Spy, capitalism is driven by greed.
Only if you use the same definition of "greed" as Gordon Gecko: the desire for more. A more normal definition includes the word "excessive", as in "an
excessive desire for more". That is not an integral part of capitalism, it is an unfortunate side-effect of human frailty.
Were you agreeing with me that Quark was intended to be a comic figure, or maintaining that he is an expert on human nature? Do you not agree that Quark's knowing "the price of everything and the value of nothing" makes him likely to misjudge the situations around him? If Quark offered Sisko a bribe and Sisko did not take it, would Quark conclude that Sisko couldn't be bribed, or that he hadn't offered enough money? Would he be right?
Quark sees everything as a commercial transaction. This often causes him to misunderstand things happening around him.
That Quark has some similar traits to real people just reinforces what I said: he is a
parody. He wouldn't be funny if he didn't slightly resemble people. Like cookie monster, he has certain traits exaggerated to the point where he is comic.
And for the record, Quark in Little Green Men didn't say anything about selling humans poison: he took a little information from Nog about drugs (tobacco in particular) and concluded that the humans of that era were selling poison to each other, and said "If they'll buy poison, they'll buy anything." The joke here being both about how much our society has changed in a few decades and how much Quark misunderstands due to his limited knowledge and his seeing everything through the lens of his greed.
I think you will still be compensated for labour, but I don't think you will be a wage slave, unless you work for the Ferengi. You will be able to tell your boss go stuff it a lot easier in the 24th Century and do something else.
So you agree with me.
Federation people only carry money, the way 19th ships used to carry beads and trinkets, in order to deal with the natives.
So the compensation I receive for my labor can only be exchanged for things from aliens?
This doesn't fit with canon: Risa is part of the Federation, and "the Horga'hn is the Risan symbol of sexuality", yet Picard clearly says of the Horga'hn Riker apparently asked him to retrieve from Risa "I just
purchased that." (emphasis mine)
I know you are going to come back and say that capitalism has been around for centuries, and we are just going to have a different form of it in the 24th, but did aborigines have capitalism? Have they survived for centuries? Did Tibetan monks? No, it's just a system, not a universal constant.
Did the aborigines or Tibetan monks have flush toilets? Does their having gotten along "just fine" without them mean that flush toilets are somehow evil? That we should shun them?
Does the fact that they are using them now suggest that they felt having them was better than the way things were before?
The fact that capitalism has been around for a long time was only brought up to rebut your assertion that it was a recent phenomenon, which was probably meant to justify the idea that it would not last for much longer although you never made that connection yourself. Rather than admit you were wrong about that, you now insist that it having been around for millennia in some recognizable form is irrelevant to the current discussion because not every human culture has embraced it for that long.
I will grant that it is possible that, like the Tibetans and flush toilets, we will contact an alien race that has an economic system that is unlike anything we have thought of, and that said system so obviously improves the lives of the people who live under it that we adopt it planet-wide. That is not, however, the situation shown in Star Trek. The system shown there is one that any ancient Roman would recognize: citizens have their basic needs attended to, and can work to earn the ability to purchase things they desire beyond their basic needs.
Spy,
You are coming round to my viewpoint, but not admitting it. The profit motive defines capitalism, the desire to make as much for yourself. It has given us the 99p beefburger, but it has also given us cigarettes, global warmimg and people working their whole lives doing something useful to have one cruise ship holiday at the end of it when they are practically senile.
And the Federation has evolved beyond capitalism as we know it. There must have been a 100 ST episodes with the Fernengi in them. In very single one, the Ferengi were depicted as being less evolved than the Feds and with a system that did not deliver as high or as ethical standard of living. In every single one. They were not the comic relief, they were a joke and frequently the bad guys. You may not like that, but that's the way it is. And, I say again, they were compared to 19th Century capitalists and 20th Century capitalists in three ST episodes. Look at 'The Search' again, Quark quite clearly states that humans don't like the Ferengi, because the remind them of the way humans were, and Quark says they were worse! And LGM is all about how the 20thC humans are just like the Ferengi, it wasn't just a bit of comic relief, it was the whole point of the episode ! Apart from the Roswell bit. I have siad that capitalism hasn't alway been around, we once bartered and before that, we stole. And up until the 19th Century, Aborigines didn't have it at all, and they are human and intelligent and successful.
At least you are now saying that you will get the basics in TNG world, and that will be a lot more than you get now, which stands to reason, as their standard of living will be much higher, as it will be, if things keep going the way they are, 400 years down the line.
And the Romans has slavery, which is something even they felt guilty about and something Quark said was wrong and unferengi like. And the Romans were very greedy people, which Picard has said TNG humans aren't.
To clarify my idea of a what you would get, in the 24th century, instead of money, you would just get a pass, an account, with clearance to to certain things. At age 18, after being educated, which you would want,you would be called into a meeting, and you would be asked' What are you going to do with your life? What's your plan?' If you said'Well I'm planning to get smashed on synthehol every day', your pass would be restricted, and you would just get enough clearance to do that, until you came up with a plan. you might find it difficult to reproduce, on your clearance,as you would be a bad example. You might decide you want to make chairs, as ex president Carter does. Hand made things would be liked in the 24th Century. There may be some monetary credit on this account, to get you off planet things, but this whole idea of unitary pieces of money that people sweat for and worship to amass, and which everything, even human sex, is measured in units of, would go the way of the chicken and the goat as a means of barter. People would be given clearance based on what they are going to do to contribute to humanity, as Picard has said they live for. That will be the big difference between us and them. We live primarily for our own gain, secondarily for humanity's, though some of us have no concept of that. With them, it's the other way round, cos they KNOW they have the basics, and will always get them, as we don't.
The principle of TNG is that humans have changed. They have evolved, because of technology. They are not the same as the Romans, they not the same as us. They still have the savage within, they could still regress, there is a piece of all of us in them, but they are more refined and more evolved. This is the bedrock of ST and is repeated over and over again in all it 700 episodes. And they don't have capitalism as we know it. Sorry, but they don't. Just because they sometimes use money, doesn't mean they do.They can DEAL with people, like Harry Mudd, that do trade the currency, just as we can still swim, and all of us can do it, but we're not an aquatic species. Those three 20th Century humans in the Neutral Zone accepted it and took the cold bath and came up spluttering and coughing, but they learned to cope in the 24thC.
