Jester David
Hero
In Trek we know, since they had entire books devoted to the in-world science. I can pull out my Next Generation Technical Manual and tell you the exact power output of the Enterprise-D's Warp Reactor.That doesn't mean anything, since we don't actually know what warping space entails. Maybe the outright power output needed to warp space is small, and the trick is what you do with that power.
Orville… less so. But the show seems much more interested in the characters than delving that deep into the pseudo-physics rabbit hole.
But it stands to reason "infinite power" is likely a key element of building to a post-scarcity economy.
There are entire industries that largely exist because the government subsidizes them to avoid people losing their jobs.How many of the "crap jobs" are in doing things to manually produce the stuff that is now free? You have machines to do heavy labor. Computers to do boring record keeping. Why would you keep going to some crap job when there is no need for humans (or any sentient being) to do crap jobs?
The US overproduces ridiculous amounts of milk and wastes gallons and then packs it inefficiently letting the majority spoil before it can be consumed just to keep the dairy farmers working,
Right.Which is to say, yes, there's not a whole lot of need for "wealth" in the current way we think of it. Most humans can spend their time in intellectual and artistic pursuits (like Sisko's father, who has a restaurant - he's a food artist). And, there's a big question as to whether you'd need anyone to *pay* for those intellectual and artistic products, because... well, the artist doesn't *need* anything.
Money is a concept based in scarcity. In a post-scarcity world, there's not a lot of call for it.
Theoretically, the restaurant owner just works because they love cooking. And people show up and order whatever they want and it's free.
People do what makes them happy. And while some people probably waste a few years doing nothing, that gets old and they move on to challenging themselves or finding their passion.
True. But in a Star Trek universe where you can "beam" across the globe to work, prime real estate matters less. You can live in San Diego, pop over to Paris for breakfast before work in London, then zip off for lunch in Moscow.Some things will always be scarce - prime real estate, original art, honorific titles.
Less so in the Orville show. But with simple shuttles able of travelling interstellar and breaking atmo, commuting between cities shouldn't be as bad.
Kinda.Even now, I can get free water, paper, flu shots, and various other goods that have a marginal cost to the provider of nearly zero. But, money is now and probably will be the most efficient way to distribute scarcities, assuming that individual differences in preference are to be respected.
On a small scale, barter or trading favors works. Across the whole Union, not really.
The catch being, you need the "currency" for big transactions. But those are irregular. The small, daily stuff is free. You don't need it for daily life, and so there's no reason to amass currency. And once you have the big things (a house, a title, a decent amount of art) what else do you need?
The value of currency over bartering is that it's easier for regular mundane transactions. The kind that are now free. So you can handle those rare occasional transactions with a barter.
Without regular use of currency, it cease to have value or importance. It becomes devalued.
But this is putting a lot more thought into the economics of a fantasy world, for a show unconcerned with economics and focused on life in a spaceship and not said fantasy world.