 Hey folks, Adamby Levine here. Things didn't go to plan this week So hold that thought until next weekend and in the meantime here's the fourth installment of speaking of bitcoins dare to be stupid series Enjoy the show Hello there, I'm George frankly and I'm going to take a look at how even the best and brightest people can make truly Stupid decisions and terrible predictions and what we can learn from them. This is dare to be stupid This time on dare to be stupid the nonsense economics of Star Trek or utopia in a vacuum The last time I waxed nostalgic about Star Trek the next generation I called out and then forgave its numerous predictive failures Sure, it tended to make very simplistic predictions about the distant future But it was all in the service of bringing us a more optimistic view of today and tomorrow Well enough feel-good bullshit dreamy sci-fi optimism is a greasy cheeseburger and right now we're going to eat steak Not just any steak even we're grilling up a sacred cow today Star Trek the next generation love it as I may built its entire utopia on the basis of one single utterly broken Nonsense idea that renders all of its lofty stories about society and science and economics absolutely moot The galaxy of replicators and warp speed works just fine as a feel-good story for the tots But if Star Trek set out to be an allegory a real thought-provoking challenge to our behavior our beliefs our way of life Then I'm sorry to say it failed miserably Star Trek and to keep things simple. I mean Star Trek the next generation imagines a beautiful fantasy world of post scarcity economics Post scarcity is not a sci-fi invention. It was in fact a sort of theoretical notion laid out by the economist John Maynard Keen himself Keen's like many philosophers from many disciplines saw scarcity and the struggle for resources as the impetus behind most human behavior He theorized that if a truly scarcity altering resource were discovered all of society and human behavior would be shaken I'll paraphrase the man himself The love of money as a possession not the love of money as a means to find enjoyment or security rather just the hoarding accumulation of capital would be recognized for what it is a disgusting morbidity This is to say that if the scarcity of resources were suddenly just end one day all sorts of traditional practices and behaviors would lose All meaning as the hoarding of wealth just becomes transparently awful So what the hell does that mean it means that in a post scarcity world like Star Trek a man with lots of money Suddenly looks less like a power broker or a kingmaker and more like a guy from an episode of my strange addiction that can't achieve sexual satisfaction unless dead white guys on green paper are watching The primordial insecurity of the entire human condition evaporates and suddenly hoarding wealth doesn't project security it projects hoarding That is Keen's post scarcity and it is the backbone of Star Trek post scarcity people are different people They're all unflappably noble space travelers hungry for knowledge for knowledge is own sake Without the fear of where their next meal is coming from or how they're going to keep the lights on the only thing they crave is Self-improvement and by God that sounds nice. It fits what we've seen Every pajama-bound space sailor on the Starship Enterprise is disgustingly enlightened professional and ethical throughout the majority of their work day But how does the Starship Enterprise actually escape scarcity rather? How did all these upstanding citizens of the 24th century break free of the oil crisis of our modern age? What new systems of energy efficiency and resource infrastructure shattered the centuries-long chokehold of Economic petroleum monoculture that define the world. We know make no mistake That's what this is about the world We live in is an economic monoculture the same way that the global population of adorable pug dogs are so inbred That the tens of thousands of them alive today have the genetic diversity of about 50 individuals Or the fact that every banana you've ever eaten in your life has been a genetic clone from the exact same centuries-old tree Our global economy is deformed and vulnerable after centuries of incest It really is all about petroleum and petroleum monoculture isn't just about gasoline Petroleum refinement is the source of practically all commercial organic chemicals propane butane still from oil fields Polymers and monomers that go into our plastics and composites refined from oil fields Numerous refined short chain hydrocarbons in the food and medicine industry are derived from petroleum byproducts Practically any chemical process or product you can think of has one foot in the oil rigs door That is the monoculture so many sectors of the global economy depend on constant and consistent petroleum flow that it is both a Kingmaker and an Achilles heel for all of human society It is the only leg that many industries have to stand on and God helps them if it falls over and So Star Trek escapes that it has a moneyless post scarcity economy But how what radical culture shift saved our fictional future from dependency on a dangerous economic monoculture? Well, that's easy dependency on a fun economic monoculture You see Star Trek never actually had any revolutionary ideas about escaping scarcity or a petroleum dependent economy It just uses the exact same mindset but replaces unilateral dependence on oil with unilateral dependence on dilithium crystals Dilithium is the magic word that makes their entire vision of utopia work And it's nothing more than 20th century petroleum culture putting on a groucho moustache and coming back to the free sample counter for seconds all roads in Star Trek lead back to dilithium Unspeakable amounts of energy production enabling fasted-in-light travel matter replication rearrangement transportation solid construct Holograms capable of having feelings for some reason it all comes from dilithium Something somebody off-camera minds and refines in nigh limitless quantities and produces perfect energy efficiency with no harmful byproducts This is not a problem exclusive to Star Trek although it leans into it the hardest Professor Imra semen criticized modern science fiction as a whole when it comes to economics saying quote Oil capital seems to represent a stage that neither capitalism nor its opponents in science fiction can think beyond The scarcity of oil he suggests is just a minor technicality We will simply invent something that can do everything oil can do without the drawback of being scarce And that is what Star Trek has done taken the driving force behind the worst motives and conflicts in human history Resource scarcity and slapped a full reverse card on it Where economic crashes and shortages have driven global depressions pushed despots into power and Look, I'll just cut to the chase and say this was gonna end up being about Nazi Germany Star Trek scribbled the word post next to scarcity and called it a day The enlightened men and women of the Starship Enterprise did not abandon oil monoculture They simply switched over to space oil and declared that all the bad things are gone now At the end of the day, it might not feel like that matters. It's not about how they got to utopia, right? It's about what they do with it morals and pathos are for book reports. We are here for space conflict But conflict is what it's all about and by it. I mean being alive There are many different interpretations and perspectives about the relationship between capital M man and capital N Nature, but there's a spot a common ground between science economics and philosophy Conflict and insecurity motivate change and progress Living things from their earliest and slimmest incarnations have been motivated by resources and security How we balance our needs our wants our fears and our desires are the fundamental components of how we make decisions and form biases When Star Trek flipped that switch that said everything bad is gone and everyone's needs are met It made all the primary colored grown-up onesie enthusiasts on board into something not quite human God, I I'd love Star Trek the next generation absolutely two pieces There's tremendous value in the stories and the adventures it takes us through and there's plenty of charm to its stoic cast of characters But we can't elevate things beyond criticism much less a show that criticizes us right back Star Trek says so many snappy and harsh things about people in our less enlightened times yet It refuses to consider what makes us this way scarcity and limitations It doesn't imagine a world where those fundamental conflicts are ever solved It just shows us a world where they cease to exist and that's not a utopia anybody earned If we're ever going to build a better society We'll get there by grappling with our needs and fighting against our limits every step of the way Prop probably not in our pajamas Yeah, thank you for listening as always I'd like to remind you that nearly all of my illustrious job titles come with the prefix armchair If you're an expert and you're hearing me get something wrong, I'd like to hear about it and with that I'm definitely done talking about Star Trek and baseball forever probably