Federation Credits
- Thread starter Johnny7oak
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All that is actually needed (by normal people at least) comes from replicators. People may build or grow things old fashioned way if they want to, and I'm sure many do. But no one needs to do that.
Because that's part of the 'hobby.' If those things didn't come from replicenter, they were given by people who grew them as for fun. And yes, they give them for free, their reward is the fun of producing those items and the appreciation of their fellow people (and possibly 'likes' on their website.)
Or during that time replicator tech was not that advanced, and there were no small household replicators, and people got their stuff from a local replicenter.
Continuity error is there being incompatible statements. It is both canon that there is no money and that people sometimes spoke as if there were.
Neither receives material compensation, the latter might receive more prestige though.
People like to claim that replicators would sweep away all vestiges of capitalism and be an instant cure for all of society's ills...but you know what I really think would happen if things like this were invented?
There was a novel I read when I was in junior high, I can't remember what it was called, but it was one where something very much like a replicator was invented. It couldn't actually create things out of thin air, but it could make perfect copies of whatever you put into it. As soon as these things became widely used, society rapidly reshaped itself, becoming a brutal slave system: those who owned these magic machines became the masters, and those who didn't have them were the slaves.
Given what we all know about basic human nature, I'm suspecting that this would be a more likely result of replicators hitting the market.
Perhaps. But Star Trek is about better future.
Star Trek is about a technologically advanced future, people are people. Picard got obvious satisfaction from snapping the spine of the Borg queen.
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Yeah, that is just utter reality denying bullshit. Star Trek, TNG is particular, is about the humanity being better morally.
Trek has always been really bi-polar about the money thing. True, the main takeaway is that the way Trek presented it, it makes no sense whatsoever. Either one minute everyone uses money regularly, the next minute there is absolutely no money use at all.
If you ask me, it all boils down to 3 major statements;
Kirk: "They're still using money" (20th century humans)
Picard: "You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century."
Jake Sisko: "I'm Human, I don't have any money.
And yet you see humans bargaining for things, gambling, and toiling away at strenuous jobs.
Humans steal, break the law and risk and go to prison when they don't need to. They work at jobs they don't like when they themselves say there is no need for money.
Doesn't it make 24th century humans look weird?
If you ask me, it all boils down to 3 major statements;
Kirk: "They're still using money" (20th century humans)
Picard: "You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century."
Jake Sisko: "I'm Human, I don't have any money.
And yet you see humans bargaining for things, gambling, and toiling away at strenuous jobs.
Humans steal, break the law and risk and go to prison when they don't need to. They work at jobs they don't like when they themselves say there is no need for money.
Doesn't it make 24th century humans look weird?
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Yet only a few episodes before Jake in fact had money.
This was right after witnessing a woman buy a newspaper, and Kirk subsequently spoke of selling his house. So (imo) he was speaking of physical money.
The same could be said of non-replicated sources of needs.
Or, they were grown or bred or manufactured as commercial ventures and sold for a nice profit to consumers.
Not according to the show. Maurice Picard (JeanLuc's father) had discussions with his wife on whether to get a replicator for their house. Replicators are not something new.
Maurice was a wealthy vineyard owner from an aristocratic family, while Michael is a dirt-poor working stiff. Obviously, Maurice could afford to get replicators when they first came out, if he wanted to.
And that's what so bi-polar about the whole thing. There's just as many examples of humans talking about using no money or getting everything free from a replicator as there is to them "buying" or "selling" things.
What makes it a genuine mess is the straight forward universal statements that for humans there is no money.
Compared to us, 24th century human beings are supposed to be more evolved and advanced -- and yet in the 24th century where poverty is eliminated, you have humans joining organized crime and committing things like murder for hire? Or supplying outlaw terrorist organizations and risking prison???
That was the intent, which can be seen especially in the earlier seasons of TNG.
This we're in agreement on, at least as far as the Federation internally, but there are still moments where I believe a nominal external currency is necessary for dealing with societies that are not so enlightened, eg during negotiations for the Barzan wormhole, and therefore that Federation Credits needs to have some kind of value on a galactic exchange or whatever for that money to actually mean anything. No-one here is suggesting the 1701-D crew are doing it for the Benjamins.
TOS is a much greyer area, as until 1984's The Voyage Home it was never infered on screen that they existed post-money, and indeed the evidence we did have from TOS the series was more to the contrary, that a money of some kind still existed and even that the crew were being paid for their service. (I'll acknowledging here that the Phase II series bible from 1977, set during Kirk's era, lays out all this stuff that would be the foundation for TNG's view, but it is a revision of what TOS seemed to show.)
So my guess is that the main difference with credits used is that you don't work to get rich. And everyone contributes... We just try to get wealthy or go shirtless if we don't work... Not including disability and blind. So everyone there doesn't appear to be shirtless unless supplies are late. And everyone works. Sorry, phone.
It's easy to be a saint in paradise.
Not really, the future holds both moral and less so people, just like today.
If "creator" includes the writers, then the intent is that there are not just businesses in the Federation, but also corporations that own entire planets.
Which means that household replicators were available at the time.
No even close, statements that money is absent are few, the use of money in the Federation, it's presence in the Federation and example of it's use are more numerous.
Who are these saints?
No idea, but apparently they have an easier time.
so future recruiters are about as unscrupulous as today
Hours maybe?
There are a few others statements around, you'd be surprised, but they're easy to miss.
PARIS: "Well, er, when the new world economy took shape in the late twenty second century and money went the way of the dinosaur"
And they are few. The problem is, those few statements are major statements. Major enough to be game changing.
It's a weird universe or society, when one moment someone declares money is extinct, the next minute they (often the same person) is shown acknowledging using money.
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