In my earlier publish, I mentioned why Star Trek’s Federation, regardless of its requires peaceable range, fell only a bit in need of their purpose. On this publish, I swap gears from tradition and beliefs to economics.
Within the Federation, most items and companies are produced by way of replication. The necessity for manufacturing and commerce by way of the division of labour is significantly diminished (although there may be demand for luxurious artisanal, non-replicated items, as proven by culinary enterprises like Chateau Picard and Sisko’s Creole Kitchen, in addition to bodily books and different objects). Thus, the Federation appears to have overcome a lot of the information downside round satisfying dynamic, subjective preferences and effectively allocating scarce assets with competing makes use of. It’s an financial system of abundance past even the goals of most economists or sci-fi writers. That is coupled with egalitarian values and the self-important assurance that the Federation is populated by digital saints solely curious about self-actualization and common brotherhood.
In contrast nevertheless, exterior (and generally inside!) the Federation’s utopian core of planets, folks typically struggle over inadequate replicators, scarce equipment, meals, drugs, and different assets. Provide ships are very important for bringing scarce gadgets to distant worlds, and for transporting items that may’t be replicated, corresponding to dilithium and uncommon medicines. Mining appears to be an necessary trade throughout the galaxy.
As Benjamin Sisko bitterly admits:
On Earth, there is no such thing as a poverty, no crime, no conflict. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and also you see paradise. Effectively, it’s simple to be a saint in paradise, however the Maquis don’t dwell in paradise. On the market within the Demilitarized Zone, all the issues haven’t been solved but. On the market, there aren’t any saints — simply folks. Indignant, scared, decided people who find themselves going to do no matter it takes to outlive, whether or not it meets with Federation approval or not!
Notably, whereas replicators can recreate virtually something, it seems that replicators themselves can’t be simply reproduced. Trek by no means tells us if creating replicators is dear. But it’s obvious that replicators can’t be offered simply for all. Opposite to Jean-Luc Picard’s assertion that “…the acquisition of wealth is now not the driving drive in our lives” the Federation has not overcome self-interest, greed, or different constraints of human nature. It has merely modified the transaction prices of battle by exploiting expertise that severely reduces shortage. When shortage returns, so does battle over assets.
Job allocation provides additional help to the view that the Federation depends on superior expertise greater than it does a sci-fi model of the New Soviet Man or Rawlsian very best concept. It’s unclear how the Federation incentivizes folks to tackle jobs which can be much less fascinating or whose social significance is much less well-understood; on condition that job alternative is supposed to be pushed by no matter a person perceives to be public-spirited, in addition to no matter they suppose will assist them self-actualize (two targets probably in stress) with out adjudication by the worth mechanism.
And it’s by no means defined how folks (particularly non-Starfleet civilians) are incentivized to decide on menial, comparatively unfulfilling work that can be socially vital, like cleansing. Nevertheless it additionally stays a thriller why such a complicated technological and egalitarian society wants professions corresponding to bartenders or janitors within the first place. Notably, Starfleet staff’ devotion to obligation doesn’t stop them from in search of methods to restrict their workload or evade disagreeable duties, whether or not via buying and selling duties or by creating buffer time.
A (Certified) Protection of the Ferengi
Right here the Ferengi have benefits that the Federation not often acknowledges. The Ferengi are routinely portrayed as a venal, egocentric species and are a comic-book caricature of capitalists (in addition to being genuinely virulent misogynists). Nevertheless, their single-minded pursuit of revenue and appreciation for the financial mind-set opens them as much as prospects which can be in any other case closed to the Federation and Starfleet.
Contemplate Quark’s resolving of battle between the Maquis rebels and the Cardassians with some easy sport concept, providing an answer that was opaque to his “rational” Vulcan interlocutor. His attentiveness to revenue and loss permits him to acknowledge {that a} profitable finish to any battle is in regards to the relative worth of peace over conflict:
Quark: You need to purchase peace. Fantastic, peace is sweet. However how a lot are you prepared to pay for it?
Sakonna: No matter it prices.
Quark: That’s the type of irresponsible spending that causes so many enterprise ventures to fail. You’re forgetting the Third Rule! Proper now, peace may very well be purchased at a cut price worth, and also you don’t even understand it.
Sakonna: …I discover this very complicated.
Quark: [sighs] Then I’ll make it so easy that even a Vulcan can perceive: the Central Command has been caught red-handed smuggling weapons to their settlers. So each ship that approaches the demilitarized zone will probably be searched. With out the help of the Central Command, the Cardassian settlers received’t be so desperate to struggle.
Sakonna: You overlook the weapons they have already got.
Quark: They’ve weapons, you’ve gotten weapons, everybody has weapons; however proper now, nobody has a transparent benefit. So the worth of peace is at an all-time low. That is the proper time to take a seat down and hammer out an settlement. Don’t you get it? Attacking the Cardassians now will solely escalate the battle and make peace costlier in the long term! Now, I ask you: is that logical?
For Federation residents, interested by the chance prices of their selections will not be an everyday train. Pampered by materials abundance and an idyllic type of deliberative democracy, they additional prohibit themselves from interested by tradeoffs by adhering to easy and rigid guidelines such because the Prime Directive. After they do select to violate an ordinance just like the Directive, not often do they observe up with the society through which that they had concerned themselves, leaving no matter large social modifications they’ve wrought for the natives to take care of (that is significantly evident in sequence like TOS, but in addition in TNG). The Directive’s non-interventionism might in lots of cases mirror a type of implicit Hayekian or Austrian faculty knowledge, however not often are completely different sorts of involvement given a radical comparability by the Federation. There’s a huge distinction between commerce and cultural engagement and the disestablishment and reconstruction of native establishments by elites from above.
The Federation can be not well-equipped to acknowledge prices and tradeoffs in these areas the place shortage has not been eradicated, significantly of 1’s time. That is the place the Ferengi save the day. When Chief O’Brien is unable to get the stabilizer he wants, Nog manages to amass it for him by creating a posh system of barter throughout Starfleet. Equally, Nog leads Jake in a sequence of trades that enable them to amass an vintage baseball card for Captain Sisko. In doing so, they take over the disliked duties of (supposedly work-happy, purely altruistic) Starfleet staff, enhancing everybody’s lot within the course of. Not like the Federation, the Ferengi are entrepreneurially alert to assembly folks’s preferences and making environment friendly use of assets. The Ferengi dedication to revenue even pushes them to ditch their sexism, within the true spirit of Gary Becker. As the Grand Nagus factors out, discrimination is unhealthy for enterprise and wastes helpful human capital.
The Ferengi have been additionally well-placed to assist Bajorans in the course of the Cardassian occupation. Ferengi served as arms sellers to the Bajoran rebels and provided Bajoran staff employment alternatives comparatively higher than what they have been compelled into by the Cardassians. Although pushed by revenue, the Ferengi’s standing as impartial retailers allowed them to have interaction in entrepreneurship that improved the Bajoran state of affairs, at the very least on the margin. In contrast, as enemies of the Cardassians, the Federation was unable to do a lot and took time to even acknowledge Bajor’s plight, regardless of the valiant efforts of Ensign Ro and others.
Between the Federation Structure and Ferengi Guidelines of Acquisition
The Ferengi arguably exemplify humanity’s long-standing cultural antipathy to retailers, businessmen, and financial middlemen, positions typically held by the despised minorities the Ferengi appear to resemble. How we take into consideration the Ferengi displays how properly we perceive the challenges of cooperation, particularly with outsiders, and the prices and tradeoffs inherent in all elements of life. In fact, the Ferengi have many deficits, starting from their sheer love of greed a la Gordon Gekko to their ugly sexism and speciesism. But they typically present a helpful corrective to the Federation’s extreme idealism and failures to coordinate. The Federation might dislike the Ferengi, however the Ferengi have many helpful classes to impart.
Nevertheless, the Ferengi even have one thing to study from the Federation. The lacking core of Ferengi values is the Federation’s respect for the equal freedom and dignity of individuals as sentient beings. Whereas the Ferengi are good at recognizing the prices and advantages of their actions, a mercantile tradition and not using a bigger philosophy of how folks needs to be handled is, in Deirdre McCloskey’s phrases, “soul-destroying.” As McCloskey factors out, a worldview centered solely on self-interest and prices and advantages has a really actual hazard of lowering folks to crude calculating brokers, perpetually in search of to use and cheat each other, each in concept and in follow. We aren’t, and shouldn’t be, easy profit-seekers in {our relationships} with others, the character McCloskey calls “Max U” or “Mr. Most Utility.”
On this respect, Trek might train us one thing necessary in regards to the inherent limitations of various worldviews. The Ferengi’s chief fault is that they’re egocentric utility maximizers even to the purpose of gross immorality, whereas the Federation has not absolutely reckoned with an imperfect world stuffed with self-interest, shortage, information issues, and tradeoffs. Ferengi relativism ends in Quark’s dilemma about whether or not there actually is something fallacious with being a weapons service provider (fortunately his conscience wins the day). Federation absolutism ends in Starfleet failing to save lots of billions of lives as a result of nothing can sanction breaking the Prime Directive, (fortunately sure officers’ conscience generally overrides their obedience). In a world of deep complexity and competing values, we want each the Ferengi Alliance and the United Federation of Planets. A messy combination to make certain, however one higher in tune with the universe we really inhabit, even in fiction.
Akiva Malamet is an M.A candidate in Philosophy at Queen’s College (Canada). He has been printed at Libertarianism.org, Liberal Currents, Catalyst, and different shops.
