Another take on "there's no money in the 24th century"

[Nightdiamond]

Erasing? Not necessarily. Why would you accept the latter episode but not the former? What makes one more authoritative than the other? Airdate? That seems rather flimsy.

The offending scene in "In the Cards" is just a conversation between Jake and Nog. Something tells me that the situation must be a bit more complicated than those two would be able to describe. Me, I'd be more likely to accept the situation as we see it in "Farpoint," where we actually SEE the Federation economy in action, in a way.

Agreed-and a good example--if they left it at that.

But therein lies the problem. We have two examples--one earlier one suggests humans use some type of credit--but the later ones flat out say that humans don't use money at all--

Either one cancels out the other-- in this case, it's too black and white.

Jake is not saying, 'Hey I'm a teenager with no job, I don't have any money', he's saying he doesn't have any money because he's a human. That's no ordinary conversation.

We also have to remember there are at least two other statements from other Trek characters that state humans don't use money;

Tom Paris: When the New World Economy took shape in the late 22nd century and money went the way of the dinosaur, Fort Knox was turned into a museum.

JAKE: Not always. I sold my first book today.

QUARK: Really? How much did you get for it?

JAKE: It's just a figure of speech. The Federation News Service is going to publish a book of my stories about life on the station under Dominion rule.

QUARK: And they're not paying you?

JAKE: No.

QUARK: Well then, you have my sympathies and the first round of drinks is on the house.

JAKE: Really?

QUARK: No. It's a figure of speech

Why didn't Jake get paid his credits for selling his book? How does this guy ever do anything, he never has money or credits

Even if it's electronic currency in the form of credits-it would still be money or treated as money. It accumulates, it gets depleted, it has to be earned, it has to be "stored" somewhere.

Those damning statements about money don't leave much wiggle room.

 

[bbjeg]

But Farpoint Station wasn't part of the Federation. That's what I meant the Enterpise granted Dr. Crusher a certain amount of credits to exchange for goods with the Bandi.

Maybe credits are different for everyone and it's just tickets for additional goods, resources, and services. The Federation is always willing to help those in need but maybe sparing engineers and power supplies for experiments or even trading for obtained dilithim costs credits.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Jake is not saying, 'Hey I'm a teenager with no job, I don't have any money', he's saying he doesn't have any money because he's a human.

Maybe Jake's just trying to rationalize his own failures? If he can blame it on his being human, then that's out of his control...

As for Tom Paris' quote: Yeah, the "new world economy" takes shape in the 22nd century, and a hundred years after that, Scotty "just BOUGHT a boat" in ST VI.

 

[Sci]

Star Trek is full of contradictory information about the presence or absence of money from Earth in the Federation era. There's no way to reconcile every statement literally; you have to creatively re-interpret some things in order to create a coherent hypothesis.

Mine is this:

The Federation no longer in general uses paper currency, and nobody in the well-developed UFP worlds needs money to survive. The Federation's developed worlds exist in such a state of abundance -- not a literal state of abundance, but the resources necessary to sustain sentient life at at level we today would consider comfortable middle-class by the standards of the industrialized West -- that money is no longer necessary, and there is more than enough surplus to support the entire population at a comfortable living standard even if only some of them ever decide to become productive workers in the economy. Greed is understood as a vice that destroys societies.

However, scarce resources still exist, and people still seek luxuries. As a result, there is still a market. However, this market is regulated, unlike the anarchic monster markets are today. Firms that reach a certain size are required to function as worker-owned, democratically-managed cooperatives, ensuring communal ownership of the means of production and distributing profits equitably to all worker-owners. This is a form of market-based democratic socialism. People who found firms when they start out small and thereby take a financial risk in so founding them are generously compensated when those firms are required to transition into worker-owned cooperatives. If they want to keep getting wealthy after that, they've got to contribute to the productive economy again by going out and founding a new firm.

To prevent the evolution of permanent economic classes and of de facto aristocracies, nobody is allowed to transfer great wealth from one generation to another; if your children want to become very wealthy, they must earn it just like you did. There is also both a minimum compensation level and a maximum compensation level; wealth inequality exists, but is not allowed to exceed certain levels, as the Federation understands that too great of wealth inequality inevitably leads to tyranny.

Culturally, however, the primary mover is no longer individual greed or the desperate race to keep up with the bills so you're not out on the streets. Economic security is enjoyed by everyone; some people may enjoy greater wealth and live in great luxury, but nobody lives less than a comfortable middle-class standard by modern reckoning. This means that the great motivator, the thing that keeps people productive in life, is no longer the drivers of capitalism -- it is, as Picard so often says, the desire to improve themselves and humanity, to accomplish great things for the benefit of the individual and of society. No longer the desire to step on other men, but the desire to lift up other men.

That's how I reconcile all these statements: By hypothesizing that the Federation exists as a market-based democratic socialist economy with a strong welfare state and an active bottom-down redistribution of wealth, and strong cultural stigmas against capitalism and greed.

 

[SPCTRE]

Let's get a bit more concrete. As an example, Sisko's father runs a restaurant. Seats at that restaurant have to be a finite resource (because they require labor), and so would not be "free" to everyone—the owners get to choose whom they give it to (which brings up the interesting question of whether the Federation would have anti-discrimination laws, but I digress). Let's say Sisko chooses to feed people in his neighborhood; choosing to live in that neighborhood is the "price" his customers pay for his food. Similarly, Picard's brother makes real wine; that would also be a finite resource (as opposed to synthehol, which is free to everyone). From the context, it seems likely that Picard the elder distributes his bottles to friends and family; a relationship with him is therefore the "price" of a bottle. Art, live theater, music, etc.—anything involving human labor would constitute limited resources. Presumably, if you wanted that kind of thing you could sign up to get it—if there was too much demand, there would have to be a waiting list.

http://qr.ae/3NT6h

It's funny to me that it didn't occur to the author that the restaurant might operate on a first-come, first-served reservation basis, and when it finally does occur to him in the final paragraph, renders his whole idea of "price" irrelevant. Depending on the establishments popularity, people might simply have to make reservations way, way in advance if they want the Sisko Culinary Experience, trademark pending, no wait, there is no money anymore, also, no trademarks.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

TOS never had this problem. The spin-off scripts that were anti-money simply reflect a lack of economic understanding. The writers didn't think it through and realize the implications of doing away with money. It just sounded pretty and they "canonized" it.

But money is not about greed. It's a tool with three functions:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/more-subjects/economics/money-and-banking/functions-of-money

In a society without money, you'd be facing huge inefficiencies, and even worse, you'd be at the mercy of the government official deciding who gets what.

Electricity and replicated goods might be plentiful in the future, but there are only so many luxury apartments in San Francisco with a spectacular view (Kirk's in TWOK), or farms in France (Picard's in "Family"), and so on. You can't outlaw scarcity altogether.

So, rather than go on my knees and beg a Commissar for what I want, I'd rather earn my own money and decide how to spend it myself. A monetary system gives the little guy some dignity and autonomy (as the helpless, dependent Jake Sisko found out when he was beggared by Gene Roddenberry's "enlightenment").

 

[Stoo]

My thinking is basically along the same lines as Sci. Scarcity hasn't totally ceased to exist - it's not like everyone can have their own starship, for example. But resources are plentiful enough that everyone has a comfortable middle class standard of living.

If people want a bit more out of life, an apartment with the best view, some rare antique for example, there's probably some way to go about earning that. But excessive greed is probably seen as distasteful. The answer to "how do you get a huge mansion with a fleet of runabouts in the garage" may be "why do you even want that?"

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The answer to "how do you get a huge mansion with a fleet of runabouts in the garage" may be "why do you even want that?"

The spin-off executive producer, top writers, studio executives, and Patrick Stewart surely had mansions and all the cars they wanted. It's a good thing they weren't hypocrites.

 

[Stoo]

Possibly true. But an idea presented by hypocrites isn't somehow automatically wrong or unworthy. I'm not interested in the personal greed of the producers or whatever.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The writers didn't think it through and realize the implications of doing away with money. It just sounded pretty and they "canonized" it.

[snip]

In a society without money, you'd be facing huge inefficiencies, and even worse, you'd be at the mercy of the government official deciding who gets what.

It frequently comes up (in these frequent discussions), and it should, but it's important to remember context. The human culture of the 23rd and 24th centuries in Star Trek is post-nuclear holocaust and post-First Contact. It's not our culture. Real people of today don't have the same cultural reference points assumed to exist in Star Trek.

The no-money idea is as if John Lennon's "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" were imported into Star Trek. It's an element of the fantasy, just like warp drive and transporter. The warp drive and the transporter are easier to criticize in fact, on the grounds of physical impossibility. If something is physically impossible, then no amount of wishing or good will will make it happen. Economics, at least, depends in part on cooperation. In a world where basic necessities aren't scarce, there would be no physical impossibilities to cope with, at least with respect to allocation of the basic necessities. So, part of the premise in Star Trek is that people approach the problem of cooperation from a perspective that is post-nuclear holocaust and post-First Contact. That perspective is part of the "explanation" for how it works, that is, if you like, perfectly analogous to the technobabble used to describe the operation of the warp drive and transporter.

Given all that, it's really hard to see how the no-money idea is less plausible than any of the iconic pieces of fantasy technology like the warp drive and transporter.

 

[SPCTRE]

Sociohistoribabble, if you will.

 

[Sci]

The answer to "how do you get a huge mansion with a fleet of runabouts in the garage" may be "why do you even want that?"

The spin-off executive producer, top writers, studio executives, and Patrick Stewart surely had mansions and all the cars they wanted. It's a good thing they weren't hypocrites.

Did they? Does Sir Patrick own a mansion?

I have no idea. I know Sir Patrick is a millionaire, and I presume the producers were as well. I know Gene Roddenberry was.

Does that make him a hypocrite? Maybe. I'm not sure. On the one hand, one might say that advocating for an end to capitalism when you benefit from it is hypocrisy. On the other hand, one might make the argument that in a capitalist society, personal freedom is actually measured in the size of their bank account, that a dollar is a unit of freedom--and that therefore, the only people who are truly free are those with millions. It's a bit harder to condemn someone for being both rich and anti-capitalist if you accept the premise that asking them to give up their wealth in the name of "consistency" means asking them to willingly return to the status of being oppressed.

Sometimes I've thought that the status of being rich is inherently an act of thievery against the poor. Other times I haven't. I'm living from paycheck to paycheck, but it occurs to me that asking someone else to also be poor for the sake of "consistency" seems to go against the idea that we're looking for dignity for all people. The solution to the problem of economic oppression is an equitable distribution of wealth, not an equitable distribution of poverty. Keep the mansion--but maybe give up the yacht. Keep some levels of inequality--but curb it significantly from its corrupt excesses today.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Sociohistoribabble, if you will.

Yes.

 

[robau]

Jake is not saying, 'Hey I'm a teenager with no job, I don't have any money', he's saying he doesn't have any money because he's a human.

Maybe Jake's just trying to rationalize his own failures? If he can blame it on his being human, then that's out of his control...

As for Tom Paris' quote: Yeah, the "new world economy" takes shape in the 22nd century, and a hundred years after that, Scotty "just BOUGHT a boat" in ST VI.

Figure of speech~!

 

[TheGoodNews]

The no-money idea is as if John Lennon's "Imagine all the people sharing all the world" were imported into Star Trek. It's an element of the fantasy, just like warp drive and transporter.....

I've explained in past comments that it has been attempted within the past century and is being put into practice in contemporary times in maybe somewhat ad hoc ways among groups of individuals seeking an alternative for various reasons or sets of circumstances.

Economics, at least, depends in part on cooperation. In a world where basic necessities aren't scarce, there would be no physical impossibilities to cope with, at least with respect to allocation of the basic necessities. So, part of the premise in Star Trek is that people approach the problem of cooperation from a perspective that is post-nuclear holocaust and post-First Contact. That perspective is part of the "explanation" for how it works....

That makes sense. But inversely, people under conditions of scarcity or economic crisis can still cooperate with each other and provide free services or organize moneyless transactions as seen by these activists in this news report from Exarchia, Greece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tvwSwp1TmU

Admittedly, this is in response to an economic crisis. And the social center (organized in a squatted building hence no rent) and clinic are dependent on donations, probably material as well as financial. But the barter network is completely moneyless.

Given all that, it's really hard to see how the no-money idea is less plausible than any of the iconic pieces of fantasy technology like the warp drive and transporter.

The key thing is really self-management rather than post-scarcity or some futuristic technology, though that might help too if it reduces production costs to or near zero. Money is necessary if someone else controls the means of production or available resources and is able to demand monetary renumeration. If people are able to provide for themselves either individually or cooperatively, then paying someone money for something you already possess would be illogical.

 

[Sci]

Well, the thing is, money is more efficient than bartering because it allows for a direct valuation and exchange, rather than requiring a long chain of exchanges to acquire a product or service. So I don't realistically expect some form of currency to disappear.

But money is not incompatible with collective ownership of the means of production.

 

[Cyke101]

The answer to "how do you get a huge mansion with a fleet of runabouts in the garage" may be "why do you even want that?"

The spin-off executive producer, top writers, studio executives, and Patrick Stewart surely had mansions and all the cars they wanted. It's a good thing they weren't hypocrites.

I kind of fail to see how that makes anyone a hypocrite. Keep in mind that they also write huge battle scenes but I'm 99% sure that they don't shoot people in real life.

 

[TheGoodNews]

Well, the thing is, money is more efficient than bartering because it allows for a direct valuation and exchange, rather than requiring a long chain of exchanges to acquire a product or service.

Don't forget gift economies, usufruct, prosumerism and mutual aid.

So I don't realistically expect some form of currency to disappear.

Time vouchers? Energy certificates? Distribution cards? Bit coins? Might depend on what one defines as money or currency, though.

But money is not incompatible with collective ownership of the means of production.

Maybe not. But workers' self-managment does sound fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIWjnEPNY

King Arthur: "Bloody peasant!"
Constitutional Peasant: "Oh, what a giveaway."

 

[Cyke101]

Well, the thing is, money is more efficient than bartering because it allows for a direct valuation and exchange, rather than requiring a long chain of exchanges to acquire a product or service.

Don't forget gift economies, usufruct, prosumerism and mutual aid.

So I don't realistically expect some form of currency to disappear.

Time vouchers? Energy certificates? Distribution cards? Bit coins? Might depend on what one defines as money or currency, though.

I'm reminded of the fact that despite that they're common facts of life, the system of writing checks and trading stocks is still relatively young in the grand scheme of economic history, so much so that Victorian era literature had a common theme of the "spectre" of economics -- that is, money that's invisible and otherwise imaginary but still with trade-able value and immense impact. Now that we have the internet, I'm sure the nature of money and how we conceive of economics and compensation is changing as we speak.

 

[TheGoodNews]

Now that we have the internet, I'm sure the nature of money and how we conceive of economics and compensation is changing as we speak.

Social capital. Open source. Internet of Things. Maker bots. Bit coins. How many "likes" did one earn today?