I have always loved Star Trek. The utopian future was at odds with most other fictional visions of the times ahead. It\u2019s easy to paint a world where nothing works, it\u2019s much harder to paint one where everything does and still make it compelling. Plus, there were space ships!<\/p>\n
One of the franchise\u2019s great heroes was one Captain Jean Luc Picard, of the star ship Enterprise (of all names). Picard would make regular speeches to some newly discovered civilisation, who were maybe behind the times by fictional 24th<\/sup> century Earth standards on some issue. They may read as follows:<\/p>\n Alien: \u201cWhat do you mean there is no money in your world?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Picard: \u201cWe have grown out of our infancy. We no longer value the gathering of material wealth. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. War and poverty have disappeared.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That may sound a little close to Communism for comfort, but as it was portrayed on screen, it came across as something different. That was the magic trick I suppose, they never really delved into how it all works in the United Federation of Planets; we just accepted it and moved along with the story.<\/p>\n In the Trek-verse, World War III was the full stop to capitalism. Humanity was brought to its knees and forced to put aside its petty differences and work together to pull itself from the ashes.<\/p>\n Thankfully, this is not a nuclear war, but it is a global pandemic<\/a><\/span> that carries with it certain similarities to a world war. Regular life and commerce<\/a><\/span> have come screeching to a halt. The comfort of the circular flow model, wherein money<\/a><\/span> flows from producers to workers as wages and flows back to producers as payment for products, has been somewhat derailed.<\/p>\n The tightrope we were walking was but a fragile, impermanent thread. More frayed than we had dared to realise.<\/p>\n GDP and the changing of the guard <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Gross Domestic Product (GDP), described as the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a country during a specific period, has been the common tongue among news reporters and politicians for decades when viewing the course of global economics. How strong is a country? The GDP will let you know. Donald Trump<\/span> has built his presidency around it. Something he can point to and say, \u201cLook, I\u2019m doing great.\u201d<\/p>\n However, there have been voices of dissent<\/a><\/span> growing for the past few years, pointing to new models of viewing how we are doing as individuals, countries and a global community.<\/p>\n Diane Coyle<\/a><\/span>, of Cambridge University, points out that GDP is an outdated measure for a production economy as now we have an economy that\u2019s 80% services. The metric of GDP ignores this and things like, the now unignorable, climate impact also.<\/p>\n The UN\u2019s Human Development Index<\/a><\/span> (HDI) and Bhutan\u2019s Gross National Happiness<\/a><\/span> (GNH) are not without their critics but at the very least show further indication of the incomplete nature of GDP.<\/p>\n Now, this pandemic has brought America\u2019s economy to a stand-still, and a more humanist approach to leadership is required. Trump can no longer hide behind the straw-man of GDP to indicate how the people are doing (nor any other world leader), and he\u2019s drowning. You can see it in his eyes and in that mega-cringe self-sizzle reel he played at a recent briefing, claiming how ahead of the curve he has been.<\/p>\n The Scarcity Myth<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Capitalism operates on a system of \u201cartificial scarcity.\u201d This refers to a scarcity of items, despite the technology and means for production and sharing existing. Meaning there should be a greater or, theoretically, even limitless quantity of production, i.e. we may not have the luxury of Star Trek\u2019s \u201creplicator\u201d devices, that can conjure most items out of thin air but there\u2019s enough to go around, lads.<\/p>\n Take this current crisis wherein an emergency social welfare payment of \u20ac350 was, rightly, put in place by our government. The jobseeker allowance pre-crisis was \u20ac203. How long have nurses been asking for a pay increase? Where was this money sitting before, or if the money wasn\u2019t \u201cthere\u201d, where was the willingness to borrow, which is effectively what our government is doing? All over the world, governments have thrown the fiscal probity rulebook out the window.<\/p>\n Of course, there are deeper financial implications for every cent of government spending and it would take a book to go there, but people see now, it\u2019s there, or at least available. It has always been there, floating through the computers and calculators of world banks and governments.<\/p>\n As French economist and Trekkie, Manu Saadi espouses in his work Trekonomics<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> warp-drive may not be possible but a post-scarcity society is.<\/p>\n Automation: Resistance is futile<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n