Yeah, but that’s because he always rolls low on skill checks.
Doesn’t matter your skill if you keep rolling ones.
While crew are not expected to pay out of pocket for basic replicated meals on board ship (though on Lower Decks we see that the good/fancy food is keycard-locked), there are fairly frequent references to financial transactions, including space traders (including people having credits to buy the aforementioned tribbles), to Ferengi bribing people with gold and/or “latinum”, to Picard having to (and having the resources to) spend a small fortune to hire a ship and pilot after resigning from starfleet, dealings on that cyberpunk planet he visits, people playing poker, and so on. It’s pretty obvious people have ways of getting money, and that it is not all distributed evenly, even while one can imagine that on a core world like Earth everyone at the very least has free access to simple replicators, like in The Diamond Age
Heck, in the “writers’ bible” for TOS that was an explicit instruction. Don’t dwell on what was the system back on Earth (other than there’s freedom and peace).
TOS seemed to be satisfied with a notion more along the lines of “a military as-it-should-ideally-be” i.e. capable of performing its mission, well disciplined but not warmongering, clearly subordinate to the civil authority, with the “five year mission” being specifically one of exploration and research while observing the PD… but if shit got real, well, we got some photon reality for ya right here, and then there’s General Order 24 – glass 'em from orbit if need be, Mr. Scott.
But by the time of TNG Roddenberry had switched to a different POV and to be blunt about it early TNG’s philosophy was straight out reaction to 1980s sociopolitical trends he did not like. So capitalism is obsolete, the traditional enemy is an ally and their different ways become honored; a new putative enemy are caricatures of greed and profiteering; traditional nationalism/militarism will be deprecated; one of your main officers is an empath in charge of “counseling” about others’ emotions; capture and possible execution of a crew member to comply with a daft local law or tradition will be negotiated about respectfully; confrontations will be solved by Picard just standing there and giving a morally superior speech, etc.
“They got better,” to use a phrase from another fandom.
The early seasons of TNG and the later original cast movies are an interesting study since they were produced simultaneously. Roddenberry had little influence in the movies but ran TNG and the military/non-military contrast was stark. The movie makers had to do lots of mental gymnastics to somehow reconcile the two.
Then Roddenbury left and TNG began to emphasize the military aspects of Starfleet 
…
It to Patrick Stewart’s credit as an actor that he was able to seamlessly play the both the Not a military man Picard and very-much-our-best-commander Picard.
I look at the Federation though the lens of a much better-realized post-scarcity civilization : Iain M. Banks’ The Culture.
The Culture really is post-scarcity - any citizen could get their own spaceship or habitat and all the material wealth they could desire. Provided they can convince someone (or some Mind) with the ability to, to give it to them. Reputation and manners are the only real currency.
There is no money, not even the notion of credits - “Money implies poverty” is a saying.
The Culture doesn’t have any jobs people have to do to run things - most everyone only does what they enjoy doing. And the same with their military. The only time we see people co-opted into things, or outsiders employed to do things, is when the Culture is interfering outside itself. Sometimes this seems to be a hobby for Minds, sometimes it’s to counter an upcoming existential threat.
Of course, this society is anarcho-socialist, without a hierarchy to the degree of the Federation. I find that more realistic given the post-scarcity nature of the overall society.
I’m not buying this entire “post-scarcity” talk. By historical standards, i.e. in comparison to periods in human history - and not all of them so very long ago - we already live in a post-scarcity society. Our material standard of living is way beyond the imagination of previous generations. Food is plentiful, and even the poorest members of our society have more of a problem note ating too much of it than not getting enough of it. And yet, we still use money. That’s because once the basic needs such as food are taken care of, people will desire something else, not really a bare necessity but something that’s nice to have. And when everybody has access to that, they will desire yet something else. It will be the same for the society in the Federation. Even if everybody has free access to goods far beyond our imagination today, there will be something else that people desire but that not everyone can have. And bang, there’s a need for money.
But you could have scarcity and no money. Doesn’t the guy in The Dispossessed have to deal with that? He has to go do some hard labor in the desert instead of concentrating on his (important) research because of scarcity and harsh conditions, not that he is super happy about it; in fact, eventually he leaves. I’m sure everyone would have been more free to do their own thing had they been living in a post-scarcity utopia. Weren’t there even communist-style Israeli kibbutzim and similar along those lines in real life? They ceased to exist after too many people left, but maybe people would have been slower to leave if they had had robot workers and could get automobiles and TV sets or whatever people were seeking to acquire by working outside the commune. (Certainly many were also dissatisfied with the local political environment and the huge problems in the country as well, no need to get too far into the detailed troubles of any specific actual commune.)
As soon as you have scarcity, you need some way of allocating who gets how much of whatever it is that is scarce. For that purpose, you can have, in principle, two methods. A centralised method, in which the allocation is made by some central planner, benevolent or malevolent (or malevolent but thinking himself to be benevolent, which is, I think, the most mikely outcome), on the basis of some criterion, such as ethnic origin or political beliefs or height or IQ or perceived need or whatnot; or a decentralised method, in which people can increase their share of the allocation by providing some service to others and use up the shares that they have accumulated when they get others to provide services to them. To implement that, you’ll have to make these accumulated shares of resources transferable, so people can transfer them to others in return for services provided. And as soon as you have such a scheme in place, no matter what you call it - credits, or social contribution points, or dollars - you will have money, because that is exactly what money is.
Kirk’s statement could also be interpreted as a reference to physical currency. In the TNG premiere, Encounter at Farpoint, Dr. Crusher buys fabric in a market and has it “charged to her shipboard account” instead of handing over any physical currency or vouchers.
No, we do not. Not remotely. Post-scarcity isn’t about basic necessities of life being free or very cheap for everyone. It’s those PLUS " some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services". We’re not anywhere near that yet.
That’s precisely my point. By the standards of most human generations before us, we live in a post-scarcity world because we have ample supplies of anything they could imagine is something they’d need. The reason why we feel we don’t live in a post-scarcity world is because after fulfilment of these needs, we’ve come up with new things that we could desire but which those before us wouldn’t even have dreamt of. If generations that come after us find a way to fulfil all of those for everyone for essentially free, they, in turn, will come up with new things that people would desire. So it won’t feel post-scarcity to them, no matter how advanced they get.
I don’t think Maslow’s has really changed all that much between generations, has it? Sure, we can feed people, but we still have a hell of a time housing them, educating them, providing healthcare or community or love or sex or safety or meaningful work for most of the world’s population. The situation you describe probably applies to less than 10%, possibly less than 1%, of the world. COVID-19 really underlined and bolded how drastic the differences can be between the haves and have-nots, in all the countries of the world.
I get what you’re saying about our ever-expanding appetites, but “post-scarcity” at least implies a fulfillment of a suite of basic human needs, not just food. Most of the world subsists on conditions worse than an American pet dog’s.
There’s diminishing returns on new material desires. Post-scarcity doesn’t concern itself with metaphysical desires. I disagree that it won’t be, or feel, post-scarcity.
I think it has. To name one example: A hundred years ago, the ability to send same-day-delivery telegram messages to other continents was considered something that someone living in the developed world would expect, lest he’d feel that “something was missing”. Fifty years ago, the ability to phone someone on another continent for instantaneous voice communication, but from a stationary landline phone and at high prices, was considered the same way. Fifteen years ago, the ability to voice chat with someone on another continent for essentially free from a stationary computer was considered the same way. And now we expect the ability to voice chat or instant-message anyone anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world essentially for free with a highpowered computer that we carry around in our pockets is considered the same way. A 2020 person whose access to telecommunications were limited to services that were considered perfectly sufficient in 1920 would now consider this to be inadequate.
Yes, that’s true, but I don’t see how that really addresses Maslow’s. Not that that model is the end-all-be-all of human needs and wants, but it’s a useful enough idea, especially when discussing scarcity.
Technology is good at providing some things, such as mass communications (for better or worse) or better food production, but we still live in a world where much of the population has their basic needs aside from food unmet, and it will likely remain that way (or get worse) for the foreseeable future. It’s a post-scarcity society for the haves, but the have-nots vastly outnumber us. That’s not really post-scarcity, then, just resource hoarding like it’s always been.
But not the way anyone from a thousand years ago would possibly understand. For one thing, what we call “money” would not be regarded as money by most of the people who’ve ever known what money was. Fiat money is a relatively recent innovation in most places, and virtual money would just be inconceivable until quite recently.
It’s quite plausible the UFP has some form of virtual credit or allocation system that just is sufficiently distinct from our currency that the word “money” has fallen into disuse.
The problem is not that we do not have the resources to feed, house, educate, clothe and provide healthcare for everyone, we do. The problem is that we do not have an equitable distribution of those resources. We meet the wants of the wealthy before we consider the needs of the poor.
The problem is, is that wants are infinite. You can always want more, no matter how much you have. If post scarcity is defined as meeting everyone’s wants, then we will never achieve it, no matter what technology and resources we have access to.
However, meeting the needs and limited wants is something that is achievable today. We just choose not to, because in order to meet what someone else needs, someone else will have to go without something that they want.
Inequitable distribution will always be a case as long as money is a thing, as long as money is the exchange necessary to attain the things necessary to meet your needs and basic wants.
Not having a monetary system, as claimed in Star Trek, would help to prevent this inequality, and help to promote a more fair distribution of goods and services.
You could still have allocation credits. Once everyone’s needs and basic wants are taken care of, and everyone is assured an agreed upon quality of life, then the excess resources could be allocated based on a type of monetary system, where everyone gets a bit, but people with higher ranks or responsibilities may get more.
For trading with outside parties, the Federation having a reserve of a galactically accepted currency (gold pressed latinum or the like), and then allocating that to their individual citizens as they make foreign trades, settling up with the different governments in the trade partnership later would make sense.
Most people would never think about money unless purchasing something extravagant or from a foreign entity.
I’m not sure I buy that we exactly CHOOSE not to. It’s just hard to do it.
And this I definitely don’t agree with. I see no reason why abandoning money would help in meeting basic needs, and I can think of a lot of reasons why it might do the opposite.
We, as a society, as a global civilization, choose not to.
We have the ability to do it, and it is not done. That means that there are choices made to not do it. It is not a specific choice of an individual or even a particular entity, but it is the result of the collective choices of those who are able to participate in the market.
The entire point of capitalism and a monetary system is to distribute resources to those who want them the most. And the way that our system determines who wants them the most is by asking what they are willing to pay for them. If someone is willing to pay more for something than someone else is able to pay, then that second someone does not have access.
Lets use an example. It’s lunchtime, and there are 10 people. We give them 15 sandwiches. Without money, or any other form of arbitrary value of the people, then everyone can take 1 and a half, more than enough for everyone.
Now, lets add in money and let them bid against eachother. One person has $1,000, two people have $100, 3 have $50, and the other five have $1.
The person with $1,000 wants a bunch of sandwiches, so he’s willing to pay $100, and get 5 of them. The people with $100 still want sandwiches, so they each pay $40, and get 2 each. The people with $50 buy one each for $20. Since there is no one else that is willing and able to pay $20 a sandwich, the rest are given away. That leaves 3 sandwiches for the remaining 5, which they are told that they should be grateful for.
That’s a bit simplistic, but it does demonstrate how the wealthy attempting to meet their unlimited wants gets in the way of the poor trying to meet their limited needs.
Surely, it’s a tautology that everyone alive has their basic needs met, because anyone whose basic needs are not met is, by virtue of that lack, no longer alive.