This has been done to death. But I enjoy writing it. I enjoy writing it except that every time I do, no matter how original my setting, plot, politics, and characters... I get this vile taste in my mouth like I expect every reader to be thinking...
"yeah, I've never seen this before... star wars...star trek..."
bah.
Anyone else find frustration with this?
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 03, 2007).]
This happens to me when I'm writing fantasy. I've read quite a bit of it and I usually tend to drift off on cliche settings. Cliche, cliche, cliche!!! >.< We all write cliches anyway.
You can manage any plot so long as you first establish characters that we care about. That's why character is so crucial to writing fiction. If I care about your characters, I'll go along wherever you take me. If I care about the characters, I'll be more willing to suspend disbelief.
I really like Elizabeth Moon's space books even though she has everyone floating around in these archaic spacecraft which use absolutely prehistoric technology...it's definitely not Star Wars, at least
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Hah, I just remembered that Bujold's first Vorkosigan book, Shards of Honor, was originally a Star Trek fan fic she wrote as a teenager.
Really, Survivor? I hadn't heard that. So Cordelia was her "Mary Sue"? And Aral was who? Kirk?
I personally don't agree with that. I want stories that focus on characters, character development, character interactions that just happen to deal with monsters, zombies, space ships, or other worlds.
It was one of the reasons I liked the show "Firefly". Sure, it was set in space, but in space, people still had problems. We were the same race, just on other planets.
I have been a fan of Star Trek for a long time, but I never quite bought the idea that in the future we won't deal with money, everyone will be equal, etc. I just don't think mankind is like that.
Matt
Then again, I always was a sucker for Heinlein.
Matt
I didn't much like certain elements of the first couple of "Star Trek" series. Everybody seemed to get along unusually well with each other in rather cramped and isolated circumstances...you saw a regular poker game in one but never saw any of the players with money...and the general contempt for the twentieth century shined through on many occasions. (Yet I didn't much care for later ones, where relationships were a little more prickly, and money was actually a factor...the twentieth-century-contempt seemed constant, though.)
I like space opera in general...but, curse the luck, so many have done this sub-genre so well that it's hard to find an angle on it. Someone (Heinlein?) once described area of SF as containing "low grade ore" because of this...certainly I find this to be the case.
So, yeah...not much like the book at all.
Matt
I feel your pain. An editor told me my WIP reminded him of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and he said it as though it was a compliment. But, having seen only the movie, I was tempted to be insulted -- till I read the book. Loved the book. Hated the movie.
I was happy to hear about Bujold and her fan fic-turned-original work because my WIP was born from a piece of fan fic, too. 
I'll have to read Shards to see if it's recognizable, which, I suppose, is a good measure of success with the transition.
Unfortunately, the term "space opera" seems to carry some baggage, a la Flash Gordon, which doesn't help those of us writing it. Someone on this site used the term "space fantasy" instead, which sounded good to me. "Space fiction" works well, too. But in lists of space opera, I've seen some prominent sf authors, including Asimov, so space opera covers a lot of ground.
You know, like Card's junky blue Datson (or whatever it was) that had nothing to do with anything except that he once drove it to a writer's convention. It's too bad that Card doesn't write space fiction, that old junker could have inspired a wonderful light freighter or something for a tiny crew of misfits.
I like the term "space fantasy" ... it seems to match what I'm attempting to do with my ... attempt at writing. My problem is that I don't want to go off and say "magic!" ... I'm disguising my magic by calling it something else ... if I ever finish and anybody ever reads it ... they'll probably figure it out.
But I still like the term "space fantasy" ... it sounds like a blend of my two favorite genres - fantasy and sci-fi (but usually, the two fall under the same category ... poo)
Reminds me of those movies of circus performers that Harry Shearer shows in The Right Stuff. But, yeah...
quote:It always seemed funny to me that there was still rank and all that went with that in their moneyless society. But maybe it wasn't moneyless, just people came to see the pursuit of money as being an indicator of moral questionability.
I never quite bought the idea that in the future we won't deal with money, everyone will be equal, etc. I just don't think mankind is like that.
as long as we are still human we will still be greedy self centered beings. the desire to own is inherent in a baby. every mom can tell you that 'mine' is one of the first words a small child latches onto. money or some form of it will always be needed. 'It's not fair' is a cry the child gives as an absolute justification, it is born in us. fair is fair is the epitome of selfishness and human nature. I as a person or we as a people and society can strive to rise above base instincts but as a race we will always be selfish and want to be compensated 'fairly' for our percieved contributions, therefore money.
The idea that everyone works for the common good of everyone else is nothing short of communism and due to human nature it won't work.
Oh and I have not read Starship troopers, I actually didn't mind the movie (b rate), I did however play Warhammer 40,000; a game based, so I am told, on the book and love stories and background for the game. In the game they do have power armor mentioned above, very cool stuff for a future war setting, I may now have to find the book and read it.
This is a demonstrated difference between men and women, but whether it would work out for piloting spacecraft the way Heinlein suggests is doubtful. Advances in electronics might obviate or supercede the differences in how men and women react. On the other hand, in zero-g women are under rather less of a disadvantage physically compared to men. Even the fact that they tend to weigh less would be a big advantage. If weight (and lifesupport) limits were a serious consideration for the spacecraft, I can see women being very much preferable, they even tend to burn fewer calories.
I think that "money" is a limited concept...the Federation supercedes it by providing a scale of semi-tangible rewards that are much more scarce. In other words, the scale of gross material wealth so far outpaces the population of the Federation that the only scarcity is attained in social rewards provided by direct interaction with other people. From the rather straightforward rewards of rank in Starfleet to the more intangible community status of people living on Earth, the economy of the Federation functions mainly by using respect and affection as currency, because almost no other resource is sufficiently scarce to serve that role. The functioning of such an economy is entirely dependent on nearly complete freedom from physical want.
(I am econ student, so mind you my knowledge is limited, but as it is my current degree I will proceed to pretend like I know a thing about it. )
Basically an econ 100 class would teach you that money is only used to increase the number of trades. For example if there were no money then if I wanted to get a soda I'd have to find someone who specializes in soda-making AND who is interested in trading for economics knowledge, which is my "good/service" that I produce. In other words if I found a soda-maker who did not demand economics knowledge he would not trade with me, so there would be fewer places I could find trades, trades would then be more costly, and then there would be fewer trades.
By having money we create a good that is always in demand, money itself, so I can trade with anyone. Limited only by how much money or wealth I have.
So, money is fairly essential because it provides an incentive for a person to work and for trades to exist.
However another important part of the equation for economy is the existance of "scarcity," the world of Star Trek you are describing seems to have no sense of scarcity. Not material scarcity anyway. (So their economy is highly theoretical and completely impossible, but that's neither here nor there.) In any case, if there is no scarcity you don't technically need money. Because you don't need to make many trades, or even trades at all. Because wealth is unlimited.
Then again, we know that "shirking" is rational behavior, a person will choose to shirk instead of work and tire if the cost/benefit is the same. Who would willingly go dig holes if they didn't want to, didn't enjoy it, and didn't get paid to do it? So it seems to me the main problem with the Star Trek economy operating on this idea of "no scarcity," is that there is no incentive to work. They should, realistically, be a very lax and non-productive society. Which would probably devolve back to a point where scarcity exists again. (IE: nobody would take jobs to repair the replicators)
At the end of the day it's an interesting and fun world, but it's 100% fiction. An economy like that could never exist.
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 07, 2007).]
Heck, as writers, we should probably understand this economy better than anyone. Some people here are also involved in open source software to some degree. And what can we make of our popular culture that places such an insane value on fame, whether or not it is renumerative or even positive?
In other words, an economy like the one in Star Trek is already all around us. It does exist, but it isn't stable or productive. As Zero points out, it's impossible to make the basic jobs, which are the foundation of all the material plenty, glamorous enough to keep anyone working at them, everyone will choose the "fulfilling" and highly visible jobs that don't really produce anything fundamentally necessary.
(I always thought Star Trek's holodeck was a bad idea. The pilot for the Original Series dealt largely with a civilization about to die out because it had been seduced by its ability to create illusions. And what is the holodeck but a place to create illusions? Once holodecks were introduced, the Federation was doomed.)
Well, that's about as off subject as it can get. Basically, we will always need money, and I have no problem with that. If I can provide a service (flipping burgers, sacking groceries, writing novels) that someone is willing to pay me for, then I'll survive.
Matt
phooey to the political agendas expressed above My question:
Isn't Space Opera/ Fiction just watered-down Sci-fi?
The same way 'heroic fantasy' is just a watered-down version of fantasy?
They are kinda like 'light-beer' genres.
We could even take the discussion to the Published Books area and talk about some of the ways it has been dealt with in books we've read. (For example, there's a rather different "payment" method in the future society in Tanith Lee's DON'T BITE THE SUN.)
I tend to lean to the Republican side of things (though I've been pretty disappointed in them lately), but I tend to write from a liberal stand point. I think that's partly because I would love to see a future where we are more equal, we take better care of each other, and we're not motivated as much by capitalism. But I also see that those things can't really happen until most people get on board with those ideas.
When writing, we have an opportunity to present different ideas. We don't need to ram them down anyone's throats, but we can present different points of views. If you as a writer can understand different political, economic, sociologic (sp?) systems, we can make our writing more real, even if we don't take sides.
Matt
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welfare society (aka, I don't work, yet I deserve to eat, have a home, have health care, etc)
I guess a full-time writer whose work doesn't sell, doesn't deserve to eat, or have healthcare or a home. Or perhaps he deserves to do these things using funds obtained through government arts grants.
It's an interesting point though, what happens to the have-nots in a moneyless society. Who would be the 'new' have-nots?
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 07, 2007).]
Matt
as soon as there is enough for everyone to have everything they want without working for it (producing for society) then no one will work. That society won't work.
I read an interesting short story in which "appreciation" was a quantified form of currency, and if you spent more appreciation than you earned, you ran out and had to either make do without or go find a way to earn some more. Another better story had a "trust" based economy, your ability to get anything was entirely dependent on whether anyone trusted you to make good on the obligation you incurred. In some ways that was a very cruel economy, partly because it was a "real" economy in which there were other scarcity issues to overcome, and partly because no economy can exist without meaningful ways to punish abuse of the economic system.
One particular story, called The Midas Plague, had a negative economy, based on the idea that robots produced so much of everything that humans "worked" at consuming it effectively. In the end, some genius realizes that all you have to do is adjust the output of the robots by switching some robots over to the consuming role as needed (which was justified as not being "wasteful" by giving the robots a chip which allowed them to feel satisfied by consuming stuff). The story was purile, but an important early examination of the question of what society will do when the economic problem for most humans (rather than a select few) becomes one of abundance rather than want. Modern America, where obesity is commonly associated with poverty and low social status, has gone some way down this path. The social issues are real and have dire implications.
Health care in particular...we have not reached a situation where there is an overabundance of health care relative to the demand for it...but we're already seeing cases where individuals are having to fight legal battles in order to assert their right to refuse unwanted health care. I was involved in a related situation not very long ago, only by dint of indirectly threatening to seriously injure or kill the doctors was I able to persuade them that I really didn't want their "assistance" (fortunately, it was much easier to convince the cops they called that I was perfectly within my legal rights to refuse). I've long found homelessness more of a hassle than it's worth. Eating I don't mind
The fact remains, we live in a society suffering the effects of a breakdown in basic economic concepts of scarcity, demand, reward, and so forth. Some of this is due to education which teaches unworkable economic theories as transcendent truth. But a lot of it is due to the evolution of minieconomies that are not based on material scarcity. Particularly for specialized persons, these mimieconomies can form their entire perspective on how economies generally function. Which is where we got most of our weird, unworkable economic theories from in the first place.
What about a story in which humans themselves are a commodity? I've read a few, they usually focus on the loss of dignity, freedom, life/limb, and such. But what if humans were kept as popular, pampered, pets? What kind of economy would develop under such circumstances? Note, I'm not suggesting that anyone is about to start keeping you guys as pets, though you might make pretty cool pokemon
First I am going to qualify my statements by saying that thinking about and delving into these issues and ideas are instrumental at helping me develop my fictional societies.
That aside, for the record, I'm with you Matt. All of my study of economics has put me into perspective that moderate conservatism is the most rational economic policy. That aside a lot of people don't really understand how the economy works. Big surprise.
For starters taxes, talking about tha taxes of a business. Leftists tend to think they are taxes paid by the large corporations and businesses, conservatives think they are passed on to the consumer. Well both are wrong. Or rather, both are partially right. It depends on the elasticity.
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No, if you don't produce for society then society doesn't OWE you anything.
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The fact remains, we live in a society suffering the effects of a breakdown in basic economic concepts of scarcity, demand, reward, and so forth. Some of this is due to education which teaches unworkable economic theories as transcendent truth.
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But a lot of it is due to the evolution of minieconomies that are not based on material scarcity. Particularly for specialized persons, these mimieconomies can form their entire perspective on how economies generally function. Which is where we got most of our weird, unworkable economic theories from in the first place.
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 08, 2007).]
Just kidding.
Matt
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That aside a lot of people don't really understand how the economy works.
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The fact remains, we live in a society suffering the effects of a breakdown in basic economic concepts of scarcity, demand, reward, and so forth.
I then posit some reasons that this paucity of understanding has come about.
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Some of this is due to education which teaches unworkable economic theories as transcendent truth.
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But a lot of it is due to the evolution of minieconomies that are not based on material scarcity. Particularly for specialized persons, these mimieconomies can form their entire perspective on how economies generally function.
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Which is where we got most of our weird, unworkable economic theories from in the first place.
The term "minieconomies" might have confused you. I was simply using the term to indicate the limited view of an economy as it might appear to a given, specialized individual. This view is less specific and narrow than that indicated by the term "microeconomics", but it is also far less detailed. Further, it is still not a view of the economy as a whole.
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Isn't Space Opera/ Fiction just watered-down Sci-fi?
The same way 'heroic fantasy' is just a watered-down version of fantasy?They are kinda like 'light-beer' genres.
I prefer the term "soft sf" vs "hard sf," although this topic has been a concern for me from day one. I'm generally not a hard sf reader and I would never presume to write it, nor would I care to. And I'm not egotistic enough to imagine I'm unique in my preferences, so there must be an audience for soft sf. Yet there seems to be a decided condescension toward it, despite the fact that space opera has come a long way since Buck Rogers.
See "Sci-Fi Caste System?" at
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/000350.html
and "Good SciFi/Fantasty movies/TV?" at
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/000658.html
In other words, the Federation economy is a "soft" SF element, not because the basic idea of an economy based entirely on intangible currency is "soft", but because the logical implications aren't worked out carefully. If you look at TV shows, even the ones that are supposedly not science fiction tend to have an awful lot of junk science, which is then used in wildly inconsistent ways from one episode to the next and often within an episode (CSI particularly, but it's hardly unique).
"Hard" SF generally only appeals to a very scientifically literate audience, and it's much harder to write. It also rarely lasts well, because of the nature of scientific progress. Often "soft" SF ends up seeming more prescient, since it tends to say "wouldn't it be cool if..." which does a good job of predicting which sorts of technologies people will want to develop. And the majority of the audience (and not just the TV audience) can't tell "hard" SF from "soft" SF.
"That's a nice sentiment" she said with pitying sarcasm, "it would go great in a card."
"It would if the card contained money."
But I do think currency is a placeholder for gratitude, if not love. I think there are real reasons that certain brain disorders have as a predictable symptom the abuse of monetary resources, and why money is the principle cause of divorce.
Though I knew of a churchy guy once who gave a talk saying that it wasn't really money, but sexual misunderstanding and people gave money as an excuse because it was socially more acceptable. I have not been able to find a copy of this talk, and my memory of where I heard it is droopsy.
I think that I've heard the fighting over "money" is really fighting over power and priorities. Since misunderstandings over power and priorities are the number one cause of sexual misunderstandings between men and women (which usually simplify to "man does X, woman withholds sex as punishment, man proceeds to Y and eventually Z as compensation for missing sex"), I think that there is a basis for identifying money as the root cause of many such relationship failures.
And I've discovered that my belief that expressing love doesn't require an exchange of money is not shared by many women I've known. So perhaps it's for the best that the entire monetary system is not long for this world
Gratitude can exist without money. (You don't pay money every time you are grateful for something.)
Money is a representation of (amount of wealth)/(total wealth)
In other words money is to facilitate the exchange of wealth by making universal trades possible.
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 10, 2007).]
But the whole point of money is that, whatever your subjective evaluation of wealth, you only have as much money as somebody else is willing to give you in exchange for whatever you're willing to sell.
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but in economic theory "wealth" is a subjective concept, which is the whole point of having a system of currency.
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If "wealth" were an absolute value, then you could trade any good for anything else without any problem of whether the goods involved were needed by the traders.
This is a model:
If a Barber demands combs and supplies haircuts. And a Comb-maker supplies combs and demands pizza. The Comb-maker will never accept haircuts to trade for his combs (he perceives them to have value=0) And the Barber will never be able to supply pizza. They cannot trade even though the barber demands a good that the Comb-maker supplies.
The solution is for them to find another party who demands haircuts and supplies pizza. This is very costly to the market because it takes a lot of time to find and make these mutually agreeable trades.
Money is designed to optimize trade possibilities. It is created as a good to make these kind of one-sided demand trades possible. If they both demand money the Barber can trade money for the combs and the Comb-maker can use that money to trade for pizza elsewhere.
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But the whole point of money is that, whatever your subjective evaluation of wealth, you only have as much money as somebody else is willing to give you in exchange for whatever you're willing to sell.
If you draw it out graphically and make each respective axis "demand" and "price" you'll see that there are fewer demanders if the price is high and more demanders if the price is low. If three people are willing to pay $600 for a new bike and 10 people are not willing to pay more than $60 what defines the actual price?
The answer is simple. The point where the number of demanders equals the supply available is the actual price.
That isn't something that is consciously set, it's a balance made by the market.
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 11, 2007).]
A good or service has intrinsic value,[quote]
What is wealth? Is it related to "intrinsic value" as opposed to subjective value? Is it the brute fact of any item's existance?
I was using "wealth" to mean property that has subjective value to the possessor such that the possessor will not part with that property without compensation of some kind. And I was pointing out that this definition makes it inherently subjective.
But you seem to be suggesting an alternate definition, yet I cannot make out what that definition would be, and how it wouldn't be based on subjective value rather than "intrinsic value".
Anyway, you seem like the kind of guy who enjoys being informed and is pretty well versed on a lot of topics.
But... no offense intended... you don't seem to know economics. It's not that what you're saying is irrational, it's just incorrect. Not for lack of trying, mostly just lack of actual study. So, just gently set down the pretense and we'll stop this masquerade of yours, sip a few cold ones and be mates again .
You really should stick to what you know.
To answer your question it isn't your reasoning that is flawed, you're just drowning in the semantics. I don't want to take the time to write an econ lecture on the proper definitions. Simply understand that there are specific terms to represent specific concepts. Easy to misuse or abuse them if you haven't studied them.
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited February 11, 2007).]
If you want to explain, in an honest and open exchange, what you meant, then we can do that in email. If, on the other hand, you really just want to play "I can bitch slap Survivor with my 1337 knowledge", then we can find someplace to play without bugging KDW.
For the record, no real economist I've ever talked to has ever thought me ignorant on the subject. So your last comment makes me extremely doubtful that you actually have anything useful to say. But I'm still willing to hear your reply.
I realize there has been speculation about bubble worlds before, but this one is fleshed out pretty well. There are places where his descriptions just do not build pictures in my mind, but that may be me and not his skill as a writer. Still, I’m finding it fascinating to journey through this place which is a big bubble of air and water with small fusion suns in it and cities that are buildings roped together and some that spin to give gravity. And humans living there.
The human civilization inside the bubble is the same old mix of styles we have today, but halfway through the book he hints at another civilization outside where something makes things for people and people have lost the ability to sort of connect with reality. As I said, it’s only hints of that, but, since it is purported to be a trilogy, I assume we’ll go out and roam around in that more variant civilization eventually.
So, how would an economy work where everyone has all/anything they need and desire?
I can’t imagine humans not wanting more or pushing to be more whatever that someone else. Without exchange of goods and work, what values might run society? Prestige? But based on what? Breeding, background, genetics? A little of that seemed like it might be what’s going on in Iain Bank’s EXCESSION.
Look at the super-rich today. Once you have so much money (at least for a time) that money is no longer a factor, what runs society at their lofty levels? Some of it is still goods – the biggest, fanciest house(s), marriage partner, most spectacular charity donation? Connections with others still higher on the ladder of prestige and power? Talent at some art?
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So, how would an economy work where everyone has all/anything they need and desire?
I think there is a natural hierarchy of desires. It starts with bodily requirements, things like food, water and satisfying apetites. Once these things are fulfilled then we move on to wanting the praise and or admiration of others. Once that is fulfilled we move on to wanting wealth, power etc. Once we have all these external desires met, where do we go? It has to be inward, to the conquering of self.
Doesn't it?
But I have drifted away from the question.
IMO
In a self-contained society where everyone TRULY has everything they could possibly want the economy would have to rely on diversion or the introduction of a perception of a lack. The creation of diversions and/or false-anxieties would become industries.
OR
In a society that was not self contained, the desire to expand altruistically into other less-abundant societies would be almost unstoppable. This is diversion.
Thought that stems from the idea of diversion: What if society/technology got to such a point that humans could generate their own universes in endless parallel planes and tweak them from the outside (without messing up the basic laws) and dwell within it when or if they should desire to do that. The people would be wholly consumed by the monitoring and desire for the welfare etc of the inhabitants of these microverses/universes or whatever you may call them.
(I've just had an idea for a short story: For Sale — Second-hand Universe — Unfinished Project.)
I don't believe a society where all the needs are met could be achieved and maintained without some unifying indoctrination of the populace. Some philosophy that actively causes people to believe they want exactly the same things as everyone else or limits their desires to that of homogenous mediocrity OR switches people's focus from their own need/desires to those of other people.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 13, 2007).]
That alone proves hoptoad's point about the absolute requirement that the desires of the population be altered/restricted to exclude essentially competitive desires. But if you can control desires to that degree, it doesn't require any specific level of economy to fulfil all desires, you just alter the desires to match whatever exists.
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For the record, no real economist I've ever talked to has ever thought me ignorant on the subject. So your last comment makes me extremely doubtful that you actually have anything useful to say. But I'm still willing to hear your reply.
And I want it known that "The armchair economist" is not supposed to be an insult. It would be a great and worthwile read to even Keynes or Smith or Marx, etc.
And lastly I apologize. I tend to insult people I like or feel akin to, it's just a personality habit.
Unless someone wants to discuss the fact that the total wealth of an interstellar society has to be measured in terms of the absolute power of its space fleets
You'd also need to factor in range, weaponry, availability of reliable and effective crew, tactical flexability, and style points for thinking of designs other than simple geometric shapes
What if some societies could molecularly create whatever they needed? Or maybe all citizens trade goods and services? Without the impetus to wrangle over or struggle for material things, or even territory, what is left? What would happen to humans or beings? Wouldn't they turn to inward speculation or invention, or more altruistic persuits? Only to be thwarted by less developed societies? Or maybe without "struggle" all sentient life would hang in peril of total disintegration.
In any case Who knows. Take away what we now understand about human behavior and what have you got? And don't say "The lack of any tension in a very blah story." A clever writer could figure it out. And maybe someone has already written this?
[This message has been edited by Chaldea (edited February 14, 2007).]
If things are limited to light speed (as, is probably but not definitely, the case in "real life"), transit time would be in years and centuries. "Wealth" probably would not survive such a journey. Trade would be virtually impossible. An interstellar economy would be impossible
If it's weeks and months, then trade and wealth and exchange rates and all that economic stff comes into play. (It'd be that way within the solar system---voyages to the planets won't take any more time than it used to take to sail the oceans.)
But if it's days or hours, it'll be all one economy and one kind of money.
(---Thoughts from someone who finds economics boring.)
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Without the impetus to wrangle over or struggle for material things, or even territory, what is left?
In your example there is no material scarcity. The laws of economics would demand the society to be lax and non-productive. For lack of incentives to do otherwise. They would devolve back to the point where there is again scarcity.
And Survivor was dead right when he suggested there would still be "scarcity" in human relations. Things like affection or respect or even fear are scarce resources. Therefore while this is going on the resource being fought over would probably be power.
I want to say there is room for a lot of speculation on what could happen. Except that I don't think there is. Economics and History have made it pretty clear what would happen. It's rational and predictable human behavior.
For whatever it may be worth, at the University of Utah (when I attended, though I think it's still the case) the economics department was part of the college of social and behavioral sciences and not the college of business. I believe the reason for that is that economics is much more closely related to psychology and sociology than it is to finance and marketing.
I also understand that it is a much tougher field to understand than something simple like accounting, partly because economics is much harder to quantify.
While an interstellar economy would be tricky if you only had lightspeed travel, it would be so because most wealth would be better employed locally now than in another star system years down the road. If some system produced something that was unique enough and couldn't be easily replicated elsewhere, then some trade could exist. Since artworks from very different cultures could probably meet this standard, there would be some trade, even if it were only "virtual" (in other words, just beamed transmissions). Information in a technologically advanced civilization can be reproduced for very low cost, and it would be highly valuable to a civilization that couldn't produce that same information independently.
If we assume that things like dark matter or whatever exist in substantial quantities, and have properties other than being "dark" and "massive", then probably advances in science would yield the potential for trade of these materials should different types have different abundances in different systems. You know, like "Elerium-115" (I think there's a wikipedia article about how that should actually be 115ium-4xx, though of course we don't know the exact isotope number because we don't have any to study) of X-Com fame, which made interstellar travel feasible.
We have travel anywhere in the world in hours/days, but we still don't have a single currency standard because of political obsticles. A star system might choose to use idiosyncratic currency for any number of reasons, only some of which would be simply as a barrier to trade. For instance, if the local culture produces and consumes primarily products that are only valued in that culture, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to put up with the vagaries of the outside economy controlling your currency supply. Or if your culture was hostile to the culture that dominated the monetary policy of the rest of the interstellar economy, it might make sense just as a way to avoid potential economic sabotage if you genuinely believed that culture was likely to enact foolish monetary policy.
A lot of it might just be simple nationalism, the desire to have an independent currency with your national leader's picture on it. I'm pretty sure that's the only function of at least a few currency instruments in our world today.
Oh the logistics of designing a civilization on which to base a sci-fi book.
The problem is that a human society has to deal with human motivations and human limitations. Just saying that you don't have money doesn't mean that eveything is free, someone still has to do all the work that goes into building up your military. You have to work out a system of assigning rewards for making and maintaining all those weapons, or the soldiers have to fight with their bare hands. You have to produce and distribute food, or the workers starve.
Money is a natural part of human society, men have coined/adopted currency of various types since long before anyone understood economics and monetary policy. It is impossible to imagine a human society more complex than simple clans that didn't use some kind of currency.
I suppose that if you had a warlike race that established social dominance through individual martial prowess, that might work. Such a system can't work for humans because humans must be prepared to fight to the death to establish martial superiority, because some humans will insist on dying before giving in, and they make that decision for reasons totally unrelated to relative martial prowess. So you can't easily build a complex heirarchy based on rational assessment of superior fighting ability. The human version of a feudal society needs money just as much as any other human society. But a species with a different evolutionary history, perhaps one based more on pure predators than on scavenging omnivores, might be able to carry on such a moneyless economy.
As the above indicates, one of the fundamental issues that an economy exists to address is the question of who directs whom in their productive activities. That is one reason that complex economics have become an intensely political question, and also the reason that money so often is connected to the state rather than any other entity.
I guess someone would have to administer the system and of course therein is the lie.
But we don't have to tell anyone that someone else is in charge.
Perhaps it could be a computer without body or passions etc
After a while humanity would be down to a single individual, either one male or one female the embodiment of the human race. Then that person was cloned (perfectly, not degradation of dna) into billions. Everyone would be equal because they'd all be the same -- equal. No sexual tension. No preference because of being related. There would be some differences due to environment. Environment would at last have triumphed over heredity in the old question of which has the most effect on humans.
What sort of society would you have then?
And they wouldn't be equal by any means. You'd have an original, and a second batch, and a third...it would be impossible to expect the original to raise more than a couple at a time without any human assistance, and human children need human contact from the very beginning, you raise those kids in isolation while only taking care of their physical needs and they'll definitely become sociopathic or retarded. Raise them in batches of age contemporaries and they'll be barbarians, with whatever childish notions of "civilization" they developed on their own.
It would take couple of centuries to get a population of billions, even if you push the process to its limits, and they will have a rigidly heirarchical society due to the demands of establishing generational tranmission of civilization under such extreme conditions. Or you can have a billion murderous savages in a couple of decades. All equal, thus all forced to establish dominance by dint of simple, lethal force.
I suppose it could be entertaining, in a way...if anyone else were around to watch
For a non-human race you can posit anything and go from there. As long as their basic social structure would allow them to survive in a "natural" (ie pretechnological) environment then I don't think you'll draw too many objections as long as they clearly look inhuman in addition to acting inhuman.