Tonight I was having real life conversation about the Borg and how in First Contact Starfleet still don't know a lot about the Borg compared to say, the Romulans, and that is why Picard was sent to the outer rim and not allowed in the fight because of this unknown quantity. And I was thinking about how so many people are devoted to researching the Borg and trying to understand them, how they tick and their weaknesses and how admirable this is. And then it occurred to me how much more EFFORT would be happening in such an area in the future, and in all and every area of research and science because no one has any physical needs to worry about. You don't worry about grant money, or paying the bills, or paying for the kids you don't live with or saving enough for a house or a car or retirement. Everything is absolutely taken care of and you get up every morning and work for your deep and abiding interest in the topic.
Your work is unconnected to eating and living and life security.
Probably there are a myriad of jobs that get you everything you want, you just sign up for one of them and you have travel credit, house credit, retirement credit. And it doesn't matter what job it is so if you are Mr. Science guy you get to play all day in science and if you are Mr. Lazy guy you find the least tasking thing you can get away with and do that. And the only people who get nothing are ones who opt out of the system completely and earth makes it so difficult for them they end up on some crap world working their butt off for a hamburger and this really puts a damper on opting out.
Anyway my revelation was that more would get done, people would be more excited about working to better the world if that work wasn't tied to their own financial and personal security. I don't know if this is true though.
Just think about what you would do if you won millions in the lottery. The freedom you get by such a win is enormous.
The thing is, in OUR society it would mean chaos, because we are trained and educated to work to live, and sometimes live to work. If you took the pressure away from people all of a sudden, of course at first the majority of them would turn into lazy couch potatoes. Money is right now the greatest element of ambition in our society.
But in Star Trek, humans have slowly developed to the point were they work for their own enjoyment, because the switch to a no money society didn't come out of the blue. They don't need money as motivation, and they don't need the pressure of a deadline to finish their work.
When you look at extremely rich people, most of them donate their money to charity (so, as Picard would say, they are trying "to better themselves and the rest of humanity"), and I give them the benefit of the doubt that they do it because they WANT to do it, and not because their PR manager told them to.
A decent lottery win for me would mean having a house again, with an actual yard, trees, and a small, thriving ecosystem that includes birds and squirrels. I'd set up a safe outdoor enclosure so the cats could go outside. And I'd adopt another cat or two; it's already past the time when I would normally have done so, since I try not to have more than a 3-year age gap between my feline children.
Then again... lottery win, plus health, plus a cat sitter would mean the chance to travel a bit. I wouldn't go gallivanting off to Europe for a month, but a weekend in Calgary or a short trip to some favorite places in BC would be nice.
But permanent goofing off is not my cup of tea (or any other beverage). Even when I was in school (around the late junior high/early high school years), a month's worth of summer holidays was enough for me. There was one summer that I missed school to the point that I was deliberately getting up at 6 a.m. to watch
University of the Air, plus whatever educational programming was on ACCESS. It ended up paying off later, since I was able to opt out of some of the course work that included watching some of the documentaries I'd already seen over the summer.
Just think about what you would do if you won millions in the lottery. The freedom you get by such a win is enormous.
The thing is, in OUR society it would mean chaos, because we are trained and educated to work to live, and sometimes live to work. If you took the pressure away from people all of a sudden, of course at first the majority of them would turn into lazy couch potatoes. Money is right now the greatest element of ambition in our society.
But in Star Trek, humans have slowly developed to the point were they work for their own enjoyment, because the switch to a no money society didn't come out of the blue. They don't need money as motivation, and they don't need the pressure of a deadline to finish their work.
When you look at extremely rich people, most of them donate their money to charity (so, as Picard would say, they are trying "to better themselves and the rest of humanity"), and I give them the benefit of the doubt that they do it because they WANT to do it, and not because their PR manager told them to.
Yes it's a human at the end of a social evolution we see, not how we would end up if we magically woke up like this today. I for one would not get off the beach for a decade.
I wish we had seen the rebellious element on earth, the outliers that were still on that planet. Does anyone pay you to take the piss? I bet all art is govco approved, you don't get to live the evolved secure life if you manage to be outside of what the officials think is worthy of it.
Much of the chaos of large lottery wins comes from the legal and tax issues that surround it - how do you invest it, how to you prevent as much as possible from going to taxes (as far as I know lottery winnings are tax-free in Canada, but the interest on whatever portion is invested/banked is taxable), who or what do you leave it to in your will, etc.?
Because everything works better in the future, prison rehabilitates you, mental health issues are whizzed away by magic medicine.
That was in TOS. Evidently the concept of "rehabilitation" changed during the century between TOS and Voyager, since there are lots of references to various kinds of prisons throughout the spinoff series.
But Voyager's "New Zealand Penal Colony" didn't have any hobbit shires or anything, because their version was filmed in California.
I never saw those movies, so I tend to think Xena/Hercules when someone mentions fantasy movies/TV shows made in New Zealand. Could be a fun crossover fanfic idea here...
teacake: "Your work is unconnected to eating and living and life security."
I've always said that the invention of the replicator is one of the main contributors to Earth "figuring it all out" in the Star Trek universe.
But where is the line drawn at allowing ordinary citizens to replicate harmful substances/stuff? I know someone who is deathly allergic to garlic, but gets higher than a kite on cinnamon. And in spite of Tasha's speech to Wesley about drugs, it's difficult to believe that NOBODY on Earth has a drug habit or other harmful addiction of some sort.
A fictitious world such as this doesn't stand up to alot of scrutiny, close up. It's best to just have the captain say things like, "... we don't use money, in the 24th Century," then have them called to the bridge right away, before they stick their foot in their mouth ...
But Picard never actually said that. It was Kirk who said they don't use money, but he really meant they don't use cash (since it's obvious that there are financial transactions that take place in both centuries).
>>SNORT!<<
