But in "The Void" Janeway says the replicators could be used to make weapons...
Hell, why The Federation Uses No money
- Thread starter Nedersong
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You've all misunderstand. It isn't credits; it's credit. They're all living on credit.
...and we know where that leads...
Buying a 360,000 Credit starship when you can only afford a 100,000 Credit starship... then not being able to make the payments.
Maybe if money had a strip-queen figure that its uniform couldn't even hide...
I just assumed it wasn't important anymore because the UFP has a lot of resources that can be extracted no matter what the conditions (i.e. using holograms).
We cannot possibly conceive of what the economic model would be in 300 years, with an interstellar "territory" encompassing many lightyears, and home to hundreds of species. So, it certainly wont be socialism or capitalism by the definitions of Earth's primitive time in their POV.
We cannot possibly conceive of what the economic model would be in 300 years, with an interstellar "territory" encompassing many lightyears, and home to hundreds of species. So, it certainly wont be socialism or capitalism by the definitions of Earth's primitive time in their POV.
Perhaps EARTH, the member planet of the UFP, doesn't use money in the 24th century, but the UFP has a national currency system called a "credit".
I don't know how you'd do trade, start businesses, or reward adventure and risking your ass in space without any kind of economic incentive, or somekind of generalized incentive that money is (you can make money anything you want, it's very useful like that).
But since there's all that 'no money/currency' stuff in TNG, perhaps we can ret-con to say that on Earth it's like that... but that's not a universal experience for all Starfleet or the UFP.
I don't know how you'd do trade, start businesses, or reward adventure and risking your ass in space without any kind of economic incentive, or somekind of generalized incentive that money is (you can make money anything you want, it's very useful like that).
But since there's all that 'no money/currency' stuff in TNG, perhaps we can ret-con to say that on Earth it's like that... but that's not a universal experience for all Starfleet or the UFP.
And see, that's what's so damned irritating about Star Trek. When the Vulcans made first contact with humans we were on the verge of going extinct. The only thing that changed between then and the current human paradise is that the Vulcans gave humans better technology and all our problems basically went away. War, poverty, diease...all the maladies that afflicted humankind for millenia weren't solved by improving ourselves and the human condition. Rather, world hunger was solved by a literally infinite supply of food. Sounds like a nice place to live, but not particularly admirable.
The supposedly enlightened humans of The Next Generation aren't actually better than us at all. They're more secure and healthy and happy because they can afford to be. They don't shun money because they're more wise, but because they have nearly infinite resources and thus no reason to worry about any of their needs or wants being fulfilled. It's all so disingenuous and silly, a dumb utopia built with toys rather than actual wisdom. Gene Rodenberry was shallow, and because of him so was Star Trek.
So, what draws you to a Star Trek forum to the point where you register and post on it?
There are people on this planet right now that would not understand what "economic incentive" is, and yet you believe that it would be necessary to motivate people centuries in the future?
Fascinating...
The main thing I wonder about is property, how its transferred between people in the Federation. Say you start a family and the one room apartment is no longer suitable and you find a nice house how does the transfer of ownership from the previous owner to you occur without some sort of medium of exchange like currency?
You can still enjoy a show overall even if you don't agree with all the decisions made by those who run and create the show.
You can still enjoy a show overall even if you don't agree with all the decisions made by those who run and create the show.
Is that really all you have to contribute? I enjoy the show and don't see any harm in talking about things I don't like about it. It's just tv.
I think Gene Rodenberry's grasp on serious issues was pretty weak. That's why he portrayed TNG's humans as "better than us", rather than ordinary humans with better stuff. They didn't use money because they simply didn't need it, not because they're enlightened. When Picard says in First Contact that acquiring wealth isn't the sole drive of humanity anymore, and that humans work to better themselves instead, that sounds like a wonderful place to live, but not necessarily a wiser society. Put Picard in a life where his tea hasn't been coming out of a box in the wall his whole life, where his kids are hungry, and then we'll talk about nobility.
I think Deep Space Nine did a better job of addressing this and was a better show for it. This isn't an attempt to flame TNG, without Rodenberry's influence I think it went on to be a much better show. It's just interesting is all.
I think that TOS actually had things pretty right in the portrayal of humanity. The people were still recognizable humans, but humans who had matured, grown, evolved over the years to a point where alot of the problems that face our modern society had been solved. Technology was the outgrowth of the societal development and was a tool to be used, it wasn't the cause or solution.
By the time of TNG, Roddenberry had gotten a little cockeyed in his utopian view of the future, and now technology was the magic provider, humans were damned near perfect, and any form of private property, money or economic system other than socialism was evil. And then Berman and Braga took it even farther with Enterprise, when they essentially stated that humans didn't improve at all, we were just given some nifty technology.
Something got lost along the way...
By the time of TNG, Roddenberry had gotten a little cockeyed in his utopian view of the future, and now technology was the magic provider, humans were damned near perfect, and any form of private property, money or economic system other than socialism was evil. And then Berman and Braga took it even farther with Enterprise, when they essentially stated that humans didn't improve at all, we were just given some nifty technology.
Something got lost along the way...
Agree, I'm sorry but even a social democrat (close to a socialist but not quite) like me thinks Rodenberry has some crazy ideas of humans, Federation (they can't argue ever lol), and an economy that's even more egalitarian that socialism (yes guys, the USSR and North Korea had money/currency) in the 24th century. He makes every human seem like they were required to be in Buddhist monestaries as kids. I'll believe it more if it was in the 84th century, but humans psychologically evolved out of their usually negative sides is just too hard to believe.
True, which is why I'm liking TOS more than TNG now that I'm actually awake during 06:00. Besides the fact that I'm more a "kick your ass" person than a "we must talk about this no matter what and bore even ourselves to death" when it comes to television.
Who are these people?
I've always preferred the idea that money just doesn't exist on a physical basis. But I also think that the pursuit of wealth isn't something that motivates most Federation citizens as well because technology has diminished the worth of material posessions and of most basic needs. Still, I think people are compensated for the work they do, but in a society that has very different economic structure and overall values than we do, money isn't that big of deal to most in the Federation.
But along the frontier, on worlds that are farther away from the core Federation industrial sectors, things are probably slightly different and colonists may have to resort to old-fashioned bartering with non-Federation worlds for certain goods and services...
But along the frontier, on worlds that are farther away from the core Federation industrial sectors, things are probably slightly different and colonists may have to resort to old-fashioned bartering with non-Federation worlds for certain goods and services...
Wait a minute. Is there actually evidence of the Vulcans giving the humans technology? I mean real canon. NX-01 was a human design, after all.
Sure, First Contact made clear that this was an important event. But it didn't say how it was important.
As for the main topic; sure, replicators make it silly to worry about a lot of things that we currently worry about. Food, clothing, toys, are all essentially free. (You could have an intellectual-property regime that would limit replication of stylish things to folks with credits; see, e.g. Charles Stross' Accelerando. There's no evidence as to whether or not the Federation does this, but I suspect not). And most of pursuing money has to do with pursuing status, and the Federation may just deal in status directly rather than use a money proxy. So for most purposes, there's no reason to think you need money.
But the model breaks down with real estate. You can't replicate that. As I've often said before, the single most unrealistic thing in all of Trek is Harry Kim's apartment.
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Oh, please. Look at your list. Do you think the people who risk their asses in space are doing it for the money. There are jobs that need money to motivate people to do them, but that isn't one of them.
For that matter, it's not at all clear that most high-level business people are really in it for money past a certain point. Is Steve Jobs still in it for the money?
More generally, many, many people are not interested in money past a certain threshold level of physical comfort. Whole sectors of the economy are based on finding people who would rather work in that industry than make the money that their talent would otherwise earn them. This is even more common in precapitalist societies, where people value more leisure over more goods.
