this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
411 points (97.7% liked)
Programming
29004 readers
192 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yup, the idea is good. How this this idea is being implemented... not so much.
Simultaneously they have created the part I wanted from Star Trek, while making the worst possible anti star trek a reality.
E.g.
I want to be able to ask a computer about history, art, codeing, well anything. And be able to clarify and question and put together new ideas.
But not by anyone owning that ability or profiting on the labor of others or causing environmental harm.
We got the cool computer but haven't achieved the post-scarcity part.
I don't think you can have one without the other.
Post-scarcity isn't actually possible. Not even in Star Trek this is true. Picard's family owns a vineyard in France filled with artifacts and antiques. Not everything is fungible. People will desire these non-fungible things. Not everyone that desires these things will be able to have them, because they aren't fungible. You can't have a billion people all owning vineyards in France. Some people won't get everything they want. There will always be scarcity.
Star Trek was made in the 1960's at the height of the cold war. They didn't want the show to be about how capitalism was superior to communism, or vice versa. So they side stepped the issue by saying in the future there's no scarcity, no money, and they live under some ideal future economic model. The show writers don't know what that ideal economic model is, so it's deliberately vague and inconsistent. And that's fine because the show isn't about economics.
It was wise of the writers of Star Trek to avoid trying to make predictions of that nature. 300 years ago, Wealth of Nations wasn't yet written, the field of economics didn't really exist. They believed shiny rocks had intrinsic value. They had some vibes about things like currency devaluation and inflation, but economics was still mostly about acquiring shiney rocks 300 years in the past. So what will economics be like 300 years in the future? None of us know, and certainly writers of a TV show don't know.
The writers of a TV show saying there will be no scarcity in the future just means they didn't want to discuss economics. It's not any kind of prediction about the future. There will always be scarcity.