Author notes

216 - The Deep End

El Cid

on May 14, 2018

This scene was intentional written to be awkward. Hopefully I've succeeded there!

Also, the bit about the “comet chaser” incident will come up again; that wasn't just me burning up panel space with dialogue (not that I'm above ever doing that!)

I redid the top panel at the very last minute, and I think it shows. It looks almost like it belongs on a completely different page.

NOTES

* Comet Chaser: A deep space roaming manufactory that modifies or completely disassembles comets in order to create useful structures, such as staging platforms for laser arrays to propel interstellar sailcraft and communications beacons.

* Scattered Disc: A region from the Kuiper Belt out to approximately 100 astronomical units, sparsely populated with icy transneptunian objects.

* Parabolic Comet: A comet with an open parabolic orbital trajectory that bends around the sun and then leaves the solar system.

* R.O.D. (remote operated drone) pilot: An R.O.D. pilot takes remote control of semi-autonomous drones, usually for especially hazardous tasks that take place outside of the spaceship but still within a close enough proximity to allow for real-time communications. A single R.O.D. pilot may control one or dozens of semi-autonomous drones.








As every trekkie knows, money doesn't exist in the 24th century, at least not on Earth. In the Star Trek universe, apparently people in the future are so “advanced” that they no longer seek out personal wealth and material things, but instead strive only to better themselves and the rest of humanity. The banishment of money is celebrated like the breaking of some ancient invisible shackles. Star Trek is one of the best known, but not the only science fiction universe which uses this trope. In sci fi author Kim Stanley Robinson's futurist novel '2312,' for instance, the colonized solar system is full of people who work only when they decide to, and spend the rest of their time creating art, doing research, and pursuing hedonistic pleasure. Is this the future of mankind? A post monetary civilization?

First, from what I gather Star Trek is NOT a post scarcity civilization. Those replicator devices are cool and all, but they do have limited supplies of replicator stock (or whatever the things use), and the energy that runs them is plentiful but still finite. They actually had to go on “replicator rations” in one episode when the going got tough. The reason people in the Star Trek universe don't have money is not because technology takes care of all their needs; it's because they've socially “evolved” past competing with each other for profit and greed. They're not a post scarcity civilization; they are a post GREED civilization. Now, I can look past a lot of the bad science in Star Trek, but this goes beyond bad science: This is pure fantasy.



The laws of economics, like the laws of physics, are inviolable. You don't “advance” or “evolve” beyond them. Supply and demand applies to you whether you live in a communist police state or a laissez faire capitalist society, or for that matter whether you live on a desert island or in a prison. Every economic model is just a different way of addressing these universal constraints; you don't get to just ignore them. As long as there is scarcity (and there always will be, because human demand is infinite), then there must be rationing. There's only so much seaside real estate in Miami, so not everyone can own a house there… and the people who do get houses there can't all have as BIG of a house as they might want. You need some mechanism to facilitate people bidding on that scarce resource. Whatever that mechanism is, even if you choose not to call it money… it's still money.

Money is not an arbitrary thing. I'll end this rant with a thought experiment: Wouldn't it be great if everyone could be a millionaire? Just imagine if you woke up tomorrow and everyone had an extra three zeroes in their bank account. Thousandaires become millionaires, millionaires become billionaires, and billionaires become trillionaires. Wouldn't that be amazing?

Well… actually, it would change exactly nothing. When you go to the supermarket, you'll find the price of a loaf of bread has gone up from $2.50 to $2,500. Why is that? Because the monetary value of that loaf of bread is not arbitrarily determined; it represents the percentage of the average household's wealth that someone is willing to part with in exchange for bread. The price is low enough that people who want it will buy it, but high enough that no one will blow through and buy all the bread at once just to be a dick. That is the function of money: It is, after thousands of years of trial and error, the single most efficient way we've found to ration scarce resources to the populace at large in combination with the pricing mechanism, which is the most efficient means of communicating the interplay between the cost of creating products and what we are willing to part with in order to possess them. It's not some scheme to promote human "greed;" it's how we make sure the maximum number of people get enough of the things they want and need. When Star Trek preaches about an enlightened post-monetary culture that has “grown out of their infancy,” they're not only being obnoxious and condescending; they're also ignorant of basic economics.