The geek part of me, which is not small, thinks you have to specify “Picard-era Earth, Vulcan, Betazed, and other central Federation worlds.” It’s clear that there is scarcity in Kirk’s time and, in the TNG era, in the parts of space outside the center of the Federation.
IIRC, what you saw in TNG was not a replicator; rather it was the end of a delivery system that delivered the item ordered from Central Stores.
I recall David Gerrold (the author of The Trouble with Tribbles) complaining that the damned devices were everywhere. Given their ubiquity, a good part of the Enterprise’s cubic must have been taken up by pneumatic tubes.
Federation replicator technology isn’t quite good enough yet; if you replicate a living thing the result is a corpse due to “single bit errors”. Some other cultures aren’t limited that way though.
We’ve seen things materialize in the replicators.
From the context, I think Otto mean to say TOS, not TNG.
Those snobs, though, are served by hobbyists who either give their product out, first come, first served, or trade them for favours or the production of said snobs’ hobbies, rather than a money economy (if trading within the Federation).
I want to eat at Joseph Sisko’s restaurant, I bring him a bottle of wine from the Picard vinyards, which I got by giving Rene a signed, mechanically produced book of poetry that the poet gave me because I actually ran the printing press it was produced on.
Or, conversely, I make a reservation, beam down to New Orleans, and settle in. (I can’t remember which model Sisko worked on, if it was ever made clear in the episode.)
And Picard and his brother had a very French conversation how there father (mother?) wouldn’t allow a replicator in the house and Rene claimed synthehol* had ruined people’s taste for real wine while Jean-Luc countered that synthehol had made him appreciate real even more.
*Remember Starfleet replicators won’t produce actual alcohol without an overide command. You just get something that looks & tastes like booze, but won’t get you drunk or cause a hangover. Guinan kept a few bottles of the real stuff in Ten-Forward and the replicators on DS9 didn’t have this restriction at all.
Most of the action in every ST series takes place within Starfleet – a military organization; and every military organization practices a form of internal communism, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, which in no way reflects on the political or economic system of the society it serves.
I agree that the Star Trek universe had strong socialistic and communist themes, and they spent a lil’ too much time on Nazi planet.
However, I doubt that reflects on Roddenbery. And even if he was, that’s allowed in the US.
Agreed. Remember that Kirk’s Enterprise was once called upon to guard a grain shipment (and screwed it up).
“The replicators on decks 7 through 9 are producing nothing but cat food.”
Let’s look at it from a Star Trek perspective…
Much of humanity has left Earth and live on countless number of Planets inside the Galaxy. Less than one billion people live on Earth.
Humanity has united and racism against humans has more or less disappeared, because of the fact that humans had to be a united front against other aliens and have to make alliances with friendly species to survive in the larger realm.
Technology like the replicator has taken care of the needs of the people. Personally, I think the replicator device was badly written in Star Trek. In my mind, the replicator can make a lot of common, small things, but what the replicator makes is not as good as the real thing.
Another problem with this cashless have no needs society, is that there are needs. There is always scarcity. In Star Trek and especially DS9 (which I love and have the DVD’s) there was a lot of bartering going about. I’ll trade you this for that. Then there is gold pressed latinum which is only in small quantities and valued. Rank and position are also important in getting goods and services.
Except it’s the tool of what is portrayed as a benevolent, reluctant empire, forged with ‘alliances’, etc. We are the Good Empire. The Universal Policeman. A Shining Beacon.
But, as already pointed out in this thread, the Federation is not so much Communist as post-scarcity, for reasons not political but technological. And there is not even a hint that its sociopolitical order resulted from any kind of Marxist revolution or class struggle.
…and this is why we generally shouldn’t listen to law professors.
It is utterly clear that the Federation is NOT socialistic, in the sense that government controls all or most economic activity.
It is also true that most economic activity isn’t capitalist either.
And this is because there is no need for the government to control or coordinate economic activity, because everything comes out of replicators. People just get what they want, there doesn’t need to be a government agency in charge of deciding how many size 13 running shoes to produce in August, because if someone wants a size 13 running shoe a replicator (or some other automated manufacturing system that might as well be a replicator) makes one for him.
And most economic activity isn’t capitalist, because private ownership of the means of production is unneccesary. That’s because “the means of production” is a replicator, and replicators are everywhere. If you set up a factory to produce widgets you’re going to go broke, because anyone who wants a widget can get one from a replicator.
Of course, there is still scarcity in the sense that some things can’t be produced by a replicator. There’s only so much land on Earth, so if you want a vinyard in northern France you can’t just make one. But the economic activity that most people in 2010 engage in is to accumulate enough money to pay for food, shelter, clothing, housing, and entertainment. In Star Trek no one has to work for this stuff, it’s so cheap to produce that there’s no point in making people do even a token amount of work in exchange for it.
And of course, if everything comes out of a replicator, typical people can’t produce anything that anyone wants anyway. Not much call for factory workers and streetsweepers when it’s all automated. Sure, there still jobs. But no one does those jobs because they get paid more, they do those jobs because they want to. And if 97% of the population sits on their ass all day and does nothing productive, well, what’s wrong with that? Either they get bored sitting on their ass and decide to do something for the fun of it, or they keep sitting on their ass. Either way, it’s up to them.
It’s not a welfare state, because people sitting on their asses aren’t getting handouts from the people who do the work. They get handouts from replicators. There’s no taxation, because what are you going to tax? There’s no government “spending”–if people don’t volunteer to do work for the “government”, then that government work just doesn’t get done. There’s no need to turn productive people into Hayekian serfs, because the productive people are volunteers, and if they don’t feel like producing anymore they’re free to sit on their asses like everyone else. They won’t starve or be uncomfortable.
Lots of people won’t work without some economic incentive. But lots of people do “work” even in 2010 without any economic incentive, or even with the opposite. We have dozens of community groups that put on plays, or concerts, and the people who perform don’t get paid and often have to spend their own money to participate. People don’t join the Boy Scouts because they get paid to be Boy Scouts. They don’t post on the Straight Dope because they get paid to post on the Straight Dope. They don’t climb Mount Everest because they get paid to climb Mount Everest.
But if I don’t post on the Dope, the only thing that happens is that people don’t get my latest musings. They still have a roof over their heads and food on the table. And in 2310 it’s pretty much the same thing, except almost every job is this way. I’m sure that there are critical jobs that would cause the breakdown of society if no one did them, but since only a few people are needed for these jobs we can motivate people in other ways. If we don’t have Starfleet Earth gets invaded by Romulans, but no one joins Starfleet because otherwise they’d starve. And if we need more people in Starfleet we motivate them by trying to make Starfleet cooler and more fun, rather than promising them material goods.
Somebody has to build the replicators.
Why? Because if I had a replicator, you know what I’d make with it? Another replicator.
So yeah, like I said it seems certain that there would have to be jobs that have to be done by someone, otherwise the whole system goes tits up. But it does not follow that therefore we have to pay those neccesary people money.
For instance, the Straight Dope could not function without moderators. But the moderators are volunteers. If all the moderators quit, the Straight Dope would be in a pickle. Except that probably won’t happen, and even if you paid the moderators that wouldn’t prevent them all from quitting. If all the mods quit, Ed would just ask for more volunteers, and you’d get some sub-par moderation for a while.
I mean, suppose we need replicator maintainence techs. Without the labor of the replicator techs, the replicators stop working. Except, how do you motivate someone to be a replicator tech? With more crap out of the replicators? Except they get everything out of the replicators just like people who sit on their ass. So what’s their motivation to be a replicator tech?
There has never been any hint in the series that any of the non-human planets are races are in a tributary/protection-racket relationship with Earth/humans. That would be the Terran Empire of the Mirror Universe.
One minor problem with this is that in the one case where the Federation is going to collect tribute (A Piece of the Action) Spock notes that this is going to be hard to explain to the Federation, and Kirk says that the money will be fed back into the planetary economy.
And another vote for the post-scarcity answer. The market and a central planner both allocate scarce resources. Where there is a case of scarce resources - the mineral being mined in “A Devil in the Dark” there appears to be free market forces at play, since the miners are there to get rich. I’m not sure of examples in the TNG time frame.
You know, it’s entirely possible that the Federation’s economic system is something which has never yet existed and for which we do not have any words or concepts. It would have been impossible to adequately explain industrial capitalism, or Stalinism, to any European of the 17th Century.