beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2012-01-11 08:16 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2012-01-11 08:16 am
Who cleans the loos on the starship Enterprise?
I've been thinking about the economics of the Federation, Starfleet, and what bits are tricky to understand.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money has a lot of quotes on it.
Simplest explanation for inconsistencies is writers forgot the 'no money' rule or couldn't grok it.
But I was mostly wondering how it could work, not how canon suggests it works.
Like, right now people exchange money for goods and services; prices vary wildly, but broadly speaking they are driven up by scarcity. Limited resources are divided up into bits that are owned by some legal entity and then they get bought and sold.
The Star Trek future posits that replicators and other advanced technologies pretty much take the limits off. There is no scarcity. You can have whatever you want, the replicator just makes it for the asking. So, no money.
But there's areas where that isn't so simples, stuff replicators can't make. The most obvious one being work. If you want a human to do work for you, how do you arrange that? It's easy to say "We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." But how does that translate in practical terms? And how do the grotty jobs fit in to that? It's easy to imagine a society full of happy productive scientists or actors or whatever, but how do you get anyone to clean toilets? And don't say everyone cleans their own, not everyone can. The future still has disability, even if only for one off episodes. Are the toilets all self cleaning? Well then who fixes the plumbing when it goes wrong? There is no system that does not go wrong sooner or later. ... maybe the toilets are all like replicators and replicate water to flush themselves with and then turn it all back into energy. Ultimate recycling... And there are people who like taking things apart and fixing them. Are there people who actually like unblocking toilets? I have difficulty imagining.
Even if all the devices are super ultra perfect, what about care work? Assuming people still get sick, there will always be a need for a way of cleaning up bodily yuck. Is that really so popular sufficient people volunteer for it to benefit humanity? It'd be a bad area to have a scarcity.
Maybe it's like quarantine fields. We don't know how they work, but they're why Starfleet doctors can just ignore getting clean and can wear the same uniform all the time. Maybe there's an anti yuck field and people can just be zapped clean with transporters. Like the bio filter. They can tell where yuck should not be and just get rid of it all the time.
So what about assistants who support mentally ill or disabled people in a more social or interactive way. Not pshrink stuff like Counsellor Troi, just moral support and being there and watching out for potential danger and making sure people don't pull bookcases down on their own heads or something. Or being someone to talk to even when socially isolated. That's not a job a clever zap machine could replace. And it's not going to be a fun job, not all the time. Childcare is another one where you wonder how it's divided up, there's not sufficient childcare right now, does the future do different? But adult care is more stressful and doesn't have an end date and doesn't necessarily involve watching people grow or get better. Is that going to be a job with enough appeal to get the right ratio of helpers to helped?
Holodecks could do a lot of work. But spending all your time in the holodeck interacting only with holo characters is not socially approved of. They tried to cure Barclay of it. And holodeck time is scarce even on the Enterprise with the biggest computers around. On DS9 at Quark's it's bookable but not always stroll in. It's surely not installed in every home or available to everyone whenever they want it. So holo isn't the solution. Even though technically it could be.
But if holodeck people are interactive enough to raise your children and befriend and comfort your people, they're pretty much people themselves, right? Turing test and all. The developing sentience of holo characters, and the Federation acknowledgement thereof, turned up several times. So once your holodeck people are people, what are the ethics? You can invent a person who will be kind and friendly and see to all your needs and give every evidence of liking it, but when the technology has the capacity to make that person free willed, like Moriarty, you're making designer slaves.
So there's a line where any technology advanced enough to do the job is advanced enough to choose if it *wants* to do the job, and you're right back where you were with humans, or whatever other species you want. Do you really get enough volunteers to do all the necessary work?
If not, how could you get them?
Not money. Rewards? How? Trade labour for labour, work for work, you do childcare today I do it tomorrow. Old school traditional much. But tricky to keep balanced.
Also, if there's no money, I'm wondering how roles are kept distinct. Like, carers are often expected to do work for love as it is. Like they should run themselves ragged because they care so much. The words need to seperate out. And there's times I need to be the boss of someone to get things done, and trying to arrange that with a friend gets awkward. Although on Star Trek people are friends with people they give orders to all the time. So they juggle those roles no problem. Maybe I'm just a bad boss. But there has to be 'on duty' and 'off duty' times, or else you could bump into your support person in the hall and decide you needed them right then and drag them away from their life. So there still needs to be jobs and boss/worker relations without money. Or there's only family and friends all the time and networks of obligation. My obligation to my worker is very tidy, they get paid and I don't ask them to do unsafe things. Simples. But if they were doing helpful things from friendship and I didn't be helpful back because I don't have much helpful to offer, like because I'm disabled, then not simples at all. There will be people in a situation of need and with no possibility of filling a need for someone else in return. So how do they arrange the necessary work?
I keep coming up with monks and nuns for the model. They don't do work for pay, they do work for a strong ideology of service. But if the whole of society works like that, how does that work out?
The results of work, of people rather than replicators working, would also be exchanged in some way. And owned, probably. I mean, if you spent ages making art and some collector dude stole it you'd still think of it as stealing even if you weren't expecting to get money for it. And Jake talked about selling his first book, even though it seems to be projecting late 20th century publishing models and ignoring even the current blog model as a publishing avenue. I mean, if nobody works for money, then it's all much more like fanfic. Fanfic writing works by giving. But art and stories aren't going to leave someone stranded if nobody gives them one.
The big question really is, how much does the Enterprise cost?
Who owns starships, and how can they possibly be exchanged?
I haven't the slightest clue of an answer. I can see how Starfleet works, but Starfleet aren't the only starship owning and operating entities, or the only humans.
And how does one arrange passage on a starship? Or get a colony together for a new world?
Even assuming Starfleet does all the survey work for fun and finds a lot of places, even when there's very many plenty new worlds, there's still a condition of scarcity, in that the journeys between them don't happen often and still require more than one person and their replicator and energy supply can actually do for themselves. There's supply and demand involved there. Is there really not more demand than supply? Or if there is, how do they sort it out who can go where?
And housing doesn't come out of a replicator either, or if it does it still needs humans to put it together. Or build the holodecks that can give the illusion of having put a whole lot more together. ... right? Probably? Do they have building size replicators?
Where the houses go remains scarce. Land: they're not making any more of it. Er, except they were, with reclaiming projects, I think. That suggests scarcity again, if they want more. So how do you get housing, who decides who can go where? To what extent does location matter when teleport takes you anywhere and holo gives you any interactive view you want? But it does matter. Especially if you've got wine fields to grow, stretching far as eye can see. Who decides who gets the big wine fields? Do you have to wait in line? Are you assessed for need, or for contribution to humanity? If the latter, how does that differ from money and accumulation of possessions? Ideologically, obviously.
I quite like the idea of not trying to accumulate money, but there's a lot of difference in just getting rid of it. How do they swap goods and services? And how long are you likely to be stuck waiting for that house you want?
Plus, access to education, and access to subsequent work. It's all very well showing students competing for admission to Starfleet Academy. Selective schooling, only take the best, since you want them to not blow up the big ships or the neighbours. Seems fair. But what happens for the education of everyone who doesn't get in? Is it like now and some people are stuck getting City College? And what difference does it make to them, if they don't get in the top universities? We know how you get a job in Starfleet. There's very tough competition, and more for every promotion. So is that what people in the future strive for, not the rewards from jobs but the jobs themselves?
... I can't really see people competing for care work. Just, in general. It don't seem likely.
Would the jobs that are harder to get in to still be the higher prestige work? Starfleet is selective so it is seen as of higher value to humanity than an inclusive recruiter?
And I'm not getting into the politics. The who is in charge and how. Even though that tangles with economics very extensively.
So, conclusion: Starfleet economics is difficult to make sense of.
er, surprise?
given that mostly they was stories about stuff blowing up.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money has a lot of quotes on it.
Simplest explanation for inconsistencies is writers forgot the 'no money' rule or couldn't grok it.
But I was mostly wondering how it could work, not how canon suggests it works.
Like, right now people exchange money for goods and services; prices vary wildly, but broadly speaking they are driven up by scarcity. Limited resources are divided up into bits that are owned by some legal entity and then they get bought and sold.
The Star Trek future posits that replicators and other advanced technologies pretty much take the limits off. There is no scarcity. You can have whatever you want, the replicator just makes it for the asking. So, no money.
But there's areas where that isn't so simples, stuff replicators can't make. The most obvious one being work. If you want a human to do work for you, how do you arrange that? It's easy to say "We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." But how does that translate in practical terms? And how do the grotty jobs fit in to that? It's easy to imagine a society full of happy productive scientists or actors or whatever, but how do you get anyone to clean toilets? And don't say everyone cleans their own, not everyone can. The future still has disability, even if only for one off episodes. Are the toilets all self cleaning? Well then who fixes the plumbing when it goes wrong? There is no system that does not go wrong sooner or later. ... maybe the toilets are all like replicators and replicate water to flush themselves with and then turn it all back into energy. Ultimate recycling... And there are people who like taking things apart and fixing them. Are there people who actually like unblocking toilets? I have difficulty imagining.
Even if all the devices are super ultra perfect, what about care work? Assuming people still get sick, there will always be a need for a way of cleaning up bodily yuck. Is that really so popular sufficient people volunteer for it to benefit humanity? It'd be a bad area to have a scarcity.
Maybe it's like quarantine fields. We don't know how they work, but they're why Starfleet doctors can just ignore getting clean and can wear the same uniform all the time. Maybe there's an anti yuck field and people can just be zapped clean with transporters. Like the bio filter. They can tell where yuck should not be and just get rid of it all the time.
So what about assistants who support mentally ill or disabled people in a more social or interactive way. Not pshrink stuff like Counsellor Troi, just moral support and being there and watching out for potential danger and making sure people don't pull bookcases down on their own heads or something. Or being someone to talk to even when socially isolated. That's not a job a clever zap machine could replace. And it's not going to be a fun job, not all the time. Childcare is another one where you wonder how it's divided up, there's not sufficient childcare right now, does the future do different? But adult care is more stressful and doesn't have an end date and doesn't necessarily involve watching people grow or get better. Is that going to be a job with enough appeal to get the right ratio of helpers to helped?
Holodecks could do a lot of work. But spending all your time in the holodeck interacting only with holo characters is not socially approved of. They tried to cure Barclay of it. And holodeck time is scarce even on the Enterprise with the biggest computers around. On DS9 at Quark's it's bookable but not always stroll in. It's surely not installed in every home or available to everyone whenever they want it. So holo isn't the solution. Even though technically it could be.
But if holodeck people are interactive enough to raise your children and befriend and comfort your people, they're pretty much people themselves, right? Turing test and all. The developing sentience of holo characters, and the Federation acknowledgement thereof, turned up several times. So once your holodeck people are people, what are the ethics? You can invent a person who will be kind and friendly and see to all your needs and give every evidence of liking it, but when the technology has the capacity to make that person free willed, like Moriarty, you're making designer slaves.
So there's a line where any technology advanced enough to do the job is advanced enough to choose if it *wants* to do the job, and you're right back where you were with humans, or whatever other species you want. Do you really get enough volunteers to do all the necessary work?
If not, how could you get them?
Not money. Rewards? How? Trade labour for labour, work for work, you do childcare today I do it tomorrow. Old school traditional much. But tricky to keep balanced.
Also, if there's no money, I'm wondering how roles are kept distinct. Like, carers are often expected to do work for love as it is. Like they should run themselves ragged because they care so much. The words need to seperate out. And there's times I need to be the boss of someone to get things done, and trying to arrange that with a friend gets awkward. Although on Star Trek people are friends with people they give orders to all the time. So they juggle those roles no problem. Maybe I'm just a bad boss. But there has to be 'on duty' and 'off duty' times, or else you could bump into your support person in the hall and decide you needed them right then and drag them away from their life. So there still needs to be jobs and boss/worker relations without money. Or there's only family and friends all the time and networks of obligation. My obligation to my worker is very tidy, they get paid and I don't ask them to do unsafe things. Simples. But if they were doing helpful things from friendship and I didn't be helpful back because I don't have much helpful to offer, like because I'm disabled, then not simples at all. There will be people in a situation of need and with no possibility of filling a need for someone else in return. So how do they arrange the necessary work?
I keep coming up with monks and nuns for the model. They don't do work for pay, they do work for a strong ideology of service. But if the whole of society works like that, how does that work out?
The results of work, of people rather than replicators working, would also be exchanged in some way. And owned, probably. I mean, if you spent ages making art and some collector dude stole it you'd still think of it as stealing even if you weren't expecting to get money for it. And Jake talked about selling his first book, even though it seems to be projecting late 20th century publishing models and ignoring even the current blog model as a publishing avenue. I mean, if nobody works for money, then it's all much more like fanfic. Fanfic writing works by giving. But art and stories aren't going to leave someone stranded if nobody gives them one.
The big question really is, how much does the Enterprise cost?
Who owns starships, and how can they possibly be exchanged?
I haven't the slightest clue of an answer. I can see how Starfleet works, but Starfleet aren't the only starship owning and operating entities, or the only humans.
And how does one arrange passage on a starship? Or get a colony together for a new world?
Even assuming Starfleet does all the survey work for fun and finds a lot of places, even when there's very many plenty new worlds, there's still a condition of scarcity, in that the journeys between them don't happen often and still require more than one person and their replicator and energy supply can actually do for themselves. There's supply and demand involved there. Is there really not more demand than supply? Or if there is, how do they sort it out who can go where?
And housing doesn't come out of a replicator either, or if it does it still needs humans to put it together. Or build the holodecks that can give the illusion of having put a whole lot more together. ... right? Probably? Do they have building size replicators?
Where the houses go remains scarce. Land: they're not making any more of it. Er, except they were, with reclaiming projects, I think. That suggests scarcity again, if they want more. So how do you get housing, who decides who can go where? To what extent does location matter when teleport takes you anywhere and holo gives you any interactive view you want? But it does matter. Especially if you've got wine fields to grow, stretching far as eye can see. Who decides who gets the big wine fields? Do you have to wait in line? Are you assessed for need, or for contribution to humanity? If the latter, how does that differ from money and accumulation of possessions? Ideologically, obviously.
I quite like the idea of not trying to accumulate money, but there's a lot of difference in just getting rid of it. How do they swap goods and services? And how long are you likely to be stuck waiting for that house you want?
Plus, access to education, and access to subsequent work. It's all very well showing students competing for admission to Starfleet Academy. Selective schooling, only take the best, since you want them to not blow up the big ships or the neighbours. Seems fair. But what happens for the education of everyone who doesn't get in? Is it like now and some people are stuck getting City College? And what difference does it make to them, if they don't get in the top universities? We know how you get a job in Starfleet. There's very tough competition, and more for every promotion. So is that what people in the future strive for, not the rewards from jobs but the jobs themselves?
... I can't really see people competing for care work. Just, in general. It don't seem likely.
Would the jobs that are harder to get in to still be the higher prestige work? Starfleet is selective so it is seen as of higher value to humanity than an inclusive recruiter?
And I'm not getting into the politics. The who is in charge and how. Even though that tangles with economics very extensively.
So, conclusion: Starfleet economics is difficult to make sense of.
er, surprise?
given that mostly they was stories about stuff blowing up.
no subject
Engineering takes care of the ship's infrastructure -- I can see having to work up to warp engines by spending years rotating through crew-quarters maintenance. Although we've seen very few people with disabilities (since most would be curable/preventable), probably the medical field handles the more unpleasant aspects of care-taking likewise. Societal mores would be important here -- did the post-WIII cultural narrative laud the caretakers of disabled survivors? You had a good point with nuns and monks, there are people who will spend lifetimes doing unpleasant work if they believe it's for a higher cause -- "God loves that" or "we take care of our own".
Or it could be more base: privileged access to scarce benefits go to people with the highest abilities competing for the top spots (holodecks on starships), and to those doing the work that most don't want to do (slots at the best restaurants, most luxurious living spaces, etc).
~
no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-10-26 04:42 am (UTC)(link)Even given all the above there will still be issues, fortunately we still have 200 years to solve them. :)