So one of the big things about Star Trek is that everyone works for the glorious scientific and military organization Starfleet in some way or another. There seems to be very little in the way of personal or private enterprise by the time of the 24th century. At least in the early part of the show’s history like TOS and TNG, we had glimpses of money, trade, and all sorts. We get hints of a “Federation Credit”, but there’s no real discussion on how it works on if it’s even real money or just something that the Federation uses to sort of trade with other currency-based races.
Deep Space Nine is a great example of a world where commerce, employment, and growth through making money are still a thing. Granted they are mostly non-humans who do this. But then we have Joseph Sisko, the father of Benjamin, and owner of the creole restaurant “Sisko’s”. Where real food is served, not replicated, with naturally grown vegetables. (I am going out on a limb to say that the meat in any meal would still be replicated on moral, economic, and generally on grounds of practicality’s sake). So Joesph has a job where he is essentially working in customer service. (Oft, writing those lines sent a shiver down my spine). He makes and prepares food for people, all I am assuming, either free of charge or making use of this “Federation Credit”. There’s been some back and forth
Earth is described often as a post-scarcity society. Electricity is cheap to produce, easy to access, and with it comes replicators, inexpensive technology to make food, water, clothing, and more. The driving force of acquiring money so you can pay to live so you don’t die doesn’t exist. Humanity is no longer living under the oppressive capitalistic thumb that would be keeping you from living from paycheck to paycheck cashing in what little you have into your retirement fund so once you stop working you have something to live off before you topple into your grave.
Ahem.
That’s how Earth is portrayed in the future, no one cares about money anymore. The economic structure of now doesn’t work in the future. The one thing that we have to remember when looking at this is, labour is no longer so tied to reward.
As Picard himself puts it in “The Neutral Zone”:
“A lot has changed in the past three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”
If there ever was a moment from Star Trek that has ever lived so for so long and had such a resonance in my head. It would be that.
Of course, this comes from series one of TNG when the crew suffered from an abundance of smugness, but the idea of humanity being “evolved” was there. They are trying to be better. To move beyond what fragile and foolish things they lived in to be better people.
There is an implication, while it is not stated outright, but through the context of the show, most people within the Federation are essentially given homes. As an outline for a concept, I’m guessing if you were entering the federation and applying for citizenship on say, Earth. You apply, you request where you’d like to live, the local government would establish a communication line to arrange for you to be sent to accommodation within a certain area. This home is already fitted with power and a replicator. Naturally, since the future doesn’t care about money, you’d get a free drink, food, water. Your basic needs are met, you and your family just move in. You look for “work” (as it were), or you spend your time chilling raising your kids and learning the flute.
What is happening right here is that The Federation is meeting the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
For those not in the know, the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs is a charted set of human requirements that are important for an individual to achieve complete development and self-actualization. The hierarchy of needs is a theory of psychologist Abraham Maslow and it can be broken down such as:
Safety needs – Examples include protection from elements, security, order, law, and stability.
Now the bottom two points of this hierarchy are “Physiological”: air, water, food, shelter, sleep clothing, reproduction. And the safety needs. Personal security, employment, resources, health, property…. (Funny how these are the most basic needs and governments today can’t meet them? Hm).
The Federation meets those needs free of charge. If you’re born on Earth you are entitled to a home, food, water, everything you need to live. A free education, and safe passage to anywhere you want to go. So, you don’t need to work to earn money, to clock in so you can save money to pay rent to afford food to pay for power and electricity. You know the drill here.
So with people having their basic needs, and a little more met. What’s a person supposed to do with all that free time?
Well, heck, anything they want.
It’s an important point to remember that while we as people might be inclined to be more self-serving a little bit lazier if we had all the time in the world and all our needs catered to that we might decide to just slack off and not bother with much. People often complain about this, suggesting that if we as humans in 2021 suddenly got universal income that “society would stagnate and we would all culturally and economically implode.” Buuuuut-
From 2017 to 2018 Finland ran a Universal Basic Income experiment, giving 2000 unemployed people ranging from 25 to 58, with monthly payments of 560 euros. (New Scientist covered the experiment here,). The first major outcome was “The basic income recipients were more satisfied with their lives and experienced less mental strain than the control group,” – as noted by at Helsinki University.
Of course, we also see a sense of financial stability. No one ever needs to worry about losing their job. Professor Helena Blomberg-Kroll who lead the study said, “Some people said the basic income had zero effect on their productivity, as there were still no jobs in the area they were trained for” – “But others said that with the basic income they were prepared to take low-paying jobs they would otherwise have avoided.
So people don’t need to worry about falling into the Poverty Trap. Right now people are working terrible and sometimes multiple low earning jobs at horribly long hours also paying for things such as education, rent, costly home bills, all while going through one of the toughest economic turmoils since 2007. That’s not to say all jobs are bad, but people are trapped in low-income jobs, working long hours, these long hours mean it’s impossible to search for another job, and the low wages mean that people who leave would need some sort of financial safety net to avoid instantly becoming penniless when quitting their job. But because the job pays so little, people won’t have been able to save at all to make that possible.
It’s an incredible toxic cycle.
Now I can’t say that if all needs were met we’d have a perfect world and everyone would be happy. But this ain’t Foundation kids, I don’t have The Prime Directive, so I really can’t make bold psychohistory style predictions. But, logically speaking, if governments were to meet everyone’s needs, we could see a dramatic shift in what we do with our lives. (and by that I mean they should meet the basic human needs of all humans everywhere).
One thing Star Trek fans tend to forget that when we talk about the people in Trek, we talk about how they are working to benefit themselves and others. To personally explore what we can do to improve our lives and the world around us. Some see it as an opportunity, some see it as a challenge. Some will probably be thankful for the help they can get. The future of Star Trek is one of an abundance of charity and kindness. People do things because they want to make the world a better and brighter place.
Living in the Federation could mean that you would be able to get up, and not have to worry about clocking into work. But perhaps today is the day you get to properly get into practising the violin or taking up painting, or….learning to cook? See, this is how to jump onto that topic I had planted in your mind earlier on, in the essay community we call that “circling back.” Fancy.
So what are we doing here? Learning to cook. Well, maybe you want to have a hobby, after all this world is about self-improvement. Maybe you want to work hard on learning a new skill so, you know a guy, around the corner, he’s looking for help in his kitchen. You call him up and ask:
“Hey Mister Sisko, I love your restaurant and I would love to learn what you do? Would you mind if I come by and pick up a few pointers?”
And Mister Sisko might say: “Sure thing, my backs a little sore, so if you help us with the mopping, I can show you the right way to properly cook creole.”
(This is a very basic example but you get the idea).
Now, maybe you’re not mopping the floor, maybe you’re helping fix a heating element, or heck, maybe Joesph Sisko just likes to talk to someone in the kitchen. Either way, you’re helping out, you come round at 9 and help around and you learn something new. But, I know what you’re thinking “Manual labour in the future? Surely this hypothetical person in this fictional world wouldn’t want to do that all day.”
Here’s the thing, and this is where it gets complicated, we only look down on manual labour and working with our hands because we have grown up in a culture that tells us to aspire to be the person in the big office at a top of the corporate ladder. Right now we have a culture that tells us that monopoly is good and owning billions is the perfect and natural outcome of capitalism. But, The Federation, has no billionaires. There is no corporate ladder, this is no society that tells us that manual labour is bad. They have a whole world that teaches the people that everyone is valued, important and can contribute to whatever they like.
We see this in our heroes in Trek, most notably in the form of Kirk, our ever-ready hero who will always put himself into a dangerous situation before she asks any of his people to do that. No task is beneath him because he knows the value of the lives of people working under his command and the value of their efforts and most importantly. Their lives.
It doesn’t fix how many poor redshirts die under his command.
Another example is O’Brien. The dude loves his job, he’s always hands-on, loves to get stuck in his work. That’s not to say that he lives for his work, of course not. He has a wife and kids. Heck, he goes onto getting a teaching position at Starfleet academy. The man learned all he could, bettered his skills so they could be used to help other people when they were needed, and then he went on to accept a position where he can pass on his skills to others so they can learn from him. And he does it without seeking a paycheck. He does it because he saw it as a challenge. If that isn’t peak Star Trek I dunno what is.
It’s probably the same reason Joesph Sisko is still running his restaurant even into his later years. He likes the challenge he enjoys cooking, trying new things to cook. He enjoys talking to the customers because it’s fun. Making people happy and treating them to good food is the end game here. There’s no call to a higher monetary master, he doesn’t need to worry about what happens if there are few slow workdays. Hell, he’ll probably just treat his staff to a sit-in lunch and tell stories about his amazing son in Starfleet.
When you think about it, we do that right now. We have so many hobbies we do and share in others because other people enjoy them. I run a non-binary group every month, and I have been for nearly 3 years now, and I’ve never been paid for it. But that’s not why I do it, I make a space for people to come and feel accepted, to talk, and make sure people are doing okay. I don’t have any endgame that puts me in an ivory tower above all. I do it because I love it.
Maybe I am dreaming the impossible dream, perhaps I am hopeful, perhaps one day humanity can reach a point where people can dream big dreams about doing something wonderful and not have to worry about paying every single bill. Maybe there will come a time when we can all do the things we love and not be trapped in jobs we suffer through. It’s important to remember though, that while Star Trek does show us a future that, while it has some frills, is very much within our reach. It just doesn’t give us the roadmap to get there. That’s on us. We have to take the long hard look at ourselves, initiate the long and complex change from the ground up to make the world a better place.
This isn’t just an essay on “Eat the Rich”, it’s too easy to just say that and be done. It is admittedly fun to say. But it lacks the nuance that this essay requires. But also, yes, billionaires hoarding the majority of the wealth of the planet and jack up the prices of life-saving medication by 5000% is literally evil. But I digress.
There is no straight line to this utopian future, perhaps there is none within the reach of our lives. We forget that the global epiphany that set mankind on this path was born from war. To be precise the third world war, one that left the world ruined and in pain. An event that shook the world to its foundation that set everyone reeling, allowing them to come to terms with that and the arrival of the Vulcans allowed humanity to see the bigger cosmic picture and strive for something more beautiful.
So what am I trying to say? Outside of singling that I am aiming for the Leftie of the Year Award? Is it that we should just be given the means to live for free? Is it that we can be happier people if we are given the tools to live and we can thrive? Can we ever accomplish the kind of unity and care for others as much as ourselves, the kind the Federation preaches? Is it that in the end, capitalism is a flawed system that serves only itself and the few people with a vested interest in hurting billions of others only to make a hypothetical number go up? Maybe all of it.
I try never to leave these things on a sour note. Star Trek is one of hopefulness, and “Hope” is where I should leave it.
It’s fair to say that the last 12 months have been rough, I doubt anyone could ever critically doubt that. But, in all the things that have happened, through the still very much ongoing Covid-19 pandemic we have seen people doing so much. And then even more.
Humanity’s capacity to care, to be good people who will be able to go out there and do the right thing is inspiring. I don’t know if I can say this is our moment of epiphany, but in a moment of global collective grief: we, could band together to help each other. No matter where we were. We did what we could. It’s that small core of wonder that gives me hope for the future of us.
We as the people aren’t perfect…
But we are getting there. Slowly…
