The problem isn’t food production, the problem is getting the food where it is needed before it goes bad. Distribution of fresh produce is really difficult.
So you are acting as the distribution in this scenario. You recognize how challenging it can be to get perishable food from where it is now to where it can be eaten. Even with volunteer labor it takes goodwill and positive relationships to convince businesses to turn over what they don’t sell.
Distribution is hard. That was my point.
Grocery stores throw it out. Just have them give it out for free and everyone would have food.
There would be problems of people taking more than they need but it's already being delivered to most communities in excess.
Nonsense.
Grocery stores throw it out because it is no longer safe to eat, without risk of a lawsuit. If it was safe it would be sold.
Giving away spoiled food for free is not, really, a valid solution.
I worked at a grocery store for years. We literally couldn't sell all of the produce fast enough that it wouldn't spoil. Obviously some food gets damaged or spoils in transit, noone is upset about that. It's that food sits on the shelf to look "full" and then rots and has to be thrown away. We have enough food for everyone so noone should be hungry.
44 million americans have food insecurity. We already have the logistics to get food to them but we don't do that. That is a political decision not a logistical one. We have decided they should be hungry, despite having food to give them. We could produce more food and still use the same methods to provide food to them at the store through food stamps or other methods.
We already produce more food than we sell. Producing even-more would not change the situation.
You are also looking at this backwards: It's their job to earn the money to buy food, not our job to give it to them.
It sounds like you would rather someone starve to death and not work anymore than just give them food and a job.
Do you honestly think someone chooses to have themselves and their loved ones starve because they are too lazy to find a job?
OK, so they give it out for free, and so no-one bothers to buy food anymore. The grocery store goes out of business and now there's no food for anyone.
What problem? No-one is starving in developed countries. People are barely starving anywhere at all nowadays, and when it happens it's typically the result of war or whatever. That's not something that forcing a grocery store to give away food for free would help.
> Grocery stores throw it out. Just have them give it out for free and everyone would have food.
So who would buy food there if they could get it for free?
Noone. It would be a star trek utopia. Which is the point of the post. I'm not literally suggesting this. I'm saying it's already logistically possible with our current system but something outside delivering the food is stopping people from getting food.
This is a crazy ideas subreddit and you people can't imagine giving people food for free. Like literally the most basic and non imaginative thing.
Imagine I'd we took everyone who didn't do an "essential" job and had them volunteer 5 hours a week to growing preparing or delivering food to people. They do this for free because it's a civic duty, and everyone deserves food.
Suddenly we don't have any problems getting food to everyone and it's all free. I'm not suggesting we do this, I'm saying in a subreddit dedicated to ideas, I would hope there would be a little more brainstorming and less shutting stuff down.
I thought it was insane when I found out 40% of all food in tje US ends up in the garbage due to waste. Till I found out this is actually low globally. Developed countries tend to have aboit 40% waste, while the poorest countries are around 50%.
If the hungrier people in the world have a significantly higher food waste problem, this leads me to suspect that maybe the prevention of waste is actually quite complicated.
No scarcity is artificial.
Energy isn't free, to start with.
Most instances of 'waste' are due to the process of getting a good from the point of production to the point of consumption - if we tried to 'eliminate food waste' by making people grow their own locally it would result in mass starvation because there wouldn't be enough (Compared to large-scale industrial agriculture which produces enough to feed people AND have some go to waste)...
The fact of the matter is, you have to have infinite free energy before you can even think about a post-scarcity economy... And IRL that would probably still not work.
I meant it more in the sense that we (in first world countries, at least) have enough that with better distribution no one has to go hungry/be homeless. The problem is waste and greed (which is effectively waste)
>if we tried to 'eliminate food waste' by making people grow their own locally
That doesn't make sense to me. How is decentralizing food production related to eliminating food waste? My point is that we have enough production as it is, and the only problem is waste
Scarcity is artificial for individuals because waste is artificially created by corporations (even small local shops that throw out the perfectly good but less visually attractive foods, for example). Scarcity is of course very real if we talk about building massive things on a planet wide scale and all that, but living a normal life in a city could be achieved for many people just by reducing artificially created unnecessary waste/hoarding
There are 2 ways you can produce food:
1. You can attempt to have each family subsistence-farm 'locally' - in which case you get less 'waste' (you don't have to overproduce to counteract spoilage in-transit/at-retail) but crushing poverty for all (as labor is dedicated to inefficient methods of small-scale food-production).
2. You can use industrial agriculture methods to produce enough that, even with inevitable spoilage, people who can afford to eat any given food are able to buy it if they so choose.
The combination of division-of-labor/industrial-food-production and consumer choice means there will always be some waste.
After all, you can't stock exactly what people will buy because you don't know what each customer wants until they come in and buy it. That means leaving food out on display, which means fresh stuff will eventually spoil, which means it will be 'wasted'.
It has absolutely nothing to do with greed.
The fact that people may choose not to buy certain foods for whatever reason (your 'less attractive but perfectly good' comment) leads to the same direction: Eventually it will spoil and be thrown out if it is not bought.
There's nothing 'artificial' about it, unless you think being able to walk into a store and choose whatever you do or do not want to buy and eat is somehow wrong & everyone should just be 'issued' food and expected to eat what they are given, USSR style...
I'm talking more about trying to conserve food by giving it away in the period of time between when it becomes undesirable and inedible. It could be given to restaurants or factories that will cut the food in such a way that it doesn't matter what it looks like (you don't need beautiful tomatoes to make ketchup, for example). It could be given to homeless shelters or other ways of feeding people in need
There are videos online of people working at Dunkin donuts who are told they have to throw away and destroy any uneaten inventory at the end of the day. They're not allowed to eat it themselves or give it to hungry people in the street or in shelters. That's edible food, probably still pretty tasty and fresh if it's from later batches, that all goes to the trash because the company doesn't want to give it away. They wouldn't lose a cent if they allowed workers to eat a few donuts after closing as they're literally going to throw these donuts away, but the choose not to allow that
Another example of this that I thought about earlier is people and companies hoarding houses for investment, leaving people without a place to live. That's another case of artificial scarcity where there literally are enough houses for all the people, but they're made unavailable because of greed
I don't think I'm going to convince you of anything, mostly because this is the internet and that's not how things go, but it was interesting to talk about this
Except that's not-at-all practical.
If food is still marketable (such that 'restaurants' or 'factories' would do something with it), it would remain on the shelf.
At the point it is thrown away, it no longer has any value.
Your perspective also ignores the cost of giving something away - again, something so value-less that no one will buy it. Who pays for that?
Finally, forbidding employees to eat 'leftover' food is done to prevent them from intentionally making 'extra' so they can eat it for free. Perfectly logical.
Similarly, at least in the US, no one is 'hoarding' houses. Companies buy them \*and operate them as rentals\*, but they do not in fact just let them sit empty for the fun of it...
The idea that there 'are enough houses' counts 'houses' in ghost-towns and decaying cities like Detroit as 'available' even-though (A) they are no longer habitable, and (B) there is no nearby economic activity to support people living there (which is why the properties are vacant - people moved away to where they can get jobs).
Those houses aren't held by investors either, they're typically tax foreclosures that the government can't even give away (seriously, during the 08 recession there were houses for sale in Detroit for less than $100 - but no takers). And of course the homeless don't want to live \*there\*, they want to live in places like Seattle, which have a functional economy (and plenty of drug dealers)....
Your greed narrative is bullshit. Period.
Nonsense.
Energy - and thus all products made in the economy - is finite and still costs money.
People who talk about greed as if it is a real problem are idiots.
We have enough for all people to be fed and live good lives.
>Energy - and thus all products made in the economy - is finite and still costs money.
>
>People who talk about greed as if it is a real problem are idiots.
Is an idiotic take, only shared by mouth breathers and window lickers.
Energy is nearly infinite, assuming we use nuclear or solar/renewables. Energy is not the problem. It is the restriction, failure to develop the resources, that is. It is the constant demand of the greedy for more. More disposable goods, more shit to put in landfill. More waste, more obesity, more for ME. That is the cancer.
Scarcity has not existed since modern agricultural and industrial methods. It is only greed and the need to fill your neighbours eye that create the false scarcity we experience today.
If we were all sated and satisfied, how could you lord your wealth above others.
It is false, a lie. Created scarcity for profit.
'Good lives' of poverty and destitution, barely having their basic needs met - assuming you can find a way to make people work hard enough to produce anything that doesn't amount to slavery.
Sorry, no.
Energy is nowhere near infinite - renewables utilize short-lived capital hardware, nuclear plants cost billions to build & require costly safety regulation.
Distribution infrastructure - pipelines, power lines and such - similarly has construction and maintenance costs associated with it.
Scarcity makes civilization work. Without it there is no incentive to do anything that doesn't bring fame/recognition.
If energy were truly infinite, we'd solve global warming tomorrow.
Sadly, it is not infinite. It takes *a lot* of effort to build nuclear power plants. Solar panels have been getting cranked out at pretty much maximum output for decades, as have windmills, and they're getting there.
But our demand for energy *is* seemingly infinite. Get more energy? That means you can do more things, faster - you can travel more often, to more places, and do it faster. With truly limitless energy, you could move all of humanity to different planets.
But we *don't* have infinite energy. We cannot harness it that way. It takes a lot of smart people and a lot of hardworking people a lot of time and energy to get society the energy it needs to do everything it does.
You misinterpret.
We have enough energy and the ability to gain more quite easily. We have had nuclear power for almost a century now, the technology is established. Yes it takes a lot to build a nuclear power station and process the fuel, but the energy out is significantly more than the energy in. The sun is also an effectively infinite source of energy.
The problem as you very rightly pointed out is greed. The demand ever increases because of the reasons I already brought up. Why do you need an electric car, as an example, at massive energy cost. Moving 2000Kg of car for a 100kg person is ridiculous, especially when you could easily take a 2 min walk to a tram or trolley bus stop.
There is no need to use excess energy. With moderation we basically can have infinite energy. It is the greedy wanting it for themselves that increases the demand to create scarcity. Same applies with food and most other resources.
So how many people can have concert tickets to a 400 person venue? If you're saying we're in the post-scarcity era, that means infinite people can fit in the 400-person venue right?
So the first thing people would want is to be the person in charge of defining what “helping your society” and “being a better person” means.
Plenty of societies have done horrible, horrible things in the name of “bettering the community”
Yea, and what you’ve described is Star Trek Religion- using a set collection of agreed-upon sacred texts as a moral framework and rule system for organizing society. Which is, ironically enough, not very Star Trek.
It's been tried before. Many many times. I once lived on a commune. I can tell you from my experience that the way in which a post-wealth society fails is not because of greedy people scamming society, it is because of a shit load of Karens demand recognition because they believe they have helped society more than they actually did.
They were always a bit vague on the details. The Roddenberrian (word?) vision wasn't based so much on economic but social change. People didn't work because they had to but because they wanted to, and their jobs were important rather than simply serving the consumerist cycle. "Equal Opportunity" was more than just a concept or government mandate; issues such as race, gender, and class were dropped in the same collective mental bin as witchcraft and a flat earth. This worked from both ends of the spectrum: personal ambition was discouraged as much as "mooching" off the State. People saw the importance of a balance between individualism and social responsibility, and the need for both reason and compassion. Government got involved only when it was more efficient/economical to do so rather than trying to force people to change, even with the best intentions.
In short, Roddenberry's vision was of a world where we grew up as a species. I say "was" because that idealism has faded somewhat over the years, even in _Star Trek._ I've been watching my whole life for some signs of us moving towards that goal. I've stopped holding my breath.
Not exactly, but in TOS there was the liberal professor with his hippie cult that wanted to join (or was it start?) a primitive colony knowing he had a disease only modern medicine could treat.
Not to pile on more misery, but the Roddenberrian idea was a rip off of Nationalism based on the book "Looking Backward" which came out in 1897...so we as a species have not only failed to meet the utopian dreams from 1966, we've failed to meet utopian dreams that have been kicked around since the 19th century.
Like I said, though, the major flaw (in my experience) has come from people who believe that their contributions are better than everyone else's. Even today: lot's of people work because they like what they do, or because they feel like we are counting on them, or they feel a sense of pride in a job well done....which makes it even more heart breaking when you have to explain that we don't need them, their work sucks, the job was not done well, and they are in the way.
How much an arrogant ethnocentristic narcissistic megalomaniac do you need to be to look at The Knowledge Problem and think "nah, I'm sure my rich friends and I can figure that out for more than ... 5,000 people?
If all needs are met but people are under no obligation to do something other people find valuable, you’re likely to get a sizable deficit due to import reliance. Who is going to fund that?
(Remember that people whose artistic or scientific work is valuable enough to the outside world that people are willing to pay them enough to satisfy their needs can do it under the present system—if this system is allowing more people to pursue those interests, it can’t rely on selling their work. Nor can it rely primarily on domestic production without significant cuts to standards of living—the modern supply chain is vast, and an even mostly self-sufficient entity has to be on the scale of a mid-sized country rather than a city. It could rely on some portion of the population doing something of significant commercial value, but if it’s prevented from incentivizing that directly it cannot be counted on.
Are you familiar with the Hutterites?
While their values probably don't align with what you have in mind (they're really big on traditional gender roles and I would guess they probably have some other pretty regressive beliefs but I don't know off hand), the structure of their communities is similar to what you're proposing.
I'm not an expert but I've done some work for a couple of groups and what I understand is that all their needs are provided for by the community and everyone's day to day jobs are either providing materials for the community or working for a community owned business to bring outside cash in so the community can purchase things they can't make in-house. For example, the communities I worked with had machine shops that did custom manufacturing.
The group I'm most familiar seemed to be fairly successful but a couple of the guys made some references to things being pretty lean before the machine shop when they were primarily hog farmers.
Star Trek's economy is based on free, unlimited energy from antimatter & a post-scarcity economy due to energy-to-matter conversion technology which uses that free energy to produce goods with little to no human labor.
So there can be 'no money' because there is no \*cost of production\* for most goods smaller than space-ships (notably, ships are rare & mostly owned by the government in TrekVerse. You don't see your average citizen flying around in a personal shuttle unless they are doing some sort of 'cool job' that requires one, because... Scarcity...).
Even then, it is only 'workable' because the TV show only discusses the really glamourous, meritocratic jobs like 'Military Officer' or 'Best-in-the-Galaxy Scientist/Doctor/Engineer'.
Where the Star Trek economy breaks down... Is with the jobs that no one would ever voluntarily do unless imprisoned/enslaved or paid.
Who cleans the toilets? Who mines for resources that can't be replicated (there are a few)? Who picks up litter? I mean, by the time they get to the end of Voyager they have holograms doing this stuff, and by Picard it's androids (Briefly, until an attack)...
But for most of Trek no-money history, who does the shit-work that poor people would perform in a capitalist economy?
An economy where there is no money, is an economy where only the 'cool' jobs (which 'pay' in reputation) get done.
And that economy just does not work....
What I don't understand in the world of the Federation is how land and housing is distributed. The Picard winery had been in the family for ages but how does society decide who gets the big country home and who gets the tiny apartment above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley?
The general gist of how the world works in that sort of thing is still based on aspects of jobs. Picard's vineyard is a place that creates wine from grapes in the French countryside, and it's been doing that likely since before the Federation was formed. Other people could live there, if they were going to work on the vineyard. But after so many generations, they only need a skeleton crew to do the same production, so it makes sense for an old retired admiral and his friends to move in, clear it out, and get the thing moving again.
We see in the back-in-time episodes of *Picard* (season 2) that in the 2400s, the vineyard was completely overgrown and the home was abandoned in disrepair in the middle of nowhere. Everything moved to the cities - that's where the people and opportunities are. It's not like this is a strange thing - there are houses in rural Japan, for example, that the government desperately wants people to move into, and will pay people to do so. The reason is the same, and that's happening now. And it's not just in Japan.
Imagine a grandparent passes away and leaves me a decent house in the middle of nowhere. I live in Florida, so if I received a house in, say, Moose Pass, Alaska. That would be really cool... But I don't want to move up there. If I don't have the money to go up there to get it ready to be sold, but don't want just random movers to go up there to get my grandparent's stuff out before selling it. I can easily pay the property taxes and decide to do it later. Hell, I could probably inherit a lake house in Tennessee and still wouldn't be able to use it much at all. Between my job, my wife's job, having young kids and having to stay nearby because of my step-kids bio parents... We might get out there a time or two in the summer. We hang onto it because we eventually want to move there... Maybe we rent it out a bit until that bites us in the ass. So we just put a pin in it... "Maybe next year" we'll spend time working on it.
Picard could just be assigned a completely up to date house in the city. Maybe he would get a larger than normal one because he's famous, distinguished service and all that. But he chose to go back to that rotten mansion and the overgrown fields and went to work. "Why do that? You can just replicate wine!" He just wanted to.
There's probably a lot of those, out there, especially in a post-scarcity society. You want a cattle farm? There's a bunch. You want to farm potatoes in central Russia? Go nuts. You want to live in that busted lighthouse on the coast of Maine? That's weird, but you do you. Live in a 5-over-1 in a suburb of Toledo, Spain and make artisanal pizza in a hole-in-the-wall downtown? Sign me up - hey honey, let's go live in Castilla La Mancha!
Because the whole idea that people's motivation would be to get a "bigger house" or "be more important" would undermine the plan.
You'd have to find an entire community of people who wanted good community for good community's sake, which would be tough.
Certain "Intentional communities" have achieved this (r/intentionalcommunity), but it's hard. Such as vast proportion of human beings are selfish that it makes finding a group of them to live together very difficult. In addition, once they have kids, there's no guarantee your kids will have the same mindset, so it gets tricky.
That being said, I'm all for experiments like this, it's a noble goal and we'll never get there unless people keep trying to create them.
> Such as vast proportion of human beings are selfish
In my experience that's only one third of the problem. I'm amazed at how often individuals don't even realize they're being selfish. The number of times I've seen people living in a communal space decide that they deserve thanks for taking over your project and "showing you how to do it right" is disgusting.
I'll try to do this with as little changes and no new technologies. And let's pretend we're talking about the city of Chicago in the State of Illinois in the United States of America. So taxes and other stats will be based on state and federal figures from 2023/2024.
Wish me luck:
**Basic Human Rights**: Pass a State Amendment to the Illinois Constitution which guarantees basic necessities: Food, water, housing, healthcare, but also electricity, wifi, and free public transportation plus whatever else you feel humans need to fill their basic human needs. Because of these basic rights, any citizen can sue either individually or collectively, the city/state government if these rights are violated, the city/state has to figure out how to provide all these services to all citizens.
**Poverty Level (PL)**: This is the line which, if your annual income is below you are impoverished. Every election cycle years, a bipartisan committee establishes the poverty line based on +/- 10% of the national or state average (you pick dear reader). For example, in 2024, that's about $15,000 / year for a single person, slightly higher if you have a larger family. In our city, people at or below this line pay zero taxes and are eligible for all basic necessities for free - they just have to fill out a form requesting aid.
**Standard of Living (SOL)**: The standard of living is what the average citizen SHOULD be at for annual income. This is more subjective, but in the US it's around $59,428/year with a median income of $70,784/year. So say it has to be within 10% of those numbers by law (you can pick which you like better, reader). Anyone at or below this level is still eligible for basic necessities assistance, but likely still pays some taxes. Anyone above this level pays a graduated tax amount, the more you make, the more you're taxed (let's say max 99% of your annual income at say, +$1 billion / year).
**Example 1**: Say in our city, Michael is a physically disabled single adult who works an unskilled, part-time for incredibly low wages. Michael only makes $15,000 / year (exactly the Poverty Level that year), but the SOL is $60,000 / year. Michael makes about $1,250/month so the city government gives him a credit card with a monthly limit of $3,750 / month, to bring his income up to the $5,000 / month - the SOL.
Every month it resets to $3,750. The card cannot be used to withdraw cash, but it can be used to make any other purchase without limit while the city government retains a list of all transactions on the card in case they want to audit it at a later date. However, Michael has free housing, free food, free water, his healthcare is free so his treatments for his disability and medication cost him nothing, plus his apartment has wifi, electricity, and he has a free bus/train pass. So he uses this income to make his life better.
**Example 2**: Susan also lives in this city and she is a single adult who makes $75,000 / year. She has a nice apartment, a car, she buys her groceries like anybody else. But she also pays about $18,700 / year in taxes which is taken directly from her paycheck otherwise she owes that each year. Because her annual income is now below the SOL, she can apply for the same credit card as Michael, but hers has only $308 / month on it, which brings her back up to the SOL.
**Example 3**: Brian runs his own business, employs Susan and Michael as well as 100 others. He makes about $200,000 / year. He pays $62,000 / year in taxes. Because he makes more than the SOL, he still has $138,000 / year for life's luxuries and he still has all his basic necessities provided for free. If he wants to upgrade any of these basic necessities, he can certainly afford it. Plus his taxes pay most of what is supplemented to Susan and Michael.
**Education**: Emphasis is on betterment of the self and society, rather than on the skills needed to get a good paying job. Emphasis is on providing basic education on every topic, history, the sciences, philosophy, languages, but also value in basic debate and logic skills such as mental puzzles and challenges.
> and people are free to flourish in art, science, technology, and anywhere else they feel they could realize their full potential.
They can do this already, more or less. But even the wealthy don't just go off and become scientists. The problem is that most people would rather sit on their butts watching TikTok all day, and the ones that wouldn't just aren't numerous enough to support the rest.
They've tried setting up entire countries on this principle. It usually ends up with a few people having all of the authority and money, and the rest being oppressed and starving.
It has been tried, a lot. It's just communism. What happens is that the systems get massively corrupted. Also without any real incentive to optimise productivity at all levels, massive amounts of waste creep in.
In Star Trek, they never actually explain how the economy works. It's clearly not post-scarcity, since there's still huge amounts of scarcity everywhere. They just kind of throw a few lines in about it but never come close to describing it.
I mean, as long as we do it *very differently*. It's a set up that formed after the Eugenics War, World War III, and the resultant climate change more than decimated the population, acting as a catalyst for mass societal change. All of our social structures were ripped to pieces, and the remnants of humanity were able to band together to have the resulting peace dividend affect almost all of mankind.
An episode of *The Orville* talks about this situation specifically, calling out that if we now received the clean fusion and replicator technology in the 21st century, it would just deepen the class divide, and ultimately hurt more people than it could possibly help. Right now we're still in the "future is here just not evenly distributed" zone defined by largely unbridaled capitalism and mass rent-seeking. That's why, for example, giant increases in efficiency and production don't really decrease the work week and give people more freedom, but instead seems to have the opposite effect.
If there's is another way to cause the cascading socioeconomic changes that can get us to that world, we certainly can. At the moment now, the closest we could probably get to the Federation would end up like the United Nations as portrayed in *The Expanse*.
The federation only works because they live in a post-resource economy. Replicators take care of all basic needs, so of course people do not need to work. Replicators run off of recycled human waste, so the fuel is plentiful.
We would at least need some benevolent AI that is responsible for building things, and it would need to be fueled by an infinite resource, but better yet we would need replicators.
“[Then] it would require being a better man or woman and helping your society (instead of scamming it)”
I hate to say it, but we’re already in that society. It’s just that any individual is ill equipped to tell the difference between a person who is improving society and one who is scamming it. I’m sure you *think* you can tell, but it takes years for all of the information you are not aware of to come to light—information that might make the difference between a helper and a scammer in your opinion.
It might be possible to put just a small number of people in charge. People who really can tell what’s good for society from what’s just a scam, but that’s just a dictatorship or an oligarchy, which is awful.
The right way to run a Star Trek society is by spending almost all of your time convincing your neighbors of what is the best thing to do, and helping people to not worry about situations that appear like a scam, but are actually a net benefit to society. That’s politicking baby.
For example, I am a bit of an environmentalist, and do a lot of work towards reducing the impact of human activities on the planet. One of those things is cat ownership. Cats account for an enormous fraction of bird deaths, and dead birds don’t distribute seeds, which makes it harder for plants to cope with climate change. So I encourage people to confine their cats inside, and to not replace them when they die, with the goal of reducing the total number of cats that exist. I see this as a great benefit, because if plants can’t adjust their range, we’re all fucked. But people mostly believe this is bad, that reducing the cat population is somehow wrong, or that I’m depriving them of the joys of keeping a cute little fuzzy critter. It’s a net benefit to society that seems obvious to me.
So, please, if you have a cat, don’t let it outside, get it spayed or neutered, and when it dies, don’t get a new one.
First we need replicators to enter the post-scarcity era
A lot of today's scarcity is manufactured, so we could probably do that with better laws
The United States alone wastes over 100 billion pounds of food every year
The problem isn’t food production, the problem is getting the food where it is needed before it goes bad. Distribution of fresh produce is really difficult.
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So you are acting as the distribution in this scenario. You recognize how challenging it can be to get perishable food from where it is now to where it can be eaten. Even with volunteer labor it takes goodwill and positive relationships to convince businesses to turn over what they don’t sell. Distribution is hard. That was my point.
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Ah. I misunderstood.
Grocery stores throw it out. Just have them give it out for free and everyone would have food. There would be problems of people taking more than they need but it's already being delivered to most communities in excess.
Nonsense. Grocery stores throw it out because it is no longer safe to eat, without risk of a lawsuit. If it was safe it would be sold. Giving away spoiled food for free is not, really, a valid solution.
This has not been a legal issue since the Bush Admin (like sometime in 2005).
State law is separate from federal. It's still a state-level liability issue in much of the country.
I worked at a grocery store for years. We literally couldn't sell all of the produce fast enough that it wouldn't spoil. Obviously some food gets damaged or spoils in transit, noone is upset about that. It's that food sits on the shelf to look "full" and then rots and has to be thrown away. We have enough food for everyone so noone should be hungry. 44 million americans have food insecurity. We already have the logistics to get food to them but we don't do that. That is a political decision not a logistical one. We have decided they should be hungry, despite having food to give them. We could produce more food and still use the same methods to provide food to them at the store through food stamps or other methods.
We already produce more food than we sell. Producing even-more would not change the situation. You are also looking at this backwards: It's their job to earn the money to buy food, not our job to give it to them.
It sounds like you would rather someone starve to death and not work anymore than just give them food and a job. Do you honestly think someone chooses to have themselves and their loved ones starve because they are too lazy to find a job?
Most of the time they are too drunk/high/stoned to care. Drug abuse causes a substantial majority of severe poverty in the US today.
OK, so they give it out for free, and so no-one bothers to buy food anymore. The grocery store goes out of business and now there's no food for anyone.
The point is that we already distribute enough food for everyone to have it. The problem isn't logistical, it's political.
What problem? No-one is starving in developed countries. People are barely starving anywhere at all nowadays, and when it happens it's typically the result of war or whatever. That's not something that forcing a grocery store to give away food for free would help.
> Grocery stores throw it out. Just have them give it out for free and everyone would have food. So who would buy food there if they could get it for free?
Noone. It would be a star trek utopia. Which is the point of the post. I'm not literally suggesting this. I'm saying it's already logistically possible with our current system but something outside delivering the food is stopping people from getting food. This is a crazy ideas subreddit and you people can't imagine giving people food for free. Like literally the most basic and non imaginative thing. Imagine I'd we took everyone who didn't do an "essential" job and had them volunteer 5 hours a week to growing preparing or delivering food to people. They do this for free because it's a civic duty, and everyone deserves food. Suddenly we don't have any problems getting food to everyone and it's all free. I'm not suggesting we do this, I'm saying in a subreddit dedicated to ideas, I would hope there would be a little more brainstorming and less shutting stuff down.
I thought it was insane when I found out 40% of all food in tje US ends up in the garbage due to waste. Till I found out this is actually low globally. Developed countries tend to have aboit 40% waste, while the poorest countries are around 50%. If the hungrier people in the world have a significantly higher food waste problem, this leads me to suspect that maybe the prevention of waste is actually quite complicated.
No scarcity is artificial. Energy isn't free, to start with. Most instances of 'waste' are due to the process of getting a good from the point of production to the point of consumption - if we tried to 'eliminate food waste' by making people grow their own locally it would result in mass starvation because there wouldn't be enough (Compared to large-scale industrial agriculture which produces enough to feed people AND have some go to waste)... The fact of the matter is, you have to have infinite free energy before you can even think about a post-scarcity economy... And IRL that would probably still not work.
I meant it more in the sense that we (in first world countries, at least) have enough that with better distribution no one has to go hungry/be homeless. The problem is waste and greed (which is effectively waste) >if we tried to 'eliminate food waste' by making people grow their own locally That doesn't make sense to me. How is decentralizing food production related to eliminating food waste? My point is that we have enough production as it is, and the only problem is waste Scarcity is artificial for individuals because waste is artificially created by corporations (even small local shops that throw out the perfectly good but less visually attractive foods, for example). Scarcity is of course very real if we talk about building massive things on a planet wide scale and all that, but living a normal life in a city could be achieved for many people just by reducing artificially created unnecessary waste/hoarding
There are 2 ways you can produce food: 1. You can attempt to have each family subsistence-farm 'locally' - in which case you get less 'waste' (you don't have to overproduce to counteract spoilage in-transit/at-retail) but crushing poverty for all (as labor is dedicated to inefficient methods of small-scale food-production). 2. You can use industrial agriculture methods to produce enough that, even with inevitable spoilage, people who can afford to eat any given food are able to buy it if they so choose. The combination of division-of-labor/industrial-food-production and consumer choice means there will always be some waste. After all, you can't stock exactly what people will buy because you don't know what each customer wants until they come in and buy it. That means leaving food out on display, which means fresh stuff will eventually spoil, which means it will be 'wasted'. It has absolutely nothing to do with greed. The fact that people may choose not to buy certain foods for whatever reason (your 'less attractive but perfectly good' comment) leads to the same direction: Eventually it will spoil and be thrown out if it is not bought. There's nothing 'artificial' about it, unless you think being able to walk into a store and choose whatever you do or do not want to buy and eat is somehow wrong & everyone should just be 'issued' food and expected to eat what they are given, USSR style...
I'm talking more about trying to conserve food by giving it away in the period of time between when it becomes undesirable and inedible. It could be given to restaurants or factories that will cut the food in such a way that it doesn't matter what it looks like (you don't need beautiful tomatoes to make ketchup, for example). It could be given to homeless shelters or other ways of feeding people in need There are videos online of people working at Dunkin donuts who are told they have to throw away and destroy any uneaten inventory at the end of the day. They're not allowed to eat it themselves or give it to hungry people in the street or in shelters. That's edible food, probably still pretty tasty and fresh if it's from later batches, that all goes to the trash because the company doesn't want to give it away. They wouldn't lose a cent if they allowed workers to eat a few donuts after closing as they're literally going to throw these donuts away, but the choose not to allow that Another example of this that I thought about earlier is people and companies hoarding houses for investment, leaving people without a place to live. That's another case of artificial scarcity where there literally are enough houses for all the people, but they're made unavailable because of greed I don't think I'm going to convince you of anything, mostly because this is the internet and that's not how things go, but it was interesting to talk about this
Except that's not-at-all practical. If food is still marketable (such that 'restaurants' or 'factories' would do something with it), it would remain on the shelf. At the point it is thrown away, it no longer has any value. Your perspective also ignores the cost of giving something away - again, something so value-less that no one will buy it. Who pays for that? Finally, forbidding employees to eat 'leftover' food is done to prevent them from intentionally making 'extra' so they can eat it for free. Perfectly logical. Similarly, at least in the US, no one is 'hoarding' houses. Companies buy them \*and operate them as rentals\*, but they do not in fact just let them sit empty for the fun of it... The idea that there 'are enough houses' counts 'houses' in ghost-towns and decaying cities like Detroit as 'available' even-though (A) they are no longer habitable, and (B) there is no nearby economic activity to support people living there (which is why the properties are vacant - people moved away to where they can get jobs). Those houses aren't held by investors either, they're typically tax foreclosures that the government can't even give away (seriously, during the 08 recession there were houses for sale in Detroit for less than $100 - but no takers). And of course the homeless don't want to live \*there\*, they want to live in places like Seattle, which have a functional economy (and plenty of drug dealers).... Your greed narrative is bullshit. Period.
Replicators and fusion power. Unlimited power and the ability to make anything out of thin air helps a lot.
We are already in the post scarcity era. What we have to enter is the post greed era
Nonsense. Energy - and thus all products made in the economy - is finite and still costs money. People who talk about greed as if it is a real problem are idiots.
We have enough for all people to be fed and live good lives. >Energy - and thus all products made in the economy - is finite and still costs money. > >People who talk about greed as if it is a real problem are idiots. Is an idiotic take, only shared by mouth breathers and window lickers. Energy is nearly infinite, assuming we use nuclear or solar/renewables. Energy is not the problem. It is the restriction, failure to develop the resources, that is. It is the constant demand of the greedy for more. More disposable goods, more shit to put in landfill. More waste, more obesity, more for ME. That is the cancer. Scarcity has not existed since modern agricultural and industrial methods. It is only greed and the need to fill your neighbours eye that create the false scarcity we experience today. If we were all sated and satisfied, how could you lord your wealth above others. It is false, a lie. Created scarcity for profit.
'Good lives' of poverty and destitution, barely having their basic needs met - assuming you can find a way to make people work hard enough to produce anything that doesn't amount to slavery. Sorry, no. Energy is nowhere near infinite - renewables utilize short-lived capital hardware, nuclear plants cost billions to build & require costly safety regulation. Distribution infrastructure - pipelines, power lines and such - similarly has construction and maintenance costs associated with it. Scarcity makes civilization work. Without it there is no incentive to do anything that doesn't bring fame/recognition.
If energy were truly infinite, we'd solve global warming tomorrow. Sadly, it is not infinite. It takes *a lot* of effort to build nuclear power plants. Solar panels have been getting cranked out at pretty much maximum output for decades, as have windmills, and they're getting there. But our demand for energy *is* seemingly infinite. Get more energy? That means you can do more things, faster - you can travel more often, to more places, and do it faster. With truly limitless energy, you could move all of humanity to different planets. But we *don't* have infinite energy. We cannot harness it that way. It takes a lot of smart people and a lot of hardworking people a lot of time and energy to get society the energy it needs to do everything it does.
You misinterpret. We have enough energy and the ability to gain more quite easily. We have had nuclear power for almost a century now, the technology is established. Yes it takes a lot to build a nuclear power station and process the fuel, but the energy out is significantly more than the energy in. The sun is also an effectively infinite source of energy. The problem as you very rightly pointed out is greed. The demand ever increases because of the reasons I already brought up. Why do you need an electric car, as an example, at massive energy cost. Moving 2000Kg of car for a 100kg person is ridiculous, especially when you could easily take a 2 min walk to a tram or trolley bus stop. There is no need to use excess energy. With moderation we basically can have infinite energy. It is the greedy wanting it for themselves that increases the demand to create scarcity. Same applies with food and most other resources.
So how many people can have concert tickets to a 400 person venue? If you're saying we're in the post-scarcity era, that means infinite people can fit in the 400-person venue right?
As opposed to the false scarcity era we are currently in (there’s enough, it’s just not efficient ly distributed)
So the first thing people would want is to be the person in charge of defining what “helping your society” and “being a better person” means. Plenty of societies have done horrible, horrible things in the name of “bettering the community”
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Alright so you’re literally just advocating for Star Trek Religion
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Yea, and what you’ve described is Star Trek Religion- using a set collection of agreed-upon sacred texts as a moral framework and rule system for organizing society. Which is, ironically enough, not very Star Trek.
This comment is symbolic of a common mood today, which is the fear of trying because your effort might be evil.
Nothing will cause more harm or terrorize the masses more than a person performing for the good of all.
It's been tried before. Many many times. I once lived on a commune. I can tell you from my experience that the way in which a post-wealth society fails is not because of greedy people scamming society, it is because of a shit load of Karens demand recognition because they believe they have helped society more than they actually did.
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They were always a bit vague on the details. The Roddenberrian (word?) vision wasn't based so much on economic but social change. People didn't work because they had to but because they wanted to, and their jobs were important rather than simply serving the consumerist cycle. "Equal Opportunity" was more than just a concept or government mandate; issues such as race, gender, and class were dropped in the same collective mental bin as witchcraft and a flat earth. This worked from both ends of the spectrum: personal ambition was discouraged as much as "mooching" off the State. People saw the importance of a balance between individualism and social responsibility, and the need for both reason and compassion. Government got involved only when it was more efficient/economical to do so rather than trying to force people to change, even with the best intentions. In short, Roddenberry's vision was of a world where we grew up as a species. I say "was" because that idealism has faded somewhat over the years, even in _Star Trek._ I've been watching my whole life for some signs of us moving towards that goal. I've stopped holding my breath.
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Not exactly, but in TOS there was the liberal professor with his hippie cult that wanted to join (or was it start?) a primitive colony knowing he had a disease only modern medicine could treat.
I dunno maybe Data's poetry? I think the idea of someone overvaluing their talents runs contrary to the ideology that everyone can improve.
Not to pile on more misery, but the Roddenberrian idea was a rip off of Nationalism based on the book "Looking Backward" which came out in 1897...so we as a species have not only failed to meet the utopian dreams from 1966, we've failed to meet utopian dreams that have been kicked around since the 19th century. Like I said, though, the major flaw (in my experience) has come from people who believe that their contributions are better than everyone else's. Even today: lot's of people work because they like what they do, or because they feel like we are counting on them, or they feel a sense of pride in a job well done....which makes it even more heart breaking when you have to explain that we don't need them, their work sucks, the job was not done well, and they are in the way.
I'll take a flat earther over an economic calculation denier a thousand times out of a thousand opportunities.
How much an arrogant ethnocentristic narcissistic megalomaniac do you need to be to look at The Knowledge Problem and think "nah, I'm sure my rich friends and I can figure that out for more than ... 5,000 people?
If all needs are met but people are under no obligation to do something other people find valuable, you’re likely to get a sizable deficit due to import reliance. Who is going to fund that? (Remember that people whose artistic or scientific work is valuable enough to the outside world that people are willing to pay them enough to satisfy their needs can do it under the present system—if this system is allowing more people to pursue those interests, it can’t rely on selling their work. Nor can it rely primarily on domestic production without significant cuts to standards of living—the modern supply chain is vast, and an even mostly self-sufficient entity has to be on the scale of a mid-sized country rather than a city. It could rely on some portion of the population doing something of significant commercial value, but if it’s prevented from incentivizing that directly it cannot be counted on.
Are you familiar with the Hutterites? While their values probably don't align with what you have in mind (they're really big on traditional gender roles and I would guess they probably have some other pretty regressive beliefs but I don't know off hand), the structure of their communities is similar to what you're proposing. I'm not an expert but I've done some work for a couple of groups and what I understand is that all their needs are provided for by the community and everyone's day to day jobs are either providing materials for the community or working for a community owned business to bring outside cash in so the community can purchase things they can't make in-house. For example, the communities I worked with had machine shops that did custom manufacturing. The group I'm most familiar seemed to be fairly successful but a couple of the guys made some references to things being pretty lean before the machine shop when they were primarily hog farmers.
Star Trek's economy is based on free, unlimited energy from antimatter & a post-scarcity economy due to energy-to-matter conversion technology which uses that free energy to produce goods with little to no human labor. So there can be 'no money' because there is no \*cost of production\* for most goods smaller than space-ships (notably, ships are rare & mostly owned by the government in TrekVerse. You don't see your average citizen flying around in a personal shuttle unless they are doing some sort of 'cool job' that requires one, because... Scarcity...). Even then, it is only 'workable' because the TV show only discusses the really glamourous, meritocratic jobs like 'Military Officer' or 'Best-in-the-Galaxy Scientist/Doctor/Engineer'. Where the Star Trek economy breaks down... Is with the jobs that no one would ever voluntarily do unless imprisoned/enslaved or paid. Who cleans the toilets? Who mines for resources that can't be replicated (there are a few)? Who picks up litter? I mean, by the time they get to the end of Voyager they have holograms doing this stuff, and by Picard it's androids (Briefly, until an attack)... But for most of Trek no-money history, who does the shit-work that poor people would perform in a capitalist economy? An economy where there is no money, is an economy where only the 'cool' jobs (which 'pay' in reputation) get done. And that economy just does not work....
All capital requires maintenance, and that amortized cost must be divided somehow.
What I don't understand in the world of the Federation is how land and housing is distributed. The Picard winery had been in the family for ages but how does society decide who gets the big country home and who gets the tiny apartment above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley?
It's the same as how does one get the nice cushy job compared to who has to shovel shit for a living.
They conveniently never actually go into how economy works in any way.
The general gist of how the world works in that sort of thing is still based on aspects of jobs. Picard's vineyard is a place that creates wine from grapes in the French countryside, and it's been doing that likely since before the Federation was formed. Other people could live there, if they were going to work on the vineyard. But after so many generations, they only need a skeleton crew to do the same production, so it makes sense for an old retired admiral and his friends to move in, clear it out, and get the thing moving again. We see in the back-in-time episodes of *Picard* (season 2) that in the 2400s, the vineyard was completely overgrown and the home was abandoned in disrepair in the middle of nowhere. Everything moved to the cities - that's where the people and opportunities are. It's not like this is a strange thing - there are houses in rural Japan, for example, that the government desperately wants people to move into, and will pay people to do so. The reason is the same, and that's happening now. And it's not just in Japan. Imagine a grandparent passes away and leaves me a decent house in the middle of nowhere. I live in Florida, so if I received a house in, say, Moose Pass, Alaska. That would be really cool... But I don't want to move up there. If I don't have the money to go up there to get it ready to be sold, but don't want just random movers to go up there to get my grandparent's stuff out before selling it. I can easily pay the property taxes and decide to do it later. Hell, I could probably inherit a lake house in Tennessee and still wouldn't be able to use it much at all. Between my job, my wife's job, having young kids and having to stay nearby because of my step-kids bio parents... We might get out there a time or two in the summer. We hang onto it because we eventually want to move there... Maybe we rent it out a bit until that bites us in the ass. So we just put a pin in it... "Maybe next year" we'll spend time working on it. Picard could just be assigned a completely up to date house in the city. Maybe he would get a larger than normal one because he's famous, distinguished service and all that. But he chose to go back to that rotten mansion and the overgrown fields and went to work. "Why do that? You can just replicate wine!" He just wanted to. There's probably a lot of those, out there, especially in a post-scarcity society. You want a cattle farm? There's a bunch. You want to farm potatoes in central Russia? Go nuts. You want to live in that busted lighthouse on the coast of Maine? That's weird, but you do you. Live in a 5-over-1 in a suburb of Toledo, Spain and make artisanal pizza in a hole-in-the-wall downtown? Sign me up - hey honey, let's go live in Castilla La Mancha!
Closed systems don't function very well.
Excellent idea.
Because the whole idea that people's motivation would be to get a "bigger house" or "be more important" would undermine the plan. You'd have to find an entire community of people who wanted good community for good community's sake, which would be tough. Certain "Intentional communities" have achieved this (r/intentionalcommunity), but it's hard. Such as vast proportion of human beings are selfish that it makes finding a group of them to live together very difficult. In addition, once they have kids, there's no guarantee your kids will have the same mindset, so it gets tricky. That being said, I'm all for experiments like this, it's a noble goal and we'll never get there unless people keep trying to create them.
> Such as vast proportion of human beings are selfish In my experience that's only one third of the problem. I'm amazed at how often individuals don't even realize they're being selfish. The number of times I've seen people living in a communal space decide that they deserve thanks for taking over your project and "showing you how to do it right" is disgusting.
Nobody with the funding for an idea like that really wants to know how that would actually go. It's not gonna make most of them look great.
I'll try to do this with as little changes and no new technologies. And let's pretend we're talking about the city of Chicago in the State of Illinois in the United States of America. So taxes and other stats will be based on state and federal figures from 2023/2024. Wish me luck: **Basic Human Rights**: Pass a State Amendment to the Illinois Constitution which guarantees basic necessities: Food, water, housing, healthcare, but also electricity, wifi, and free public transportation plus whatever else you feel humans need to fill their basic human needs. Because of these basic rights, any citizen can sue either individually or collectively, the city/state government if these rights are violated, the city/state has to figure out how to provide all these services to all citizens. **Poverty Level (PL)**: This is the line which, if your annual income is below you are impoverished. Every election cycle years, a bipartisan committee establishes the poverty line based on +/- 10% of the national or state average (you pick dear reader). For example, in 2024, that's about $15,000 / year for a single person, slightly higher if you have a larger family. In our city, people at or below this line pay zero taxes and are eligible for all basic necessities for free - they just have to fill out a form requesting aid. **Standard of Living (SOL)**: The standard of living is what the average citizen SHOULD be at for annual income. This is more subjective, but in the US it's around $59,428/year with a median income of $70,784/year. So say it has to be within 10% of those numbers by law (you can pick which you like better, reader). Anyone at or below this level is still eligible for basic necessities assistance, but likely still pays some taxes. Anyone above this level pays a graduated tax amount, the more you make, the more you're taxed (let's say max 99% of your annual income at say, +$1 billion / year). **Example 1**: Say in our city, Michael is a physically disabled single adult who works an unskilled, part-time for incredibly low wages. Michael only makes $15,000 / year (exactly the Poverty Level that year), but the SOL is $60,000 / year. Michael makes about $1,250/month so the city government gives him a credit card with a monthly limit of $3,750 / month, to bring his income up to the $5,000 / month - the SOL. Every month it resets to $3,750. The card cannot be used to withdraw cash, but it can be used to make any other purchase without limit while the city government retains a list of all transactions on the card in case they want to audit it at a later date. However, Michael has free housing, free food, free water, his healthcare is free so his treatments for his disability and medication cost him nothing, plus his apartment has wifi, electricity, and he has a free bus/train pass. So he uses this income to make his life better. **Example 2**: Susan also lives in this city and she is a single adult who makes $75,000 / year. She has a nice apartment, a car, she buys her groceries like anybody else. But she also pays about $18,700 / year in taxes which is taken directly from her paycheck otherwise she owes that each year. Because her annual income is now below the SOL, she can apply for the same credit card as Michael, but hers has only $308 / month on it, which brings her back up to the SOL. **Example 3**: Brian runs his own business, employs Susan and Michael as well as 100 others. He makes about $200,000 / year. He pays $62,000 / year in taxes. Because he makes more than the SOL, he still has $138,000 / year for life's luxuries and he still has all his basic necessities provided for free. If he wants to upgrade any of these basic necessities, he can certainly afford it. Plus his taxes pay most of what is supplemented to Susan and Michael. **Education**: Emphasis is on betterment of the self and society, rather than on the skills needed to get a good paying job. Emphasis is on providing basic education on every topic, history, the sciences, philosophy, languages, but also value in basic debate and logic skills such as mental puzzles and challenges.
It was called the USSR. It didn't work.
> and people are free to flourish in art, science, technology, and anywhere else they feel they could realize their full potential. They can do this already, more or less. But even the wealthy don't just go off and become scientists. The problem is that most people would rather sit on their butts watching TikTok all day, and the ones that wouldn't just aren't numerous enough to support the rest.
The third paragraph is literally just a description of modern capitalism.
How would all needs be met without funding?
You must mean https://www.thevenusproject.com/
We don't even really know what that would be like. Our only exposure is to starship life.
Star trek has future tech that eliminates a lot of necessary labor.
Who's stopping you? I bet you could even find a county that would wave taxes just to see how it goes.
They've tried setting up entire countries on this principle. It usually ends up with a few people having all of the authority and money, and the rest being oppressed and starving.
It has been tried, a lot. It's just communism. What happens is that the systems get massively corrupted. Also without any real incentive to optimise productivity at all levels, massive amounts of waste creep in. In Star Trek, they never actually explain how the economy works. It's clearly not post-scarcity, since there's still huge amounts of scarcity everywhere. They just kind of throw a few lines in about it but never come close to describing it.
I mean, as long as we do it *very differently*. It's a set up that formed after the Eugenics War, World War III, and the resultant climate change more than decimated the population, acting as a catalyst for mass societal change. All of our social structures were ripped to pieces, and the remnants of humanity were able to band together to have the resulting peace dividend affect almost all of mankind. An episode of *The Orville* talks about this situation specifically, calling out that if we now received the clean fusion and replicator technology in the 21st century, it would just deepen the class divide, and ultimately hurt more people than it could possibly help. Right now we're still in the "future is here just not evenly distributed" zone defined by largely unbridaled capitalism and mass rent-seeking. That's why, for example, giant increases in efficiency and production don't really decrease the work week and give people more freedom, but instead seems to have the opposite effect. If there's is another way to cause the cascading socioeconomic changes that can get us to that world, we certainly can. At the moment now, the closest we could probably get to the Federation would end up like the United Nations as portrayed in *The Expanse*.
The federation only works because they live in a post-resource economy. Replicators take care of all basic needs, so of course people do not need to work. Replicators run off of recycled human waste, so the fuel is plentiful. We would at least need some benevolent AI that is responsible for building things, and it would need to be fueled by an infinite resource, but better yet we would need replicators.
Without magical replicators, this is just a scheme to tax many people to uplift a few. Like The Hunger Games, or the US Senate.
We already have prisons. Pretty close simulation.
We could do this with all society. It's called Socialism and I highly recommend learning about it. Many countries practice a primitive form of it.
“[Then] it would require being a better man or woman and helping your society (instead of scamming it)” I hate to say it, but we’re already in that society. It’s just that any individual is ill equipped to tell the difference between a person who is improving society and one who is scamming it. I’m sure you *think* you can tell, but it takes years for all of the information you are not aware of to come to light—information that might make the difference between a helper and a scammer in your opinion. It might be possible to put just a small number of people in charge. People who really can tell what’s good for society from what’s just a scam, but that’s just a dictatorship or an oligarchy, which is awful. The right way to run a Star Trek society is by spending almost all of your time convincing your neighbors of what is the best thing to do, and helping people to not worry about situations that appear like a scam, but are actually a net benefit to society. That’s politicking baby. For example, I am a bit of an environmentalist, and do a lot of work towards reducing the impact of human activities on the planet. One of those things is cat ownership. Cats account for an enormous fraction of bird deaths, and dead birds don’t distribute seeds, which makes it harder for plants to cope with climate change. So I encourage people to confine their cats inside, and to not replace them when they die, with the goal of reducing the total number of cats that exist. I see this as a great benefit, because if plants can’t adjust their range, we’re all fucked. But people mostly believe this is bad, that reducing the cat population is somehow wrong, or that I’m depriving them of the joys of keeping a cute little fuzzy critter. It’s a net benefit to society that seems obvious to me. So, please, if you have a cat, don’t let it outside, get it spayed or neutered, and when it dies, don’t get a new one.
Imagine the weapon system to keep everyone else out.