Anyone who has known me for nearly any length of time will know that I am what qualifies as a gigantic Star Trek fan; whether it is the Original Series with Kirk and Spock, The Next Generation with Picard and company, or Voyager with Captain Janeway. With the upcoming release of the next Star Trek feature film, Star Trek XI (okay, in December 2008, but I’m already counting down), I thought I would devote a little blog space to the economics of Star Trek. Of course, Star Trek as a franchise is big money for Paramount Pictures, but I am here concerned with the internal economics of the fictional Star Trek Universe. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used his fictional universe as a way of putting forward his own Utopian ideals about what an ideal human society would be like at some unspecified future date. But does Roddenberry’s vision of the Star Trek Utopia make a plausible candidate for a desirable direction for our species to take?
While occasionally the Star Trek characters use “Federation credits” or “gold-pressed latinum” to make purchases, it has been explicitly stated in Star Trek (such as Picard’s statement in Star Trek: First Contact) that money does not exist anymore in the 24th century, and that humans had advanced beyond the drive for material wealth and possessions. Aside from the practical implausibility of this ever coming to fruition, it is worth asking if this should even be the abstract ideal (something along the lines of the idealized society in Plato’s Republic) for human society.
The prima facie appeal of Gene Roddenberry’s vision here is undeniable. A cursory glance at the problems in the world due to greed, power, and materialism throws Roddenberry’s non-economic Utopia into the realm of plausibility. If the drive for money and wealth were somehow eradicated from human society, goes the argument, then mankind would be free to pursue higher ends such as peace, exploration, knowledge, etc. The connection here is obvious, and I have personal experience with this connection: working on my doctoral dissertation while trying to make ends meet financially creates an intrinsic tension with my time and efforts, and I have struggled with this battle for some time now. My academic pursuits would undeniably be easier to follow were I somehow to be free of more pedestrian concerns about rent, food, quality of life, etc. That being said, however, I will argue that Roddenberry’s view is over-hasty and throws out the financial baby with the proverbial bathwater.
For all the problems that money causes in the world, one can just as easily find examples of money being used as a tool for the cause of goodness. Charities, churches, and even academic institutions, all utilize their finances to bring about positive change in the world. Moreover, Roddenberry seems to disregard a basic fact about human nature, which is that mankind is a being that is able to find value in things (whether value in people, in morality, or in material possessions). I would argue that part of human life is to find and assign value(s) to the objects and entities we encounter throughout the course of our lives. Money is thus just a means of quantifying the value that we have already placed in the objects that makeup our world. The valuing comes first, the quantification later. On my view, then, doing away with money would just force this valuation to take other forms (e.g. Federation credits, gold-pressed latinum, etc.).
Fundamentally, though, I believe that Roddenberry has committed a “false-cause” fallacy in his vision of future human society. Roddenberry takes the view that money is the root (or, rather, one of the roots, since he also rejects religion in his Utopia) of the evil that one finds in interpersonal interaction. I maintain, however, that Roddenberry has hit upon a false cause here and that where money is concerned, it is the love of money that is the root of evil rather than money itself. Like all inanimate objects, money is just a tool that can be used for good or for evil. Money is therefore morally neutral and it is up to individual persons (or perhaps societies) to choose willingly to use money for morally good ends rather than for evil. But if it ends up that money gets used for evil, the money is not to blame; the people are!
So in conclusion, I find that the economics (or lack thereof) in the Star Trek universe to be desirable on the surface. But on closer inspection it becomes clear that Gene Roddenberry has incorrectly assumed that money is a force for evil and strife in the world, while in reality money is just an inanimate object like any other object with value to us. How we use that object is up to us as beings with free-will. Perhaps human nature and its tendency toward evil is the real culprit, so unless human nature is adjusted (although as a religious person I believe it is possible to transcend this tendency toward evil) money will be continue to be used for evil ends. One can hardly blame the money for this, though, since the money cannot control its own destiny; how money is used is strictly up to us.
