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Comment by bryanlarsen

2 days ago

Land, labour and dilithium crystals are still scarce in the Star Trek universe.

And AFAICT even energy and material goods are scarce in the economic sense. The replicator can replicate replicators so that and any goods that a replicator can create seem not scarce, but the replicator still requires energy to run. Energy is crazy cheap and abundant in Star Trek, but it's not unlimited.

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bryanlarsen

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mandmandam  2 days ago

> Land, labour and dilithium crystals are still scarce in the Star Trek universe.

Land can't be that scarce. How many times did we see an entire planet colonized by like 200 people? Also, it seems like very few cities in the future have put hard caps on building height.

People have their own replicators, as you say; and cheap abundant energy. The need for labour is vastly reduced.

And dilithium, while 'rare' is not an essential commodity for anything except space travel.

> even energy and material goods are scarce in the economic sense.

Sure; but they are abundant enough that 'fair distribution' hardly matters, which I think was the OP's point.

  • bryanlarsen  2 days ago

    Land is still rare in Star Trek universe for the same reason some land in the US sells for $10/acre and others for hundreds of millions per acre. If you want land in the middle of nowhere it's cheap, but travel still takes significant time between star systems so land on significant planets is still quite valuable.

  • bryanlarsen  2 days ago

    > fair distribution hardly matters

    I'm not so sure. In most of the US if people only used water for drinking and bathing then water would be so abundant fair distribution wouldn't matter. But when it's free-ish then people abuse it and we have water shortages.

    • lotsofpulp  2 days ago

      Fair is undefine-able. Is it a set volume of water per person? Or is it a set volume of water per person per kilogram? Is it different by gender? By age or physical ability?

      For the purposes of distributing a limited resource, it seems a power law formula is most fair, with a sufficiently steep curve to keep total consumption within resource limits.

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