Rebel Wilson's accent is not British.
Why Do We Demand Internal Consistency & Continuity in Star Trek?
- Thread starter Samuel
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IMHO the whole no money thing is one of the most plausible aspects of the Trek setting. Money is basically a shared delusion we keep around because it is useful. We all agree that these arbitrary units have value, and as long as confidence in the currency (and underlying society) keep up, it does.
But in order for money to have utility, there have to be things worth exchanging. The replicator means that factories essentially no longer exist - basically any item can be "printed" at any time. Given from what we can see in the Trekverse energy is very cheap, there is effectively no cost for any thing (at least on the level of consumer products). Of course some things may still have value, like services and real estate, but at minimum, Federation tech means the amount of things you would need money for is very restricted.
In terms of canon, it's worth nothing that most of the TOS and very early TNG references to money were offhanded and could be seen as phrases which stayed in English past their original term (much like we discus a "salary" even though we're no longer paid in salt like the Romans). In contrast, the statements in Trek which say there is no longer money in the Federation by characters like Picard, Nog, and Tom Paris are much, much harder to explain away.
But you see, then you have the whole issue that if there is no money and people can live in comfort and stay fed for free and have access to free entertainment like a holodeck, why would anyone even get jobs or pursue careers? Contrary to what Picard preaches, not many are going to give a damn about "bettering humanity."
I suppose, joining Starfleet is one job some people might do for reasons other than financial, and that could explain most of the people from the main casts of the shows. But what about someone like Barclay who struggled with his job, interacting with his peers, and even had a phobia of the transporter? If it's not for financial gain and benefits, why did he join Starfleet and why does he stick with it? And what about people on Earth doing menial jobs? What is in it for people to agree to be waiters or low-level kitchen staff at Sisko's Restaurant, for example?
Energy rations to keep those holodeck fantasies going.
Just because there is unlimited energy, it doesn't mean there is no cost to get it to people.
In terms of real-world psychology, people just naturally differ on their desire to get stuff done. I am a very naturally lazy person (with pretty bad ADD). My wife is very type A and driven. On a beautiful spring day, she comments on how nice the weather is, and how she can't wait to do work in the garden. I am dumbfounded and can't wait to lay on the porch swing and take a nap.
I've always just presumed that's how the Federation works. People do what they want. Some people - people like me - who have no real desire to be productive just can sit around, get food from the replicator, and read. Other people contribute to the extent that they wish to (Jake Sisko didn't seem to do much besides work on his writing, and canonically got nothing for it in terms of compensation). Starfleet attracts the extreme "Type A" people who actually want to have full-time jobs.
I envision a dark underbelly of jaded, depraved humans that never leave their holorooms and only interact with others through a weird holographic version of Second Life.
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Snorting narcotics that they replicate over and over again...The Earth War on drugs ends with replication
But the many occasions we see it being used are equally hard, hence the years of drawn out, absurd and perpetually fruitless debates that miss the point that it really doesn't matter. There are bigger fish to fry here.
Could be something like an unpaid apprenticeship. Do scutwork for a few years and Joseph Sisko teaches you the tools of the trade. Later on, you can open your own creole kitchen.
Many situations?
There was of course the TAS episode with the millionaire. And Crusher purchased something with "Federation Credits" in Encounter at Farpoint. But most of the other examples where people are either shown or discuss buying things are on other worlds (like Risa and Bolias) which may have cash economies.
Edit: In general, my headcannon is that the Trekverse only moved to a cashless economy sometime between the end of the TOS movie era and TNG. There are certainly more than enough mentions of cash in both TOS and the movies up through Generations to prove people buy and sell things then. But post TNG, the evidence is very limited.
Down the rabbit hole we go.....
Risa and Bolias are Federation planets, which makes it hard to simultaneously claim money does not exist and maintain consistency, which is my point. (and yes, there are many such occasions but I'm really not wanting to derail the thread with yet another instance of exactly the sort of debate I'm saying is pointless).
What matters here is that the question of whether money exists or not in the Federation is precisely the sort of detail on which the franchise has been inconsistent, leading to endless arguments lasting years and going nowhere precisely because there is no correct answer.
This may seem harmless in and of itself but again it means people are for some reason focusing on all manner of trivia (I would prefer the word "drivel" to be honest) and completely missing the point, the underlying questions and themes being addressed by the franchise or any given episode.
What I don't understand is why Trek in particular inspires this sort of misplaced scrutiny to an extent other franchises do not, especially given it is a franchise whose focus on the whole places such value on the big questions (arguably sometimes the profound) and so little on the drivel, *ahem*, trivia.
Depends on what one considers world building to be. I think there was a great amount of world building in Star Trek, so much that it was one of the biggest appeals of the show to me. I really feel like I could live in the Star Trek universe if I woke up there tomorrow.
I think the various discussions we've had about the Starfleet Detla emblem and how the other starships were/were not supposed to have different patches actually illustrates this point. The fact that Bob Justman cared enough about the stupid patch to write his memo tells me that he was concerned with a certain amount of world building. https://www.trekbbs.com/search/13887816/?q=delta+memo&o=date&c[node]=44+38
Because as a general rule, any narrative about which I have to accept that "none of it really makes any sense in universe" is a narrative in which I no longer have any interest. I like things to make sense. As I wrote upthread, logical consistency (or at least an effort to achieve it) is a perfectly reasonable expectation of most fiction just as it is of real life.
(And, seriously, Trek is not half as bad on this front as you make it out to be. You're exaggerating its weaknesses to make your point. That point is that the thematic elements of the show are important, and that's not even something we disagree about... so I'm not sure why you think attention to continuity is somehow at the expense of that.)
Of course the franchise has been inconsistent. But Phillipa Louvois suggesting that Picard "buy her dinner" is entirely different than Picard saying "money doesn't exist in the 24th century."
But the way I think about it is this: Basically every time that the writers want to make a story which focuses on capitalism, rather than just mentioning money off-handedly, they have contrasted the Trek setting with either the past, or an alien culture like the Ferengi. Certainly there would be room to have, for example, a story about a rich inventor, an "insane admiral" accepting bribes, or a power-hungry corporation within the Trek corpus, but this has basically never been done.
I wouldn't call the question on whether the future is capitalist or not a trival matter by any means, but YMMV.
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To be honest, the most interesting thing about rewatching TOS last year after a long period of not touching it is realizing how many of the early episodes had some throwaway remark that either conflicted with later stories, or were often the seed of something much greater which will come down the pike. That was of course not their intent, but that's the most interesting thing to me about watching them today - much as reading a book of great historic importance, like The Communist Manifesto or On the Origins of Species, means something much different to us today than at the time it was published.
I'm not sure how trivial it is. It is a big part of "The Neutral Zone". One of those clubs used to look down on 20th/21st century humanity. And a big part of TNG was how perfect human society is. Then, every time we see it, it looks like we've been tossed a big carton of hog wash as it looks like things pretty much operate as they always have.
Perhaps one way to look at it when it comes to certain aspects of continuity is that certain rules\laws have to apply to the universe. So when those rules\laws are broken it can break the suspension of disbelief, the more we know about how a universe works can lead to issues were we say that's not how that works. Sometimes it can be better not to explain things.
Because intrinsic motivations beat extrinsic ones, for most people, most of the time. I am not half so cynical as to believe your earlier proposition that "Money is what makes the world go around, and without it, there is nothing to motivate the greater majority of humanity to give a shit. " People want to do stuff that is personally fulfilling. (Indeed, that's part of the key difference between "jobs" and "careers." The former is what's not necessary in the Federation.)
Money is a useful social construct to facilitate exchange of goods and services in a context of scarcity, but beyond that role it quickly becomes a not-good thing — certainly it's not a great concept around which to organize an entire society, much less a theory of human motivations.
Actually, most people I know very much do give a damn about that. And with less time toiling and scraping to make ends meet, they'd care about it even more. And certainly, part of the idealistic vision of Trek is that we can and should do that.
(I mean, sure, there are people in the world whose concept of a career is just to find some kind of influential role in the FIRE sector and be the best little parasitical rent-seekers they can be. But they're not a majority (thank goodness), and without the social status and approval that comes with that today, there would be even fewer of them.)
Nobody has to do those jobs in the Federation economy, because they could be completely automated. If they do, then, it's presumably because they get some personal satisfaction out of it. Hell, by the 24th century, for all we know serving as a waiter could be seen as a kind of "historical reenactment" for hobbyists.
Actually, I think the question of what Trek has to say about the Federation's economic structure is very much at the heart of the kind of social messages you say the show is about! It inspires thought-provoking debates about the nature of human motivation and what a post-scarcity economy will look like.
(Notwithstanding which, I still disagree with your dismissal of continuity as "trivia" and "drivel," in Trek or otherwise.)
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