How would having no currency work?

[T'Girl]

What other option is there?

That it's an actual business, in the usual meaning of the word business.

And while we at usual meanings. Sold: to give up for a valuable consideration. Jake as much as admitted to Quark that he employed the word euphemistically in his previous sentence. Jake was posting story to that news service, like people post fan fiction to this board. Or like people sending news stories to one of the Seattle's TV/cable news stations, they don't get paid either.

But the actual news reporters do.

From what Jake Sisko said, humans don't get paid for their work or labor.

Jake said HE wasn't getting paid.

In Little Green Men, Quark sold his shuttle in the Earth's solar system for money, and purchased passage back to DS9 from Earth, with the money.

It would be nice if people did do things like run a restaurant for absolutely free.

Then it wouldn't be a restaurant, a restaurant is a commercial establishment. What you seem to be describing is the private kitchen in Joseph's house.

But if Jake didn't get paid for his articles, that means the customers don't pay for the food.

One does not logically follow the other. You're trying to infer a conclusion from a single item

.

 

[ichab]

Simple: It wouldn't work.

You said it yourself, they may say in a handful of episodes that there's no more money, but there are probably more episodes where humans or specifically Starfleeters mention paying for something. It's a horrible idea that I'm frankly glad they didn't try to write around too much.

QFE. That whole "money doesn't exist" thing was stupid and is a classic case of idealism getting in the way of reality.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Here's how I figured it;

Jake gets hired by the Federation New Service- The Federation, mind you- and yet does not get paid for a book he wrote for them. (It's also called Starfleet New Service too)

I think he said he was hired as a reporter in some episode.

Of all institutions, I figure the Federation News Service would pay its employees. They have to have access to some type of currency if they wanted.

Jake risks his life and safety repeatedly to send news stories to them for nothing?

If that's the case, I have to guess that other companies are not paying their employees either-hence the customers have nothing to pay with.

It's a free home cooked lunch!

By the way, I might have been wrong about Jake having a job before he tried to buy the baseball card for his father.

 

[Arpy]

Apologies - this is gonna be long:

... because they've found a better way to motivate and account for people to be productive.

If you don't mind me asking ... who are they supposed to be?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAlVKgl_zCQ

It's not about the money for Steve Jobs. Or James Kirk.

Watch part of Generations last night too (I need to date) in the scene between Kirk and Picard inside the cabin where Kirk was chopping wood, Kirk said "But I sold this house months ago." Not, "The government seized this house months ago."

Kirk sold the house for filthy money.

Money isn't filthy - it isn't perfect either. As barter wasn't perfect before it. As stealing wasn't perfect before it. It's just an accounting tool we use today. Maybe the moneyless economy isn't a luddite step back or fantastical utopian dream, but the next one in the natural progression of more sophisticated systems of economics.

Last time we saw anyone cleaning a floor was outside to simulator in TWOK.

This annoys me. We have Roomba's today: we're not going to have people vacuuming lobbies in the 23rd century. End of story.

TWOK is awesome but it's Nicholas Meyer's anachronism-loving interpretation of the Trek universe. "Yeah well Roddenberry said Trek was Horation Hornblower in space." Roddenberry didn't have sailors in quasi-Napoleanic uniforms aboard ships firing broadsides at each other. No doubt if Meyer could, he'd also have crewman hoisting solar sails between the nacelles and shivering their timbers. He also wanted no-smoking signs on the bridge.

Suppose the "sweeper" was in security sweeping for Romulan bugs if you like.

Currency is essential for any economy. You can't pay for a car with cows if the car owner doesn't need cows. You need currency.

What you can eliminate is greed. The mindset that you have to be compensated for every single fucking thing you do.

I think one should be compensated for every fucking thing they do. We just don’t because we can’t. So we expect them to be professional and conscientious. But not everybody is so we deal with crappy checkout clerks and epic swindler CEOs. How much more efficient would the economy be if everyone were paid exactly what they deserved?

It doesn't say either way, but it looks as if she was a real person-the script itself doesn't identify her as artificial but an English woman in her 50's.

...

Is someone really going to go around cleaning up after someone else all day for nothing, like Data's housekeeper?

DATA: She can be trying at times.
But she does make me laugh.

For this? Lol

Maybe she was a hologram. Say she wasn’t. Is Data’s bantering supposed to mean he didn’t care for her? Also, she seemed like one’s grandmother – maybe she just loved Data and, like granny, enjoyed taking care of him in her older years, as grandparents invest their remaining energies in their grandchildren.

Regardless of whether or not she was real or paid, I don’t see mistreatment when I watch that scene.

Trek keeps making it more confusing- Tom Paris said that money disappeared in the 22nd century when a new economy took hold.

This annoyed me. It’s like Troi’s line in FC that war, poverty, and disease would all be gone in fifty years. This to me is hackneyed writers’ nonsense attributing Trek’s better future to kumbaya fantasy rather than honest to goodness human progress.

It’s also cheap to say the Vulcans fixed everything. Mercifully, we learn on ENT that they didn’t but say that they had: without humans being up to maintaining those changes, they wouldn’t have lasted.

So somehow humans gave up money even before replicators were invented.

This doesn’t necessarily bother me. I don’t know either how it would work, but the replicator alone would not…“create saints in paradise”. It would just make a lot of affluent people less dependent on others for their material comfort. Now comfort takes away needless strife giving you a clearer view of the world…you don’t have spend every waking moment hunting for food and fending off strangers. But comfort doesn’t ennoble one to cooperate with strangers to create markets and aqueducts and corporations.

There’s this sci-fi fiction website called Orion’s Arm that’s so bogged-down with made-up lingo and is so convoluted to navigate through that though I’ve thought about it for years, I’ve rarely visited. Still, one of the many great things in it that got my attention was the idea that in its future, many of its interstellar nations have exceptionally complex economies. So complex in fact that different planets and even different individuals have their own currencies and stocks. Politicians, physicians, celebrities, thinkers, what have you.

This got me thinking of how the real world may work one day. Not as an anachronistic Communist society, but as an ultra-sophisticated capitalist or post-capitalist one. What if in the future, conducting business were so sophisticated that every effort one made could be measured and accounted for and bought and sold and mortgaged and loaned and invested and traded and myriad other things yet to be invented? That would put into play so much potential that currently is left untapped.

If you believe that being good is economically effective, then in an economy that trades on every action, being good could lead to great wealth.

I don’t know. It’s a tangent I’m following. The original question is how would a moneyless economy work and I’m throwing my considerations out there.

 

[Cyke101]

I'm thinking perhaps that there's a new fusion of government/corporate philosophy that we in the 21st century can't quite comprehend just yet. Not to get too political, but modern neoliberal financial theory hit the mainstream only 30 years ago when Reagan and Thatcher were in power and it's been followed by every US president since (regardless of party affiliation), so the idea that new forms of economic thinking and framework happening in a couple hundred years isn't unheard of.

In today's political discourse, there's so much desire to separate corporate/private from government in the name of self-reliance and self-governance, ie privatization is good, government is bad or vice versa, or regulation vs. free-market, unions vs. anti-unions. But perhaps in the Federation, a new brand of philosophy and discourse has found a compromise between the state and the corporate; after all, Yoyodyne still makes ships and engines in the 24th century

 

[Nightdiamond]

It's not so much about abuse as it is about the human ego.

What made me think of this was something Picard had said in "Tapestry".
He is given a second chance at life, becomes a science officer, which he had described as a dreary, boring job as if it were beneath him.

I would have been impressed to have been an officer and a scientist.

I can imagine if someone overheard their boss say,(jokingly) "she tries my patience, but I still keep her around". even a paid employee may wince at that, but if the employee is doing it free?

Reminds me of an alien on Trek where it was said that they had a natural desire to serve other people; it made them happy..

I had to think a quite a few viewers winced at that one- "are you serious"?



I thought about how replicators or those protein sequencers things might had a hand in human improvement.

If you can create food, objects and gifts from nowhere-status won't be based on wealth anymore. (which is why it's hard to understand Ferengi behavior.)

Everyone has the same access.

Eventually all you're going to have left is your personality and character and skills, and if you're a rotten person you're going to be at the bottom of the new food chain.

Well fed and clothed, but at the bottom.


I think there are private businesses on earth, but the thing is---are they doing it all for free?

 

[Myasishchev]

Wanting something in return for something of value (excluding gifts and charity and such, of course) isn't greed, it's fair exchange. Wanting money for doing something selfless, like pulling an unconscious person off of the highway or saving the family dog from burning up in a house fire, that is greed.

Damn greedy firemen.

I thought about how replicators or those protein sequencers things might had a hand in human improvement.

Indeed. We have no idea what kind of drugs they put in the food.

 

[Cyke101]

It's not so much about abuse as it is about the human ego.

What made me think of this was something Picard had said in "Tapestry".
He is given a second chance at life, becomes a science officer, which he had described as a dreary, boring job as if it were beneath him.

I would have been impressed to have been an officer and a scientist.

I can imagine if someone overheard their boss say,(jokingly) "she tries my patience, but I still keep her around". even a paid employee may wince at that, but if the employee is doing it free?

Reminds me of an alien on Trek where it was said that they had a natural desire to serve other people; it made them happy..

I had to think a quite a few viewers winced at that one- "are you serious"?

Well, on the other hand by that point in Picard's life, he not only had the taste of captaincy, he's had it for a good twenty years. One of the basic premises of the episode is that he took his life experience for granted. If he had never been captain, that other life that Q showed him wouldn't be that much different. Rather, the part that Picard found was beneath him was that this Picard showed no initiative.

I think there are private businesses on earth, but the thing is---are they doing it all for free?

I'm really the least qualified person here to talk about financial theory, philosophy, or sociology, but I'm under the impression that there's no such thing as doing it for "free." Whenever we see Joseph Sisko in his restaurant, he always says he's gratified by the satisfaction of his customers -- assuming there's no money as we know it, his payment is making them happy. There's still some sort of exchange, even if it's immaterial. So maybe it's free in the sense of no money, but it's not free if Joseph is doing it for something in return -- and receives what he desired for his passion/labor.

I think it's interesting that we don't see many private businesses in Star Trek by simple fact that it's an exploration/military show -- how many military shows have ever focused on private enterprise? I'd say businesses exist, but how they work and how they help define the economy is the tricky part. It leads me to believe that there's at least a form of currency or financial circulation that operates on a level that's higher, less materialistic than money as we know it. Money's been around forever, but things we take for granted today, like credit and loans and checks and capital and commodities, were only either invented and/or truly defined in the 19th century and those creations changed the way society thought of money forever. That seems so recent compared to the three hundred fifty years we still have until the TNG era.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I'm beginning to think that even in the 24th century, there are jobs some people think are beneath them or just won't do.

Especially if you don't need money anymore- I think not needing money anymore-or even having want anymore- would probably inflate that attitude.

It can be argued-that even on alien cultures- that as long as they had replicators, they could similarly eliminate money and want as well.

So it's hard to understand why there are miners, traders, who know what replicators are and use holodecks who still struggle and strain in dangerous mines-for profit- as if they needed it.

It is interesting that we never really see much of Earth society on the show-though we do hear enough about some it.

I think I remember seeing on an original trek a Lawyer who had an office which would make lots of sense.

In that particular case.

The running of a restaurant in a place where it is said there is no money because there is no want- still seems hard to wrap the mind around.

I've seen this question on a few other forums; would people really continue doing something like that (running a restaurant), hard work and all, if no money was being exchanged?

 

[Cyke101]

I've seen this question on a few other forums; would people really continue doing something like that (running a restaurant), hard work and all, if no money was being exchanged?

In my Victorian lit class, we discussed how money and credit were used in novels like Great Expectations, but they were used both metaphorically and interchangeably -- credit wasn't just money, but personal credit too (like reputation, the regard of friends, etc). If money wasn't exchanged between the characters, there was still some sort of personal credit exchanged like impressions of people, or a priest passing on a moral lesson (but slowly being corrupted in the process). So things that aren't normally thought as agents or objects of exchange -- like education or marriage or even the advice of friends -- are suddenly substitutes for money in these novels.

I thought that was interesting that Joseph Sisko says he does it for the pleasure of making people happy, but his restaurant is popular -- maybe he's doing it for the fame and attention, too? If that's the case, then we've got something less material but perhaps a little more superficial than money being exchanged.

But that Sisko's a tricky fella, too. I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that like Chateau Picard, Joseph disdains the use of replicators in any part of the food-making process. If that's true, then he must get his ingredients fresh -- while the discussion earlier was about how much the replicator could change economics, Sisko seems to be out of that system -- if there's no money, how does he procure his produce? Does he grow them himself? But he manages a full-time restaurant. Where does he find the time? (or is there already tech that speeds up the farming process?) Blah.

The philosopher Zizek once said it's easier to think of worldwide destruction than to think about how to improve or replace capitalism. He might have a point At this point, I'm just thinking outloud (so to speak).

 

[Arpy]

Without addressing how the economy would work, I want to consider Joseph's restaurant for a moment. I don't think he works at it for money. I also think it's a lot easier to run a business in the 24th century. A supercomputer can take care of all your finances and marketing and ordering and bookkeeping. Droids or nanites or particle beems can do the cleaning. Etc. What you do it for is two fold. One for your own enjoyment at honing your craft and sharing it with an audience and the prestige that gets. Second you also create a community - one that is fortified by your efforts and influenced by your tastes. And one that you take pride in and are at times supported by - think George Bailey at the end of It's a Wonderful Life.

Basically though, if you're going to live a life of consequence, beyond the masturbatory walls of the holodeck, you're going to need a job, some interests beyond dilletantism that you'll need avenues for honing and sharing and that's a job. Floors will sweep themselves, but who's gonna come up with the next hot replicator recipe, or barring that, open up a place to get together to eat and relate to each other, where one could go maybe to meet someone special, or talk scifi with fellow fans.

All those connections and good will and opportunities to cross-pollinate tastes and bolster the community.