Were they paid?

Seriously? Over 150 Federation worlds to visit, thousands of different cultures to discover, and you'd just sit on your ass on a crummy Cardassian rust bucket in the middle of nowhere?

Ah well, to each their own.

 

The explanation for the moneyless economy is simple and obvious - the existence of replicators and practically inexhaustible energy resources.

Enterprise is on the cusp of that - transporter technology is still a new-fangled thing. Can't imagine that our traditional notions of labor for pay could survive for another generation beyond that, though.

 

But no better way.

How would either of those explain a "new economy" in the late 22nd century?

And you seem to be assuming that replicators (when they come into existence much later) operate at no cost to the user.

 

Internet often operates at no cost to the user, too, and in several important cases did so from the very start. It also started benefiting this society economically long before it became a consumer product. Replicator economy might have been at full swing in the 2170s, only it was at the sort of swing handgun industry was in the 1300s, far from being accessible to the average consumer.

Really, it's the sort of leap one would expect to come immediately with the creation of the Federation: alien cultures would provide the technological input needed to realize mankind's feverish dream of doing away with the Great Satan that launched WWIII or whatever.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I've always liked airports, hub train stations.. transitional spaces full of travelers. I love the idea of being on DS9. Obviously I would take jaunts now and then to other places. There are busier hubs of course, but DS9 has the charm of being so far away from the establishment.

 

That's true. DS9 has lots of charm indeed. Especially when you take a runabout to Gamma every now and then.

 

I think insane is an exaggeration but people with dangerous occupations are certainly not necessarily rational (if the pay is high it might be rational) and definitely not hedonists. And yet there are been ample of people who wanna become soldiers or fly to the moon with tons of hydrogen burning under your feet without becoming rich in the process.