The book, which grew in part out of conversations between Mr. Saadia and his friend Chris Black, a former writer for “Star Trek: Enterprise”...examines “Star Trek’”s “post-economic” system, in which money no longer exists and anything you want can be made in a replicator, essentially for free.

Talk about the final frontier: In the future world of “Star Trek,” everyone’s material needs are satisfied, and money doesn’t exist. What would the economy of such a world look like?

For all its staying power in the rest of academia, Star Trek is almost nowhere to be found in economics, according to Manu Saadia, author of the forthcoming book Trekonomics. We sat down with Saadia this week to talk about the book and his analysis of the Star Trek economy.

Economist Brad DeLong recently spoke with Trekonomics author Manu Saadia about how we're living in post-scarcity world.

On this episode of Slate Money, Trekonomics author Manu Saadia joins host Felix Salmon of Fusion, Cathy O’Neil of Mathbabe.org, and Slate’s Moneybox columnist Jordan Weissmann to discuss: (1) How the universe of Star Trek functions without money? (2) If we could we ever reach a post-scarcity society? (3) Just what Google is up to with their new umbrella company Alphabet?

The jumping-off point for Grundhauser’s article is Manu Saadia’s upcoming book, Trekonomics, which suggests that the futuristic series provides an excellent economic example that humans of the 21st century would do well to follow.

In author Manu Saadia’s forthcoming book, Trekonomics, he suggests that the values of Gene Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future may be the thing to aspire to if we ever want to achieve a world of peace and abundance. And it’s not just about the technology, either.

The economics of Star Trek is thus True Communism. Fortunately, without the intervening bit of socialism that anyone has to suffer through.

Newitz — along with Nobel Prize winner and economist Paul Krugman, Treknomics author Manu Saadia, economics professor Brad DeLong, Fusion's Felix Salmon and Star Trek writer Chris Black — discussed economics through the lens of the Star Trek world at a New York Comic Con panel Sunday.

“Trekonomics takes readers on a journey through Star Trek‘s fictional society, its mores and values, and its sources of inspiration in classic sci-fi. But it also looks hard at the challenges posed by it. How does Star Trek solve what Keynes called “the economic question,” the old and stubborn quandary of the allocation of scarce resources? How can it benefit all without depriving anyone? And what could that mean for us, the passengers of Starship Earth?”