Inspired by the ongoing Resurgence giveaway, I thought it might be fun to discuss some of our favourite Trek games. Underappreciated gems are particularly welcome!
I was absolutely trash at it, but I loved it. And to be honest, I thought it was just a very hard game to begin with. There is only so much you can do to manage your shields, weapons, and position before the ship becomes overwhelmed.
Overall seems to give a good picture how Treconomics, but I think he is wrong a in a few ways. The first being private property. There is definitely personal property, but no private property as “business” like the Sisko Family Restaurant and Picard’s vineyard aren’t charging anything from what we can tell. They operate like their customers are family, and you’re visiting them to eat/drink with/etc and then go home.
The second is his labeling of The Federation as a technically capitalist society. I don’t think that’s the case, as corporations don’t seem to exist aside from the ones that are owned and operated outside of Federation space. There are family “business”, but they don’t have stocks or a stock market. And because the “businesses” that do exist don’t charge or make profit, I don’t think it can be considered capitalist.
And they are indeed credited to and debited from each citizen’s “account.” However, the average citizen doesn’t even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not measured in currency units — definitely not Federation Credits.
I think this idea of each Federation citizen having a welfare account is probably wrong. I think it’s more likely that it’s just assumed that you won’t abuse the replicators/transporters, with a set limit of how much of something a user can use it.
So you can maybe replicate only a handful of basketballs a day, a couple hundred hotdogs, etc. But there is an inbuilt limit to the machine and electricity provided to your home. But it’s not an account.
Sure, I agree that there is absolutely somebody/some governing body controlling and tracking energy use. But again, no personal account.
As for the rest of what he said there, I am pretty much in full agreement.
Complete tangent, it’s probably not too hard to get around the limits of a replicator if they prohibit or limit alcohol. Presumably you could have it create all the supplies needed for fermentation and make your own batch.
It would take a bit, but you’d have as much as you’d ever want.
I think if you need to be payed to be loyal to Starfleet/The Federation, that kinda is a deal breaker given the philosophy of personal growth and societal enrichment.
It boggles my mind how my conservative father even remotely thinks anything positive about star trek, let alone being obsessed with it.
Steve absolutely nailed it. Though I think his 4th point about optimism being a core part of star trek was missing a subsection. Almost all of the characters, and especially the ones the show wants you to root for have shit loads of empathy for the people around them, and often times it even extends to outright enemies.
Whenever a crew member is losing control of their behavior because of a mind control space entity, the crew’s first reaction is a level of concern people only have for close family members. When Sisko is doing arguably immoral acts for the greater good, he is wracked with grief and empathy for those he had to hurt. Janeway on the other hand just wants her coffee lol.
If you think this description sounds suspiciously like Paradox Interactive’s Stellaris with a Star Trek Prime Directive attached, you’re not wrong. The mechanics of advancing your faction and winning the game (militarily, economically, or diplomatically) are nearly identical, and fans of Stellaris will recognize the game’s style in Infinite’s assets and artwork.
The renters, ultimately. Landlords are just middle men who need to be cut out of the equation through a land tax system and massive investments in housing development, zoning fixes, and market rate housing/co-ops.
The only “job” landlords have is owning, which isn’t a job and adds nothing. They are a burden and inefficiency of the economy, and a burden on people.
A LVT/georgism system would instantly kill the profit margins of all landlords around the country, so they will do everything in their power to prevent it from happening. All the more reason to do it.
And they have little to no risk in the first place because the market has such high demand that they can pretty much instantly fill vacancies, and they barely do repairs if at all. And at least where I live, renters are required to have/pay for renters insurance which further drives down the landlord’s risk.
If landlords ceased to exist, how do you propose new housing stock be created? Should the government be your landlord?
Government investment into housing development (which then turn into market rate housing/co-ops), zoning fixes, and a LVT is the solution. The builders get paid, home ownership becomes affordable, and renters aren’t being priced gouged. It would also do wonders to help fix the homelessness crisis.
And none of it needs the government to own your home.
It was implied, but I later edited my comment, the government should do so. We have a massive housing crisis on our hands and there needs to be a solution. The government is so bloated that there is easily already the money somewhere to divert to something actually worthwhile.
That allow who to build more housing?
Private developers, individual citizens, the government itself, etc. Anybody and everybody with a willingness to build a house should be able to do so without dealing with the ridiculous zoning laws we have now.
Is literally what the West has right now.
We have these now.
We have market-rate housing and co-ops at such a low rate. We need a massive increase in quantity. The private sector won’t do this because there is no profit motive, so it largely has to be the government who is building these. But once their built it shouldn’t be the government who owns it, it should be the co-ops, market-rate housing orgs, or literally individual citizens who own the housing,
Most states have property taxes now that include the land that a rental sits on.
I don’t want property taxes. Those need to be removed along with all other types of taxation. The only valid type of taxation should be land value tax, and a carbon emission tax. A property tax punishes a land owner for developing their land and using it more efficiently. A land value tax on the other hand incentivizes more effective use. It’s a massive topic and a massive difference. If you want to learn more I would recommend looking into georgism.
In either event the entity that owns your house, that isn’t you, is your landlord.
Georgism is not a form of capitalism. Georgism is a strategy for government revenue. Regardless of what type of economy you have, unless you have pure anarchy there needs to be a source of income for the government. Georgism is the least bad option, they’re all bad.
I usually fall somewhere in the range of what people call socialism. I’m certainly not a capitalist.
There is value in someone figuring out all the finance mess so that when someone wants a place to live it exists.
That’s the job of a manager, which isn’t what a landlord generally does. And even on the rare times when a landlord actually does do some financial management, it takes up a minority of the time.
I don’t want to spent 200 days of my life building a house, I just want a place to live.
I would like to do so at some point, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to do so. But housing needs to be affordable and it isn’t.
but property ownership still comes with a level of long-term required investment that many people simply do not want and cannot afford.
That’s largely due to the lack of supply of housing. And that’s why I think the government should be absolutely spamming housing units. Even if we kept landlords, they’d have no leverage to keep rents sky high.
People like me need to rent, and thus we need to rent from somebody.
And I think that your choice for that somebody should be better than some rich fuck who owns half the city’s housing (mildly exaggerating).
you’ve got the existence of an intermediate owner that performs maintenance and searches for tenants, with the bonus and curse that that intermediate has no profit motive to actually perform that work.
The person who does that work doesn’t need to be the owner though.
Where there’s an opportunity to game the system, those with means will.
Absolutely. It’s one of my few gripes with georgism. And at the end of the day a shitty implementation of georgism is better than our current shit show of billionaires and mega corps paying $0 or next to $0 in taxes. Sometimes they even get paid instead.
But anyways, I haven’t seen much detail about how to fairly valuate land, but I’ve had some thoughts on it. The number one thing should be that all land is taxed at the same percentage, but each plot is valued differently. I think one of the ways to do this would be to simply calculate how far a given plot is from the nearest city center, and factor in how big the population of that city is.
It’s something that can be objectively measured, should be roughly correlated with what we could subjectively agree on is valuable, and isn’t something that could be gamed easily.
I would like to see working examples first, if possible.
The Netherlands has a land value tax, though it is not the sole income source for their government.
My understanding is that the government employs people to assign a value to each plot, and from there the use case of the land is considered. Land owners can then appeal the judgement if they like. I know there are some other countries besides the Netherlands that have a LVT system, but the Netherlands is the first that comes to mind. I’d honestly be ok with either of these systems of determining land value, either the one I made up or the Netherland’s. At the end of the day it’s pretty much the only way to tax the rich without them just moving their money elsewhere. You can’t move land after all, and much of their wealth is tied up in land.
Here is a research paper into the effects that might interest you.
You’re going to fund all the social programs of a modern government via, essentially, no taxes?
No, it would be funded through land value and carbon taxes. Those two tax types should be the only valid form of taxation. We should still have enough tax to pay for it (after we ditch the bloat our government has. Example).
If you want the government to provide a robust social safety net, including housing, you’ll be looking at Nordics level taxation.
People always complain about such a system but they actually have healthcare, so seems like a moot point to me.
You can be wrong if you want to be.
First off, there’s no need to be a dick about it. Second, that definition says person, whereas you said entity.
“In either event the entity that owns your house, that isn’t you, is your landlord.”
“a person who rents land, a building, or an apartment to a tenant.”
You know, so long as we can agree that lack of supply is the core issue
It’s one of the core issues. I think there is a lot more baked into this, but if this is one of the things we can agree on then so be it.
I’m not hugely confident of public housing
While I do think public housing is a part of the solution, and has a lot of mistakes to learn from, I think co-ops should be the main workhorse/end goal for government built housing.
public housing or just loosening zoning and allowing the market to actually meet demand, I don’t really care so long as there are units.
I say, all of the above. Any possible way to increase the supply is a good thing.
I’m lucky enough to live in a place that is a little bit walkable (7 eleven, pizza shop, beer store 2 min walking with a grocer 15 walk), there is so much more that could be done. I wish I didn’t have to get a car, and I am so close to basically ditching mine for an e-bike. The only thing stopping me is that my city’s bike safety is not the best.
I see you’re one of the famed georgists. First I’ve seen in the wild!
If you have a criticism of georgism I’d love to hear it, because so far I’ve heard basically none. And I don’t think I would go quite so far as to call myself a georgist. It’s only something I learned about relatively recently, but the more I learn about it the better it sounds than the current dog shit we are dealing with that we somehow call a tax system. Is georgism perfect? Almost certainly not, but it’s a massive step in the right direction.
you’d make the turn to “politically only possible with a socialist government”
You are correct in that the solution to the housing crisis is only possible with a socialist government. Socialism and georgism are not mutually exclusive.
People should still be able to own land for their own personal use. Land used to extract wealth on the other hand should be more tightly controlled. We should ideally implement georgism to free up the land that the rich own and to increase land use efficiency. After that ownership should look pretty much identical.
Yup. I’m ok with some kinds, just not the kind that fucks over the creation/distribution of basic necessities.
So you’re okay with some rich person owning acreage as long as it’s for their own enjoyment
Yeah that’s bullshit too and shouldn’t be allowed. Even for personal use/enjoyment there should be a hard limit.
but not for a normal dude who has an investment property and is holding out for a renter that will adequately cover his costs and generate some profit?
It can take 30 years for the tenants to pay it off. Landlords aren’t paying for that out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s instead ultimately the tenants.
Throughout all that time they are responsible for maintenance, insurance and a litany of other things to keep it from falling into disrepair.
They hire people to do that, they don’t do it themselves.
In some versions of socialism, not all. And technically in a georgist system, depending on implementation, all land is considered the governments land, it’s owned by the common people. From there individuals pay society for exclusivity to a plot.
It would only have a minor impact based on the size of your house+yard, nothing more. It’s in no way progressing us towards socialism.
I’m not an economist, so my understanding is limited, but my understanding is that a LVT results in the landlords themselves paying the tax instead of tennants. The end result is a giant hit to the wallets of landlords across the country. That’s a very good thing, and does indeed get us closer to socialism. Less landlords, less landlord power, the better.
Additionally, even if it only slightly effects land use efficiency (which I disagree that it would be slight) any increase in efficiency will increase the proportion of land that is for sale and therefore reduce prices.
And keep in mind, this is only part of the solution, not the sole solution. Zoning still needs to be fixed and there needs to be massive government investments into co-op housing developments.
That’s not true because housing is not the only form of wealth.
I could profitably buy a plot of land and use it to store pig feces which happens in North Carolina.
And did I say I approve of that? No. That’s why it is a whataboutism fallacy. The topic is housing. Pointing out other horrible ways to use land doesn’t change the fact that the current housing situation is bullshit.
They aren’t selling something the person could otherwise afford or even want to buy.
More people could afford to own their house if not for landlords hoarding the supply.
I know contractors that built houses and eventually built one and rented it out for additional income.
You’ve never had to clean up a house destroyed by drug addicts. Believe me they can do a ton of damage. There’s plenty of risk. No one in this thread understands that though.
This is again a rare case.
I wonder if the macroeconomic factors could play into that? You know? Stagnating wages, a falling dollar, endless wars, cronyism, endless immigration, enriching Blackrock during the 2008 bank crisis so that it can single handedly buy more single-family homes than any other entity in American history. Nope it’s Jim from work that rents a condo.
It’s all of the above. Landlords are a part of the problem, and I never once said they are the sole problem.
Read some theory, it kinda sounds like you’re basing this entirely off of YouTube videos you’ve seen (including your understanding of socialism)
If you want to convince me, mocking me isn’t the way to go about it. I’m as much of a leftist/anti-capitalist as it gets in my area, and I almost certainly agree with you on more things than the average american. If you can’t even hold a civil conversation with me, how could you ever hope to convince anybody else?
But yes, most of this is based on a rather light understanding as I have already mentioned. I live in the U.S., a capitalist country that very intentionally does not allow workers to have free time. I have a disabled girlfriend that I take care of. The amount of time I have to myself that is truly free time is extremely limited. I’d rather spend that time playing video games and watching youtube than reading economics books. It’s shocking, I know. And during the rare times that I am able to find the time/energy to read, I’d rather read science fiction, which rarely if ever goes into economic theory.
Landlords increase rent to make up for it, what does georgism do? Landlords don’t exist as such in socialism, but how they do exist still isn’t really impacted by this shift.
Again, they can’t exactly just increase rent to pass off the tax.
The lack of massive investment of housing and zoning are, again, results of a problem not the problem itself. These issues don’t exist with good planning
How is investment in housing and zoning fixes not a form of better planning?
georgism is just irrelevant except as a bandage for some of the ills of capitalism temporarily
I disagree that it is just a bandage. But even if it was, I’d rather have a bandage than a fucking open wound like we have now.
If the government doesn’t collect wealth in the form of a land tax, how do you suggest we do it?
Let's remember some Star Trek games
Inspired by the ongoing Resurgence giveaway, I thought it might be fun to discuss some of our favourite Trek games. Underappreciated gems are particularly welcome!
How did money work on deep space 9?
Whenever there’s a storyline with quark, they talk about money/latinum....
Steve Shives: What Actually Makes Star Trek . . . Star Trek? ( www.youtube.com )
Star Trek: Infinite Review Thread
cross-posted from: beehaw.org/post/8680018...
Mike McMahan Calls On Fans To Help Keep ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ From Facing The Same Fate As ‘Prodigy’ ( trekmovie.com )
Landlords should have to pay income tax on their rental properties regardless of whether they're rented out or not. ( gothamist.com )
cross-posted from: lemmy.crimedad.work/post/12162...
Final StarTrek Canvas space ( startrek.website )
Thanks again to all who joined in the creative fun on Canvas. It’s been great getting to cooperate with you in this midsummer enthusiasm....