I’ve had this article on my mind for some time. As I see Elon Musk’s SpaceX take centerstage, with Mars-high aspirations and beyond, it seemed like the time.
When you mention Star Trek, besides outer space and aliens of course, people often think of the technology—starships, communicators, phasers, warp drive and so on. Books have been written about the inspiration such ideas have provided and analogous items today such as cell phones or directed energy weapons. But I’m not talking about any of those.
I first encountered Star Trek as a kid watching it in the afternoon every day in the seventies with my sister, Debbie—4:00pm, Channel 2! I loved the starship, the aliens, the adventure, the strong captain, and probably at some point, the miniskirts, but why does a somewhat campy 1960’s TV show have such an enduring emotional effect on its fans? And it’s a deep emotional connection. Heck, I almost wept at one of the newer movie iterations in 2009 when Captain James T. Kirk was born, and that movie is only kind of official canon!
I always joke that in a back corner of every real Star Trek fan’s mind they—ok, we—think it’s real. It’s one of the reasons Star Trek fans are so uptight about “canon”—reality doesn’t have discontinuity, so Star Trek can’t either. It’s future history. For the uninitiated, “canon” is the official story, timeline, and details of any fictional universe.
Is a Star Trek future possible?
Star Trek blends two elements together in a very hopeful way. First, everyone gets along regardless of race, creed or color. Second, they live in a post-scarcity society. The former is about values; the latter is about the economics of prosperity.
I believe the answer to the question is an unequivocal yes—but only if we understand that the social harmony and prosperity required for a Star Trek future arises from liberty, productivity, capital accumulation, and technological innovation.
The real question isn’t whether we can invent warp drive.
The real question is whether we can create the social and economic conditions necessary to make a Star Trek civilization possible.
The Message of Star Trek
Can’t we all just get along?
The message of Star Trek that resonated was not pointed ears and warp drive. It was a message of hope, of possibility. It was a message of a time when, frankly, we would stop being jerks to each other in our daily lives.
That vision of ending conflict over petty differences so we could all “just get along” was merciless in its clear messages for the times of the latter half of the 1960’s. In an episode titled “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” there were two antagonists, Bele and Lokai from the fictional planet Cheron—one was black on the left half of his face with the right half being white, and the other black on the right half of his face, but white on the left.
They were locked in a vicious, racially based battle. The crew was confused as to why they were in a feud. They looked the same? One of the characters explained to the effect that, “Can’t you see, Lokai’s people are all white on their right sides, we are white on the left…”
The episode and scene brilliantly identify the absurd irrationality of racism. Apropos for the sixties, but also today. Unfortunately, after all the progress made by activists in the area of race in the United States in the fifty years after, today’s activists would be more likely to solely identify one as oppressor, the other as victim, and press for more conflict and grievance in the name of “wokeness” or “social justice,” rather than finding a way to move beyond the conflict. Our work is never done, it seems.
They haven’t moved beyond profit, they have conquered it.
As much as I have loved Star Trek, there has, at least after the original William Shatner led series, been implied, and occasionally explicit, socialist messaging. In the episode The Neutral Zone, Captain Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, declares, “We have moved beyond profit… Material needs no longer exist. The challenge… is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it.”
As a fan, I ignore those moments of cognitive dissonance. However, if the actual future is to have some version of the best aspects of Star Trek’s vision—universal opportunity and prosperity, the elimination of poverty, and yes, star ships and awesome technology, we have to understand what is right, what is wrong, and why.
The irony of Picard’s line above is that it is incredibly arrogant and tone deaf. They haven’t moved beyond profit, they have conquered it. Mastered it like no one before.
The essential factors in Star Trek economics are “replication” and “transporter” technology. Replicators are machines that can take any material input and re-sequence it at the atomic level, turning it into whatever you need. Poop goes in, an iPhone comes out. And transporters can move matter from one location to another, even hundreds of miles away, in an instant.
This is where the basic economics of prosperity have to be explained. There is literally only one way in reality to raise the standard of living for human beings: increase productivity.
If you develop better tools, you can either work less or have more. When productivity increases enough, you can achieve both: work less and have more. Much of the western, capitalist world is experiencing this phenomenon right now to varying degrees. Prior generations would be shocked at our standard of living and the accompanying (from their point of view) slothful, lazy values of the people. They did hard physical work ten to twelve hours per day seven days a week. Significant portions of our population work eight hours per day, sitting in air conditioning, and complain about it.
Replication and transporter technology raises humans to a level of near infinite productivity. What takes a month to do now can be achieved in a few minutes or seconds.
It’s not socialism that takes you there. It’s freedom, innovation, and capital formation. It’s capitalism.
We should all be capitalists now
If we want to realize Star Trek’s vision of universal peace and prosperity, we need to all be capitalists now.
Capitalism isn’t really about economics. It’s about a moral social system in which we each respect the individual rights of others while they respect ours in return. That’s the first secret to getting along: your life belongs to you, mine belongs to me. The ends do not determine the means, and using violence against others to get what you want isn’t acceptable.
That’s why Liberty—the delicate balance of individual rights being protected from government by a limited government—is so crucial.
The social and economic elements of capitalism blend because they are a harmonious whole. Property rights are essential for individual liberty, and what we call civil rights—what you say on your property is your business, what I say on mine is my business. They are also essential for economic prosperity. I will work and invest in what I can own, create, and use to the benefit of myself and my family. I won’t do the same for something that can be forcibly taken from me.
Capital is also part of the magical elixir of prosperity. In the earlier example of basic tools, it takes capital—savings—to be able to take the time, whether for each member of a group or all members, to invest in newer and better ways of doing things. Savings—the source of capital—is time in a bottle. It gives you the time to invest and create to move to the next level. Extraordinary levels of capital are required for Star Trek level achievement. We are seeing that take place in real time with Artificial Intelligence. AI is already taking productivity to levels never before conceived-unless of course you conceived of replicators and transporters.
Prices, the value someone else places on something, and profits, the reward for the efficient use of resources in solving the needs of others, guide the efficient allocation of resources—the right stuff ends up in the right place at the right time.
This all happens because human beings are motivated by self-interest. This is an observation, not a criticism, no different than saying wheels are round. Human beings, by their nature as human beings, must take self-interested, goal-directed action to sustain themselves, let alone prosper and flourish.
Capitalism makes that sustenance easier and allows humans to take an increasingly long-term view of life. Taking away the immediacy of survival makes room to open our hearts to what else is possible. A free people is a generous people for a reason.
I should be clear that by capitalism I mean true, laissez-faire capitalism. Government’s only legitimate role is protecting individual rights. That legitimacy makes it not surprising that limited government can function relatively well in the limited sphere of protecting rights, which primarily means police, courts, and national defense.
In just about every other instance than the above, the cost of government intervention is higher than the benefit, reducing human prosperity and growth.
Every regulation has a higher cost than benefit. That doesn’t mean there are no benefits, it just means the benefits of not having that regulation would, on net, be higher.
A true capitalistic regime would have a dramatically higher standard of living from the bottom up with levels of growth and innovation we can barely even imagine. We wouldn’t be dreaming today with Musk of living on Mars—we would likely already have permanent settlements on Mars and be contemplating even more ambitious goals, whether deeper in the solar system or beyond.
Let Freedom Be Your Last Battlefield
Star Trek’s real legacy isn’t predicting warp drive. It’s moral progress, but so often the writers got it backwards. It’s not the centralized commands of socialism; it’s the decentralized freedom, prosperity, and innovation of capitalism that gives us a shot—our only shot—at a Star Trek future.
I said earlier that in the back corner of every Star Trek fan’s mind Star Trek is real. But it’s not so much the phasers, aliens, prosperity, or because Vulcans are about to make first contact. It’s the hope. The hope of something better, the hope of peace and harmony, the hope of prosperity and self-determination.
That hopeful future is possible. It’s even within our grasp with what we know right now. Not guaranteed. Not inevitable. But possible.
Every generation decides whether it will move toward freedom or coercion, cooperation or conflict, creation or destruction.
The question is whether we will choose an actual viable path to a Star Trek future based on the peace, freedom, wealth, productivity, innovation, and prosperity of true capitalism.
The choice is always ours to make.
An outstanding article, Don!
In my opinion, what has captured and retained the lure and aura of “Star Trek,” is that it artistically presents the rational, logical, and “technical,” imagination of man. Science-fiction writer Arthur Clark, once remarked that “a sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic.” Star Trek, fueled by a reality-based imagination, presented such magic!
Imaginations are also influenced (for better or worse) by values – including and especially moral values. It is one of the reasons “the arts” are so influential and important. They convey ideals. What an artist’s imagination and ideals create, combined with their creative talent and skill, produces a product their imagination “sees” and becomes "real!"
Unfortunately, our culture is dominated by the moral ideal of altruism. As such, individuals within our culture can often be counted on to have likely become “stricken” with that moral ideal. These individuals likely permeated Star Trek as they do in virtually all art – foreign, domestic - and in Space!
On future “flourishing,” for a society to improve its wealth and standard of living it need only remain free to do so with, as you have indicated, but a few “Robert’s Rules of Order.” For an individual to become wealthy in such an environment he/she need only to produce more than they consume and save/invest the difference!
Thank you for the article.
Dave