Bleg 2: Science Fiction

Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”.

Blish’s “Cities in Flight” series.

The Culture series by Iain Banks describes a well-thought-out and internally consistent mechanism for a post-scarcity socialist utopia.

The trick is: the government consists of hyper-intelligent benevolent AIs.

If you haven’t read Stephenson’s “Confusion” series, that has some really smart economics in it.

I love Banks’ Culture material, but I think it would not be so useful for providing examples of economics. The titular civilization is post-scarcity in general, but the stories all occur when and where scarcity comes into existence again: there is still a finite amount of interstellar transport, a finite amount of jobs with the most prestigious employers, a finite amount of invitations to the best parties, a finite amount of social capital, a finite number of positions at the top of the rankings in competitive pursuits, a finite amount of military power to deploy. It makes more sense and is far more consistent than any other “post-scarcity” society depicted in fiction, but the economics of it is all still quite hand-wavy.

Dune might be a worthwhile book for this, though I’m not sure how much more I would recommend it that The Culture.

Consider examining the Prometheus Award winners:
http://www.lfs.org/awards.htm

From Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End on the singularity and communications technology. True Names on crypto and virtual reality. The Ungoverned on “competitive governments”, available here.

I second The Confusion.

Riffing on the Heinlein theme: _The Rolling Stones_& _Farmer in the Sky_

Add “The Man Who Sold the Moon” by Heinlein.

Also both Asimov’s Foundation series and his Robot series are interesting.

As John stated, Asimov’s Foundation series is interesting. It’s basically premised a social science that is as precise and accurate as people think economics is today, a world where “Taking the Con out of Econometrics” would never have been written.

I will second the recommendation for “The Baroque Cycle” which I guess is actually historical fiction but is just amazing for amongst other things its economic content. It discusses such varied topics as the development of insurance, money and banking, the unintended effects of regulation (such as banning short selling), free trade and well much more… And all of it is very well done.

More on the science fiction side:

The Golden Ecumen trilogy shows a libertarian society with very strong social norms. Not to give away too much, but effectively, there is a non-governmental body who through a network of voluntary contractual obligations enforces social norms while the government enforces a very basic minimum of rules that we would associate with a libertarian society.

The Unincorporated Man reflects upon a future in which again, there is a very limited government with a twist: everyone is incorporated. Basically, when you are born, your parents receive 25% of your shares, the state 5% and you get to keep the 70%. Those who own your shares are entitled to that portion of your income and a certain amount of control in your life to defend their interests as shareholders. The book is written by two brothers and you can really feel the dualism as the book equally defends and attacks the system it portrays.

Asimov wrote a great trilogy whose first book is called “Caves of Steel”. The three are very much “noir” detective stories set in an absolutely technocratic future. There is a fair amount of exploration of a variety of laws and norms that have arisen to deal with an overpopulated Earth. It also in the later books looks more at a (somewhat) opposite of Earth on the “Spacer” worlds which humans have colonized.

Interesting from a public choice theory point of view is the short story “The Evitable Conflict” in Asimov’s short story collection: I, Robot. The world economy is being run entirely by a set of gigantic supercomputers who plan the entirety of production perfectly. Yet, a number of issues have cropped up where minor cases of over or under production have occurred. I won’t reveal what is happening, but it is a somewhat unexpected twist which students of public choice theory will kick themselves for not having seen coming.

I’d recommend Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling. It’s a 1988 novel that also provide an insightful vision of how transnational communities (like the ones you see in The Diamond Age) may work and organise.

“Citizen of the Galaxy” (novel), by Heinlein, for its treatment of slavery, traditional societies, and corporate governance.

“And then there were none” (short story) by Eric Frank Russell for economics of anarchy. Available at http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php

Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It illustrates how society reverts to pre-capitalist modes in the wake of devastating cometary impact.

Michael Flynn’s “Firestar” series follows a near future through a couple generations as they cope with manipulation, free will, technological change, and an alien “test” of humanity. The stories include juvenile delinquency, a chartered school, capitalist motives, political activists, politics, war, and project management.

Several of Jack Vance’s novels deal with the rise of an individual through application and clever work. EMPHYRIO features a closed economic society with trade guilds and lots of government control over workers, with the top caste gaining rents by monopolizing the market. WYST almost qualifies as an anti-utopian classic. TO LIVE FOREVER is about the economics of state-controlled longevity.

Eric Frank Russell’s THE GREAT EXPLOSION contains a classic segment describing an anarchist society. The people there are amazingly uncoöperative. They trade “obs” or obligations.

Cyril M. Kornbluth’s THE SYNDIC has the mob running the U.S., and a number of economic ideas running through it.

In general, though, economics is not the science behind many “science fiction” works. Most sf authors are not very economically savvy. Most are utopian or technocratic. Still, the Heinlein wing has a sort of practical, common sense perspective going through it.

Sometimes the “hard-hearted” approach – which might be characterized as ‘economistic” – yielded classic stories. Contrast “The Cold Equations” with “Think Like a Dinosaur.”

Not sure if it counts as economics but Tad Williams’s amazing Otherworld series depicts the near future in which a group of super-rich people create a virtual reality internet so advanced as to be indistinguisable from reality. They plan to overcome the one thing wealth cannot stop – death – by uploading their memories into the machine and living for eternity as gods. Has some very plausible ideas for how our near future could look.

Issac Asimov’s Foundation series seems to have an economics angle. It deals with “psychohistory”, the idea that the future of civilisations can be predicted over the long term while the future of individuals cannot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series

“The Towers of Utopia” – Mack Reynolds – can’t remember too much about the details, but it involves a massive welfare state

“Mindstar Rising” – Peter Hamilton – more political than economic, but involves rebuilding after global warming and a catastrophic socialist experiment

“Architects of Emortality” – Brian Stableford – I understand this is one in a series dealing with the same future world, but it involves transition to a postindustrial economy in which the younger generation, but not the older, may have achieved practical immortality

“Tower of Glass” – Robert Silverberg – involves, among other things, a giant building project made possible by the transition to an android labor force

“Ring Around the Sun” – Clifford Simak – involves an alien species flooding the market with cheap products to destroy the world economy

“Mallworld” – Somtow Sucharitkul – About a planet-sized shopping mall – to the extent that it’s about anything in particular. Brilliant book, impossible to describe. Admittedly, probably one you can’t easily use in lectures.

The Poul Anderson story “Margin of Profit,” one of the series featuring Nicholas van Rijn, is a favorite of mine. The central point is that, in order to stop bad people from doing bad things to you, you don’t have to make what they are doing impossible, merely unprofitable.

Vinge’s story “The Ungoverned” describes the invasion of an anarcho-capitalist society by an adjacent state.

I would un-recommend Asimov’s Foundation novels. They are science fiction classics and I devoured them when I was young but …

There is pretty much nothing about economics in them. The dues ex machina in the series is “psychohistory,” an academic breadthrough that almost perfectly predicts what will happen centuries into the future. General equilibrium on steroids.

One gets the impression after reading them that smart, well-trained people should rule. (On the other hand, if you strongly believe that anything like psychohistory is impossible, the books may subvert that idea.)

The three original novels come to almost a thousand pages. The reading is easy but I don’t know any high school student who would read an extra thousand pages for a course, even an AP course.

I liked Greg Costikyan’s “First Contract.”

When aliens come to Earth with far superior technology, Earth becomes a third-world planet. An intrepid entrepreneur tries to find a new way to compete in the new interstellar market.

It contains much detail about trade economics and entreprenurial methods.