So your premise is that, deep down at our core, all humans are just greedy and self serving with no hope of ever overcoming that? I'd bet not having to worry about going hungry or worry about where to get medical procedures, having a roof over your head etc. would have quite the effect on a society in general. Since that sort of society doesn't exist in the real world, we can't say exactly how it would affect us.DarthTom said:
Uh huh. Not getting the 10,000 years of human history and nature thing are we?
Yep replicator technology will cure us of that or is rather large doses of Zoloft?
24th century wealth $$$
- Thread starter RobertScorpio
- Start date
John_Picard said:
AlGore will prevail!!!! He and John Edwards will converted their monstrosity homes into low-income apartments
You've just tapped into something. Al Gore and Dennis Kunnich [because he's a space alien himself] work together to transform human behavior in their likeness and goals - and utilizing alien technology in the early 21st century slowly beam information into our heads in combination with drug therapy to change 10,000 years of human history and behavior in just 200 years according to Trek lore to the 'happy land' planet as depicted on Star Trek. It's really quite simple don't ya understand.
My premise is quite simply. Human beings covet what they cannot have. Scarcity exists in Trek on many items and in terms of limited property e.g. the baseball card Jake tried to acquire for his dad. and that so long as scarcity exists the society as depicted in Trek is fantasy land. Worse it's poorly thought out fiction.
Plus, where is the motivation to simply survive if everything is given to you. Government housing and welfare should be an example of what society would be like if Trek's everyone-has-everything ideals existed.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Tribble dude
Cereno Jones, I think that was his name, was selling his tribbles on a Federation space station. I believe Uhura would have paid, but he gave it to her. Then we see him bartering the price with the bartender.
Quark you can dismiss because he isn't part of the Federation, and DS9 was quasi-Federation ran place..
K-7 is a totally differnt thing. It seems to be a Federation space station. One would even say that the Klingons were probably paying for their drinks, but we just dont see it.
If the Bartender and Jones are bartering over the cost of the tribbles then it suggests the more you have in terms of credit, the better off you are.
Cereno Jones, I think that was his name, was selling his tribbles on a Federation space station. I believe Uhura would have paid, but he gave it to her. Then we see him bartering the price with the bartender.
Quark you can dismiss because he isn't part of the Federation, and DS9 was quasi-Federation ran place..
K-7 is a totally differnt thing. It seems to be a Federation space station. One would even say that the Klingons were probably paying for their drinks, but we just dont see it.
If the Bartender and Jones are bartering over the cost of the tribbles then it suggests the more you have in terms of credit, the better off you are.
Exactly. And to circle back to generational inhereted wealth like the Picard family wineary implies there are a select group of people where wealth is passed down generation and by generation but the rest of the poor suckers like Barclay have to live in ~800 sq foot apartments and according to Trek dogma their happy to do it so the Picards can keep producing wine.
Yea fucking right. Human nature ain't going to change that dramatically unless there is some other variable and it ain't holograms or replicators alone that will do it.
Again, the scarcity argument holds more for basic necessities such as food, water, now energy included, have all been taken care of. Any other perceived scarcity such as wealth, baseball cards, is a societal imprint on humans and i don't think we're naturally that way.
You're making all kinds of assumptions based on today's accepted norms. Maybe all people need is a place to live. They can travel, pretty much do whatever they want, so why would they necessarily want a vineyard?
Then it's a good thing Trek is set in a fictional universe that was never meant to be a prediction of what we can expect for our own society. Would it have helped if TNG was set in the 29th century instead of the 24th? Keep everything exactly the same, just say 29 instead of 24? How about 35th century? I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter.
Here's another example we can compare to our society today. In Trek it's canon that human prepared food is superior to replicated food kinda like baked restaurant food is superior to microwaved frozen food.
In the Trek world nonsense, people willingly open restaurants, cook for others out of the goodness of their hearts because they just love to do it. They don't trade that for anything else they might want that someone else might be good at say creating or recreating or refurbishing antiques by hand.
In the Trek world everyone is kinda a 19th century renissance explorer good at everything - wanting for nothing - and just sailing around the galaxy for the 'good of humanity.'
That is nonsense. It defies human nature. It defies the way we have lived or live today. It defies logic.
I'm making no such assumptions. I'm using the on-screen canon and dialog to justify my argument. There are many more examples in the series where trade occurs for scarce objects or for play like at Quarks with other cultures that don't follow the Federation alleged economic nonsense.
Of course it's fictional sense Trek also breaks the laws of physics. But I tend to like my Fiction believable and when it comes to the economics of the human future as depicted on the series - it's simply not believable even as fiction.
For example, I'll accept sound in space for dramatic license because well it would be boring without it. But when the writers go to great lengths to create a fictional environment about the economics of the future that is not only improbable but outright stupid - I tune out - why: because they didn't have to do so to make the story interesting - like sound in space.
Actually, it isn't. Face it -- you're so blinded with idealism that you can't comprehend the reality that is man.
Not that I put a whole lot of thought into this issue but here's my take:
By Picard's era, energy is cheap if not free (the prevalance of antimatter reactors would presumably drive energy costs down to the point of meaninglessness) and replicators are prevalant. Hence, even the poorest of people would be comparatively "rich" since with the purchase of one replicator would enable them to make just about anything that they needed.
Hence, while people may still earn and spend money, they would need far less of it to get by. Hence, they could work less and do more of whatever they like. Picard's comment about the Federation using no money could have been hyperbole . . . money still exists, it's just not all that importany any more.
By Picard's era, energy is cheap if not free (the prevalance of antimatter reactors would presumably drive energy costs down to the point of meaninglessness) and replicators are prevalant. Hence, even the poorest of people would be comparatively "rich" since with the purchase of one replicator would enable them to make just about anything that they needed.
Hence, while people may still earn and spend money, they would need far less of it to get by. Hence, they could work less and do more of whatever they like. Picard's comment about the Federation using no money could have been hyperbole . . . money still exists, it's just not all that importany any more.
There are many people who've over-drank the Trek Kool-aid to the point of borderline 'Trek-alcoholism' [
]I don't mean to imply that I don't like Trek btw but I don't like this one aspect of it which is one of the reasons why I suppose that I gravitate to DS9 of all the series because they steer clear of alot of the stupid rhetoric that was avoidable and focus on simply writing good stories.
Another example is TNG's constant hammering of the Prime Directive which was another stupid concept in Trek that DS9 for the most part avoided as well.
And that's the problematic part of the entire fictional world they've created.That's because living in trek is not about how we have lived or live today. Do you really think that if people didn't have to do anything then they just simply wouldn't? That's a shitty outlook on humanity and I don't really subscribe to it. And that view doesn't even apply to humanity today. In a simplistic comparison, why would people have hobbies?
Yes, you are. Quark is not a member of the Federation. You're seeing things at the fringe of the federation involving non-Federation members and economic policies. The Federation doesn't exist in a bubble. To trade or otherwise deal with non-Federation species requires abiding by other rules than the Federations for deals. Doing that doesn't mean that everyone in the federation lives or dies by those beliefs.
I'll give you that. They didn't actually need to try to explain away how people live and work because it doesn't make much sense if you're trying to connect the trek universe with out actual future.
I'm not saying humanity is going down that road, but in universe, they story tellers tell us that people don't live for material wealth and do things to better themselves and society. Basic necessities such as food, water and shelter are taken care of so people are free to pursue whatever they want. Even Ben Sisko's father runs a restaurant well past what many of us would consider retirement age.
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