Ditto. I think bald women are hot. Seriously, no one has mentioned 'Starfleet has evolved past intercrew friction'? And even worse when Hurley kept the tradition. edit: i see Daniel mentioned it.
The idea first cropped up in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The Original Series made numerous references to money and even had the scene with Uhura haggling with Cyrano Jones to buy a tribble on Space Station K-7. Voyager later retconned the demise of money to the 22nd century in the episode "Fury". Then Kirk offered to pay for Uhura's drink in Star Trek (2009), re-un-retconning it. Sort-of.
I decided a long time ago that Starfleet doesn't use money, but civilians do where it's necessary. That would tend to cover "a multitude of sins."
Yeah, I know. Most folks can accept warp drive, transporters, replicators, and shape-shifting aliens with no difficulty, but a money-less society--fugetaboutit...
I can buy GR's thinking on this. TOS was made in the era of the NASA astronaut-hero, the days of John Glenn and others. At that time, all NASA astronauts were college grads and all were officers. GR wanted his TOS crew to be qualified astronauts, same as NASA, only in a future century. NASA only had officers as their astronauts, GR wanted no less. So okay, everyone on the Enterprise is an astronaut and an officer.
I stand corrected again (I should probably just stop). But it still doesn't bug me. It's fairly consistent with the technology they possess. They seem to have effectively infinitely abundant energy and the technology to remove scarcity from the fundamentals of existence such as food, water, housing, clothing, etc. Money as a system would certainly be impacted by such a development. Like I say, what bothers me is how ineffectively it was explored.
What I want to see is people who just sit on their ass on the beach their whole life, replicating their needs. Where are these people? Because I'd sure as hell be one of them in this glorious future.
pfft.. I'll have my little community of beachniks and we won't care about the rest of you and your fancy shmancy bettering wank.
But it simply isn't practical for a crew of 400 to be entirely officers. You ned enlisted crew to be there.
Exactly. Gene Roddenberry apparently thought that human nature could be re-shaped to suit a politico-economic ideology, and vices like laziness could be done away with. He was naive. This "evolved humanity" concept was analogous to the "New Soviet man" push that worked out so well in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man
To be fair, there's no indication that Roddenberry "thought that human nature could be re-shaped to suit a politico-economic ideology". It seems to me that he thought that technology would remove the impetus in humans to those impulses - that it would re-shape itself of its own accord. And I mean - I dunno. People talk about 'human nature' but there used to be slaves fighting to the death in ancient Rome. People used to tie cats to sticks and burn them in public for entertainment only a few hundred years ago (by which time gladiator-slaves weren't seen as acceptable). Sensibilities do change.
Still, money is what makes the world go around and always has been. Without money, just what motivates people to go to work, to even get a job to begin with? After all, their free house likely has a replicator that can provide them with unlimited food and clothing.
I'm not sure 'jobs' as we think of them even exist. Virtually everyone we see is a Starfleet officer or a scientist. Presumably there are engineers, architects, etc. I guess people become architects because they want to be architects. We see Joseph Sisko runs a restaurant but that seems to be just because he loves to cook. Now, what if someone wants to be an architect but just isn't any use at it? Maybe they just keep plugging away, or maybe they find something new. I do wish they'd have fleshed it out more but it probably wouldn't have made very entertaining viewing.
Joseph Sisko also had employees working for him. Just what makes people want to be a waiter at a restaurant? O clean dishes? It's not to pay for university, save up for a car or any of that stuff. Hell, what do people who don't join Starfleet and have no science interests or aspirations do? Hell, robocops have even been built for law enforcement!
I propose holodeck privileges. You want access to the latest holodeck programs not to mention holodeck time? You gotta work. If you are a dumbass you wash dishes. Because you need your special time on the holodeck with Shmun and T'Lana. Roddenberry replaced money with porn credit.