In America, we went off the gold standard in the early 1970's, our money currently is backed by the "full faith and credit of United states Government." Pretty much the same story all over the world today. Now according to Commander Riker, immediately following the third world war there were "few governments." So it not to hard to imagine a return to precious metals as money, or as a way of backing currency and electronic funds transfers. Tom might have been referring to a return to completely fiat money, a century after the war. And possibly the elimination of currency. Paris: "Fort Knox. The largest repository of gold bullion in Earth's history. Over fifty metric tons worth over nine trillion U.S. dollars ... when the New World Economy took shape in the late twenty second century and money went the way of the dinosaur, Fort Knox was turned into a museum. Here Tom does seem to be directly tying gold to money, a direct tie that doesn't exist today in the year 2013. Now what Tom actually meant by "money went the way of the dinosaur" might be something completely different. Obviously Humans and the Federation were using money in the TOS era and later, which is after the late twenty second century time period Tom mentioned. **** So, where the officers and crew of the NX-01 being paid, I would yes.
I think those things became worthless in the 21st century when their planet became a nuclear wasteland. Isn't it possible to be libertarian without being so smugly cynical that we have to complain about the idealism of a TV series based on idealism? Let the series be something to strive to be, not that people can realistically be.
600 million people died in the third world war, the equivalent of modern America losing 20 million people. But the majority of Humanity survived, so basic infrastructure couldn't have been knocked down too far. Estimates are that by the middle of this century (the time of WWIII) 70% of the population will be living in cities, obviously after the war they were still able to move food around. So we are not exactly talking about "mad max." Cochrane was able to travel around by train, rail lines pass through cities. The "world war" could have been devastating to select portions of the Earth, but not really world wide. The world wide economy would have taken a hard hit, but could have recovered in decades. The Vulcan Ambassador in ST: Enterprise said that Vulcans were amazed at how fast Humans recovered. Except Star Trek isn't based on "idealism," it's based on action-adventure, based on solving whatever that week's (or season's) dilemma is.
I'm doing an ENTERPRISE re-watch on DVD currently. I just finished the Vulcan Trilogy in season four, and so far, there has been no reference to anybody being paid.
The only references anywhere in Trek to a Starfleet employee getting paid are from TOS. In "The Doomsday Machine", Scotty receives a compliment from his CO: In "Who Mourns for Adonais", it's Chekov who gets the praise: The formulaic expression may well be a mere saying in the 23rd century, unrelated to any actual payment. Surely sayings about money will survive money itself by 200-300 years... By Jove, old Roman religions are still going strong almost two thousand years after their factual demise! Timo Saloniemi
Look at it this way. Imagine if energy was free and in abundance (antimatter). Now imagine if it could easily be converted into matter (this is how replicators work). This technology wasn't yet mainstream in mid 22 century, but it's safe to assume that this mysterious "new world economics" was based on this. Free energy for everyone means also free food, free clothes, free water... And as for housing, industrial replicators take care of that. Homes are practically costless, so we can assume that in the UFP every citizen is entitled to one. Here ya go. Utopia. BTW, it's safe to assume that some form of currency still exists (hence the motivation), and it is mostly used for aquisition of "luxuries", like Scotty's famous boat, Admiral Paris' shuttle, or those antique glasses Bones bought Kirk for his birthday.
Of course, if money really was made to disappear (at least from the consumer economy), then it was apparently seen as fundamentally evil somehow. Not just unnecessary, but evil, the same way eugenics is evil nowadays because of Adolf Hitler. Picard speaks very derisively of wealth, accumulation thereof, and the profit motive (say, in "The Neutral Zone" and "Starship Mine"). A society of Picards probably wouldn't want to compensate people for their "loss", but punish them for having possessed all that worth in the first place. And such a society would be careful never to refer to its currency as "money", when it's easy to invent euphemisms of all sorts... Timo Saloniemi
I'll bet you credits to navy beans they got paid in something. How about their housing and lifestyle back on earth, if one of them just QUITS and announces they are never working again are they going to be allowed to just keep their house, go to their San Francisco bars and Chinese restaurants, eat what they want, travel where they want, wear what they want.. no replicators makes this even less likely than in the future.
They certainly were not motivated by money. Hoshi wanted to go home in the very beginning of the show and did not worry about not being able to pay her bills or give up the fantastic Starfleet paychecks for the meager earnings of a language professor. Archer wanted to go out there because it is his father's engine, Trip was a workaholic engineer (somehow all the engineers in Trek are) and certainly did not work so hard because he got paid for overtime.
It's kind of funny you can tell who does and doesn't think the state should pay their way by the comments in this thread.
I don't think the state should pay my way but if it did pay my way the way as it appears to in our glorious federation future I would be living on the beach with a replicator and never bettering myself one jot. Oh and my house would be humble, but with a stunning view.
^I wouldn't even need a house. Just a little holodeck. Even if everything was provided for me, I'd probably still choose to work. Probably no more than three or four days a week, but I'd want to do something.
People would come to me seeking enlightenment as I was free from the burden of bettering myself or anyone else. And because of the latter freedom I would tell them all to fuck off. PARADISE.
The folks who join Starfleet are a bit insane anyway. In a population of trillions, it shouldn't be that hard to find a few million volunteers for unpaid work fraught with deadly dangers. Hey, they find suicide bombers in sufficient numbers in our reality, too! As for the few examples of purchases of luxury items or services in Star Trek, there tends to be a very poor correlation between such activity and the working income of the purchaser. Luxury tends to be bought by people who don't really have to work for their money! Timo Saloniemi
A Star Trek fan is telling me that he/she wouldn't seek the opportunity to go to space if the Federation existed? Yeah, seems legit.
Exactly. My ideal life in Star Trek is to own a little shop on DS9's promenade. There is no way I would ever ever ever join Starfleet.