In the Trek universe’s federation status is currency, though they (wisely, probably) never went into much detail about how that works.
In Lower Decks, we learn that officers get better replicator recipes than ensigns. An episode of DS9 mentions transporter credits for Starfleet Academy students. Postscarcity doesn’t necessarily mean everybody gets everything they want instantly.
And don’t forget that lots and lots of people in the real world work incredibly difficult, incredibly important jobs without the promise of money or status. Many of them could make much more money by moving from the public sector to the private, but choose not to because they believe in the work. That’s not going to change; if anything, more people will be willing to do those jobs if shitty pay is taken out of the equation.
In our postscarcity society, I think people doing jobs we currently consider menial, let alone important but shat-upon jobs like public school teachers, would be highly respected.
I visited a friend last summer who lives in a McMansion. When I arrived he was “mowing” his lawn using a robotic mower. When I commented on how cool it was, he complained about the time it takes to clean the thing after each use.
Then they’re not really jobs. They’re vocations or hobbies. When I mentioned “shittiest jobs”, I was talking about the bottom-of-the-ladder service and manual labour jobs, not NGO volunteering. No-one’s going to be collecting your trash or digging ditches because they “believe in the work”, if they don’t need the money.
I’m sure that disposal of items in the replicator has been shown somwhere in the franchise; otherwise the Enterprise would be half filled with Picard’s used teacups.
I think that’s the key, which I alluded to earlier. People do a lot of things for reasons other than money. While there’s definitely YouTubers who’ve been able to make videos their job, the overwhelming majority do it because they like making videos and sharing them with others. Some do it just for the recognition, to be a micro-celebrity. An interesting example is people who clean up some old lady’s overgrown yard, or pressure wash her sidewalk without charging her. The payback is YouTube revenue and recognition, so there’s still a monetary component, but it’s an interesting step that divorces the cost of the service from the person receiving it.
That seems like artificial scarcity. Cynical me can see that happening because of intellectual property rights, or simply a way to dangle a carrot in front of people, but I would also expect it to lead to replicator recipe piracy.
I know it was specifically referring to cadets, which could similarly be a means of keeping them from going home every night and forcing them to interact with other cadets. We don’t know if transporter credits apply to civilians too, but they might if there’s a limited amount of capacity, transporter operators, or what have you. Starfleet may operate differently because they have little choice, and random crew members can’t just beam home willy nilly anyway.
There are absolutely people who would collect trash or dig ditches. Heck, there’s no shortage of people on YouTube who just unclog drains. Most of them are professionals, but not all. There’d certainly be fewer people who do those things than now, but there’s also no shortage of do-it-yourselfers who like nothing more than to rent a track hoe for the day to play in the dirt. If it gets their new sewer pipe installed too then that’s just gravy. For garbage collection, some people will do it simply because they don’t want to live someplace where garbage is strewn everywhere. That sort of re-framing can elevate the appeal and respect for those jobs that’s missing now.
I’m not talking about when they feel like it, or for clicks, or for their neighbours, or things like volunteer beach cleanups.
I’m talking about municipal trash collection and city ditch digging, day after day. Not the same thing.
Youtubers do it for money.
Cleaning your own yard or even street is not the same as going door-to-door emptying everyone else’s bins into a truck, all the time. I don’t agree that people will do it for everyone, absent the current monetary incentive.
In one STTNG episode Picard explained that (and I’m paraphrasing) in the future people no longer work for money so they can get more things, but instead dedicate their lives to improving themselves as human beings.
Granted, that’s a pretty broad brush stroke, but seems to be what Gene Roddenberry, at least, foresaw as the future direction of our species. It would seem that living in a post-scarcity society may be a precondition for embracing this sort of idealized purpose of existence.
Maybe not, but someone working a couple hours a week times five or six people is still a serviceable crew. That’s a shift yes, but it doesn’t mean those jobs would go unfilled.
Sometimes yes, but as I said, not always. Lots of people get off on the recognition and engagement alone. The ones who get enough subscribers can do it for the money, but plenty don’t get the money and still do the things.
In a world with replicators there won’t really be a need for garbage collection since it can all be turned back into energy or new products via those replicators. People tidying up their yards or the empty lot across the street are all that’s going to be left, and it may turn out that they only need to do it once.
I faintly remember a story I read that dealt with the introduction of replicators to a society that didn’t have that tech yet. Once the people had access to them and discovered they could replicate amost anything then the econony was thrown into chaos.
This disrupted things enough to leave them vulnerable to attack. They were basically being used as a weapon.
“Without the promise of money” was a response to a comment about high-paying jobs. I suppose I could have said “wealth” to be more clear.
I personally worked one of those low-paying, extremely difficult, extremely important jobs for a long time. Nobody there was in it for the money or the prestige, and I think many of them would have still done it -or something similar-in a post-scarcity society.
My wife once posed the question “why do they have Dabo girls in a society where everyone has access to replicators?” which is really just a variant of garbage collectors and ditch diggers. I countered, “perhaps they view their best and highest purpose in life to be harlots in need of pimps or sugar daddies?”
I worked with at-risk kids. I made a topic about it early last year that you can dig up if you want, but feel free to give my vague anecdote as much or little weight as you care to. I think we can probably agree that there are lots of important jobs that are neither prestigious nor lucrative.
But garbagemen are extremely important. The fact that we don’t respect them for it is a societal one that devalues people who don’t have higher education or who work “menial” jobs. People who keep civil infrastructure ticking along should be lauded, and I think a hypothetical society that’s managed to divorce wealth from labor might just be capable of doing so.
It would destroy our economy. Why should gold be a standard when I can just make it? I guess that’s how humans were able to give up money. The whole system became worthless.
Actually, you’ve just identified a form of wealth - real estate - that really can’t be created, even it replicators existed to reproduce any object. What ‘rent’ could someone pay for living on someone else’s land? Can’t I just replicate whatever thing you want for rent…unless maybe you want them to swear fealty and make oaths to fight for their lord when called upon…
"Not anymore; now we can do both at the same time! According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We’ll do it for you in six minutes! "
In the post scarcity society of ST, there are certainly a LOT of people who spend all their lives in their private holosuites, having fake sex and eating the 24th century equivalent of Hot Pockets. And you know what - society can handle that. Better they do that than cause trouble, agitating for change. There are probably millions of people that never knew the federation was at war with the Dominion. Np one told them, and they never bothered to look outside.