But in the episode where Cisco’s son wants to buy him a baseball card he needs the Ferengi kid to pay for him. (And I don’t even like Deep Shit 9!) They do what they always do: leave it very sketchy until there is an episode where they make up the details on the spot when needed.
But since only TOS, TAS and TNG were created by Gene, we have now left the OP… to go… where no discussion… has gone before???
Technically speaking, there’s no particular barrier to genetically modifying mankind to all be the sort of person who is willing to go out and work hard every day, regardless of how he’s treated for it. Capitalism works because it figures that if you’re a good and noble person, you’ll go out and do your best for society regardless of anything. But if you’re not that sort of person, you can still be bribed into acting like one. If you entirely get rid of the second group of people, then you don’t need to maintain a Capitalist system.
But of course, then you’re not watching a show about humanity. It’s a show about a group of genetic freaks. 
No, but there is a law against it by that time. Genetic engineering tends to produce guys who like to put eels in people’s heads and quote Moby Dick.
I don’t think he was a communist or a socialist, just a technologist. Many people have become adjusted to this technological , paradigm… but paradigms change and their unexpected capalistic freefal follow in effect.
That we know of. It’s theoretically possible that the whole Federation is predicated on a great, looming secret that’s been erased from history.
Bit of a sidetrack but I always marvelled at that “smurfs=communist” theory.
“What? They use no money? They must be communists! Aaahhh! Head for the hills!”
By not having such extremely centralized decisionmaking. Consider that when people want something, they just ask for it from a replicator. There’s no central authority deciding how much “Tea, Earl Grey” gets shipped to the Enterprise, Picard just asks for it. Having such universal manufacturing devices makes centralized economic decision making far more effective because it makes the job far simpler; instead of having to literally decide where every roll of duct tape goes, all the government needs to do is allocate raw materials and power. Most of the actual decisionmaking is made on site.
It’s not really Communist because people have far too much freedom to choose; there’s far too little planning. But it isn’t free market capitalism either because there’s not much of a market. Industry is just a free utility.
But that’s not a Federation station. The Feds have a post scarcity society, but other societies still run on money.
Sure you do; in what people ask for from the machines. I expect they have some sort of freeware model with people uploading designs/patterns for the replicators.
Just imagine the virus and Trojan-horse possibilities that would bring.
Computer! Tea, Earl Grey. 42 degrees Celsius. Slightly sweetened.
Gaaah!
Well, heck, there was a fully-functioning galley in Trek VI, complete with pots boiling on stoves and whatnot and, oddly, an unsecured weapons locker from which hand phasers can be casually plucked, presumably to be used when the time comes to turn the crated calf into veal.
[fanwank]
Maybe it’s a hobby room for those who like to cook “old-fashioned style”.
[fanwank]
About the phasers, dunno.
Harry Mudd. Kirk does not express any kind of fascination that traders still exist. Mudd sells Tribbles on K7 to Uhura, and she “pays” with credits, whatever they are.
They used phasers to make the creme brulee.
I suppose there could still be “markets”, especially in underdeveloped areas where replicators aren’t available.
Also, there may be a demand for “the real thing”, instead of replicated copies. Think wine snobs, for example.
Gentlemen. Set phasers on ‘caramelize’.
And we know wine snobs still exist because of the Picard winery/vineyard.
Cyrano Jones. Mudd was in two other episodes, only one of which actually depicted him as anything like a trader.
Jones traded in exotic items. He sold living creatures, which presumably could not be replicated (though I see no technical bar to it–this is more likely a legal restriction), flame gems, and “Antarean glow-water”. There did not seem to be much of a market for the latter two items, but presumably they were not available from replicators for some reason; given the names, maybe they had energy signatures that were incompatible with replicator tech, or maybe they had just never had patterns encoded.
Mudd was actually trading in women, essentially selling the equivalent of mail-order brides (with a side line of “Venus drug”). Presumably, there are some pretty strict laws against replicating people.
“Post-scarcity” does not necessarily mean that anything and everything is available to everyone at all times. It means that, at minimum, all necessities are available to everyone at no cost. There can still be things to buy or trade for–services, novelties, and art, to name a few–and you still need some way to mediate these exchanges.
The RPG Eclipse Phase goes into a great deal of detail on post-scarcity economies. The setting has an equivalent to replicator tech–nanofabrication devices called cornucopia machines–and effectively unlimited power. It addresses three major types of economy in a system where such tech exists.
The “old” or traditional economy: Cornucopia machines exist, but are strictly controlled by one or more manufacturing companies, who sell the items they produce to a captive market. (Think of old mining towns with a company store.) The economy runs on money.
The transitional economy: Cornucopia machines are available to the general public, but are restricted to only producing necessities–you can make your own food, drink, clothing and shelter effectively for free, or for the price of a nominal tax. Corporations control the unrestricted machines, and use them to manufacture luxury goods for sale. There’s also a barter system of sorts, in which people produce novel designs and recipes for the public machines and swap them for other designs, services, or non-manufactured goods. The barter economy is mediated chiefly by reputation–this is similar to the reputation systems on some message boards. Basically, if you’re known to produce good things and help people out, people are more likely to trade with you. The economy runs on a combination of money and rep (which can be thought of in terms of “credit”).
The “new” economy: Unrestricted (or nearly unrestricted–many of them lock out weapon of mass destruction designs) cornucopia machines are available to anyone. You can make pretty much anything you want, though if your design uses rare materials, you’ll probably have to supply them. Trade is almost entirely in novel designs and services, and is handled by rep. People who contribute a lot to the community–by doing support work to keep things running and by producing popular designs–garner high reps, and can trade on those reps to get things they want. If you stop producing and start mooching, people notice, and your rep drops. The economy runs entirely on rep, except when trading with outsiders (who have no local rep, and have little reason to value the rep of locals). If a local needs to buy something from an outsider, he can trade on his rep to get money from someone who has sold something to an outsider–basically a currency exchange between “credit” and “money”.
In the time of TOS, it seems to me that the Federation runs on something like an advanced transitional economy; necessities are readily available to all, but services and luxury goods like jewelry and pets must be traded for. Rep and money are effectively interchangeable symbols for the goods and services you provide, and are quantified as “credits”. Uhura, for example, provides a valuable service to the Federation through her service in Star Fleet–she’s contributing to the common defense and exploration. She receives credit (rep) for that, which she can use to acquire other goods. In practical terms, credits are money, but the attitude behind them is changing, which is why Kirk at one point claims that they don’t use money.
In TNG, they’ve moved farther into a transitional economy, almost to a “new” economy within the Federation. Most luxury goods can be replicated easily, but people trade for luxury goods that they don’t have replicator patterns for–bolts of cloth with a novel design, particular vintages of wine, items that still can’t be replicated, and so forth. The rep system has fully assumed the role of money, with automated tracking and conversion mechanisms for dealing with external systems, but the Feds (snooty bunch that they are) regard it as something very different. They never go into the details of how much various people get “paid”, but it’s possible that an officer’s pay fluctuates depending on current public attitudes toward Star Fleet–so when a ship makes some great discovery, or is dealing with a publicly known threat, their pay may spontaneously rise. If they screw up in some spectacular way, they may actually get their accounts docked.
So, when Riker is gambling with credits, he is literally staking his reputation (or part of it, at least) on his skill and luck.
But why couldn’t he just use his replicator to create something that would be valuable to the outsider?
Wrong end of the stick in the OP imo, instead the Borg represented communism.
Yes, the utopia is kept pretty vague, because the shows aren’t about how the utopia works.
It’s pretty clear that with replicators and other automation, there’s no need for an average person to work for a living. Yes, there are big projects that require some form of coordination–like building starships for instance. But food, drink, shelter, clothing, and entertainment are available to everyone, and these things are so abundant that there’s no point in charging people for them.
If you want earl grey tea, you just ask for it, and it’s made for you. If you want a starship, you might be able to make it “one piece at a time”, like the Johnny Cash song. Or maybe not. But it seems pretty clear that the average person on Earth doesn’t really contribute much of anything, and is not expected to.
Sure, people get involved in giant projects like exploring the galaxy, but they certainly don’t explore the galaxy because that’s the way to make more money. They do it for fun and status. And the vast majority of people back on Earth think roaming around the Galaxy getting shot at by aliens is a pretty silly way to spend your time, equivalent to guys who spend years training to climb Mount Everest. You don’t climb Mount Everest because you get paid to climb it.
He might, if he has a pattern for something like that, and the outsider doesn’t (or doesn’t have a replicator of his own). Or he might use his rep to obtain a pattern for something valuable to the outsider. Or he could run errands/serve as a local guide to the outsider in exchange for goods. The assumption in the bit you quoted was that the outsider was from some place with a traditional economy, and wanted money in exchange for his stuff. Trading between people from separate “new” economies would likely be in some form of barter most of the time, unless they agreed upon some particular medium of exchange.