Trekonomics: High-Tech Sustainability Model
My father was a major Trekkie. He watched the classic TV episodes on repeat and attended Star Trek conventions at every chance. Growing up in Vegas, my parents and I visited a now-defunct attraction that had to be demolished to make room for more profitable slot machines. It was called "Star Trek: The Experience." There, I felt the dazzling sensation of getting beamed up via transporter and visiting Quark's Bar from Deep Space Nine.
At home, my mother and I played chess with the show's 3D chess set and bonded with my father over the futuristic and egalitarian societies envisioned by Gene Roddenberry. Some episodes were culturally groundbreaking: poking holes through ideologies and dogmatic institutions like racism and xenophobia.
During our unorthodox and intellectual father-son discussions, he'd share a sneaking suspicion that he was born into the wrong timeline. He perceived our modern-day world as quite primitive in contrast to our potential.
Even as Uber and iPhones emerged, he sensed that our social structures remained relatively stagnant, moving in slow-motion compared to our technological progression.
This led to my interest in futurists like Buckminster Fuller and books like Manu Saadia's "Trekonomics." Eventually, I started to see our current monetary system for what it was: a confusing mess of complex equations designed to justify increasing inequality and environmental exploitation.
We've seen lobbyists literally author bills, allowing powerful corporations to make up the rules of our economic game as it plays out. Today, it seems the only meaningful way to vote is with your dollar, and this leaves many Americans with an increasingly quiet voice in our political system.
If it doesn't happen in the coming months and years, the global economic system will eventually be forced to undergo a dramatic shift or an abrupt end. This system is extractive, competitive, and growth-based. It discourages us from cooperating, sharing, and harmonizing with each other and our ecosystem.
So we can take solace in knowing the status quo, as it exists today, isn't sustainable and won't last much longer. It can't.
And while headlines have highlighted the negative economic impact of COVID-19, scientific evidence paints an entirely different picture. According to experts, our global economy appears to be the cause of the coronavirus pandemic—not the victim of it.
Voicing the concerns of leaders in the scientific community, Global Health Consultant Alanna Shaikh explained the connection between humanity's extractive, growth-based activities and the coronavirus:
"This is not the last major outbreak we're ever going to see. There's going to be more outbreaks, and there's going to be more epidemics. That's not a maybe. That's a given. And it's a result of the way that we, as human beings, are interacting with our planet. Human choices are driving us into a position where we're going to see more outbreaks. Part of that is about climate change and the way a warming climate makes the world more hospitable to viruses and bacteria. But it's also about the way we're pushing into the last wild spaces on our planet.
When we burn and plow the Amazon rain forest so that we can have cheap land for ranching, when the last of the African bush gets converted to farms, when wild animals in China are hunted to extinction, human beings come into contact with wildlife populations that they've never come into contact with before, and those populations have new kinds of diseases: bacteria, viruses, stuff we're not ready for. Bats, in particular, have a knack for hosting illnesses that can infect people, but they're not the only animals that do it. So as long as we keep making our remote places less remote, the outbreaks are going to keep coming."
But if our current mode of conspicuous consumption and perpetual growth is the cause of the recent pandemic, what's the alternative?
Taking a page from the Star Trek universe, we see great alternatives that were proposed by renaissance men like Jacque Fresco (Resource-Based Economy) and ground-breaking activists like Martin Luther King Jr (Universal Basic Income).
If we take an aerial view of the ideas proposed by polymaths and social advocates like these, a future economic vision for society emerges. This future could combine ideas and tools like universal basic income, blockchain technology, social decentralization, automation, and a new economic model based on the earth's natural resources.
With this in mind, I want to explain how trekonomics and other economic approaches can better align with our natural world, offering glimpses into alternative ways of modeling our economy. Such economic models reveal how humans can have a reasonable and sustainable relationship with the ecosystem and each other.
What is trekonomics?
Trekonomics is an approach to economics that draws inspiration from the Star Trek universe. The term was first coined by futurist Ross Dawson in his book "Enterprise Change: Making Technology Work for People (2000)." In Star Trek, society operates on a resource-based economy, which means that the planet's resources are distributed based on need rather than scarcity.
Dawson argues that our current economic system is outdated and inefficient, and that a resource-based economy would be a more equitable way of distributing the world's resources. He writes:
"A key advantage of a resource-based economy is that it does not suffer from the inherent wastefulness of an economics based on scarcity, in which goods are produced whether or not they are needed, simply to make money."
In other words, under a resource-based economy, there would be no poverty or inequality because everyone would have access to the resources they need. This type of economic system has been proposed by several thinkers and activists over the years, including Jacque Fresco and Martin Luther King Jr.
Fresco is a futurist and social designer who has spent his life advocating for a resource-based economy. He is the founder of The Venus Project, which is "a comprehensive plan to transform the global economy and to achieve a sustainable civilization."
In his book Designing the Future (2002), Fresco argues that our current economic system is based on scarcity, competition, and violence. Fresco writes:
"The present economic system is not only dysfunctional; it is also self-destructive. By its very nature it generates widespread poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime, pollution, and warfare."
Fresco's solution is a resource-based economy, which he believes will " usher in a time of abundance, freedom, and peace." In such an economic system, resources would be distributed based on need rather than profit. He writes:
"In a resource-based economy everyone would have access to the Earth's abundant resources without the use of money, credits, barter, or any form of debt or servitude."
A resource-based economy has many advantages over our current system. For one, it would eliminate poverty and inequality because everyone would have access to the resources they need. It would reduce crime rates because people wouldn't have to compete for scarce resources. And finally, it would help protect the environment because resources would be used more efficiently.
Implementing a resource-based economy
Fresco argues that a resource-based economy can only be achieved through "scientific and social engineering." In other words, it will require a major shift in our thinking and behavior. Fresco writes:
"A fundamental prerequisite for the transition to a resource-based economy is the development of automated systems to monitor and control the Earth's resources and infrastructure."
Such automated systems would need to be designed and overseen by an international body, like the United Nations. All countries would need to cooperate in order to make the transition to a resource-based economy.
Fresco admits that this is a tall order, but he believes it's necessary in order to create a more sustainable and equitable society. He writes:
"The successful implementation of a resource-based economy would require a high degree of international cooperation and coordination, as well as the participation of the world's scientific and industrial communities."
However, Fresco is optimistic about the future, and he believes that a resource-based economy is possible if we're willing to make the necessary changes. Fresco writes:
"By utilizing advanced technologies, we can build an entirely new civilization – one that is based on environmental sustainability, economic security, and social justice."
While this may seem like a radical proposal, it shares a kinship with longstanding ideas that connect in with today's discussion around Universal Basic Income (UBI). Only it hasn't been called a UBI. Instead, it's been given other names like a citizen's dividend, social credit, national dividend, demogrant (a demographically-based grant), negative income tax, and a mincome (a minimum income).
The first recorded proposal for something like a UBI was made by the English political philosopher Thomas Paine in his 1797 pamphlet Agrarian Justice. In it, Paine argues that land ownership is unjust because it allows a small group of people to claim the Earth's resources as their own. He writes:
"It is injustice, slight at first, but increasing like a mountain, in proportion as landed property accumulates in fewer hands and wealth circulates more slowly."
Paine proposes that the government should tax landowners and use the revenue to provide a "national fund" that would be used to pay every citizen an annual income. Paine writes:
"Every person, rich or poor, shall be provided for, at the public expense, and in such a manner as not to injure his or her industry."
Paine's proposal was ahead of its time, and it would be nearly 100 years before another major figure proposed something similar. In 1848, French Emperor Napoleon III toyed with the idea of using social credit to alleviate poverty. The concept of social credit was developed by French economist Claude Frédéric Bastiat and others as a way to increase purchasing power and economic activity.
Under Napoleon's plan, the government would have provided loans to businesses and individuals at low interest rates. The goal was to stimulate economic activity and reduce unemployment. However, the plan was never implemented due to the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848.
Nearly 100 years later, in his "I Have a Dream" speech, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. proposed a "Demogrant" program that would provide every American citizen with a minimum income. King's proposal was similar to Paine's in that it would be funded by the government and used to supplement the incomes of the poor.
King argued that such a program would help reduce poverty and inequality in the United States. He wrote:
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"
In his 1967 book "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?," King proposed a guaranteed minimum income (GMI) for all Americans as a way to address poverty and economic inequality.
King argued that a GMI would provide everyone with the resources they need to live a dignified life, regardless of their employment status. He wrote:
"We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished."
King argued that GMI would provide everyone with the resources they need to live a decent life, regardless of whether they are employed or not. King also believed that GMI would help reduce crime rates, because people wouldn't have to turn to criminal activity in order to make ends meet. Additionally, he believed that it would help improve race relations, because people of all races would have a more equal economic standing. King's vision for GMI was ambitious, but he believed that it was necessary in order to create a more just society. He wrote:
"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."
While King's GMI proposal was never enacted, his vision for economic justice remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. In our current system, too many people are struggling to make ends meet. The reduction in crime, poverty, and vicious corporate competition would allow for a more civil social fabric to emerge that encourages enhanced race relations. It would give people the freedom to pursue their goals and dreams without worrying about their economic circumstances.
More solutions and ideas are out there, waiting to be discovered and implemented on a local and global scale. The challenge is in combining and coordinating our collective knowledge, wisdom, and resources. You, dear reader, have something essential to contribute toward this effort.
If you'd like to participate in devising and building alternative social and economic models, reach out to me at WordBrewer.com so we can work in collaboration to bring a better future into focus.
Note:
Words imperfectly capture truth. What I write is imperfect by nature, but those words point toward a perfect truth that is beyond the limitations of language or mental comprehension.
Published content continues to evolve and improve over time. First drafts are released, and I welcome any constructive feedback: edits, factual corrections, or content suggestions.
Exact words and identifying characteristics such as pronouns or names are redacted or changed for any writers who have not given me written permission to identify them or use their writing.
