EconTech

Economics & Sci-Fi: Two Great Tastes…

… that don’t go well together?

I happened to see a few episodes from season I of Masters of Science Fiction and it got me thinking…

Economics is a science (yes it is, don’t argue with me!), so why is there no economic fiction? Sure, from Physics you get time travel and space travel and all, but then you could have both in a story: social experimentation informed by economic theory in outer space?

And another thing… watching this reminded me why Sci-Fi geeks are mostly (and often permanently) turned off Economics… Economics is about allocations and their properties, that is, scarcity, exchange, coordination, political power and market power. Sci-Fi nerds have little interest in these.

Remember, Star Trek supposedly takes place in a post-scarcity era, where replicators turn pure energy into anything, a world without money and where all leadership is provided by the army.

In much mainstream/commercial Sci-Fi, politicians and bureaucrats are either benevolent, if not always competent, either gratuitously evil. There seems to be little understand of what drives political actors (hint: allocations!) and why and how government (doesn’t) work(s).

It seems to me that this disdain for anything “commercial” or money-related shown by many idealistic, intellectual youth (I was one of them, I think!) is the kind of mindset that’s favorable for pro-socialist sentiments among the middle and upper class.

Wasn’t Star Trek was just as much economic fiction as it was sci-fi. I’m not sure what else economic fiction would look like. I think most of science fiction assumes some kind of economic fiction. This is usually boring (yes, I hate Star Trek). Indeed, I find shows much more interesting when scarcity is an issue. I was probably one of few people who liked the Battlestar Galactica episode on the underground economy, and the issues of power and scarcity explored there, though BSG itself is all about scarcity. Other examples might be the Stargate series, which went downhill when it started to ignore economic reality and the characters were suddenly capable of much more than the resources they had should’ve allowed. This might also be why I prefer the original Star Wars over the new pre-quels. The Rebel’s were having to deal with scarcity, the Republic did not. You get a little of both in The Matrix, where, while in the matrix, they have full access to information and armaments, and in the real world, they are dealing with extreme scarcity relative to the robot enemy.

And count me as one of those few appreciators of (some) Sci-Fi and of economics. I think I want less economic fiction with my Sci-Fi.