I know, seems odd. Mot just trimmed the fringe. This was in Ensign Ro
Best post/poster name combo of the week.
Another canonical point to consider.
At one point in DS9 Cisco is looking back on his first year in the academy and he remarks to someone (make Jake) that for the first month he went home every night (from San Francisco to New Orleans) and ate dinner at home. The person he was speaking with remarked something like ‘that must has used up all of your transporter credit for the year!’
So it’s good. But it isn’t, apparently, unlimited.
What you call bullshit, I call an optimistic take on the future of humanity. Their system works because, as a whole, they are better people than we are.
Wasn’t there an episode of Deep Space Nine where O’Brian makes some kind of remark implying that humans had evolved in some way since the 20th century?
I have a small fixed income, which due to my small cheap apartment - would keep me out of poverty and need. I still work, as I’d like to be able to go on vacations, drive a nice car, get more than basic cable and internet, and eat out.
I also like my job too. Mind you, if they didn’t pay me (and let us assume no one got paid) I’d only drop by for a few hours 3-4 days a week, instead of the slightly over 40 I work now.
I agree with aceplace57: I think ST:TNG is more a place “where basic needs like food, shelter, medical care are met for everybody. Anyone could pursue advanced education and training for free.” Hardly utopia, but no one goes hungry or cold.
This is, of course, contradicted by the entirety of DS9 and TOS, and the less-stupid episodes of TNG as well. Starfleet officers have the authority to arrest civilians who break the laws, among other things. Data and Worf threaten to shut down a bar if it is found to be harboring Maquis, and they are taken seriously. Sisko exercises considerable authority; so does Kirk.
On DS9? I seriously doubt it. That’s doesn’t fit O’Brien’s personality at all, nor the tone of the show.
He might have said it on TNG when he was just a glorified extra, though, or someone may’ve said it on Voyager. They’re both much more idealistic shows.
Okuda put a lot of easter eggs on displays never meant to be seen, including a giant hamster wheel in engineering on some schematics so take anything you might glean from those types of displays with a mine’s worth of salt.
In the Deep Space Nine relaunch novels, much is made of Quark’s consternation that when Bajor joins the Federation, they will become part of their moneyless economy, and there goes his profit.
So Rom, the new Grand Nagus, makes Quark’s Bar the official embassy to Bajor, allowing Quark to continue to charge for his services.
Of course, how this moneyless economy functions is never explained.
If Voyager is any indication, duty shifts. (I assume they don’t need to bet replicator rations.)
Or maybe something that can’t be replicated, like real alcohol. Or, since there are two women, maybe it’s actually strip poker–we just never get that far.
Or they could just be playing for chips. That’s what my friends and I did when we were kids, and we enjoyed ourselves.
I explicitly recall that replicator rations being used as currency on Voyager, as resources were not infinite there.
Alcohol can be replicated; Worf provides the stereotyped Irishman with the ridiculously hot daughter some actual booze. It’s just that the default is the non-inebriating synthehol. If you didn’t know that asking for Irish whiskey would bring up the defanged version you might not guess it – particularly if you didn’t know the defanged version existed in the first place. The SIwtRHD had only learned of replicators that day, after all.
I think this fits in rather nicely with an “optimistic take on humanity,” and the tone of the show. Like I said. 
Apparently Ronald D. Moore thought the absence of a Federation monetary system was bs.
A bit more about credits.
Latinum seemed to be the preferred ‘hard’ currency of the Star Trek galaxy.
I’ve used up my geek credits for the month with those links.
“You keep hunting your whale, Ahab!”
I’m sorry, yeah, I should have specified TNG era, specifically. One of those little ‘you know, if you look at it this way it sort of makes sense’ things.
Honestly, TNG is so inconsistent on the economy issue (only natural, as what they postulate is incoherent) that it should simply be ignored. Likewise Picard’s silly statement about Starfleet not being a military organization, which can only be reconciled by an exremely narrow reading of the word military – i.e., saying that only ground forces are military.
Starfleet does have ground forces though, as Jake Sisko found out when he wanted to find out what war was really like.
Eh … I agree that this statement was silly, but it wasn’t quite as silly as you’re saying. A good example from the real world might be the police - they’re armed, and some of them (i.e., SWAT teams) are very heavily armed and meant to engage in violence. There are similarities here to military service, but we draw a sharp distinction between the police and the military - violence is a necessary part of policework, but the fundamental function of law enforcement is something we scrupulously keep out of military hands.
By a similar token, I can imagine TNG-era Picard saying, if you pressed him, something like, “Starfleet’s mandate is exploration and the enforcement of certain parts of interstellar (Federation) law. Ships doing this work need to be armed, and since it’s too expensive (in terms of men, resources, etc) to build a dedicated exploratory/law enforcement fleet and a dedicated war fleet, we use Starfleet for warfighting on those rare occasions when it’s needed. (Just as, in times of national emergency, police might be drafted into military units). But we aren’t ‘the military’, any more than a beat cop with his pistol/phaser is.”
I’ll say this for Rodenberry - although I think his particular take on human progress was unspeakably silly, it’s hard to argue against the notion that people can genuinely become better over time. Consider the ancient Romans, for example - racist, sexist, genocidally violent slavers. Also the height of Western civilization in their day. Who can deny that we - with our democracies, our rule of law, our tolerance for variation in creed and ethnicity and so on - are far better people than they?