The Future is... slavery??

[phavoc]

At NY Comic Con there was a panel on Star Trek. A panel consisted of "Trek" writer Chris Black; Manu Saadia, author of the book "Trekonomics"; Annalee Newitz, founding editor of the culture site io9; moderator Felix Salmon, of Fusion; Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist; and Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

There take on Star Trek economics was that the Starfleet personnel were the 1%, and at least some of the rest of the population "We're constantly being reminded that slavery and low wages support the comfortable, 'Enterprise' living," Newitz said. One of the cited examples? The episode where it was questioned whether or not Data was property or a free being.

Granted, the idea of people working because they want to is a little odd to us today because we've never had that choice (except for trust fund babies... which I'm assuming most on the board are not). We work for money to buy food, shelter, clothing, internet, porn and gaming materials - not necessarily in that order. But what if basic food and shelter were free? That is a fundamental paradigm shift that we as a society have never experienced.

So would you, as a person, automatically assume that there had to be a down-trodden slave class to ensure the rest had something to do? I think that's a hugely erroneously conclusion. Applying previous economic models to something that has no equivalent is silly. They also aren't factoring in the other supposedly cultural changes of society, with fewer people succumbing to violent tendencies.

And they also forget that currency, as such, wasn't totally gotten rid of in the Federation. You still had energy credits, but there was also barter. Money becomes more or less irrelevant when you don't need it to survive or even live a decent life.

What say you? Do you think the panelists had it right with their future prognostication?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/utopian-future-star-trek-doesnt-144300467.html

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Star Trek's economy is not very defined. Governments determine economies. And we don't know much about Star Trek's governments either.

 

[phavoc]

That's very true. Which is why the panel's predictions make no sense.

Many moons ago I read a book by George Friedman, called "The coming War with Japan" (1991) and they predicted a number of things. And pretty much got them all wrong. The guy is CEO of STRATFOR, worked for the RAND corporation and is acknowledged as a smart guy. But he also predicted the 4 Aegis class destroyers the Japanese possessed would give them control of their sea lanes - against the US Navy. Uh, no. For all his intelligence he was totally wrong with his conclusions.

Slavery and other forms of bondage go against the ideals of the Trek universe. Actually, in Voyager there was an episode that had retired copies of the Doctor doing work in mines (don't ask how they get the holoemitters to work in a place like that). But slavery of an EMH is not quite the same as that of a human being.

 

[Galadrion]

Two things you have to bear in mind about that whole event: first, this took place at New York ComicCon (one of the more leftist venues in this country), and second, every person on that panel of whom I have heard could quite reasonably be described as politically further to the left than 98% of the US population. In other words, this was a highly polarized event politically, and from what I can see, strongly biased in one direction. They are seeing the subject matter through their own preconceptions, many of which don't appear to be supported in the source material.

The Federation, while not a truly post-scarcity society, has a number of technologies available move it so much closer to that state that from our viewpoint, it can be considered in that light. Many aspects of the Federation members' economies are managed, mostly in a manner which promotes the greatest good for the greatest number. Canon has stated, not that wages are low, but that the rate of increase in wages is low... which is, essentially, saying that inflation is low. This would be an indication that the managed economies are well-managed (okay, we're starting to get into science fantasy territory - I mean, who ever heard of a centrally managed economy being managed well?) Overall, the canon seems to present the Federation as a nearly Utopian society... especially as contrasted with some of their more fractious neighbors.

So why did the panel jump to the conclusion that all this was a whitewash job covering up a slave society? Well, primarily because they couldn't see any way to actually make such a society work. There's probably a strong element of hipsterish pessimism/cynicism in there, too - if something appears good, it's got to be hiding a bad side, and the better it appears, the worse the hidden part has got to be.

The Federation and its neighbors, as created by Roddenberry, were never intended to be true-to-life societies - it was a fictional setting, a backdrop for an ongoing adventure series. You have the Federation, a paragon of a society promoting the best of all things for the largest number of people possible, served by such heroes as the protagonists. Then you have the Klingons and the Romulans, different in personality but both opposed to the wonderful Federation (and sometimes to each other, as well). These are not realistically fleshed-out societies; these are broad-stroke thumbnail sketches of societies, intended to provide some place where the heroes can be heroic. For that purpose, they were more than adequate.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Star Trek is best known for its moral stories. Slavery is usually tossed in to help the plot drama is all, rather than make some Star Trek government as official canon that we ourselves should avoid in the future.

 

[-Daniel-]

I think the panel was full of horse droppings and cow pies. There is nothing in the canon of Star Trek to support the idea of vast hordes of slaves supporting the Federation.

And as for the one episode they used as proof, that was not about Data being a slave, it was about Data being a person with rights or a machine, no different than the tricorder. The fact that the captain brought up slavery as a reason not to have Data declared a machine does not prove that he thinks others should be slaves. That isn't even close to logic, that is just pure stupidity.

I say the panel should be ignored.

 

[phavoc]

Star Trek is best known for its moral stories. Slavery is usually tossed in to help the plot drama is all, rather than make some Star Trek government as official canon that we ourselves should avoid in the future.

The particular issue here is that the panel inferred that the rest of the federation engaged in slavery and other moral turpitudes in order for the 1% like Starfleet could live well. Nothing to do with story lines or anything. It just seems a bit wonky to come to that conclusion when there is not even a precedent. Even trust fund babies aren't a good example since they exist in a bubble.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

It's reported by Yahoo News. That says it all anyway.

 

[Condottiere]

Slavery might just be people having power trips and getting off on forcing people to do things, since production is likely to be automated.

True slavery might be forcing people to use their fairly unique or least individualistic talents, like musicians, courtesans and scientists.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

At NY Comic Con there was a panel on Star Trek. A panel consisted of "Trek" writer Chris Black; Manu Saadia, author of the book "Trekonomics"; Annalee Newitz, founding editor of the culture site io9; moderator Felix Salmon, of Fusion; Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist; and Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

There take on Star Trek economics was that the Starfleet personnel were the 1%, and at least some of the rest of the population "We're constantly being reminded that slavery and low wages support the comfortable, 'Enterprise' living," Newitz said. One of the cited examples? The episode where it was questioned whether or not Data was property or a free being.

Granted, the idea of people working because they want to is a little odd to us today because we've never had that choice (except for trust fund babies... which I'm assuming most on the board are not). We work for money to buy food, shelter, clothing, internet, porn and gaming materials - not necessarily in that order. But what if basic food and shelter were free? That is a fundamental paradigm shift that we as a society have never experienced.

So would you, as a person, automatically assume that there had to be a down-trodden slave class to ensure the rest had something to do? I think that's a hugely erroneously conclusion. Applying previous economic models to something that has no equivalent is silly. They also aren't factoring in the other supposedly cultural changes of society, with fewer people succumbing to violent tendencies.

And they also forget that currency, as such, wasn't totally gotten rid of in the Federation. You still had energy credits, but there was also barter. Money becomes more or less irrelevant when you don't need it to survive or even live a decent life.

What say you? Do you think the panelists had it right with their future prognostication?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/utopian-future-star-trek-doesnt-144300467.html

What about Quark's "Gold Plated Latinum Bars" doesn't that count as money?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Two things you have to bear in mind about that whole event: first, this took place at New York ComicCon (one of the more leftist venues in this country), and second, every person on that panel of whom I have heard could quite reasonably be described as politically further to the left than 98% of the US population. In other words, this was a highly polarized event politically, and from what I can see, strongly biased in one direction. They are seeing the subject matter through their own preconceptions, many of which don't appear to be supported in the source material.

The Federation, while not a truly post-scarcity society, has a number of technologies available move it so much closer to that state that from our viewpoint, it can be considered in that light. Many aspects of the Federation members' economies are managed, mostly in a manner which promotes the greatest good for the greatest number. Canon has stated, not that wages are low, but that the rate of increase in wages is low... which is, essentially, saying that inflation is low. This would be an indication that the managed economies are well-managed (okay, we're starting to get into science fantasy territory - I mean, who ever heard of a centrally managed economy being managed well?) Overall, the canon seems to present the Federation as a nearly Utopian society... especially as contrasted with some of their more fractious neighbors.

So why did the panel jump to the conclusion that all this was a whitewash job covering up a slave society? Well, primarily because they couldn't see any way to actually make such a society work. There's probably a strong element of hipsterish pessimism/cynicism in there, too - if something appears good, it's got to be hiding a bad side, and the better it appears, the worse the hidden part has got to be.

The Federation and its neighbors, as created by Roddenberry, were never intended to be true-to-life societies - it was a fictional setting, a backdrop for an ongoing adventure series. You have the Federation, a paragon of a society promoting the best of all things for the largest number of people possible, served by such heroes as the protagonists. Then you have the Klingons and the Romulans, different in personality but both opposed to the wonderful Federation (and sometimes to each other, as well). These are not realistically fleshed-out societies; these are broad-stroke thumbnail sketches of societies, intended to provide some place where the heroes can be heroic. For that purpose, they were more than adequate.

The name Federation seems to imply a weak central government, and that the planets do most of the governing, and the Federation only steps in on matters of security, war, or exploration and colonization. I think you would need a medium of exchange, Quark uses gold plated latinum bars, various episodes contradict each other, so Picard says the Federation doesn't use money. But Harry Mudd was motivated by greed, and he sought to get rich, maybe there was a big difference between the 23rd and 24th centuries, but I think it really is different writers trying to push their own agendas onto this setting, in the old series, the writers wanted to make Star Trek a sort of Western/high seas adventure in space, whereas in the Next Generation, you have more left wing writers trying to make the Federation into a socialist Utopia, but the problem with Utopias is they are boring, and not the stuff adventures are made out of.

 

[Epicenter]

I suspect the panel was more out to outrage people and start discussion/controversy than actually believing anything they were spouting.

A large problem with citing "canon" sources in ST is that the shows of the ST universe were written by different writers. Quite a few episodes were written by "walk on" writers who had some story to tell (or point to make) who were "outsiders" and only paid lip service to the established "canon" of the series. As a result, an ostensibly peaceful Federation suddenly has hawkish Special Forces for the Undiscovered Country; similar other "shadowy" / "morally bankrupt" groups pop up in the Federation whenever there's a writer (regardless of their political view) who wants to rail on about the evil of governments.

In addition, ST and particular the Federation, have become depressingly less and less futuristic and more and more a derivative of the modern Western world as the decades pass; if this is because of a general diminishing of the imaginations of the writers or the viewers they're writing stories for is unclear. For instance, at one point in ST, there was an observation that energy to matter technology (transporters) basically made a lot of we understand as economy obsolete; when you can turn sunlight into electricity then the electricity into durable physical goods such as food, clothing, and so on, it's amazing. It's also like magic; it also limits the kind of stories they can tell to a "modern" audience. At some point, it was implied that the Federation didn't even have money. Later, things like trade (and its implied scarcity), industry (particularly mining), money, and so on start showing up, even in the TOS era.

It's difficult to talk about things like slavery in a show where the "canon" is so slopp-- er "flexible" as ST's is.

 

[dragoner]

Picard specifically states that the old ways of making money for a living are gone, and that people work for self actualization, which is a part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, yadda yadda ...

So the panel just seems to not know the Trek universe, nice one.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

A large problem with citing "canon" sources in ST is that the shows of the ST universe were written by different writers. Quite a few episodes were written by "walk on" writers who had some story to tell (or point to make) who were "outsiders" and only paid lip service to the established "canon" of the series. As a result, an ostensibly peaceful Federation suddenly has hawkish Special Forces for the Undiscovered Country; similar other "shadowy" / "morally bankrupt" groups pop up in the Federation whenever there's a writer (regardless of their political view) who wants to rail on about the evil of governments.

You know the United States of America is a federation, that's probably why, the writers need a stand for the "evil United States" so they pick the Federation, but then there is the "Mirror Universe"" episodes which shows you what it would be like if it really were evil.

 

[Condottiere]

Next Generation and Deep Space seem to contradict each other.

Though interplanetary trade obviously exists, or the Ferenghi are the greatest marketers in the galaxy.

 

[dragoner]

The Ferengi are a deus ex machine plot device brought in to be the nemesis of Picard's love interest. Though there is no telling who they are trading with.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The Ferengi are a deus ex machine plot device brought in to be the nemesis of Picard's love interest. Though there is no telling who they are trading with.

I didn't know Picard had a love interest, Most starship captains in this series don't. Most have ex-wives or ex-girlfriends, the major exception to this was Captain Benjamin Sisko, and they killed off his wife in the first episode.

 

[alex_greene]

Most starship captains in this series don't. Most have ex-wives or ex-girlfriends, the major exception to this was Captain Benjamin Sisko, and they killed off his wife in the first episode.

And gave us Kasidy Yates at the end, before sending him away to be "with the gods."

 

[alex_greene]

Gene had the idea that, after the cynics fought WWIII, we somehow managed to survive, overcome the huge ugliness which seemed to define us, came together as a species and set out to explore the stars.

Once we'd had First Contact and became aware that we were not alone, and that there was this huge expanse of space out there to move to, the human species mellowed out.

We only seem to mellow out when we're expanding. If we come across a space which is occupied, we become penned in, fractious, selfish. Space offers us an infinite number of opportunities to just keep on going and never stop, never look back. We may never run out of places to go to, out there. And that realisation will change the species forever.

The fact that we in this generation could not see how this could come about does not preclude the idea that Gene Roddenberry did know. It'll be up to us to prove either him right, or the cynics.

And I know which I'd prefer to prove correct, in the end.

 

[High Orbit Drifter]

I hate to be overtly negative but most of the stuff here is as impossibly wrong as that ComiCon panel or that Friedman book (I read it too - pure drek).

Not everyone in New York or who goes to New York is a leftist. Leftist do not endorse slavery. Rodenberry himself was pretty far left, his wife supposedly describing him as a communist. I don't know about that but he certainly is to the left of the political spectrum as practiced in the US of the late 1960s. I'm not sure if Galadrion is trying to say the panel was being sarcastic?

Federation implies a STRONG central government. CONfederation is the weak one. It nearly impossible to tell what the Federation of Planets is, centralized or a confederation or what, due to all the different versions on the different shows and movies, as has been pointed out. The character of the government changes to suit the plot - it IS a show after all. Then again, the original show was written by a bunch of liberals (see the comment on Roddenberry above)

The writers have consistently used the United States of America, not as an "evil United States" but as the paragon of virtue, aside from all the money grubbing, at least the Original Series. It was less the model during the Next Generation.

Ferengi where brought in, not as Picard's love nemesis (which is just weird) but as examples of unbridled capitalism, described as equivalent to 19th century Yankee traders. Who they exist in Star Trek economics is never explained (thankfully).

Epicenter is exactly right - that panel was dragooned into the convention, didn't know what to talk about so decided to stir everyone up. Its an old professor's trick, so the Berkley guy probably thought it up. Say something outrageous, and obviously wrong, and see if they can get the dumb kids to start talking so the panelists don't have to, or anyway just bat the ball back at them.
He's right about the writing getting slop..er.. more flexible as the years went on. Granted there was a ton of canon to support, which could otherwise hamper a good story.