See, that’s the real truth.
There WAS a world-ending war, a final showdown between Communism and Capitalism, between the Soviets and the West, between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys.
And the bad guys won.
If everything anyone can ever want can be replicated out of a box in your living room, what’s the point of making people pay for that stuff? And what’s the point of working for it?
Of course there is still scarcity. But if all you want is food, clothing, a decent apartment, and all the holoporn you can swallow, then why force these useless people to do anything? I guess you could make them dig ditches at gunpoint, but you’ve got magic boxes to dig ditches, what do you need unskilled gulag prisoners for?
And so in the future world of the future, the basic economic problems of human life have been solved. Nobody HAS to work, because nobody has to lift a finger to serve the unproductive. They get served by machines. There’s no need for money, not because there’s no scarcity, but because the remaining scarce goods and services are distributed by nonmarket allocation. You want a post on a starship? You can’t buy that, you have to earn it. You want everyone to come to your Creole restaurant? You can’t buy that, you have to earn it. And so on.
So there is still exchange, but the fad for monetized exchange that’s been all the rage for the last 400 years is over. Feudal peasants did almost all their exchanges without money, feudal warriors the same, feudal lords the same. Sure, some things used to be bought with money back in the feudal era, but very few things. People worked hard, but they mostly didn’t get paid for their work, and they mostly didn’t pay others to work for them. The vast majority of stuff you used was stuff made by your family, or produced for you by your feudal underlings. Peasants handed over a portion of their crops to the lord of the manor, not because he paid them for the food, but because if they didn’t he’d lop their heads off.
But what’s the point of forcing peasants to work for you on the manor at swordpoint when you can get all the food you want out of a magic box? What’s the point of forcing the proletariat to labor in your factory for a few coins when you can get all the industrial production you want out of a magic box? What’s the point of paying scientists and engineers to explore the galaxy, when they can get everything they want out of a magic box? So the only reason for them to explore the galaxy is if they want to. They aren’t going to starve if they don’t explore the galaxy, they aren’t going to get rich exploring the galaxy either.
So instead of paying them, you make it cool. You give them uniforms, you invent a bunch of rules and regulations for them to follow, you give them cool toys, which coincidentally are invented by the other scientists for free anyway. You can go explore the galaxy if you want to join our cool club, or you can stay home on Earth like a loser. But we won’t pay you to explore the galaxy, any more than you can get paid to climb Mount Everest today. Well, a few guys do get paid to climb Mount Everest. There are a few Sherpas in the mix. The the majority of people climbing that stupid mountain are people paying a small fortune for the adventure of climbing the mountain, not because they derive an economic benefit from climbing it.
Today Sherpas get paid to climb the mountain because they’re desperately poor. If they got everything they needed out of a magic box in their village, why would they help crazy people climb a mountain? Sure, I bet a few might do it because it was fun, and if there really was an emergency they might turn out to help a few idiots not die. But not because they were getting paid to rescue idiots.
Same thing with Starfleet. They rescue colonists, but they don’t get paid to rescue colonists, because what could you pay them with? If you want a soft life, go back to Earth and sit on your ass. Or explore the galaxy. Your choice.
After. Before she got hit by the age-inator, she looked like this:
Bashir’‘s father was constantly between jobs, much to Julian’'s dismay.
I meant to specify Federation citizens, (on Earth or on outposts), not aliens of the week like Trelane. Picard’s “son” mentioned earlier is the perfect example of what I was thinking about.
Trelane was a child with superpowers; Balok was captain of the Fesarius.
Hmmm. Not the cutest babe in the fleet, but not irredeemably ugly either. Maybe she was cast as that week’s casualty precisely because they didn’t want to kill off another hottie like the one in “By Any Other Name.”
When I read “The Deadly Years,” BTW, I immediately thought of Kirk’s love interest. I never particularly cared for her either, though her boobs were magnificent! :o
You summed it up pretty much as I imagine it.
Though I would add that I’m not sure that the people that stayed behind rather than join Starfleet are always happy about SF. What with them bringing home all kinds of trouble - V’Ger, the Borg, Q, the Xindi, the Dominion, plus things like improper usage of the Guardian of Forever - that can destroy all life on earth, or at least upset the nicely functioning world of holoporn and cajun restaurants. I can imaging them being a bit upset with the Space Boy Scouts sometimes. Like kids that bring home frogs, or find a dead body down by the river. Except these can eat your house.
Eh, when the crap goes down you just build 2 billion Personal Battle Cubes and fill them with all the Holo-gamers out there. You just don’t tell them it’s real. 
Borg? We don’t need no stinkin’ Borg! We have our own army of atrophied permanently connected cyborgs. Go ahead, kill a billion of them, we have more, and they’re just eating resources and solving problems for us.
If the past is anything to go by, the population of Earth has crashed since we achieved post-scarcity. The higher the standard of living, the lower the birth rate, roughly. Between everything your little heart desires for free and tactile holoporn, they must have to threaten people with pointed sticks to get them to fuck.
Yeesh…
It’s ridiculous to call Star Trek “communism”, because the means of production are not owned communally, or by the state. The means of production are still in private hands, all you need is a replicator in your living room. And if you want to open up a business, nobody is going to stop you. The problem is that you won’t have any customers, because anything you can make for them they can get out of the replicator.
Lower birthrates among the affluent are likely due to better contraception, not less sex.
One of the great advantages of having lots of leisure time is that you get more opportunities to fuck. And NOTHING will ever replace The Real Thing, not unless it’s mind-bogglingly pleasurable!
I’m at a bit of a loss here. What, precisely, is it meant to incite? Or did you mean to write “insightful”? :dubious: 
It was good enough for Tuvok when he went into pon farr. He simply programmed a simulation of his wife into the holodeck and it served the purpose.
But it was a refuge of last resort.
A girlie magazine would probably have produced the same result, and he could have done everything in the privacy of his own quarters.
Not everything can be replicated to everyone’s satisfaction; chocolate beans, f’rinstance. Naturally grown ones will always be in demand. And there will always be those who prefer something artisanal, made by a real living being, rather than something produced by a soulless machine.
What you looking for a fight? 
I thought it looked wrong…but I let it go.
I’d hope we’d advance beyond such superstitions by the 24th century. 
That’s like saying CDs are “soulless” because they are digital. I doubt that Star Trek replicated products could be told apart from the original at any level. Even at quantum levels. You make the perfect soup, or perfect chocolate bar, one time, and every replication is as perfect as that one. Because it’s using transporter tech, it has to be. Otherwise, no one would ever go through a transporter.
They complain on the show because it makes drama, but in real life you couldn’t tell the difference. Only the people that claim they can tell the difference between regular CD music and from a CD that had been marked with a green magic marker are going to complain about replicated food. That is to say, idiots.
Now coming up with new products, new food, yes, that requires skill. And there would always be a market for that.
Perfectly legitimate question. I had no idea what you were trying to say.