Better late than never, here are the (super simple) slides I used to present during the workshop led by @Katebee at the Istanbul Innovation Days conference.
The slot we had was very short, so there was a need for a super basic kit of building blocks that could be combined to yield multiple alternative economic systems. Kate asked me for five such blocks: in the end I simply had to have six from economics, plus one general principle well known to science fiction authors.
In list form:
- Leontiev’s input-output model (Leontief 1936) . Economic planning and inflation control in KSR’s Mars Trilogy. Anarres in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
- Mosler and Kelton’s Modern Monetary Theory (Kelton 1998). The Green New Deal in Cory Doctorow’s The Lost Cause (heads up: there is a hint to local currencies, “unies and munies”).
- Wray’s Job guarantee (Wray 2018). Doctorow in the Green New Deal world; Paul McAuley in the Quiet War series.
- Housing cooperatives, community land trusts and other forms of shared real estate property (cooperatives are common in Switzerland and Denmark, CLTs in the USA and the UK). These are foregrounded in KSR’s New York 2140. The model has been generalized to other essentials in his 2312, where, in the asteroid’s belt, capitalism still exists but only provides nonessential goods in nonregulated markets.
- UNDP’s Human Development Index, and in general the idea that economic performance depends on how well and fully human needs are met (needs-based approach). You can target and monitor indicators expressed in non-monetary terms.
- Hurwicz’s incentive compatibility (Hurwicz 1960). This is a concern in any well-conceived economic science fiction, for example Doctorow’s Walkaway, KSR’s Ministry for the Future. Viable future economies run well on normal, flawed people. If your story requires everyone to be a staunch altruist to function, it is not incentive compatible and we will not believe it.
- (+ 1): don’t use unobtainium – including General AI, blockchain, etc. If a technology is not already doing something, do not assume that it will do so based on some enlightened entrepreneur coming along.)
In slide form: 6 + 1 economic concepts to write science fiction.pdf (86.2 KB)