Is it the Federation, or Just Earth that Doesn't Use Money

In every Trek scene with a replicator, the operator simply uses the replicator. They never insert any form of payment before using the replicator. So there is no immediate cost to the user. Of course, the replicator does use energy so there is a cost, just not one that the operator sees. And I believe that some episodes have mentioned replicator credits so perhaps using the replicator does cost credits to operate. I do think that using replicators works much the same way as showers do today. We don't need to make a payment every time we use the shower but we get a bill at the end of the month for our water usage. Likewise, the operator does not need to insert money in the replicator each time they use it, but they might still get a bill at the end of the month showing how many credits they spent on the replicator. The idea of credits makes sense to me because I've always thought that you would need some way of rationing the use of replicators in order to prevent waste and abuse.

 

So is Ten Forward, but Guinan doesn't seem to charge anyone for anything.

And why do soup kitchens stay open for no compensation?

Better question: why did high school and college athletes spend hundreds of hours training for sports and performing in competitions without getting paid for any of their time? Why does ANYONE bother to play basketball who isn't in the NBA?

Humans have been asking ourselves that question for 4,000 years. You really think you're going to get an answer on a Trek message board?

Well, I described her as a rebellious youngster who gets herself into dangerous situations with irresponsible people. Which is why she (and Neelix) have no money.

Are you perhaps confused about how they first MET Neelix?

NEELIX [on viewscreen]: Whoever you are, I found this waste zone first.
JANEWAY: We're not interested in this debris, Mister
NEELIX [on viewscreen]: Neelix. And since you're not interested in my debris, well, I'm delighted to know you.​

Later:

NEELIX [on viewscreen]: I really wish that I could help you, I do, but as you can see, there's just there's so much debris for me to investigate today. You'd be surprised the things of value some people abandon.
JANEWAY: Of course, we'd want to compensate you for your trouble.
NEELIX [on viewscreen]: Well, there's really very little that you could offer me. Unless.
JANEWAY: Yes?
NEELIX [on viewscreen]: Unless of course... you had... water.​

So, yeah. He's pretty much a bum who spends most of his life dumpster diving for basic sustenance. And THIS is the guy who Kes was counting on to come rescue her.

If it was the STARFLEET line, no. Non-human Starfleet officers also seem suspiciously silent on the subject or else have their own interpretation of what "normal" standard of living should be. Worf, for example, doesn't seem to think poverty, disease, war and hunger have been eliminated for Klingons, and Nog -- who has been to the academy and is now an Ensign in Starfleet -- still maintains his profit-hunting proclivities in "Treachery, Faith and the Great River."

And then there's Eddington's defection to the Maquis, which he justifies thusly:

I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed about the Maquis? We've never harmed you, and yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation.​

This is as much about Earth's cashless "everyone is happy" utopia as it is about the Federation worlds that have similar (if not exactly as thinly distributed) planned economies. Eddington's beef isn't with Starfleet, it's with the FEDERATION. And that "party line" isn't a Starfleet thing, it's an Earth thing primary and a Federation thing more generally. Not everyone likes it and not everyone accepts it, but not everyone really has to for it to work.

That's because Jake is from Earth, the homeworld of the Humans, on which the vast majority of Humans actually live. ANYTHING that Jake could say about humans in general would be inaccurate due to the existence of the Maquis or anyone still alive on Turkhana IV at this point. But again, this is the Star Trek monoculture in action: generalizations are treated as mostly accurate and the exceptions, if any, can be ignored. Same thing for the Klingons and the Ferengi: are we REALLY supposed to believe that all Klingons are warriors, or want to be warriors, or look down on Klingons who AREN'T warriors? That there isn't a whole society of Klingons living somewhere who think that the affectations of hyper-machismo that pervades Klingon society isn't completely stupid and turn their backs on the whole business?

In the real world, there would be. But on Star Trek, nobody cares.

Because the Bandi DO. And so, broadly, does the Federation.

And yet James T. Kirk is still a "frat boy" for that very reason.

By being the incredibly odd humans who refuse to participate in the "Betterment of humanity" scheme and deciding to go by cash instead.

And being a human who uses money is probably a lot like being a Klingon that doesn't like violence or being a Vulcan who doesn't strive to be logical. It makes you odd and easily forgettable, and possibly a pariah to your peers. It's likely that most such people wind up moving out to the colonies where scarcity is still a thing and the preference to control ones own resources doesn't raise as many eyebrows.

 

Sigh. There aren't any "politburo" at supposed communism. There are part of SOCIALISM, not COMMUNISM. As Marx & Lenin assumed, there would be no need in governing bureaucracy in communism, because peoples would be enlightened enough to easily govern themselves, and only some function would required specially-trained bureaucrats to preform.

P.S. And, frankly, to starve at post-war USSR or any Eastern Europe republics you must be really, REALLY unlucky. Presumably being lost in some deep forest) Come on, the Cold War is over quite a lot of years ago and you still believe all this Western propaganda about USSR?

 

Nah, it is assumed that majority of peoples are too enlightened & rational to waste resources. Let's don't forget:

"A lot has changed in three hundred years," said Picard. "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things.' We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions."

 

I find that hard to believe. If it were true then how come Voyager needed to ration the use of the holodeck?

 

Neelix was shown to be a deeply SENTIMENTAL person, yes. But it takes him about fifteen minutes to get over Kes' departure, and when she comes back in "Fury" it is Janeway, NOT Neelix, that she blames for her having left the Ocampa. As close as they were together, Kes and Neelix wouldn't have been a thing for as long as they were if they hadn't hitched a ride on Voyager (even ignoring the fact that at least one of them would be dead long before then) and I think they both knew that on some level.

The fact that Kes wasn't ON Neelix's ship when Janeway found him tells you all you need to know. She was apparently caught by the Kazon while trying to sneak back in to the hidden Ocampa city and they've been torturing her to figure out how to get inside. Why would she risk sneaking past the Kazon if she had such a good thing with Neelix and his "debris?"

Obvious answer is obvious: Because Neelix is BROKE, and she doesn't want to starve. So she's mainly hanging out with him because she likes the excitement and the idea of getting away from her boring life among the Ocama and seeing the universe, and Neelix is the only person she has EVER MET who has ever offered to show her around (without, you know, beating her within an inch of her life in the process).

The Earth/The Federation has money, and evidently backs trades made by its citizens to non-Federation members (which is why Beverly says "Bill it to my ship" instead of "Here's some latinum." SOMEBODY'S going to pay for that fabric, it just probably won't be Beverly's personal cash.

Which it can. In "The Survivors" Picard even gives Kevin Uxbridge a portable replicator that doesn't seem to need anything other than some raw materials and a power supply, which Kevin, by all appearances, has.

Obviously there's an operating cost involved, but that doesn't mean the USER has to pay it. As above: somebody's paying for it, but not necessarily the individuals.

 

Because they were in much more dire situation than average, and they need to control the resource distribution much more tightly.

 

Yes, but surely such enlightened and evolved human beings would self-ration and act responsibly? I ask in jest of course. My point is simply that even enlightened humans would need some form of currency to regulate transactions and prevent abuse.

 

Kilowatt per hour, probably. After all, the real question is the energy, everything else is just the question of how much energy we need to do this or that.

 

The idea that people spend money to use the replicator, even for basic needs, would explain a lot off things. It would make sense in a way.

Each time a person uses the replicator, it draws from their account. Almost any type of basic need or even luxury is available to the average person who uses it. When the accounts gets too low or empty, it stops working. It would be a great motivator for people to work.

The problem is--- The show itself would never allow that scenario. Someone running out of credits and can't use the replicator? No way. It would clash with the concept that humans no longer need or want things anymore.

It has to portray humans in a post scarcity society where poverty has been eliminated and abundance is everywhere for the taking.

 

That bad huh?

First off, this supposed "post scarcity society" is a invention of some of the fans, and is never mention in the show. And the civilians on Earth (what we saw of them) do not seem to be living in never ending abundance.

Going to the elimination of poverty, Deanna told Cochrane that poverty, disease, war would be gone in fifty years. Problem with that is we know from the show that disease and war are still with Humans in the 24th century, so what does that say about Deanna's pronouncement concerning poverty?

 

That her statement is only valid vis a vis people living on Earth or at least deep in the core worlds of the Federation.

 

Deanna spoke of Humanity, not just people on Earth or those in some kind of "core."

 

Right, just like Gowron gives all these speeches about "true Klingons" and how Sarek and Spock wax philosophical about "the vulcan way" because there's clearly only one right way to be a Klingon or a Vulcan or even a human.

Except when there isn't.

But nobody talks about that.

 

The funding for charity soup kitchens come from sponsors, the kitchens don't operate somehow for free.

Isn't that what Picard is advocating when he's waxing philosophic about the way evolved Humanities supposedly are this single-minded collective group of non-diverse enlightened thinkers?

No differing viewpoints, no alternate philosophies, no millions of Humans looking to get rich, no Human freighter captains trying to land a lucrative contract.

Just Picard's one true path.

 

Picard is an unreliable narrator in this instance.

 

The show is full of contradictions, but when you look at these statements;

Picard: People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We’ve eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We’ve grown out of our infancy.”

Captain Jean Luc Picard: Material needs no longer exist.

SOONG: What's so important about the past? People got sick, they needed money. Why tie yourself to that?

ARISSA (A simple Investigation DS9): It's not like a Federation world where everything is handed to you.

If people are working to better themselves and the rest of humanity" because there is no money in the 24th century-- and they have these devices called replicators that just produces food easily at the push of a button--that's strongly implying these people are living in some type post scarcity society. Or they say they are.

Picard gave a stranded couple a small portable replicator that he said could take care of all their needs. Fed technology is usually implied to last for centuries so it sems to be another example of post scarcity type technology.

It's either that or Trek's canon is almost on the same level as an 80's cartoon show.

 

They're non-profits, they don't make anything off the soup kitchens but their operating expenses.

I didn't ask HOW they are able to do that. I asked WHY they do it.

Yes. Which is actually a kind of bullshit generalization and rubs a lot of people the wrong way (Eddington, for example). But while humans are the only Star Trek race allowed to have that kind of internal cultural dissent, nobody else ever recognizes that dissent as having any real significance.

Exactly. Same as every other race on Star Trek: there is only one right way to be a Klingon or a Ferengi or a Vulcan or a Human. Everybody has their standard monocultural meme that every member of their species is supposed to adhere to.

Humanity's thing is "We don't need money because we work to better ourselves and all of humanity." It's bullshit, of course, but no more so than "We are a warrior race that lives for the thrill of battle!" or "The vulcan way is to be committed to the path of logic and reason and the control of our emotions so they do not control us."

There are exceptions to these rules -- you could probably fill a couple of continents worth of cities with the exceptions to these rules -- but Star Trek is really REALLY good at paving over that kind of diversity.

 

Oh okay, you (hypothedically) don't have any money, you and a friend go out to a restaurant, when the bill comes your friend pays for both of you.

Does that make it clearer?

 

But which is the contradition? All the times we see and hear of the use of money, or the times we hear of the non-existance of money? There's a lot of examples of money use, Harry Kim in the first episode of Voyage for one.

Yet Picard himself used money while on vacation. And others use money too, Crusher right in the first episode of TNG.

That one of the points I made, the show (and the people in it) never claim to be living in a " post scarcity society," this is a invention of some of the fans.

Picard gave (charity) away a piece of the ship's equipment. And Picard specified that it would (iirc) provide food and clothing for the two of them, not "take care of all their needs."

When was this? Most Federation technology is usual implies to be relatively new, often only a few decades old.