Arpy said:
How did the DS9 crew buy anything at Quark’s without money?
One of the set decorations on the sound stage where the "Quark's Bar" was, was a mock ATM machine. It got moved around a lot. One of the buttons was labeled credits.
If the system I suspect is in place, the the food and drink served at Quarks to Starfleet and their dependent is charged to people's financial accounts, Quark would likely have a business account the funds would be transferred to. I think it reasonable that Quark would need to have a way of making long distant payments without having to physically ship GPL to suppliers.
Or, Starfleet eats and drinks for free, this is in exchange for Quark not paying rent. Which means that Quark from a certain way of looking at it is in fact paying rent.
I was agreeing with you that they had currency to buy things at Quark’s. It only makes sense given he was operating under Bajoran sovereignty and everyone seemed to use GPL.
Arpy said:
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3) They're giving a incomplete description of the Federations economic structure.
Correct: they didn’t mention the foreign credit accounts. Because there’s little time to explain it to Lily in a den of Borg, and everyone one DS9 and Voyager already know about them.
But what you said doesn't go far enough, because it doesn't account for the observed use of money within the Federation, by people whose planets are Federation members.
That's the trick, both Picard (and others) statements that the money is gone
has to exist side by side with money still being there. This is where the "incomplete description of the Federations economic structure" comes in. Because if both are
equally true, then something is going on beyond simply "there's no money," or "they only use it with outsiders."
Right. The point is, if you’re a Federation citizen, interacting with a trillion other Federation citizens, you don’t use money. Dealing with aliens and their economies is another issue. Some of which may not use money either but barter or something completely different still — again, these are
aliens, and I’d like to see more sci-fi dealing with alien economics. It might also be interesting to have multiple economies running under a single government — if you want to play the money game (the latest from Nintendo MMCDXI), have at it. It might also be interesting for them to come across civilization that has multiple governments ruling over a single area, come to think of it. Again: go sci-fi.
Then in the mid 23rd century money use is repeatedly referred to. One possibility is that the non-existence of money wasn't working the way society theorized it would and money was reintroduced.
I’d rather we not go down this path as you then can say anything that changed series to series or episode to episode was set aside then reintroduced. If things are that difficult for the viewer to roll with
in a TV show, you might as well have each series or episode therein be a visit to an alternate universe. Also, where does the music come from? Why do all the characters look and talk and act like actors from the real world? Why are they all wearing make-up -- that can change shot to shot in the same scene? Why is the whole thing a TV show? Why have they not come for me for daring to ask such questions? Oh they have? "Corrupting the Youth of Athens," you say. Very well, pass the hemlock. The good Q kind,
Nogatch Hemlock, please.
My case here is that you seem to be shifting the weighting of evidence frequently to suit whatever point you are currently making.
Again, my point was that you take
Real World intent over
In Universe intent. The difference here is that they never have any intent of negating the old no-money thing; it’s just a funny line -- “I just bought a boat.” And there you have fans rationalizing it was a figure of speech ("I’m gonna kill that guy,” doesn't mean you will). With Khan, they’re saying, “Pretend ‘Space Seed’ took place after whenever Chekov showed up, or just don’t think about it, but yes, Chekov was one of the main bastards for Khan.”
The same applies here, money as a loose term for "exchange medium" as we know it has clearly become an antiquated concept. My case would be similar to tenacity's in that we must consider that what Picard means by money may be a very specific concept, much as his concept of military does not apply to organisations where ours almost certainly would. His concept of money need not tally all that neatly with ours.
His concept IS ours as the writer wasn’t thinking of some future concept of a military or of money but ours. The challenge to the viewer is to see if they can fathom it. It’s sci-fi.
According to Ron Moore, everyone on TNG's writing staff realized this, but were required to adhere to it anyway because Gene said so.
Ron Moore is one of my favorites and I especially love what he did with nuBSG, but he and a lot of other writers in the franchise had massive chips on their shoulders over Roddenberry's idealism. It's harder to write, sorry. But you chose the job: quit whining and figure out how it, this concept that moves millions, could work. It's especially odd given he was a co-writer on FC which made a point of bringing it up again. Then DS9 mocked the movie twice. But as much as he rebelled against dad, by the end of DS9 they half-Federationed the Ferengi!?! He
wants the better future, just not to have to write for it.
World War 1 1914-1918 saw trench warfare, widespread use of chemical weapons unseen before, tanks and the use of flying craft in combat for the first time. 25 years later (so, less than 30) World War 2 featured a megalomaniac bent on breeding the perfect genetic race and the use of atomic weapons that, previously, had only been in the realm of Jules Verne or Buck Rogers. In both wars technology that had previously been science fiction was used in reality. You think it's a stretch that they speculated what a future war 30 years hene would be like? Really? From the way the world was heading, a world war would have fit the 25 to 30 year timetable. With Hitler having the goal of a genetically pure civilization, and the writers and makers of Star Trek all being WWII veterans or, at least, living through that time, perhaps it seemed quite plausible a reality. Heck, those same people saw the birth of the space program that started with Robert Goddard's first rockets in 1926 to successfully reaching the moon within 4 decades later and landing on the moon in 1969.
Of course hindsight is 20/20. Of course, to us, it only makes sense that they shouldn't have expected real-world genetics to have advanced that fast in 30 some years from the 60s to the 90s. Likewise, yes, it's silly to have set Blade Runner in 2019, or have Back to the Future 2 depict such an advanced 2015. Still, give the writers of the 60s some credit. They just saw science fiction come to life in front of their own eyes not 20 years earlier. They were living science fiction every day with the space program. The Nazis already had some eugenics ideas in place back in the 30s and 40s. Khan was probably imagined to be the result of superior breeding and not genome manipulation.
Bladerunner in 2019,
Looper in 2044, etc. Hollywood has a bad habit of thinking only if something will happen in our lifetimes will it resonate with the audience. Maybe for a lot of people that's true. Your points about the the WWs are good ones and I thought about them, but look at many of the predictions of Verne and Wells and Shelley and others that nowhere near panned out. I'll half give it to you, but Hollywood annoys me still.
