The Economics of Star Trek

There is almost zero mention of central planning. It’s a capitalistic society, it’s benefits are just through the roof. Also, market economics = crowdsourced. That is, it’s not centrally planned. It’s democratic. It’s the only mechanism we know of to allocate resources that isn’t centrally planned. The alternative is that all allocations are done algorithmically through a computer and the economy is completely decoupled from market forces, but that’s still basically central planning, and infinitely more complex than assuming there is still some semblance of market underpinning, much like we stayed on the gold standard for far longer than we needed to and we still have pennies even though we don’t need them. It’s a vestige of the past. It’s the constitutional monarchy.

Either way, presumably, you take whatever job you want, and your benefits allocations are adjusted accordingly. But by and large you just don’t care, because the base welfare allocation is more than enough. Some people might care, some people might still care about wealth, such asCarter Winston. More power to them. They can go try and be “rich” in some non-Federation-issued currency. But most people just don’t care. After all, if you were effectively “wealthy” why would you take a job to become wealthy? It pretty much becomes the least likely reason to take a job.

So, behind the scenes there is a massive internal accounting and calculation going on — the economics still happen. They just aren’t based on a currency unit, and people don’t acquire things based upon a currency value. People just acquire things from replicators, from restaurants such as Sisko’s or coffee shops like Cosimo’s, or, presumably, get larger things from dealerships or (more likely) factories. This could still be called “buying,” as a throwback.

- More Here from Rick Webb who is looking for economic models beyond capitalism that aren’t all communist hoo-ha.