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How Science Fiction Helps Us Understand the Economy
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Fantasy and economics
Underlying our fears of robots stealing our jobs are more basic anxieties about money. We're using fantasy to confront fears
Sci-Fi has become a measure to assess what's happening in the real world to see if we should be concerned. It doesn't take us away from our problems but allows us to identify what's wrong.
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Economic metaphors
- The Hunger Games gave us a neo-Depression dystopia where media-obsessed elites torment the starving lower classes.
- The Expanse is about class warfare.
- The 1950 Foundation series was partly about saving the galaxy with sound economic programs.
- The 2012 novel Three Parts Dead, was a mythical reimagining of the 2008 financial crisis. The author, Max Gladstone, said you couldn't tell a story like the financial crisis with realism. You need fantasy to explain it.
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The dark side of science fiction
The “dark” kind of science fiction deals with the foundation of economics, which is scarcity. There is a fear that poverty will come faster as automation continues to devalue human labor.
People are experiencing scarcity or are afraid of it on a regular basis. Writers are turning to economists to make their financial worlds more plausible.
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Exploring a future of automation
By incorporating ideas of economists, science fiction can explore a future of automation.
For example, how easy it would be to slide backward into the savagery of a slave economy. By incorporating ideas of a working economist, readers can be offered a believable thought experiment about real-life dangers.
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The Influence Of Sci-Fi On Real Technology
Some of the tech appearing in movies wasn’t the fruit of random predictions but of consultations with industrial designers, futurists and advertising specialists.
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Design Fiction
Is a new method for designing technology that explores the futures that ordinary people would prefer. Design fictions are provocative and engage people, encouraging them to envision, explain and raise questions about the direction of future technology and society.
Design fictions are now being used in sectors ranging from health to defence tech forecasting, and even policy making. In this way, science fiction can be used as a tool to help design future societies and technologies, giving the public a say on it too.
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Babylon 5
It's a cold-war set in space, with politics aligning towards left of center. It showcases the dangers of nationalism, with great leaders ending up causing enormous damage and harm because of th...
Battlestar Galactica
It's focuses on the survivors of humans in devastated colony worlds. The politics of this series reflect the left-wing reaction to the war on terror, stressing on the significance of democracy and civilian leadership.
The old ‘70s series, and it’s newer remake have, surprisingly different political ideologies, with the same basic story line.
Game Of Thrones
... which is based on George R.R. Martin’s book series "A Song Of Ice And Fire", addresses a range of diverse political issues.
Most of the people hungry for power are showcased as maniacs and reflect on the wrongdoings of global political elites and career politicians.
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The Automation Myth
For decades, we have believed that automation and huge leaps in technology will take away most of our jobs and there will be widespread unemployment.
A new study shows that this belief is inc...
Hours worked vs Income
The average working hours have declined only 6 percent, while income has increased at a decent rate per year.
The economy has actually grown even after automation, due to the addition of workers.
The Solow Paradox
The Solow Paradox suggests that automation and computerization aren't taking our jobs, but are adding to our overall workload, taking away our leisure time.