Comment by aspenmayer

I think the comparisons of Star Trek to Iain Banks’s Culture series are immediately obvious and welcomed by me and many others in this comment section. I’d like to draw attention toward Peter F. Hamilton’s works, and specifically those in his Commonwealth Saga and its sequels and one-shots. The Advancer and Higher subcultures embody different strains of hacker archetypes; the Higher culture is largely post-scarcity for commodities and incidental expenses, with everything excess costing “matter-engergy credits” essentially, representing the cost to their society to provide you with rabbits from hats upon request. Everyone gets a UBI of these credits every pay period, and they may be stockpiled, traded, and vested. More importantly, they can be discounted, as humans are only in the loop as a formality for most civilian requests. It’s a really interesting concept, and I don’t want to spoil anything for those who are new to the books, of which there are many.

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/anyone-here-read-the-void-se...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?21641