Roddenberry's Worst Ideas

[TheGoodNews]

And yet Belz, I've pointed out more than once that moneyless societies have proven to be quite functional.

I must've missed it. Which real-life societies are functional without money, aside from primitive tribes ?

See my above comments. There was the Spanish Revolution and the Kibbutz movement. Also, in the U.S. there was the San Francisco Diggers which included actor Peter Coyote and engaged in many moneyless activities.

In the U.S. the IWW (the Wobblies) slogan was "against the wage system."

So you see T'G, I've brought up other historical examples besides the Spanish Revolution. I've also mentioned contemporary examples such as Time Banks and the Barter/Exchange Co-ops of present-day Argentina.

 

[marksound]

^^ Don't you get it by now? In a "post-scarcity" economy, replicators could create all those materials and supplies out of thin air. Or maybe just by the power of pure thought, like the Krell machines in Forbidden Planet.

Hey, it's science fiction.

Right. I know it's fiction. I would like to know how the proponents of the system plan to make it work.

In other words, if there's no incentive to get up and do something, why bother? Replicators can't do everything. Robots can't do everything. Who fixes the robots when the robot robot mechanics break down?

People in general will not stop playing their video games to go take care of something that doesn't benefit them in some way. The garbage will just have to sit on the sidewalk until somebody fixes the collection droids. I wonder who that would be?

It's fiction, but people talk about it like it's real. I'd just like to know how they make it happen.

As long as humans are human, the kind of utopian society that people love to go on about will not exist.

IMO, YMMV, blahblahblah.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Millionaires that (should) have free time and don't have to work still hire other people to maintain their lawns. Even middle class people pay other people to do that.

Most likely because it's still a lot of work and involves getting dirty, even if the end result is a beautiful landscape.

So imagine working 9 hours a day getting dirty, scratches and whatever, just to beautify someone else's landscape and not getting compensated.

I just don't see human doing that, unless that groundskeeper is getting paid in Federation Credits, that he can use if he leaves the planet.

But he didn't look like the type to leave earth an go spending money buying things from other cultures.

My theory is that humans possibly don't use money, as long as they don't leave earth. If they do, they're financially helpless.

But still it looks very strange to see humans doing stressful, work-intense jobs for absolutely nothing--either something else is going on, or the whole thing is weird.

 

[T'Girl]

... a "post-scarcity" economy ...

According to whom?

YMMV, of course.

See my above comments. There was the Spanish Revolution and the Kibbutz movement.

Kibbutz's are not moneyless societies, the majority of people working in them are being paid for their efforts, and the outside workers brought into the Kibbutz communities are also paid. There are a small number of communities that claim to be moneyless, but there is a financial system and they are being supported by government subsidies, so are not moneyless.

It hard to see a Kibbutz as an example of your point.

Also, in the U.S. there was the San Francisco Diggers ...

They existed in a limited area of one city for what TheGoodNews, three years before collapsing? Basically (if I have your reference correct) the digger group was given food (charity), and they occasion stole food from the local markets (stealing), they then gave this food away. They also attempted to run a substandard medical clinic (for free) before being shut down by the San Francisco board of health.

This was in no way a moneyless society, it was basically like today's food banks without the thieving, people (with money) provide food to a charitable organization, the food is then either sold at low cost or given away to those in need. My church helps run one of these.

Again, not an example of a "moneyless" society.

In the U.S. the IWW (the Wobblies) slogan was "against the wage system."

The International Workers of the World are a trade union organizing service group, and their efforts are to increase wages and benefits, not create a moneyless society.

And they are not particularly successful at it, they have maybe a few thousand members. Most workers who are serious about possessing a union look elsewhere for organization services.

I've also mentioned contemporary examples such as Time Banks ...

Just did a board search of your user name and the phrase "time banks." Correct me if I'm wrong, but in fact you've never mentioned time banks before. Maybe I missed it?

The prime problem with "time banks" is there a lot of volunteering of unskilled labor, and relatively little volunteering by the professionally skilled. Nothing wrong with volunteering your time, but you can't base a society on it.

...the Barter/Exchange Co-ops of present-day Argentina.

Where all workers receive the same wages. Again, not an example of a moneyless society.

So you see T'G, I've brought up other historical examples besides the Spanish Revolution.

Where?

 

[scotpens]

... a "post-scarcity" economy ...

According to whom?

According to several posters here who've used that phrase. Their language, not mine.

BTW, I was agreeing with Carcazoid's post. Maybe I should have used one of these.

Even given the existence of replicator technology, the whole "moneyless" thing can't work. It would never work. It's pie-in-the-sky thinking.

Oh, and the plural of kibbutz is kibbutzim.

 

[Charles Phipps]

In other words, if there's no incentive to get up and do something, why bother? Replicators can't do everything. Robots can't do everything. Who fixes the robots when the robot robot mechanics break down?

I think this argument has been talked to death. Either you believe people would do productive labor because of social pressure as well as a desire to contribute to society or you don't.

Full stop.

There's no further discussion needed.

Can we move on?

 

[Belz...]

See my above comments. There was the Spanish Revolution and the Kibbutz movement. Also, in the U.S. there was the San Francisco Diggers which included actor Peter Coyote and engaged in many moneyless activities.

I'm not asking for people who want to get rid of money. I know those exist. I'm asking for states who had none for an appreciable amount of time and it worked.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I'm asking for states who had none for an appreciable amount of time and it worked.

Ancient Egypt: transactions were conducted via measured amounts of grain, which could be used by the worker who earned it as food or for further transactions. This was not money, but a precise system of direct exchange. Indeed, most of the ancient economy worked without money, especially at the lowest levels. Simply put, coins were rare.

 

[nightwind1]

I'm asking for states who had none for an appreciable amount of time and it worked.

Ancient Egypt: transactions were conducted via measured amounts of grain, which could be used by the worker who earned it as food or for further transactions.

That's a lot more like "money" than barter.

 

[yousirname]

I don't care if there's never been a moneyless state. There's never been a space vessel with FTL drive, either.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

That's a lot more like "money" than barter.

It is not an abstract value that can commodified itself. Grain is not a placeholder for value: it represents its own value.

 

[T'Girl]

I don't care if there's never been a moneyless state. There's never been a space vessel with FTL drive, either.

But one is a transportation system, really just a form of propulsion. People in the 24th century might go their entire lives without ever setting foot on one.

The other is a major factor in every person's life. More than a economic system, it's would be one of the corner stones in the society and of the multi-culture that makes up their civilization.

Ancient Egypt: transactions were conducted via measured amounts of grain, which could be used by the worker who earned it as food or for further transactions.

That's a lot more like "money" than barter.

Money and currency are not the same things, currency is money, but money isn't automatically currency.

Today, a single troy ounce of gold dust will buy you 260 bushels of corn (about seven and a quarter tonnes). That gold dust is money, solely because people will accept it.

Money is any object or record of accounting that is generally accepted as payment.

5000 years ago, in the middle east, a shekel of grain was money, it was a standardize amount of a substance (an object) that was generally accepted as payment.

Either you believe people would do productive labor because of social pressure as well as a desire to contribute to society or you don't.

There another (or more) piece to that, beyond having a culture where people basically work for free, you have to have a culture that never changes away from working for free, not in decades, not in centuries. A mono-culture of volunteerism.

Which is almost an impossibility in a modern society for a protracted period of time. Humans will be in contact with hundreds of alien species, with many thousands of different cultures, lifestyles and ways of doing things.

Once the culture that changed to volunteerism, later changes then to "something" else, the world wide society that depended on volunteerism to operate either collapses or it adapts.

Can we move on?

I'm going to stick around for a while.

 

[yousirname]

I don't care if there's never been a moneyless state. There's never been a space vessel with FTL drive, either.

But one is a transportation system, really just a form of propulsion. People in the 24th century might go their entire lives without ever setting foot on one.

Not of the slightest relevance. But if it helps, other things there've never been include energy-to-matter conversion devices which tailor food, clothing etc to spec, devices for teleporting humans thousands of miles in seconds, anti-gravity devices, artificial gravity devices, etc etc etc.

I don't want to seem like I'm poisoning the well. But it's obvious that many of the people who are demanding to know 'how it could work' and wanting real-world examples of its having worked and so forth are doing so solely because the prospect contradicts their political sensibilities. Which just seems silly. It's only a TV show.

I feel pretty strongly, for example, that FTL travel is literally impossible and will never be achieved. I won't be demanding that someone build or show me a working warp drive before I accept that it exists in the show. Just as nobody needs proof vampires exist to accept that Buffy slays them.

 

[Belz...]

Ancient Egypt: transactions were conducted via measured amounts of grain, which could be used by the worker who earned it as food or for further transactions. This was not money, but a precise system of direct exchange. Indeed, most of the ancient economy worked without money, especially at the lowest levels. Simply put, coins were rare.

No, that's still currency: wealth exchanged for something else.

That's not what Trek is implying.

I don't care if there's never been a moneyless state. There's never been a space vessel with FTL drive, either.

Oh, I don't mind the idea in a sci-fi show. I'm just saying it would not work in real life simply because it would require a change in mankind's most basic psychological features.

 

[Third Nacelle]

No, that's still currency: wealth exchanged for something else.

No, that's not currency at all. Exchanging one thing that has intrinsic value (be it grain or latinum) for another thing that has intrinsic value is bartering.

Currency is assigning a set arbitrary value to something and using it for trade.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Bluntly, part of why I dislike this argument is that many times the individuals involved fall back on "The Couch Potato" argument which exists solely to serve his own needs and will exist as a drain on society unless motivated by fear of starvation.

The problem is, we have plenty of examples this flat out is not true in RL from people who are rich yet continue to work and people who are taken care of by socialist governments yet continue to work.

The thing is, many times arguers don't rebuttle these points, they flat out ignore them. This page is filled with mentions of these various RL incidents and the pro-money group's response is, "People won't work if they're not paid." It's like none of these things are even mentioned.

I'm a proponent of capitalism in RL but even I think people are SLIGHTLY more complex than this.

 

[Crazyewok]

Bluntly, part of why I dislike this argument is that many times the individuals involved fall back on "The Couch Potato" argument which exists solely to serve his own needs and will exist as a drain on society unless motivated by fear of starvation.

The problem is, we have plenty of examples this flat out is not true in RL from people who are rich yet continue to work and people who are taken care of by socialist governments yet continue to work.

The thing is, many times arguers don't rebuttle these points, they flat out ignore them. This page is filled with mentions of these various RL incidents and the pro-money group's response is, "People won't work if they're not paid." It's like none of these things are even mentioned.

I'm a proponent of capitalism in RL but even I think people are SLIGHTLY more complex than this.

And you havent refuted my point.

Yes people will work for fun if the jobs rewarding and intresting.


But they wont work for free if they are paper clip pushers or doing a dirty smelly job or being a maid or butler for someone else. Especialy the last example who the hell is going to do a job or servitude for fun?

There has to be some incentive somewere.

 

[Charles Phipps]

But they wont work for free if they are paper clip pushers or doing a dirty smelly job or being a maid or butler for someone else. Especialy the last example who the hell is going to do a job or servitude for fun?

Social pressure, self-fulfillment, and/or opporunity for advancement. Also, I mentioned earlier that tough jobs might be easier with tech invented for them.

 

[marksound]

Bluntly, part of why I dislike this argument is that many times the individuals involved fall back on "The Couch Potato" argument which exists solely to serve his own needs and will exist as a drain on society unless motivated by fear of starvation.

The problem is, we have plenty of examples this flat out is not true in RL from people who are rich yet continue to work and people who are taken care of by socialist governments yet continue to work.

The thing is, many times arguers don't rebuttle these points, they flat out ignore them. This page is filled with mentions of these various RL incidents and the pro-money group's response is, "People won't work if they're not paid." It's like none of these things are even mentioned.

I'm a proponent of capitalism in RL but even I think people are SLIGHTLY more complex than this.

I think you're wrong.

In real life, there is no scenario I've ever seen where this works.

If no one volunteers to do a particularly nasty but necessary job, who would assign someone to do it against his will?

If a person gets lazy and decides he doesn't want to work, would society cut off his food? Evict him from his home? If he is not contributing, is his life worth supporting? Then what? Exterminate the non-contributors and the undesirables?

Don't think it hasn't been proposed. George Bernard Shaw said, "Sir or madam, will you be kind enough to justify your existence?" Look into the early 20th century progressive movement, including eugenics. Yes, eugenics.

It's crazy, but it's true. How many people right here on this forum would eventually agree with a proposal like that if it meant not having to deal with people who don't think the way they do? People like me?

 

[Belz...]

No, that's not currency at all. Exchanging one thing that has intrinsic value (be it grain or latinum) for another thing that has intrinsic value is bartering.

If latinum, and therefore gold, can't be considered a currency, and therefore money, I don't know what else we can talk about, here.