The Star Trek Economy
So, economic models are more or less based on, or at least constrained by, human psychology, right? Communism and socialism don't work because peoples' brains aren't wired to do lots of work for little or no or unequal reward. This isn't restricted to just people, either, it's been observed in monkeys (<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_monkeyfairness.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0917_030917_...</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKhAd0Tyny0</a> -- it's a short video and pretty hilarious, worth a watch).<p>At the same time, capitalism has serious flaws, also exploited by human psychology. Capitalism rewards not just work and the investment of capital but also greed and cheating.<p>So, when looking for a new economic model, why not go back to psychology? Is it really true that <i>most</i> people don't want to work? There are some people who are content to receive a small stipend and spend their lives jut getting by without doing very much, but does that describe enough people to cause the collapse of a strong welfare society?<p>I think we probably are headed towards a post-scarcity (or low-scarcity) economy. Food costs as percentage of income in the U.S. have fallen quite a bit just in the last thirty years (<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/americas-shrinking-grocery-bill" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-28/americas-shr...</a>). People are already going to find that it takes less real effort to survive (<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596529-americas-labour-market-has-suffered-permanent-harm-closing-gap" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21596529...</a>, posted earlier to HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235810" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7235810</a>). A different economic model seems inevitable.<p>Likewise, there will probably always be jobs that people don't want to do. Take oil rig work for example: hard, dangerous work, and it pays well, starting at the U.S. median wage for unskilled, inexperienced labor (<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/oil_workers/" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/oil_workers/</a>) and going up from there.<p>As long as demand for this labor doesn't fall, if the available labor pool continues to shrink, those jobs should net greater incomes.<p>Maybe we'll see an economy, not quite like Star Trek's, but with a large leisure class and a well-paid class of plumbers, construction workers, mechanics, and technicians.<p>That would be kinda neat.