I would never join the Enterprise-D's poker table.

True, but replicators run on energy. So do transporters, environmental systems, and self care items like sonic showers. You have to get energy from somewhere. Also, you need to be able to pay someone to fix your replicator, transporter (assuming it didn't splatter you across the cosmos), or shower. Not to mention things like child care, dog walking, party planning, or other service industries.

 

might be a guranteed standard of living, but perks and extras that can't be replicated (Barclay's super swank apartment in the heart of San Francisco, George Kirk's Corvette, Baron Grimes' everything) have to either be bought on external (and quasi-legal in some cases) markets using foreign corrency or else there is some method of exchange. I suspect it would be based on service to society in some way. There's a lot of risk being in Starfleet, and while a lot of people in the service do seem like they are ideologically fit for the role, if not outright cheerleaders like Picard, some officers do leave you scratching your head. My suspicion is that Starfleet is a rare way to rise above, either politically or materially. It's also a very risky way, considering the rate of attrition. And also, considering the number of multi-generational Starfleet families, it might not be all that easy to get out of and acclimate to civilian life with.


Another option might be colonization. There has to be something driving people to these highly risky worlds instead of having everything in paradises like Earth.

 

Whit energy again, the implication is that Earth/The Federation found found safe, cheap/free sources of energy.

With child care, dog walking, party planning and other services...well remember Joseph Sisko's restaurant. Once again the implication here is that there's people who just love cooking for people, walking dogs or looking after children.
It might not make all that much sense, but that's the explanation the shows tended to go with.

With more menial kinds of work....honestly I always though Star Trek should address this by having heaps of non-humanoid robots buzzing around doing all the work humans don't want to do.

For my own headcanon I once described it like this in another thread, when it comes to clothes:

Clothes from replicators are free, you can use your replicator, or go to the local "mall" replicator any time you want to replicate as many shirts, pants and ballgowns as you wish.
However, just as with replicated food, replicated clothes are seen as "inferior" to handmade clothes (imagine the difference between an artifically created diamond and the real thing)
So there's people who create clothes which you can buy and sell for "Credits" (like the ones Dr. Crusher mentions in Farpoint) and so it is with everything else a person produces by themselves.
There's no more chain stores and a non-replicated dress, sown together from replicated fabric is probably a luxury item.
And going along those lines, a hand-made dress made from non-replicated fabric is probably something extremely expensive that people could only afford once a lifetime, since there would not be much cotton or wool production going on anymore. And non-replicated silk or leather are most likely unobtainable.

 

Why did this remind me of electric cars that are now the new huge thing. They use electricity, just plug in and drive. Yeah, who made that electricity and how?

 

Depends on where you live.

 

Star Trek can't really handle a post-AI world very well. It's why with rare exceptions it's either handled artificial life and intelligent as hostile and antagonistic or at best as a pathetic Pinnochio. A replicator could make a shirt with a random assortment of flaws and identifiable patterns of stitching and weaving to make it impossible to tell from the real thing, likewise for food and drink. The replicator and more importantly the computational power to create such things leaves humanity as indolent recipients of wish fulfillment at the hands of their own perfected creation. Nothing wrong with it, if the AI's morally better than their masters and are cool with the whole thing.

Star Trek rests on a foundation that there is something intrinsically monumental and important about being human, and while that does lead to the optimism and can-do we all love about the show, it's a lie. We're just apes that got lucky.

 

DS9 certainly has currency.

 

And you could easily end up in a causality loop....

 

DS9 is also the series that repeatedly states that humans do not use money at all in the 24th century.
All monetary transactions in that show are with people outside the Federation (like when Miles buys a Jumja Stick from a Bajoran).