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One thought that keeps popping into my head every time I see something solarpunk related - Solarpunk is proto Star Trek. It's the closest concept we have to th

One thought that keeps popping into my head every time I see something solarpunk related - Solarpunk is proto Star Trek. It's the closest concept we have to that post scarcity utopia, albeit on a very small scale, and likely completely unsustainable for any decently sized chunk of the global population. But it makes me wonder what the best way to chart that progress would be, and what the present day equivalent for quality of life it would be best to aim at based on current levels of technology.

autoexec 2y ago
It seems like Trek handwaved away or ignored a lot of the issues that weren't directly solved by replicators. Joseph Sisko had a restaurant on earth. The idea of a guy who loves to cook for people having a place where anyone can walk in off the street, order from a menu, and eat for free is easy to envision. The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. I'm interested in seeing Solarpunk grow so that we can see different people's ideas on how issues like this can be addressed without these fictional worlds becoming dystopian.
- nullstyle 2y ago
  To me, it seemed pretty clear that in the Federation context a restaurant or a bar is a cultural space and its value would be beyond its ability to produce meals for hungry people
- protocolture 2y ago
  Yeah. Star Trek is very "Look at this cool society" without "This is how we got there" I dont know if it is still canon, but the vulcans supposedly simply "fixed" earths economy and transitioned humans away from money. Its very surface level. They never go into depth about how that was done or what the downsides were. Even in say, Arthur C Clarke's childhoods end, there were details about the how and why people resisted the overlords.
  - rkagerer 2y ago
    Some episodes explored steps along the journey. Eg. DS9's Past Tense where they're taken back in time to a Sanctuary District confronts poverty and homelessness.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    [dead]
- harimau777 2y ago
  That part that bothered me is that everyone in the Federation appears to have more or less the same worldview. That struck me as sort of a cop out versus depicting the characters having to navigate different worldviews/religions/ideologies making up the Federation.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Most of that kind of conflict was usually framed in terms of human vs alien. Sometimes it was still within the federation (Worf trying to get someone to kill him when he was injured and likely wouldn't fully recover for example), but a lot of it was dealing with outsiders like humans having to deal with Ferengi who had very different ideology when it came to things like greed or women's rights. For outsiders, while the show was pretty careful about expressing a respect for differing cultural views, they did seem to side one way or the other. When there was disagreement within the federation it tended to be a single person or small fraction with an unpopular opinion (like the guy who wanted to disassemble and reverse-engineer Data) creating conflict vs a sizable faction.
    - whearyou 2y ago
      It seems to me the assumption of consensus with disagreement coming from small fringe factions mirrored much of the American experience during the TNG era.
    - dguest 2y ago
      I sort of thought that was the whole point of the show: the humans live in a liberal utopia according to western progressives and the aliens are everyone else in the world they have to get along with. It let the writers comment on contemporary issues with adjustable knobs for violence, sex, and laser beams, in hopes that the right cocktail could dislodge people from from their instinctive association with a political identity and let them learn something.
- slightwinder 2y ago
  > The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. It's not finite in a practical sense, especially if you are a space faring civilization. Certain space is treasured and in demand, but space usage overall comes down to how well you can utilize it (how tall your buildings can be), and how you access it. And in Star Trek, they have transporter, allowing people to live everywhere and still visiting most places casually for breakfast. Even today, humankind on earth is not going out of space. Instead, we have problems with finding places which are easier to utilize for the majority, or which are popular for cultural reasons. But the first one is no problem in Star Trek, and the second one seems to have reached a peaceful solution. > Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. Who decides today that someone should have a certain space? And I'm not talking about money, welfare-projects exists today too. Every society has their organization, why should this different just because they have no money by our understanding? And why do you think it's a privilege for Sisko to open a restaurant that others have not? I would think everyone can open a restaurant if they wish, but they simply do not wish to do this if they have no monetary stress doing it. At the end, a restaurant is hard work, not everyone is willing to put up with this.
Wickedflickr 2y ago
Sustainability for large populations is kind've a cornerstone of solarpunk, alongside decentralization and horizontal power to empower individuals and communities against corporation and government control. There's a lot of discussion on how to implement solarpunk in the here and now over on the fediverse, like Lemmy, but a condensed version of short term goals tends to be: 1. Switch to solar and wind on a mass scale, including personal solar such as the type described in low-tech magazine, combined with reducing energy use as much as is reasonable. 2. Embrace permaculture urbanism, where energy and food production take place in cities. The most well researched proposal put forward is by the Edenicity project. 3. Replace as many cars as possible by implementing more robust and far reaching public transport and bicycle infrastructure in urban and rural areas, more in line with the Netherlands. 4. Build new societal structures that are bottom up through mutual aid, to wean ourselves off corporatism and consumerism, and to develop community independence. None of those objectives are too far fetched, and would lay the groundwork for even more positive change.
- Avicebron 2y ago
  I would also add that all of these would provide jobs, construction, high-level engineering, etc and any knock on benefit people with paying work contribute to their local/national economies would bring.
- whearyou 2y ago
  I agree. But it has a similar aspirational quality, to me, as well thought out proposals for eg Moon colonization. I suppose the question left is overcoming the blocking path dependence - the method of mass action to get there.
  - Wickedflickr 2y ago
    Moon colonization requires billions or even trillions of capital all at once, and can only be done by elite experts in a very specialized field, with no practical gain to society toward solving or global warming. It would be an expense almost impossible to justify, and only corporations building the parts would truly benefit. Solarpunk, on the other hand, is accessible for an incredibly wide swath of people to contribute toward achieving, as a solarpunk life would actually save money while improving quality of life and mitigating global warming. Solar panels are within the financial reach of most parts of society, bicycles are far more affordable than cars, better zoning laws are only a stroke of a pen, gardening your food or creating a larger communal gardening area creates food resiliency while saving money, and again is within reach of almost all economic situations. It can be a big government program, but it scales down incredibly well compared to colonizing the moon, and I believe that is key to it being viable.
roughly 2y ago
> completely unsustainable for any decently sized chunk of the global population I think the inherent critique in Solarpunk is that our current way of doing things is unsustainable for any decently-sized chunk of the global population - that climate change and general environmental collapse are signs that capitalism as we’ve run it so far cannot continue. If you take the critique at face value, it becomes less of a trade-off, because we don’t really have the thing we think we’re trading against: we’re not trading a successful capitalist future for a gamble on sustainability, we’re trying to find a successful future to begin with.
- AstralStorm 2y ago
  The heart is in the right place, but the means to achieve it are incorrect and incomplete. We should at least try to experiment with various social, ecological and economical approaches, as we're currently being held stuck.
BirAdam 2y ago
Once a replicator is invented, human economic systems don’t make any sense. In a society without scarcity, money is meaningless as anyone can have whatever he/she desires nearly instantly. Of course, there are great discussions around what this would do to people psychologically and thus what such a breakthrough would do to human civilization.
- cpitman 2y ago
  A replicator still cannot give everyone a beachfront villa.
  - dv_dt 2y ago
    But a holodeck could
    - BonitaPersona 2y ago
      Okay so you get the holodeck villa, and I get the real beach villa (which also has a holodeck inside). Deal?
      - volemo 2y ago
        Ehm, everyone gets a holodeck, a replicator, and an abundance of energy to run them? Deal, take your beach villa, idc.
  - guy234 2y ago
    you could replicate another planet with just as many or more beachfronts
- krapp 2y ago
  Replicators as depicted in Star Trek cannot exist in the real world because they violate the laws of physics.
  - cosmic_cheese 2y ago

autoexec 2y ago

It seems like Trek handwaved away or ignored a lot of the issues that weren't directly solved by replicators. Joseph Sisko had a restaurant on earth. The idea of a guy who loves to cook for people having a place where anyone can walk in off the street, order from a menu, and eat for free is easy to envision. The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. I'm interested in seeing Solarpunk grow so that we can see different people's ideas on how issues like this can be addressed without these fictional worlds becoming dystopian.

nullstyle 2y ago
To me, it seemed pretty clear that in the Federation context a restaurant or a bar is a cultural space and its value would be beyond its ability to produce meals for hungry people
protocolture 2y ago
Yeah. Star Trek is very "Look at this cool society" without "This is how we got there" I dont know if it is still canon, but the vulcans supposedly simply "fixed" earths economy and transitioned humans away from money. Its very surface level. They never go into depth about how that was done or what the downsides were. Even in say, Arthur C Clarke's childhoods end, there were details about the how and why people resisted the overlords.
- rkagerer 2y ago
  Some episodes explored steps along the journey. Eg. DS9's Past Tense where they're taken back in time to a Sanctuary District confronts poverty and homelessness.
- mistermann 2y ago
  [dead]
harimau777 2y ago
That part that bothered me is that everyone in the Federation appears to have more or less the same worldview. That struck me as sort of a cop out versus depicting the characters having to navigate different worldviews/religions/ideologies making up the Federation.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Most of that kind of conflict was usually framed in terms of human vs alien. Sometimes it was still within the federation (Worf trying to get someone to kill him when he was injured and likely wouldn't fully recover for example), but a lot of it was dealing with outsiders like humans having to deal with Ferengi who had very different ideology when it came to things like greed or women's rights. For outsiders, while the show was pretty careful about expressing a respect for differing cultural views, they did seem to side one way or the other. When there was disagreement within the federation it tended to be a single person or small fraction with an unpopular opinion (like the guy who wanted to disassemble and reverse-engineer Data) creating conflict vs a sizable faction.
  - whearyou 2y ago
    It seems to me the assumption of consensus with disagreement coming from small fringe factions mirrored much of the American experience during the TNG era.
  - dguest 2y ago
    I sort of thought that was the whole point of the show: the humans live in a liberal utopia according to western progressives and the aliens are everyone else in the world they have to get along with. It let the writers comment on contemporary issues with adjustable knobs for violence, sex, and laser beams, in hopes that the right cocktail could dislodge people from from their instinctive association with a political identity and let them learn something.
slightwinder 2y ago
> The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. It's not finite in a practical sense, especially if you are a space faring civilization. Certain space is treasured and in demand, but space usage overall comes down to how well you can utilize it (how tall your buildings can be), and how you access it. And in Star Trek, they have transporter, allowing people to live everywhere and still visiting most places casually for breakfast. Even today, humankind on earth is not going out of space. Instead, we have problems with finding places which are easier to utilize for the majority, or which are popular for cultural reasons. But the first one is no problem in Star Trek, and the second one seems to have reached a peaceful solution. > Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up. Who decides today that someone should have a certain space? And I'm not talking about money, welfare-projects exists today too. Every society has their organization, why should this different just because they have no money by our understanding? And why do you think it's a privilege for Sisko to open a restaurant that others have not? I would think everyone can open a restaurant if they wish, but they simply do not wish to do this if they have no monetary stress doing it. At the end, a restaurant is hard work, not everyone is willing to put up with this.

Wickedflickr 2y ago

Sustainability for large populations is kind've a cornerstone of solarpunk, alongside decentralization and horizontal power to empower individuals and communities against corporation and government control. There's a lot of discussion on how to implement solarpunk in the here and now over on the fediverse, like Lemmy, but a condensed version of short term goals tends to be: 1. Switch to solar and wind on a mass scale, including personal solar such as the type described in low-tech magazine, combined with reducing energy use as much as is reasonable. 2. Embrace permaculture urbanism, where energy and food production take place in cities. The most well researched proposal put forward is by the Edenicity project. 3. Replace as many cars as possible by implementing more robust and far reaching public transport and bicycle infrastructure in urban and rural areas, more in line with the Netherlands. 4. Build new societal structures that are bottom up through mutual aid, to wean ourselves off corporatism and consumerism, and to develop community independence. None of those objectives are too far fetched, and would lay the groundwork for even more positive change.

Avicebron 2y ago
I would also add that all of these would provide jobs, construction, high-level engineering, etc and any knock on benefit people with paying work contribute to their local/national economies would bring.
whearyou 2y ago
I agree. But it has a similar aspirational quality, to me, as well thought out proposals for eg Moon colonization. I suppose the question left is overcoming the blocking path dependence - the method of mass action to get there.
- Wickedflickr 2y ago
  Moon colonization requires billions or even trillions of capital all at once, and can only be done by elite experts in a very specialized field, with no practical gain to society toward solving or global warming. It would be an expense almost impossible to justify, and only corporations building the parts would truly benefit. Solarpunk, on the other hand, is accessible for an incredibly wide swath of people to contribute toward achieving, as a solarpunk life would actually save money while improving quality of life and mitigating global warming. Solar panels are within the financial reach of most parts of society, bicycles are far more affordable than cars, better zoning laws are only a stroke of a pen, gardening your food or creating a larger communal gardening area creates food resiliency while saving money, and again is within reach of almost all economic situations. It can be a big government program, but it scales down incredibly well compared to colonizing the moon, and I believe that is key to it being viable.

roughly 2y ago

> completely unsustainable for any decently sized chunk of the global population I think the inherent critique in Solarpunk is that our current way of doing things is unsustainable for any decently-sized chunk of the global population - that climate change and general environmental collapse are signs that capitalism as we’ve run it so far cannot continue. If you take the critique at face value, it becomes less of a trade-off, because we don’t really have the thing we think we’re trading against: we’re not trading a successful capitalist future for a gamble on sustainability, we’re trying to find a successful future to begin with.

AstralStorm 2y ago
The heart is in the right place, but the means to achieve it are incorrect and incomplete. We should at least try to experiment with various social, ecological and economical approaches, as we're currently being held stuck.

BirAdam 2y ago

Once a replicator is invented, human economic systems don’t make any sense. In a society without scarcity, money is meaningless as anyone can have whatever he/she desires nearly instantly. Of course, there are great discussions around what this would do to people psychologically and thus what such a breakthrough would do to human civilization.

cpitman 2y ago
A replicator still cannot give everyone a beachfront villa.
- dv_dt 2y ago
  But a holodeck could
  - BonitaPersona 2y ago
    Okay so you get the holodeck villa, and I get the real beach villa (which also has a holodeck inside). Deal?
    - volemo 2y ago
      Ehm, everyone gets a holodeck, a replicator, and an abundance of energy to run them? Deal, take your beach villa, idc.
- guy234 2y ago
  you could replicate another planet with just as many or more beachfronts
krapp 2y ago
Replicators as depicted in Star Trek cannot exist in the real world because they violate the laws of physics.
- cosmic_cheese 2y ago