Economy
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This article discusses a subject with undecided "Canon". The Swarm Cycle writers need to discuss this on the email list, come to a decision, and then update this article to let readers know what Swarm Cycle "true canon" is.
The economy of the Confederacy is generally referred to (inaccurately) as a "post-scarcity" economy, but such a thing in absolute terms is impossible for several reasons, the most important being that the wants and desires of a human (unless they are idealized to a ridiculous degree) are boundless and their dedication to earning those desires is limited. An important corollary to this issue is that it is unlikely that the distribution of raw materials needed for replicator fabrication of goods within any colony will always be in such unlimited abundance that no possibility of scarcity could ever exist. In a system faced with unlimited human wants, no amount of resources could ever exist to satisfy them, regardless of the technology used to fulfill human wants.
Authors have generally avoided this economic issue as it might not be relevant to their stories or of much interest to them. Usually the entire issue is resolved with 'someone wanted something and a replicator provided it' without any further discussion. While this simplifies the requirement for potentially uninteresting asides in a story, the unrealistic concept of magical "abundance" makes the universe less believable, and less interesting. We can say that we don't bother talking about things in order to get to "the good stuff" but authors should be cautioned against establishing some economic utopia that denies basic human nature and fundamental physical realities.
Human Behavior and Economics
In a world of unlimited abundance, the value of work is zero, and the desire to work would not exist. Yet work (particularly work related to military needs) in the Swarm Cycle Universe is extremely valuable and important. In order to encourage (or if necessary compel) work, some sort of reward and/or punishment must exist to facilitate work. While we have a Code of Military Justice to provide the needed "stick" against military personnel, it would not apply to personnel in the Civil Service or those working under the authority of a planetary governor, so there is no existing uniform and universal compulsion for all Confederacy sponsors to engage in work.
With no economic system to reward work, or reward work of higher quality, it is extremely likely that encouraging performance from humans would be extremely problematic. Non-economic rewards can be very useful, but they are not entirely sufficient. Without some sort of positive incentive to perform that workers would value highly, laziness and sloth would be rampant. While we gloss over this issue in our stories, or appeal to some sort of altruistic attitude on the part of our characters, we end up with a "Lake Woebegone" effect where "all the children are above average," or in our case "all our characters are uniquely exceptional, except those assholes at CENTCOM and DECO." We need to establish more realistic incentives to explain the level of effort our characters are engaged in, besides just making everyone think these characters are the exception to the rules of human psychology, rather than being realistic examples of human psychology.
See Also
- Monty Python "Would You Rather Be Elsewhere?" from "The Meaning Of Life"
Scarcity And Abundance
All human physical needs and wants ultimately require physical resources that cannot exist in abundance. There are limited supplies of raw materials, raw materials do not exist in equal quantities, and a replicator cannot transmute lead into gold. It is not the magic genie that can grant any wish, and if it was, the Swarm Cycle would be utterly boring and pointless. Why not just fabricate millions of cyborg warriors out of thin air to go out and terminate the Sa'arm while we sit back and watch the video feed as we sip on some cold ones? That would not only be ridiculous, but pathetically boring.
A replicator is simply a substitute for manufacturing systems. The raw materials and energy needed by a replicator still must be located, transported and fed into a digester in order to provide it with the raw materials needed in order to fabricate an item. Some of those raw materials may be easy to locate, and some may be extremely difficult to locate. And while we might think that the distribution of raw materials on other planetary bodies will exist in relatively equal proportion as they do on Earth, there is not only no guarantee they would, but it is almost certain they would not. All raw materials must exist in relative scarcity. This is decidedly not a "post-scarcity economy" but simply an economy where the normally observed scarcities have been transferred from finished goods to raw materials.
See Also
- Seinfeld Seinfeld Economics-TANSTAAFL
Whenever scarcity exists, and it always does, some economic system will develop to address it, as human nature cannot tolerate scarcity without struggling against it. Some sort of central planning effort may be attempted, but human experience with command and control economic systems is rather dismal, and it largely ends up ensuring an equal share of misery among all those not politically powerful enough to evade distribution restrictions that balance supplies and demands. Free market systems require some degree of institutional development in monetary systems, banking, finance and law in order to effectively operate, whether they be established officially or unofficially. Unofficial systems usually are rampant with fraud, abuse and criminal behavior and quickly yield to official systems were a rule of law regulates behavior and punishes offenders.
The Swarm Cycle Universe has chosen the Gene Roddenberry route where there is none of that, with the same unfortunate results. We simply avoid discussion of the issue, there's rarely a shortage of anything but time and personnel, and we move on to talking about the fun stuff.
See Also
- Monty Python, "Life of Brian" Alms for an ex-leper?
Gently Gliding Into A Realistic Economy
Following the example of economic development in the late middle ages, the storyline could gently start on a path to mentioning aspects of the establishment of an actually plausible economic system for the human planets of the Confederacy. It would first involve colonies that experience resource scarcities establishing local monetary systems and commercial enterprises in order to engage in interplanetary trade in a more efficient way than the present barter system. If the Bank of Demeter issues "Demeter Credits" as a valuation system to facilitate the exchange of raw materials among itself and its trading partners, their trade becomes vastly more efficient. These independent systems at the colonial level would increasingly become influential in making possible increased trade while focusing on the "intergalactic" exchange of goods and services rather than among individuals within a colony.
As these systems expand in size and scope they would become more valuable domestically, eventually allowing colonists to earn these monetary units, exchange them among each other, and purchase raw materials for their home replicator to make luxury goods they might enjoy, purchase services from other colonists, and do what governments like most, paying fines and taxes. We need not describe in depth how these systems operate and how, but instead of "Joe Schmoe asked the AI for a golden crown encrusted with diamonds because he wanted to feel happy, and the replicator made one for him in five minutes" we can have Joe actually dedicating himself to some effort to make it happen, or more likely choosing not to because he had more important needs.
There must be competing interests, a way to assign value to them, and a method of fulfilling them if the value of them exceeds the cost of the effort to obtain them. It's simple economics.
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