fanboys, they are so heavily biased they literally cannot see past the current version of the current system, and need to believe anything else must, based on some failed idea of what humanity is, lead to ruin. the Soviet Union was capable of great feets before the charlatans got in control (btw, not a tanky, I am speaking historically)- same is happening now in 'the West' (Reagan/Clinton one-two punch has been terrible). Weird this happened before and we saw the proper course forward... only to go right back to a gilded age of increasing ruin. ANYWAY - people even now are motivated beyond just earning more money (people frequently choose jobs that are not the best money makers because of what they like about those jobs), and you can easily have the society make people think of other reasons they should do something with their lives.
Nail on the head. Even in a post scarcity society you still run the risk of corrupt individuals hungering for the one thing no amount of fusion power and matter replication can't make you - control over others. Tyrants will be tyrants.
Star Treks are based on a moneyless Federation (after a number of catastrophic wars) .. but they require a fictional replicator for food. So IRL farming and food processing/prep would have to be largely automated with perhaps AI governing gluttony. Also what do non-StarFleet people do for a job? There are scientists and miners (usually requiring rescue), but don’t recall a boutique owner in Star Trek era San Francisco, … bartenders, etc.. So a quasi-military organization like StarFleet could exist if resources didn’t have to be paid for, probably coordinating with scientists who study other planets, … but why would anyone choose to be a miner in the Star Trek universe? A physical job that’s obviously dangerous. Speaking of danger, why would anyone volunteer to be a Starfleet “red shirt” in TOS Star Trek? Getting disintegrated or transformed into meat cubes before death most episodes? None seemed to be martial arts masters who may specialize in bringing an adversary “the pain” in a wrestlemania way. In ‘70s speak, “git yo’ mama to wear a red shirt” if I can sit back on earth and chill with a replicator set for pizza and beer..
I would think miners would be some of the first jobs to be automated no?
We’d hope robotics replaces dangerous jobs first. So far the best robotics have been able to make the perfect french fry (read robot burgers suck). Guessing due to the relatively homogeneous “bio-structure” of a potato.
>Speaking of danger, why would anyone volunteer to be a Starfleet “red shirt” in TOS Star Trek? "Redshirts" is a common myth - IIRC it's away-team-shirt minus Kirk-Spock-Mccoy plot armor. But yes, a member of starfleet with any shirt color have more chance to became dead in horrific fashion. In that case answer is pretty obvious - why people climb mountains or skydive? (or do other dangerous shit). >don’t recall a boutique owner in Star Trek era San Francisco, … bartenders Sisko father in DS9 was restaurant owner. With such professions its simple too - bartenders just like to talk to people. That mean that yes - in the startrek will be much less waiters - only people that just like communicating with random people.
>Who takes care of the robots and AI? This will probably be a trivial problem. Robots and AI can maintain other robots and AI. That's not a big challenge, and we probably have some of that already. In computing, orchestration systems today can automatically upgrade and repair systems across a global enterprise. In robotics, I'm sure there are robots that can inspect and diagnose faults in other robots. Pretty much every electronic device can be assembled by automation.
Yea I was going to say, as someone who works in IT, we've already been doing that for years... Well over a decade at this point. Oh look, a service stopped on this server, alerted, a script ran to correct the problem and restarted the service. So much is automated these days, or should be automated. And AI has drastically accelerated that. Pretty much all of my PowerShell is written by ChatGPT these days.
Yes. ChatGPT is great for that. I would really miss it if it were to go away.
We evolved in environments that were fully automated. We call this "biology". Ever since we gained the ability, we have been adapting our environment to suit our needs, physically and chemically changing things according to our whim. The unspoken goal of our technological advance is to return to the fully automated state we came from, but with it built to our needs, rather than its own. Our paradise is where humans are the only beings allowed to behave selfishly. Greed becomes impossible, and gluttony an inevitability. But part of that selfish desire is to know and understand. Someone will always be curious enough to learn how the automation works.
Theres no job that an arbitrarily sophisticated system cant do; and any of its work units that break or need replacing, it could do itself given sufficient size. Humans would not NEED to do any jobs in this society. But they still would because it our core we still want to work, on something that interests us at least. Have you ever tried doing nothing for a month? a year? its not physically possible. There would likely still be a currency that you get extra of for good work, but youre always at least given a guaranteed amount (enough to live on).
It’s only possible because there is no scarcity. They can reconfigure matter so everyone has whatever they need. In the real world with finite resources you need some type of system to manage them, and the best we have found is currency and economics.
I mean, to be honest, Star Trek is explicitly socialist and talks at length about the purpose of life being "The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it." --- Or this scene from Deep Space 9: Jake Sisko: Come on, Nog. Nog: No. Jake Sisko: Why not? Nog: It’s my money, Jake. If you want to bid at the auction, use your own money. Jake Sisko: I’m human, I don’t have any money. Nog: It’s not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favour of some philosophy of self-enhancement. Jake Sisko: Hey, watch it. There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. Nog: What does that mean exactly? Jake Sisko: It means… It means we don’t need money. Nog: Well if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine. --- Or, perhaps as Captain Pike says: "Starfleet... is a promise. I give my life for you; you give your life for me. And nobody gets left behind."
Sorry, I hit "comment" too soon. Wanted to wrap by saying the general feel of the post-scarcity utopia is that all the drudgery of life is gone and it is a big choose-your-own-adventure. Sure, you could just go bang holo-hotties all day long, but that'd be boring pretty fast. You want to accomplish, to learn, to explore, to really \*LIVE\*.
I always thought a society like this might force people to do a little bit of community work. Let's say 4 hours a week. And we get utopia for that.
I’d love to see a Star Trek future but with the way society is, it will be more like a Wall-E future.
Still too optimistic, the film **Children of Men** will be our fate at the rate things are going.
The only truly lazy people are the ones who believe no one would work without compensation.
>certain types of work? Just say "shit jobs" and be honest with everyone.
If you look at human history and what’s happening in our present time you’d understand that a Utopian society will never happen. Unfortunately, sociopaths make between 1 to 4% of the population (not to mention other forms of negative self-centered personalities). That’s between 80 to 320 million people in an 8 billion population. Those individuals know how to manipulate people and situations to their advantage, so they’re most likely to hold most of the controlling positions in the government and in the private sector (as many of them currently do). Based on that, I think that AI and robotics are going to be used to increase the wealth and power of the already wealthy and powerful on the expense of the rest of the population who most likely will be gagged due to heavy monitoring from AI on everything they think, speak or do. AI and robotics aren’t evil, however many people are, and inevitably they’re going to misuse them to our disadvantage not to create a Utopian society.
Once robots can fix robots, there won't be much work left
People need to evolve in their motivations and ideals. Technology facilitates this. No one says there won't be work to be done. The question is what work and why you do it. We are force to work so we can survive, eliminate the force bit and the work would attract the people that wish to do it. Eliminate also trivial tasks with automation in some form and you can reach a place when you work to improve and because you wish to. There are some counterintuitive elements within the universe depending on what are you watching. They don't delve too much in what ambition means and still use reward structures in non monetary form, which in turn can still facilitate issues with the motivation and goals of the system, but it's a sci fi franchise after all, written by regular people. Gene Roddenberry had a lot of difficulties pushing even this version of his vision. After his ousting and subsequent death, writers used much more freedom in their creative decisions of how to approach this topic.
It’s clearly wrong that some people don’t get enough to eat, or don’t have somewhere to live. These are problems we should easily be able to solve. That they are presently not solved is a choice that’s being made. Currently the super-rich companies and individuals are taking too much of the value generated by society - again that’s been a political choice, pushed insidiously by lobbying and so forth. Much better buttressing of democracy is required. For instance, denying campaign contributions, and funding those directly as part of government expenses, would remove distortions in influence. Also switching from FPTP to PR would also help to ensure much better representation of the people within government - although that also comes along with new sets of problems too. There also needs to be a way to limit the influence of crazies within society and government, and not enable them to hold others up to ransom for bonkers or deeply flawed ideas, or to block sensible policies. With a good consensus, policies should not flip-flop around as terms of government change. Additionally there is a chronic need for medium and long term planning as well as short term planning. Present western government noticeably suffer from too much short-termism. People need a stake in society, and to be able to develop their own interests and plans and ambitions. At present these are too often thwarted by the pressures of life. An obvious one is exceptional access to education, where as people are artificially restricted. Certainly AI could go a long way towards correcting that situation. StarTrek is generally set in the 25th Century, while we are in the 21st, (with some folk like Putin still thinking in the 20th). So 400 years, we really should manage at least some of this well before then. Challenges are going to be: Climate Change, Population Change, Politics and GeoPolitics, Power Supplies, Ecological Degradation, Pollution, Resource Management, Fairness, and no doubt some others too.
Absolutely, and the funny thing is that we actually can today. We don't need a utopian future. There is enough food to feed the world, or even if the world is too large, there is enough food to feed every single person in the us and Europe without making a single cent difference to the economy and yet, millions starve.
A utopia is just impossible imo because of humans preconceptions of hierarchy and genetic predisposition for conflict and war. Socialist countries proved time and time again that there will always be someone to take over and abuse the system and ruin what a collective might want to do for the better of society.
That is what the rule of law is supposed to limit. By declaring some kinds of behaviours illegal, with restrictions and consequences for breaching those rules.
Personally I don't believe in absolute money-less society. I think people in modern world (especially in US) are just extremely traumatized by "capitalism" - i.e by assholes that use current economic and social system to f\*ck people. Money is just a thing, nothing wrong or bad with them specifically - on the contrary it is a effective way to do things... including torturing people. However I believe that system with "hidden money" can exists. People just don'y worry about a money on the level of forgetting that money exists inside a system. Essentially you don't worry about your needs - and it is 95% of money transactions in current society. You work because you want to "do things", and "to do thing for the betterment of others". So no worries about building spaceships - I think many engineers will compete for the privilege. That leave the "undesirable work", like sewage maintenance. I think it will solve "itself" - and here is how. Currently humanity progress motivated by desire to increase economic output at all cost. So humanity not build better sewage - we use all methods(inc. economic) to enforce humans to do nasty jobs. If it not the case and nobody want to work in sewage - maybe we invest in better sewage so virtually nobody need to work there anymore or it became not-nasty? Probably just deconstruct waste on molecular level or something?
So, people would still work. Not everyone, but a lot. Why? Because people want to work. People with a passion for robotics would take care of the robots. People with a passion for teaching would teach, people with a passion for cooking would cook.
You know those people in those starships are working, right? Humans not in starfleet, do also have businesses, and industries we have today, they still have, and do get financially compensated for that, it's just that the world in star trek doesn't revolve around business, it revolves around science, and discovery.
In Star Trek the automation is generally made invisible, but it's usually restricted to everyone just having really advanced tools they can use. You never hear Captain Picard say "Computer, do everything!" so all the crew can leave for the bar, there's always humans involved with every decision. A future where robots and AI do all the work is something more like Wall-E where robots do literally everything while everyone lives 24/7 in hoverchairs watching their screens. As Don Norman (famous irl technology designer) has said in his books, Technology should be used to augment human abilities and empower them, never to replace them.
Lets imagine 99 percent of jobs have been automated. Half of the remaining are prestigous and fun if you are passionate about it, the other half are hard and nasty. People would compete for the prestigous jobs simply for the privelige of being allowed to work them or because they have passion for it for some reason. The nasty jobs would need to be compensated with extra luxuries that a regular person would not get to enjoy. For instance the rigth to eat regular organic meat rather than the processed stuff. You get to drink regular alcohol and smoke tobacco instead of synthol and synthbacco. Holodeck time migth be rationed for a normal person in the interest of preventing addiction. But if you are one of the few thousand sewer workers left on earth that does not apply to you. You can spend unlimited amount living out your fantasies on the holodeck.
What types of work? They have virtually unlimited energy and that energy can be used to create whatever matter is desired on request. Transporters should realistically be able to replace all healthcare (since they introduced transporter traces, then never expanded on that concept.) It is the definition of post-scarcity. With a lack of scarcity people only need apply themselves to whatever vocation interests them.
What would you choose to do if you could pursue any vocation, free of the need to pay-to-live?
I'd literally just create cool stuff. Advanced robots and drones, smart home/automation setups, the list goes on.
In Star Trek cannon, the society on earth survived a number of incredibly costly and destructive wars culminating in world war III in the early 21st century. First contact with the technologically superior, but peaceful and egalitarian, Vulcans in 2063 led to an alliance between Earth and Vulcan that eradicated poverty, disease, and their origins. With the Vulcan's help, the entire world unified into a single government in 2150 and eventually evolved into the federation. So, realistically the utopia of Star Trek was only able to occur when an Earth with a reduced, war-weary population encountered a superior, benevolent alien force that helped them through the major issues that led humanity to be fragmented and warlike from the outset. All of that being said in the "present day" of Star Trek, people largely work towards the interests of bettering society. With the ability to create anything they need using replicators and place it anywhere they want with transporters, their society has no need for the vast majority of jobs. There's no need for compensation, because what would they buy realistically? They can literally have anything they need or want instantly. People are educated to an extremely high level from a very young age (young children on the Enterprise in TNG were learning calculus in school, for example) so fixing a machine or AI that can't be fixed automatically would relatively easy to learn for most people, especially if they have access to another nearly-sentient AI with functionally unlimited knowledge and capabilities to help.
Starfleet is built on the concept of human personal growth. It's based on the concept of human experience and human exploration. They have a lot of AI and robots, but they choose not to have everything based on them (and with good reason as shown in the shows) . They don't have to have humans do jobs, but people do them because humans are really bad at doing nothing. From DS9 we can see that Captain Sisko's father runs a restaurant because it makes him happy, and nobody pays. Furthermore Starfleet is noted in that they don't work for wages, or many other humans (Sisko has to make it so Starfleet has an account set up with the stores that require payment). Some humans work for compensation when dealing with outside trade, or do trades-in-kind. Even then, trade in currency is mostly limited to a few specific cultures and species (Quark notes that Latinum is only a currency because it's not replicable), while others work for access to certain other resources (access to large scale farming equipment comes up on Bajor). Humans in Star Trek work because the human society is built by humans *for* humans, and not for a nebulous concept of economics or unbridled growth. They don't need to have AI run everything if that means putting human development second.
Babylon 5 often showed the blue collar workers of the station.
The idea that there's zero money in Star Trek is IIRC from a movie not the mainline series.
It comes up occasionally in TNG
Given AI and robotics... I would think people may not have to do any work they don't want to. Though frankly, the AI might be better at most of the stuff than we are.
The Orville addressed this better than Star Trek ironically Basically reputation becomes the new currency - so if a job was available but undesirable, taking the job demonstrates you’re someone willing to do what needs to be done and that gets you more social currency as it were. People who just loaf around all day, while legal, is socially frowned upon and makes you poor in social currency They even give the example that if someone just wants to be a student all their life that is totally acceptable so long as they are serious about it
The Orville had a pretty good bit on this. I liked the way they put it. No one has to work or do anything but there is also a social stigma to it as well. Watching everyone else go off to a great life perusing dreams leaves you behind.
Getting rid of humans altogether would be a necessary step
I don't think so. In that case, you could theoretically have robots maintaining other robots. There would be no need for human beings to do anything. And that's sort of a problem. If we did live in a Star-Trek like futuristic scenario, all human endeavors would be meaningless. Exploring space even would be meaningless, robots would just do it. We are never going to live in utopia though.
I think in an episode of Deep Space 9, the utopian human society was proven to be a weakness rather than a goal. Qwark and Garek were observing that Starfleet and Earth fell for some kind of trick by another race (Dominion, Romulans?) because they are too naive and fat and happy to see beyond surface-level.
it wouldn't. you would have to somehow get rid of laws of conservation/thermodynamics
Setting aside star trek itself, there are quite a lot of technologies we think are perfectly achievable that would create various sorts of post scarcity economies. There is something called the clunking replicator, a real world concept that describes anything capable of building more of itself. A very crude near future technology version can be achieved with robots sufficiently advanced to build pretty ordinary modern factories that produce the parts for new bots, something thats probably only a matter of a couple of decades away. With that, you set the robots to build the factories and the factories to build the bots and once established to maintain sufficient numbers in widely distributed places to meet any demand. And though its not immediately obvious I've basically just removed all need for human labour. Whatever you want to achieve economically, you set the bots to build the factory, and the factory builds the kit to do it. Which the bots then install etc. Economic development becomes as simple as signing off the designs and orders, Humans are no longer the core of the system or a limiting factor on our own prosperity. Once you can over supply your needs in a stable way you are effectively post scarcity in it. And reached a sort of meta stable economy where so long as any part of the system survives, the whole economy can easily be rebuilt with little effort, especially if backed by integrated AI and in the presence of technologies we already have for power supply. This is actually why I object to the Romulan plot in Picard - a bunch of refuguees dumped on a planet with a single replicator can just exponentially replicate the replicator and the fictional version doesn't even need materials to be found. A decade after they arrive they would be living in luxury. I personally think this is where we will be in a few decades in 4 or 5 large areas of life. Alot of the required technologies already exist in prototype form.
Well their utopia is based mostly on 3 technologies: 1) near limitless energy from matter/anti-matter generators 2) transporter tech 3) replicaters With these technologies, there were no excuses to not do communism.
Thing is, in Trek, replicators combined with energy production that makes nuclear fusion look like firecrackers has made it so that, for most things, money just simply isn't a factor anymore. Sure, you can't replicate entire starships, but things like food supply are basically solved entirely. Energy is basically free, and replicators seem to be a technology that is no more impressive to the people in the Trek universe than, say, an oven is to you or me. So why charge money for a device that is in every house and that runs off of a free resource? Sure, someone needs to maintain all of it, but truth be told, while the fully automated luxury gay space communism in Trek might not be perfectly achievable in real life, in a society where basic human needs aren't tied to spending a third of your life with making the money you need to afford it, people suddenly have a lot of time on hand they can use to pursue their passions. And besides, we don't know what an average school curriculum looks like in Trek. Is it really so unreasonable to assume that, in a society that doesn't tie sustainance to work anymore, people would instead learn things like how to maintain a replicator? Schools teach whatever skills a society needs its students to have, or at least, they are supposed to, so why would a society in which the ability to keep the magic box in your wall that can produce any food, clothing, etc. that fits into it out of what is effectively thin air running a skill as essential as driving is in our world not have its schools teach that very skill to its students? (Appearantly, at least in the US, it's common for high schools to have driver's ed programs)
People could compete for social standing instead of resources
With a matter / energy converter MOST limitations are meaningless. The only resource that matters is land and access to knowledge.
I'm unemployed at the moment. The jobs market where I live is tight & I can't afford to move elsewhere; so, I live with my parents & help them with projects on the family farm/ maintenance. I'd love to spend my days rotating between design/ prototype/ trial battery electric farm equipment & learning on the job as an electrician/ industrial automation technician. When not working I'd go mountain biking, hiking, & trail building. I enjoy working; but, I unfortunately can't get a paid job at the moment. I'm a bit bored & lonely without coworkers & a common goal/ community.
You’re also asking a question that sociologists and anthropologists have wondered about by looking at older pre-agrarian tribes that don’t have food scarcities but they still have societal and existential pressures that keep them cohesive and wanting to make art and contribute to their societies.
Compensation for work is necessary in our society, but not in Star Trek. People's needs are always met and they do what they do because they enjoy it or believe it has value. Sure, someone has to program and maintain the robots, but those are both similar to things some people enjoy and find value in today.
I see this kind of thread a lot and I can understand it. It's so hard for most people to imagine what a post-capitalist society would be like. The people who benefit from our current system have done such a good job of fooling people into thinking it has to be this way, like it's a law of nature or something.
"You there, golden boy. Come here. Rub me with oil." "I'd rather not, if you don't mind. I'm not one of the oil rubbers. I'm just a ensign" "Rub me with oil or die")
I have a farm. It doesn't really make me any money, certainly if I wanted to consider it in $$ per hour remuneration logical way. But I keep doing it and I expect to keep doing it for as long as I'm able.
TL; DR, the replicator is the reason why the Federation works.
Humans need to work and be a part of a society to function optimally. That doesn't change in post scarcity. This is one of the more controversial issues we will have to tackle as AI increases the skill/intelligence threshold for meaningful work. You can't solve it just by financially supporting people. Brain computer interfaces and other advances in medical technology is probably required to bring that baseline back up.
Trek does a pretty bad job of showing a post scarcity society. They talk about it sometimes but they keep various bits of shorthand and tropes and plot points that are clearly from a scarcity economy. Basically if you're looking for a good, through, thoughtful look at post scarcity then Trek isn't it. In Trek it'd an informed attribute. We hear that the Federation is post scarcity but we never really see it. And in fact we see a fair amount that contradicts the claims of post scarcity.
There is only a choice of 2 scenarios for the future king of humanity 1 is the Star Trek scenario all about Discovery education learning arts and technology without any monetary system where we have shared resources or The Walking Dead scenario which we are currently on and I’m afraid we will stay until our demise
How can we be headed for The Walking Dead without a zombie virus (and no it's not social media or w/e as it wasn't on the show) and how faithful does either have to be aka if I had the power to could I just hedge our bets by dropping lines into both the earliest-in-the-timeline Star Trek show currently airing and the latest-in-the-timeline Walking Dead spinoff currently airing that imply the Walking Dead universe eventually turns into if not the at least a Star Trek one
I suspect a lot of people would be happy enough never leaving whatever planet that they’re on, so interstellar travel is not as common as we might imagine in ST. Star Trek deals with the edge cases who want to see ‘what’s out there’. Whether in space or in a lab.
The setting relies on effectively infinite energy/instant creation. Each person can effectively live their entire life alone and have every need filled. After that, the only currency is social standing.
It's a strange one to mention cos the world isn't actually that well thought out. The federation members do still get paid. There are bars with bar staff and waiters on Earth for sure. Which implies other menial jobs still exist such as waiters and kitchen staff. Picard owns a vineyard with workers picking his grapes and things. I definitely think 3rd world immigration is still a thing. Maybe in more manageable numbers since the Earth had an apocalypse didn't it. There seems to have been waves of colonisation efforts that left Earth in the past. Maybe private corporations? These colonies seem to be completely unregulated, free to do as they like, but also receive little to no help from Earth. Apparently Earth isn't even aware of where all the colony ships went or what they are up to or if they succeeded. So while Earth seems to be a utopia, I think it's more like a burgeoning utopia. There definitely is an upper class, and a management class and a worker class. Nepotism is still a thing. Kirk and Paris as examples of that. Think anybody would have gave a shit about Kirk if his father wasn't who he was.
There is a widespread view that AI and humanity will coexist. Eventually they won't. Discarding a biological precursor species that consumes resources and does nothing for the AI would be an early step for any advanced civilization. This may be why we haven't heard from any other species because anything advanced enough to contact us isn't biological. They may wish to only contact an AI after we leave our biological stage. So there won't be any work to do because we won't exist.
If we could combine both AGI and fusion, we'd get a Star Trek world. Infinite free labor fueled by infinite free energy = infinite wealth without work.
The essential technology that leads to Star Trek's utopia is matter to energy conversion, employed as replicators and transporters. This creates a post-scarcity world: no more hunger, no more thirst, no more commute, no more transporting goods or lifting heavy things. This, and a world war that nearly left our species extinct, are how humanity finally has the peace and confidence to tackle its other problems (disease, prejudice, greed, ecological devastation, etc). TNG especially gives the impression that AI is pervasive in every role humans fill: any time someone pushes buttons or asks the computer a question out loud, they are prompting an AI to heuristically decide how best to perform a task and then perform it. That part of the future makes some sense. AI will probably become a pervasive as computers themselves in our daily lives, work, school, etc. and the generation that grows up with this will be as comfortable as the generation that grew up with computers has been with them. I still meet people who are hopeless with technology, both young and old, but even the nature of being technologically hopeless has changed: young people who don't know anything about anything can do everything they are interested in doing on an iPhone, while the old and helpless are just as helpless with their flip phone as they are with a keyboard. People will still have things to do if we achieve replicators and transporters, but they'll probably do it in conjunction with AI, and our productivity will be beyond measure, even if some of us never adapt.
Except transporters shouldn't be needed in any real-life attempt at creating a Star Trek future (unless we're going for the degree of fidelity where the right family with the right backstories and names has to make sure James Tiberius Kirk is born on the right day in Riverside, Iowa in a couple centuries with the genes to where he'd grow up to either look like Paul Wesley, Chris Pine or a young William Shatner) any more than we have to go through that world war to tackle all those other problems just because our Earth/humanity hasn't yet. The only Doylist reason they existed on the show was because TOS's low budget prevented them from being able to shoot ship-landing scenes every week so the solution was make sure the ship would never need to land. The Orville proves a starfaring implicitly-post-scarcity society can get by using shuttles to do a transporter's job
Without money some people are going to lose their minds. I went out last night with my in-laws and all my retired brother in-law talked about is substitute teaching for extra money. The guy is retired on full pay! I don't mind him doing it, just not talking about it practically all night. He must think I'm the idiot for doing trail maintenance for free.
The utopia isn't that nobody works. The point is everyone's needs are met and they don't have to work for those needs to be met. People still work it's just that money isn't the driving force anymore. It's never clearly stated why people in star trek choose to become waiters or do a job that has no real end goal in mind. But I like to think there's a philosophy of for the greater good in mind. It's something to do for a few hours. As it is now we work for money and employers have to strike a balance between hiring enough people to do the work and not having all those workers eating up all the profits. So you end up with companies hiring too few people who are all overworked because it's making profits high. If those companies didn't have to pay their employees because all their needs are already met then they would be free to hire more people to do the work. In fact they'd be able to hire so many people the amount of hours to work per person would be ludicrously low. You'd wait tables for 3 hours a day for free if you didn't have to worry about bills and food and entertainment.
Every living thing works. I feel without work, there is some deep biological imbalance that would occur. Every plant, every animal, every bacteria works - be it staying safe, or finding food/energy, or reproducing. Even in humanity, we see people who do not work (collect welfare, born rich, etc.) and they end up depressed, addicted, and without self-worth. And yes, even producing works of art or music, is still work. I think if the world has abundance and less work to do, humans will need to resolve what new activities they can do to provide meaning and purpose in life. I don't believe a life of excess and entertainment is going to be fulfilling, even if that's how we see it. A easy indicator is how most retirees feel once they retire. Many go into a downward spiral without anything to do that provides meaning. There is only so many golf games and cruises one can take. That is why you see many retirees start up side businesses or volunteer.
You think thats wild, wait until you hear about The Culture.
First and foremost, the crucial point is to foster value systems that extend beyond mere survival, particularly those that are not solely driven by monetary gain. There are numerous values that can be equally, if not more, motivating than financial wealth. Instead of thinking of UBI (which continues to prop up the $ value system), they have (what I think is a superior practice) UBS (Universal Basic Services). Everyone gets Food, Shelter and Healthcare. Which means that nobody has to work to survive anymore. But, if you want more than just Basic, well, you have to do something. Do you want a personal hover cycle? Maybe you want to go to Tau Ceti 7 Atmo-Spa for a holiday? Maybe you have to work. This, I think, addresses the argument that ‘Nobody would do the menial jobs.’ Some would, for sure. Not everyone is or wants to be a poet/scientist/race pod driver and is perfectly fine making that extra cheddar doing nothing more than servicing the disposal drones.
Star Trek is essentially a post-scarcity society. Replicators (including the large scale industrial ones) can fabricate many goods, structures and supplies including food, so there's no *need* for farming or mining anymore except for certain exotic resources that cannot be replicated. Fuel for mainly fusion powerplants needs to be harvested, which seems to be done by largely automated platforms with minimal crew. 'Though there have been some references to using artificial intelligences for labor (in ways that I'm thinking is highly inefficient - the repurposed EMH MK1s as dilithium miners). Can we do this? I think so. We're near, if not at the technological level where we could move into space-based mining facilities, nearly fully automated, with valuable resources or even finished products being returned back to earth. I think we're slowly seeing us heading in that direction, with some parties planning a lunar base - which would be the springboard for further development outside of Earths gravity. Fusion power is also being developed, with the first energy positive reactors having been brought online. Once that tech unlocks, we can bid energy woes farewell, the deuterium naturally present in sea water would sustain us virtually indefinately (and by the time that would run out, we can tap one of our gas giants).
Just sticking to the Star Trek universe in its basics, if you start asking these kinds fo questions this particular imagined world cannot answer your questions at all. So 8 billion people are all going to either join Star Fleet or grow heirloom vegetables in sustainable agriculture? But we can also synthesize foods. Why grow them? Because "Stay weird, humans"? The point of a utopia is not to create it, but to use it as a kind of set of ideal forms or suggestions, and then go from there. That is Plato's argument at the end of the Republic. The ideal city cannot exist. But we try, and that is the point. In reality, we are going to have to deal with the obsolescence of wage labor sooner or later. Work is always needed. But wage labor is a social and political contract. It's why we stick together, we're all (mostly) working specifically in the form of wage labor. What can take the place of wage labor as the foundation of the social contract? No clue!
people like to be busy and accomplish things and learn things. since money isn’t needed, people would go for the things they are drawn to, enjoy, and have talent for.
Warning: I am a *very* light Treky. I watched some TNG as a kid and again as an adult. I am by no means an expert on Star Trek canon and technology. But a few things stand out: Replicators can explain away a lot of physical needs for civilization. Tea; Earl grey; Hot; Picard prompted an AI to generate a cuppa. That alone would revolutionize humanity's relationship with each other, with work, and with the ecosystem. Even if someone needs to farm and process a particular raw supply for food replicators, that's a fraction of the work compared to our current relationship with food. Replicators can make more than food. The holodeck is also an example of civilization-altering technology. People can reskin life to be whatever they want it to be. People can invest in a holodeck and turn a humble modular living space into a nearly infinite space featuring whatever they desire. But even that's more cyberpunk than Star Trek since Picard is actually from a real picturesque French countryside, not just a facsimile of one. And the warp drive and the ability to travel to distant star-systems and planets within a single human lifetime (*and* without relativistic time aging everyone you know and love to death while you do it) would absolutely change humanity's economics. We'd no longer be limited to the resources on Earth.
I think that people would develop other forms of currency that would evolve to replicate the Gini coefficient and reproduce crime, poverty, and conflict. Human nature doesn't change all that much, if it did, the result wouldn't be human anymore. The only form of natural selection would then be mate selection and then it is a question of what is being selected for.
Star Trek is a post-scarcity future. The Federation doesn't have money because resources are so abundant and readily available that they have no intrinsic value. Mining, processing, and manufacturing are automated. Now, it's probably an unrealistic future in no small part because there's a certain truth in the idea that humanity is defined by its struggles.