How would a society with no money work?

Unless there's reason beyond World War 3 and First Contact the society in Trek just can't work. Human nature just won't allow it.

It's one of the things I love and also hate about Star Trek. At least TOS seemed a bit more realistic in that people still worked for pay.

Starships are big, heavy pieces of metal and technology. Someone had to design them, someone had to come up with the ideas for those designs, and you are saying they did it just because that is their passion? And for nothing? I find that very hard to believe. I'd sure as hell want compensation if I designed a ship and then it was going to be built.

Now building them also might involve some automation but there would have been a hell of a lot of human labour there too. And when they are built people have to live and work in them and fix them when they are out in the field...

I find it very hard to believe people crew these ships for nothing as well, as there must be some kind of incentive to want to work on a ship like that as crew.

Picard's talk of why they did this in First Contact sounds more like bullshit.

 

Money exists in the form of credits

Starfleet personnel are rewarded with status and prestige (and first choice on accommodation)

Society is as unequal as it has ever been but people are so distracted by holodecks and ample supplies of food that they have been rendered fairly docile

 

For the vast majority of human history and all of prehistory, humans have worked without compensation - that is, compensation that could be arbitrarily converted into a form desired by the recipient, by forwarding it to compensate for somebody else pampering the original recipient. Humans worked because that gave them the moral right to use common if scarce resources; without the moral right, the society would kick them out and they'd die. "Salaries" are a very recent invention, and we did fine without those for millennia.

Why are things different today?

1) The resources we covet are more difficult to obtain. We're significantly poorer than hunter-gatherers - we have no access to vital food, except through the great effort of a global infrastructure. We'd perish if not for a vastly more complicated and forward-thinking food-gathering apparatus. So we have to store gratification in abstract form for future need, for use by people greatly distanced from us in time and space.
2) With the infrastructure for survival in place, it becomes possible to treat luxuries the same way. A vast industry translates fear of starvation into various sinks for our stored gratification, meaning we're desperate for sources, and can be blackmailed into working in ways we would otherwise not consider. A small percentage of these are vital for the infrastructure. Most are unnecessary.

It really isn't all that difficult to postulate a society where 1) has been removed (replicators mean everybody is his own complete supply chain and all consumer industries are unnecessary) and the mechanism supporting 2) has therefore collapsed. The world today needs labor for the production of food and energy and consumer gratification items, and uses labor also for other, non-vital tasks. The world of TNG has little need for the vital labor, as food and consumer gratification follow directly from energy, without an industry or a supply chain, and energy supposedly is available in unlimited quantity. So there's basically 100% labor pool available for the non-vitals. If one out of ten million chooses to work, then the world can be run.

Now, removal of money is not a vital ingredient in the above at all. But it's something that can be done at one's leisure - nobody will miss consumer money, as there no longer exists a consumer market, and nobody will miss consumer wages, as there no longer exists a consumer-based labor force.

That doesn't mean money wouldn't continue to exist as a means of managing resources. It merely means the consumer has no need to get involved in any fashion. Allowing him access to money would be detrimental to the stability of the system; the resources he personally consumes or produces are peanuts, not worthy of the attention of the economic system at all. Small streams evaporate before reaching the great river, and all that.

Given that the Federation has replicators, it makes perfect sense that the consumers of the Federation would have no money, even though the industries of the Federation would still have plenty of it going round and round. Given something else, it would make better sense to have something else, but that's for other franchises to worry about.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Do not underestimate the human spirit and what actually drives it, or might one day inspire it.

Yes it might, certainly when this prospect is judged by the 'bullshit' we take for granted existing like shallowness, greed, selfishness and narcissism we see and experience in today's society.

Go back a thousand years and ask villagers if they might be interested in sailing off to a far away land ravaged by earthquake to render expert assistance for free. No material reward, no pay, no happy god in the clouds to pat them on the back...
Why would they want to? But it happens today...

Imagine another leap into the future where humankind's priorities are once again completely re-shuffled, more tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs being fulfilled by default at a collective level...

Get my point?

 

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Invoking the magic of replicators to explain an entire economy is naive. Mistaking material items as the sum total of "wealth" is equally naive. Somewhere along the line the brains and the power generation to run the replicators is needed.

Meritocracy is another idea that sounds fine on paper, but expecting everyone to agree on who is superior in a given field is delusional. (And that's where competition comes in.) If anything, such homogenous concepts in TREK are antithetical to the diversity it advocates.

No aspect of STAR TREK should be taken literally.

 

How does warp drive work? I don't know, it just does.

How do transporters work? I don't know, they just do.

How did Spot change sex? I don't know, he/she just did.



It's along those lines.

 

If I had a replicator to provide anything I could ever want, I would happily design a starship for free. Sign me up right now.

I think what you're missing is that the society in Star Trek has gone from being monetarily-based to merit-based. People no longer do things for money because money isn't necessary for what they want. People do things for recognition because it's always nice to be recognized for your accomplishments.

 

OK I accept that.

But what kind of society and government is the Federation? Is it a democracy? Do they monitor every citizen to keep them all in line?

Every single citizen on Earth is happy in the Federation?

 

Ah, so that's why people work down in the sewers, do shifts in the coffee shops and restaurants and agree to clean the public toilets and streets

For that wonderful sense of achievement it gives them

As they watch Starfleet officers go off and explore space, they smile and think......"I'm so glad I chose to slog my guts out down the sewers while Kirk travels the universe banging sexy green ladies......my accomplishments in sewage maintenance is its own reward"

 

Cool post ...There's no reputation button or I'd give you rep.

 

Timo covered what needed to be said. In fact, there are humans today that don't use currency. The bushman of Madagascar have no possessions and share everything equally, including parenthood. You're describing our culture Coco, not human nature.

As for Trek, I imagine that the necessities in life are free (food, shelter, transport, ect.) while luxuries cost credits (Starships, weapons, facilities, ect.) and credits are obtained by serving in Starfleet or building those homes or growing/serving the food and so on.

Also, their aren't toilets or sewers in the future hux. It's teleported out and reconstituted. Trash is probably treated the same way.

 

Directly from your GI tract?

 

Who today would do that for no pay? The American Red Cross webpage for potential new employees mentions " competitive pay and benefits," the members of the US military that assist in natural disasters get their pay and benefits on time, religious organization like the Salvation Army and WorldVision also compensate the people they send around the world to render assistance. Unpaid volunteers tend to be people from the effected community.

A better question for those villagers from a thousand years ago might be, would they like to live in a society where they would be compensated for their efforts in a market economy, to be recognized financially for their skills and talents and abilities. To live in a society where they are free persons and not serf or peons, able to buy their own land, send their children to school, and openly worship as they choose to.

But hopefully people in that society would still have the ability to decide if that is how they wish to live or not, and would be able to choose instead (in the same society) to provide for themselves and their family without the embarrassment of being provided for.

I'm afraid not.

They also have a average lifespan of 45 years and a ridiculously high infant mortality rate ... yes, let's live like them.

 

^I never said we should live like them, I like my Xbox. People are just quick to describe our culture as human nature.

 

So the Earth in say Picard's time isn't a dystopia?

I swear I read that somewhere and the explanation was really convoluted, but basically the author said that despite what you see on TV and in movies Earth in Picard's time is a dystopia..

Ah, found it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/35nmsi/cmv_the_next_generation_depicts_a_dystopian/

Don't agree at all with it but it's interesting.

 

No. No it is not interesting. It is someone typing for attention by making something out of nothing. It happens a lot on the Internet to make things something they are not because people read about those things.

Star Trek is designed to be taken more or less as presented by the authors and directors. There tends to be moral plays going on about how we are today (or at least back when the show was being written) and do a social commentary on it via science fiction. Or to tell a good tale here and there.

That we are presented with the idea that Earth, or prehaps the entire Federation does not use money anymore is something we are suppose to take at face value as the audiance. The concept is not isolated to just Picard. It is echoed by crew members on all three TV shows in the 90s. Jake Sisko has no concept of money and has to learn from Nog, though Jake can barter well. Janeway has trouble with money on those planets that they deal with directly. Riker doesn't carry money yet is willing to work for services when needed.

Not everyone is happy on Earth. Those that are unhappy move to colony planets or set up new colonies that hold to their own rules and standards. Some go for more primative days, others technocractic in nature. Others settle on old Earth cultures and nationalities as bastions of the long past. Those that stay on Earth, seem more or less happy. Not everyone goes for the replicators, but it seems to be more for either a sense of taste (replicated dishes always taste the same as the last time you replicated that dish), or a sense of accomplishment (I did this myself, not some computer).

Power is not a problem on Earth. Resources are not knowingly an issue for the civilian population. They sometimes don't care for Starfleet and have the right to do so. While we don't know the details of the political system due to them not being particularly important to the story, we know the Federation has a president and a council, and that the president seem to be answerable to the people. Earth's government is unknown since most times were are there things are about the characters themselves, or Starfleet/Federation business.

 

OK Well I took that for what it was worth but I've seen other people fall into making the same claim. Anyway thank you for replying I loved your post.

On your last paragraph I think that would make for an interesting story to see what life on Earth is like and how the average citizen works or lives and how Earth government works. It would be interesting I think and a change of pace..

 

Actually I was specifically referring to the current example of healthcare professionals, (there are handfuls of them in Australia and I'm assuming elsewhere in the world) - including veterinarians, doctors/surgeons and nurses - who have voluntarily gone to Nepal (taking leave from their jobs) to render assistance in the aftermath of the earthquake. They have done this as individuals, not as part of some charitable organization. Only some of these volunteers have sought donations in local newspapers to help pay for equipment they will be taking, but many of them have just packed backpacks and jumped on a plane, temporarily leaving their jobs - and sources of income - behind.

This is just a tiny example I used to help illustrate my point.

 

How would a society with no money work?

Poorly.

But who knows, maybe human beings will be very different in a few hundred years, and will be able to evolve and move past their inherent self interest, greed, and egotistical natures.

I doubt it.

 

Doubt it very much. If anything it will be worse then it is today.