Star Trek has always focused on the character interaction, as opposed to the society that they live in. I think the lessons to be learned, are how the characters deal with the problems they face. In particular, the focus on peace and acceptance. I think that’s the most important message.

I love Star Trek. I hope it comes back in a couple years… but for now, we need a break.

Star Trek looks at the positives in human behaviour and there are few, if any, other Science Fiction shows that do that! For me, TNG was the best of all the series, but some of the best DS9 Eps (eg its final episode)certainly rated up there as well.

Star Trek has its faults, to be sure (afterall, it did give us Captain Kirk and Star Trek: Enterprise) but in the main it also gave us entertainment of an extremely high and professional level.

I love Star Trek, and I will forever.

RJKW

Imagine homes with replicators in them instead of appliances. Just feed all your refuse into the raw material bin and start pushing buttons! No need to cook or stock food in the house, just punch it up on the replicator. Want an ice cold beverage? You know what to do. No need to do laundry, just throw your dirty things in the replicator and get a new set of clothes every day. Why be envious of things other people have? Just go to your replicator and dial up whatever you want.

One thing I can see as a possible market in this scenario is the design and ownership of certain items. If you want to be able to replicate that new designer jacket, then you may have to pay a fee.

Then again, you could probably just download copies of your favorite items from Replister……

I also think that the starships are the cream of society, and that Earth is filled with lazy people. At the very least, there are probably lots of people who consider themselves artists, actors, or musicians, even though they have no talent. They can pursue their fantasies because they don’t have to worry about being unable to feed themselves.

You’ll never guess what my favorite holiday is…

1) It is undebatable that the Enterprise represents the Best and Brightest among them. As such, it isn’t a totally accurate view of the society/culture as a whole.

2) DS9 is a frontier outpost, and as such, “money” is relevant there, unlike throughout most of the Federation. They also explicitly note that Federation citizens don’t have “money”. One episode has Captain Sisko’s son, Jake, approaching his Ferengi friend Nog because he wants to get something that requires money, and, being a Federation citizen, he has none. DS9, after season 4, is much better than any other ST series, btw. Far better writing, a wider character/alien set than any other, and a wider use of storytelling techniques. At the moment, both are running on Spike, and 6th season DS9 stories are, on the whole, much, much better than the season 7 ST:TNG stories. In their best stories, both peak about the same, but DS9 is consistently better.

3) If you want to see a not dissimilar attitude towards the future, I would highly recommend “Voyage From Yesteryear” by James P. Hogan. It, too, postulates on “What next?”. It, like ST, is idealistic and ignores some critical aspects of economics (more below). I think both are still valuable as an early template, but they both miss some critical points.

The key issue of ST is an important one. We now produce virtually all our food with 1 to 2 percent of the population. It should not be long before the same can be said for our need for manufactured goods (which is why “exporting jobs overseas” is so ludicrous as a problem… sooner or later it’ll all be done by machines anyway).

We are now ready to advance into the next society — the one, whatever it is, which follows the Agrarian/Feudal society and the Industrial/Corporate one.

Each of these were radically different, and each had its own control structures and reward systems. Just as the peasant or Lord of the Agrarian society no doubt scoffed at the idea of most people working in factories for a living (”Pfahh! How will they eat? Will they eat cloth? Shoes? It’ll never happen!”), so, too, many scoff now at the idea that most won’t work in factories OR farms for a living, yet somehow, our systems will continue to function and, likely, continue to find ways to reward people for work.

Currently, it appears that the basis for the new economy is going to be a mix of IP and Services — that is, to say, that all new wealth will derive from increasing the type, variety, and quality of those things (IP and Services).

There’s a problem here — IP has very, very different qualities from the way it has been historically treated, which is equivalent to Real Property. While it was not the centerpiece of the economy, this did not matter — but, as its significance grows, the difference is becoming more and more critical, and The Powers That Be are attempting to thwart this shift in The Rules which is inherently needed to follow. Hence you get the current insanities of Napster suits and WIPO, and ISPs being held responsible for the actions of people using their systems. This is basically TPTB, attempting to, in the words of John Perry Barlow, “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic of IP canon” (”The Economy of Ideas”, Wired, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html — Very, very, VERY recommended reading for futurizing!!!)

The flaw in both ST and Hogan’s work is that neither really deals with the central problem of economics (i.e., why it exists, and why money exists) — How do you allocate scarce resources? More simply, who gets to decide how something which is shorter in supply than the demand gets the right to use it?

No amount of manufacturing efforts will eliminate this. Just as there are rare foods, there will be goods which are rare, as well — either through some limited material component (”Tantalum”, say) or the use of some new processing technique which has not yet become widespread. In other cases, it can be that the object is unique — in the aforementioned DS9, Jake Sisko wanted to get a 20th century baseball card for his father… not a reproduction, but an original.

“Who gets those”?

Money is the method we use to decide that. It invokes choices — you do without this so that you may have that. Others choose to not do so, and so do without.

ST:TNG pretty much handwaves past this, but it’s there, from time to time as a dramatic element. DS9 deals with it directly, in the course of the series. It doesn’t really solve it, but does ack its existence, and this shows some of the cracks in the Utopian Federation system. ST:Voyager dodged it as a problem by being away from the social base and thus implemented a “rationing system” for dealing with it… In some societies, they call this “money”.

Don’t think that I don’t like ST:TNG — by no means is that the case — but it does fail to address this central issue of any social system utterly.

Nick
obloodyhell–at–yahoo.com

Ayn Rand’s characters may have been selfish in our eyes, but their belief was that it was disserving to anybody’s good to be lavish to those who would never produce or make the best of themselves. People with a lot of money had a gift and responsibility to use their wealth to futher mankind, not squander it on philoanthropic endeavors. Build a railroad but don’t squander your profits on cheap fares because the underclass would like to afford travel on it or the government demands it. I don’t agree with her views, but Objectivism does have some strong points. I think it is more of a “survival of the fittest” wherein money and having it makes you more fit.

Your articles are usually very good, but please don’t waste your time falling back on the purported ideals of a fictionalized utopia. Keep your head in this world where we need you and your excellent advice; a place it is appreciated.

Regards,

Jack Greenwood

Having worked in agriculture, I would NOT hold agrarian cultures in high regard. It is hard work for long hours in cold and hot temperatures.

I think Star Trek is great fun, but I don’t think I’d hold it as a model society.

I do think, however, that Picard was not a bad model for management.