How Star Trek Does Money

by B. Traven

In what must be the nerdiest nerdgasm posted to the Internet in the last 24 hours, Slate economics blogger Matt Yglesias has watched every episode of every series of Star Trek and shared his thoughts about what makes the series great.

Naturally, he has some insights about the “post-scarcity socialism” of the future economy they portray:

Consider the miraculous technology of the replicator — a machine that can seemingly create anything out of thin air, based on rudimentary raw materials plus energy. When computers and energy can substitute for productive human labor, either the energy supply will be controlled democratically for Federation-style liberal socialism, or else it will fall into the hands of some narrow clique and give us the fascistic authoritarianism of the Klingons, the Romulans, or the Cardassians. Under the circumstances, nothing resembling capitalism as we know it could survive.

Also, everything he has to say about the shows themselves is 100 percent objectively correct.

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