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?

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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.

Reminds me of those movies of circus performers that Harry Shearer shows in The Right Stuff. But, yeah...

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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welfare society (aka, I don't work, yet I deserve to eat, have a home, have health care, etc)

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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?

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.

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.

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Just kidding.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

"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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.