Organizations and Markets

| Peter Klein |

The better works in science fiction challenge us to explore and reflect upon strange and interesting forms of social and political organization, such as the anarcho-capitalism of Robert Heinlein’s Luna or the (shockingly) rigid social hierarchy of Mary Doria Russell’s Rakhat. The political economy of the Star Trek universe, by contrast, is remarkably dull and familiar. As Tim Cavanaugh reminds us in the new issue of Reason:

[T]he society of the Federation is the kind of thing that might spring fully grown from the hernia scar of Lyndon Baines Johnson — a galacticized Great Society. A vaguely militarized government makes all decisions. Any time the Enterprise crew encounters a private entrepreneur or contractor, that person will almost certainly turn out to be a thief, a swindler, a coward, or all three. (Roger C. Carmel’s mincing, scheming Harry Mudd is Star Trek’s idea of a businessman.) . . . Despite frequent references to a “noninterference” directive in contacting alien civilizations, Star Trek eerily predicts the era of total interventionism, as James T. Kirk, an interstellar Gen. Tommy Franks, routinely smashes planetary autocracies, promising (sometimes) that others will come along later to do the nation building.

Cavanaugh borrows here from Paul Cantor, one of my favorite scholars, about whom I will blog soon.