Worst economics in science fiction?

[Dinwar]

Unless Bantha meat is some delicacy that is worth its weight in gold, the numbers that such a barren planet can support are tiny and hardly making any farmer rich.

Who said anything about rich? The only rich being on Tattooine is Jabba. I'm merely arguing that it makes moisture farming viable, which has a MUCH lower threshold. Look into the settling of the USA's Great Plains for an example of this. Also, remember that people get very attached to their homesteads. Even if it's expensive you'll have people sticking around because their fathers and mothers stuck around. ANTPogo already outlined why they started colonizing the planet.

Even if you're looking to hide, there is no point in going to a place where even water costs a mint, being produced in tiny quantities per farmer, and where just a shower or brushing your teeth can set you back accordingly.

Check your history books. This is more or less exactly what happeend when the USA pushed westward.

Even the excuse of supplying stuff for the smuggler cities, runs into the problem that smuggling in the SW universe is itself something that doesn't make much sense. It's exactly the cliche of big, expensive, top-technology ships carrying tiny amounts of inexpensive goods. Whether it's Han Solo or the smuggler in the SW:TOR intro, or whatever, the ships are invariably touted as the fastest in <insert chunk of space or class>, and shown as beiing able to outmaneuver fighters, and withstand attacks by whole squadrons of fighters and bombers. We're talking things that are pushing the technology envelope, and that ain't cheap. Yet invariably they don't even have space for more than tiny amounts of anything on board, and even if they're carrying drugs ("spice"), it's the stuff that apparently every junkie can afford. But occasionally we hear even of inexpensive stuff like food being smuggled.

Again, I suggest you check your history books. Particularly pirates and the Brittish blockaid of France in the Nepoleanic Wars. Also, while they're high-end in terms of performance, Lucas made a point of referring to the Millenium Falcon as a "pile of junk" on many occasions, and it obviously wasn't what you'd call "plush" inside.

As for the economics, look at the entire Age of Imperialism. The whole point of sailing west was to look for spices. They used the cutting edge of technology and a great deal of money to look for a faster route by which comparatively small volumes of very expensive substances can be traded. This is precisely analogous to Star Wars smuggling, considering the fact that the Hutts were a legitimate government (of Nal Hutta, and Nar Shada, but still a legitimate government).

Why not just skip it entirely and stick to whatever planets A and B you're smuggling stuff between?

Ever wonder why so many ships sank in the Carribean? Same concept.

Rome was a very complex thing, with a rich culture, and a mix of economic, artistic, military, etc, aspects, not just one like the "planet of hats" in some SF settings.

Right, I get that. You missed my point, though: Italy isn't Roman anymore. However complex the cultures, the one is not the other.

And as for the long lineage of doing the same stupid thing for thousands of years, well, the victors write the history books.

Middle-class Americans CANNOT become Klingons any more than they can become Vulcans, because humans don't work that way, and they'd still have a pyramid of needs that includes more than war.

The Middle Ages demonstrated that a human economy can work even if it praises martial prowes and openly is hostile to trade. It's not GOOD, necessarily, but it worked for about a thousand years and the populatoin of Europe rather quickly rose to more than that of the Roman Empire (well, until the Black Death, anyway) so it had to have something going for it. Remember, unless you're reading Ayn Rand you're not going to see the details of the economy. Luke Skywalker never goes to a mechanic, Kirk never visits a barber, SeaQuest never gets into the details of smelting, etc., yet we can reasonably assume that such jobs in fact existed. A culture devouted to warriors isn't going to parade their merchants to the galaxy, but you can be sure that they're there.

general trope seems to be the contrary, that cultures that evolved on lush planets are all peaceful and wise and were so for as long as anyone remembers,

This is where our disagreement is fundamentaly stemming from. You're saying that the culture started when people remember it starting. I'm saying it probably started a great deal earlier, based on our history, and evolved into the culture the sci-fi writer presents. And I'm also saying that the writer, unless they have a specific reason to, isn't going to get into the nuts-and-bolts of every little aspect of a culture. We can reasonably assume that species in the Star Treck universe eat things other than delicacies, for example--they have to have some comfort food that's as common as Mac & Cheese--despite every meal on the Enterprise being a delicacy.

Very rarely some series actually does explore the question of "so how did those get to be a space empire if they're THAT dysfunctional?",

What I'm saying is that there's no reason to assume that just because a species is that disfunctional, and a space empire, that they became a space empire while being that disfunctional. It could just as easily be that they became a space empire and THEN became disfunctional.

Duly noted, Dune sorta manages to handwave that kind of economy more convincingly than other settings... never mind that that kind of economy or society never actually existed,

I wouldn't say "never". If you got rid of oil, our economy would collaps pretty fast, for example. We may be able to rebound, but we'd certainly falter long enough for someone to overthrow our government (how would we defend ourselves? Our entire defense system is based on oil).

 

[Mark6]

This is the issue with the majority of fantasy/science fiction worlds in general. In some cases, it's a matter of lazy writing, but in others the story itself (which is interesting) would fail utterly if the economics had to be realistic.

In case of "Smoke Ring" it was lazy writing, as moving gigantic trees around was superficial to the story. Niven could have had the "loggers" ("prospectors"?) travel the Smoke Ring and bring back something much smaller and more realistic, and the book would have been exactly same.

 

[Starthinker]

The Golgafrinchans used leaves as currency until they realized that everyone could gather an abundance of leaves at which point they decided to burn down all the forests and thus revalue the leaves.

 

[RobRoy]

In case of "Smoke Ring" it was lazy writing, as moving gigantic trees around was superficial to the story. Niven could have had the "loggers" ("prospectors"?) travel the Smoke Ring and bring back something much smaller and more realistic, and the book would have been exactly same.

Sure, and while I haven't read that particular book, I have read Niven. Some of his stories are more about what he thinks would be cool, as opposed to what's reasonable, rational, or plausible. So Niven might be considered a lazy fictional economist, while at the same time still an excellent fictional author.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Actually, that's been VERY inadequately and inconsistently handwaved.Imperfections or inabilities on organic creatures are rendered moot by the fact that the transporter essentially IS a glorified replicator.

It's all about the buffer. The buffer can temporarily store the information, including the atom-by-atom interactions, to allow for transport. But this information is far in excess of what the database can store for replicator use.

You beam up an ice cream sundae, its detailed structure is stored in the buffer (a signature that rapidly decays, by the way), you get a perfect ice cream sundae. You replicate an ice cream sundae, you're doing so on the basis of a replicator pattern with far less information than a transporter pattern.

 

[Chaos]

Not any particular story, but... any SF story that involves manual/unskilled slave labor is unrealistic.

 

[Mark6]

Not any particular story, but... any SF story that involves manual/unskilled slave labor is unrealistic.

manual/unskilled slave labor AND high technology.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is a subset of SF.

But yes, that's what immediately set off my Suspension of Disbelief alarms when I read "Time Enough for Love". Although IIRC, the only uses of slaves actually mentioned in that book were sexual.

 

[catsmate]

Star Trek Next Generation "Best of Both Worlds"

Sir we lost 39 ships and over 11,000 Star Fleet personnel in the battle of Wolf 359. The good news is the fleet will be back to full strength within a year"

Well I'm sure a couple of thousand member planets could manage that.

 

[Wudang]

You beam up an ice cream sundae, its detailed structure is stored in the buffer (a signature that rapidly decays, by the way)

Unless that episode's writer needs something different. How long was Scotty stored in a transporter buffer for?

 

[RobRoy]

Unless that episode's writer needs something different. How long was Scotty stored in a transporter buffer for?

Like 75 years? The writers did some tap-dancing on the pattern degradation though, and whoever the guy/girl with Scotty didn't make it. So Scotty's solution wasn't perfect, even though it saved him and allowed him to show up in TNG for a pretty awesome episode. The Dyson sphere alone was worth it, not to mention the "it is green" moment.

 

[MG1962]

We can reasonably assume that species in the Star Treck universe eat things other than delicacies, for example--they have to have some comfort food that's as common as Mac & Cheese--despite every meal on the Enterprise being a delicacy.

Star Trek did try to address this - Season 4 an episdode "Family" has Worf showing his adopted human parents around the ship. At one stage the mother confides to Troy, she tried hard to make Klingon food but was never sure she got bloodbeast pie right.

At the end of the episode as she is leaving she asks Worf can she sends him anything, he responds "Your Bloodbeast pie"

So clearly the replicators could do the job but lacked that final something that only say a mother can add to a dish

 

[autumn1971]

Star Trek did try to address this - Season 4 an episdode "Family" has Worf showing his adopted human parents around the ship. At one stage the mother confides to Troy, she tried hard to make Klingon food but was never sure she got bloodbeast pie right.

At the end of the episode as she is leaving she asks Worf can she sends him anything, he responds "Your Bloodbeast pie"

So clearly the replicators could do the job but lacked that final something that only say a mother can add to a dish

Aww. . . The missing ingredient was---
nutmeg. It's always nutmeg.
What do you all think the "spice" in Dune actually was?

 

[gnome]

Dorky Star Trek fan weighing in here...

You can't take every word, even of "canon" as something that must be held true in context for the whole to be worthwhile. With so much material of varying quality to pick from, it makes sense for a fan to simply choose what works for them and disregard/handwave/"broad strokes" what doesn't.

In a Star Trek storyverse to my ideals, replicators work but have lots of the aforementioned limitations to crafting the old-fashioned way. Replicating their own batteries is clearly nonsense and I definitely discount that as a possibility.

The biggest limitation as I see it is to remember that replicating something requires a massive amount of power, and is only economical because of the ludicrous power available to matter-antimatter reactors. Plenty of stuff would still be physically made for artistic reasons, and also where perhaps there isn't an anti-matter power source handy.

Replicators would be of special use when something needs to be made FAST, in larger quantities than available raw material, or when it needs extra precision in duplicating parts, and only in an energy-rich context.

Transporters share some of the functions with replicators, but have additional limitations, that SOMETIMES can be worked around, but not reliably, and often not intentionally. Again, plot lines that rely on stupidly powerful transporters are bunk to me... but it's all made up, so I don't have to agree with all of it.

Where it comes to the Mirror Universe reachable by flaky transporters, it's just the triumph of Rule of Cool.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Aww. . . The missing ingredient was---
nutmeg. It's always nutmeg.
What do you all think the "spice" in Dune actually was?

Worm poop presumably.

 

[Darat]

If I recall correctly the Dorsai parts of the Childe cycle had a good stab at an interplanetary economy - even though it had monolithic culture per planet.

 

[theprestige]

Not any particular story, but... any SF story that involves manual/unskilled slave labor is unrealistic.

Actually, that's probably the most realistic SF story out there.

I mean, it's essentially the SF story we're living right now: people in one place living in luxury and enjoying the most advanced technology the setting has to offer, while people in another place live in poverty and work in terrible conditions, often manufacturing the same advanced technology enjoyed by the first group.

Science fiction economics? More like science fact.

 

[Nowhere Man]

A couple of different takes on a replicator economy are The People Maker (revised and republished as A for Anything) by Damon Knight and the later "Venus Equilateral" stories by George O. Smith.

In the Knight story, replicators are strictly controlled, and slave labor is the driving force of the economy, because while you can replicate people, you can't replicate labor. Also, enough nasty people get a kick out of exerting control over others. One squickier sub-plot involves a young woman who is repeatedly replicated by each generation of one family to be the mother of the next generation.

The Smith stories are a series of increasingly super-science advances, finally landing on power transmission and matter duplication. Living beings can't be duplicated (until later). The economy collapses but the day is saved when the inventors come up with a form of handwavium metal that explodes when duplicated, to act as a replacement for money and a safeguard against duplication. A golden age ensues.

Fred

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Dorky Star Trek fan weighing in here...

You can't take every word, even of "canon" as something that must be held true in context for the whole to be worthwhile. With so much material of varying quality to pick from, it makes sense for a fan to simply choose what works for them and disregard/handwave/"broad strokes" what doesn't.

In a Star Trek storyverse to my ideals, replicators work but have lots of the aforementioned limitations to crafting the old-fashioned way. Replicating their own batteries is clearly nonsense and I definitely discount that as a possibility.

The biggest limitation as I see it is to remember that replicating something requires a massive amount of power, and is only economical because of the ludicrous power available to matter-antimatter reactors. Plenty of stuff would still be physically made for artistic reasons, and also where perhaps there isn't an anti-matter power source handy.

Replicators would be of special use when something needs to be made FAST, in larger quantities than available raw material, or when it needs extra precision in duplicating parts, and only in an energy-rich context.

Transporters share some of the functions with replicators, but have additional limitations, that SOMETIMES can be worked around, but not reliably, and often not intentionally. Again, plot lines that rely on stupidly powerful transporters are bunk to me... but it's all made up, so I don't have to agree with all of it.

Where it comes to the Mirror Universe reachable by flaky transporters, it's just the triumph of Rule of Cool.

Yet Picard gives a lone settler family on a dead planet a replicator, just in case, and it obviously doesn't need a whole ship reactor to power it. In fact, it looks like there isn't any more to it than just about the part you see on the ship's wall.

Also on the topic of replicators, in "Alegiance", the aliens use basically a modified replicator to create a Picard impostor. So obviously it doesn't take all that much to replicate something not just living, but a living sentient being, and there ARE species in the galaxy which have that technology.

The replicator also obviously has enough resolution to target individual CO2 mollecules in the air, and act as basically an air recycler, as of Deep Space Nine.

The replicator also effectively does have infinite energy even if you skip the part where it replicates its batteries, as it can convert matter into energy, and is used as basically a recycling bin. Which renders the energy requirements fully irrelevant. If you need to produce 2 pounds of anything, since e=mc² for any matter, you can just shovel two pounds of dirt into it.

In fact, in pretty much any closed system, where matter doesn't get lost into space, a replicator would need not much extra energy. Once you have replicators that can recycle matter into energy, essentially all the food and drink that goes into people, has to come out in some form or another. It will be as CO2, sweat, and, well, other byproducts. If it doesn't leave the ship AND you have replicators which are accurate enough to recycle even individual CO2 mollecules out of the air, all that can be just transformed back into energy and then transformed into more food, drinks, and whatever else the crew needs.

Also whatever energy problems it may have, they obviously are no matter when the same technology is used in holodecks just for entertainment.

You're basically right that one can't take the whole canon literally, because the whole thing doesn't even make any damn sense (as in, all stated rules and limitations AND the stuff that they did with it across all episodes, can't really be true at the same time) if you think too much about it. Every other episode breaks some stated rules.

 

[Dinwar]

Why would replicating the batteries be nonsense? Energy storage is, after all, predominantly an issue of arranging atoms and particles. If you have enough energy to make a banana split you have enough for a batter of the same size, and since they've found a way around the issue of the whole thing exploding because of unbalanced charges and the like we can presume that holding the atoms apart until the system is stable isn't an issue (either it has to do that anyway, or it just makes the fully-formed thing all at once, instead of producing it 3D printer-style). Or, it could replicate a solar panel--I've noticed that there aren't a whole lot of really dark areas on a Federation ship. That'd amount to the same thing as replicating batteries. Or it could replicate the replicator. Or it could replicate biomass and burn it for fuel.

 

[Wowbagger]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy claims that monetary units don't really exist in the Universe.