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Lack of money in Federation society
renata666
Member Posts: 284 Arc User
in Ten Forward
Not sure if this is the right spot for this question but, I was working some fan fiction centered around one of my STO toons. Part of the story takes place on Earth. And I suddenly was struck by the idea that not only "how" but "why" would anyone go out to eat, or go window shopping, or look for collectibles in a society where money doesn't exist?
With replicators all over the place, who would go to a fancy restaurant for a good meal?
With out money, why would you go looking for souvenirs or collectibles to buy? In fact, why would anyone sell collectibles or souvenirs?
Many of what we look at today as enjoyable activities today would be gone in a world where money didn't matter. Granted, you could probably come up with other activities but many of those that take us out and about among other people would be gone.
This makes some scenes I've seen in TNG and other versions of Star Trek questionable.
With replicators all over the place, who would go to a fancy restaurant for a good meal?
With out money, why would you go looking for souvenirs or collectibles to buy? In fact, why would anyone sell collectibles or souvenirs?
Many of what we look at today as enjoyable activities today would be gone in a world where money didn't matter. Granted, you could probably come up with other activities but many of those that take us out and about among other people would be gone.
This makes some scenes I've seen in TNG and other versions of Star Trek questionable.
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Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Also, only Earth/humans were said not to use currency any more. The UFP as a whole still has a economy, especially with outsiders.
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In the very first episode of TNG, Beverly Crusher purchases Bandi cloth for Credits. As of DS9 we're made aware that gold-pressed latinum is a valued currency.
From Enterprise onward Earth is in a Post-Scarcity economy in which the basics of food, shelter, and clean water are available to all. If you want that restored soft-top stingray you need to have some surplus. Whatever form that surplus takes, it is effectively cash.
I suppose art pieces would be the same way - the artist creates because it's easier than not creating, and gives the pieces away because he's done with them and doesn't want them cluttering up the place. If he doesn't want to give them away, well, he doesn't, because on Earth at least there's nothing forcing him to.
And as Picard said.....in his time, you are not trying to improve your bank account.....but yourself, and, seeing as how well over 90% of the laws made revolve around money, most crime involves money, most marriages and relationships end because of money, many wars waged these days because they make money, technology and cures are suppressed because of money, rich people guilty of horrible crimes (I am looking YOU, Jeffery Epstein) getting out of jail, and poor innocent people going to jail (especially of they own a simple PLANT) and many sick people not able to be cured due to money.....I personally would NOT weep if money were to go the way of the dinosaurs. One's level of respect, health, happiness and so on should not be judged by how many ugly pieces of paper with pictures of overrated dead people on em, or how many numbers they have on a computer database, have.
Whatever Trek has, it's FAR better than what we got now.
Money, along with religion, is one of the worst inventions in history.
As long as human nature exists, there will always be money and religion. Even if humans live in a post-scarcity economy, some form of money will still exist. After all, due to laws or rarity, not everything will be available for free. Becoming part of the Borg Collective would make money worthless, but the religion of the Borg Collective will still exist.
As for shopping, people don't just go shopping because they want new stuff, but because they like finding things. You'd shop in person for the same reason you'd go on a treasure hunt.
I disagree. Money and religion were both good and necessary inventions that, like any invention, are sometimes used in a way that cause more problems than they solve.
Money is necessary for any complex civilization that doesn't have unlimited everything and isn't some sort of super-communist utopia. It's lubricant to keep trade flowing smoothly. The alternative is the barter system, which breaks down in complicated settings. Imagine you have a headache one day and go to the store to get asprin. The storekeeper wants to be paid in chickens, but you don't have any chickens because you're a plumber. So you go to the chicken farmer to get some chickens, but he wants to be paid in milk, so you spend the rest of the day on a ridiculous fetch quest until you finally find someone who has what you need and is willing to give it to you in exchange for plumbing work.
Money makes this simpler. Go to the store, give money to the storekeeper, who uses it to buy chickens from the cooper, who buys milk from the dairy farmer, and so on.
Religion, similarly, is a useful tool for imposing morality in situations where other forms (such as pure altruism) don't work well. You may not be able to persuade the Booki-booki Tribe who lives across the river from you that they shouldn't raid you because it's cruel and you don't deserve to suffer, but you might persuade them to stop because the gods will torture them in the afterlife for being evil.
The problems we have with money and religion aren't actually baked into money or religion themselves, but are interactions between those things and pre-human behaviors baked into us from 3.5 billion years of natural selection. Greed, tribalism, and the tendency to think of other life forms as things rather than thinking entities like yourself, are all adaptive traits in an environment where creatures live and die by how well they compete. Obviously it's not a complete melee because social structures can be adaptive, but take any flaw you see in humanity and I'll bet you can trace it back to a survival strategy that's older than our museum fossils.
People like to ascribe all our flaws to "human nature," but really it's more like "nature's nature." Human nature, the things that set us apart from other life on the planet, tend to be about overcoming the shortsightedness of nature built into us. As such, "human nature" might not be the right term for it, since any aliens we find who can build a civilization will probably have to move toward similar values to get off the ground.
It's worth mentioning that food made by people is perceived in a different way than food made by a machine. Machine-made food is just a thing, but food made by people is a product of work, skill, intent, and their desire to please the person they're cooking for. There's an element of relationship built in.
As for shopping, people would go to shops for the same reason they'd go on a treasure hunt game. They like searching for and finding things.
I disagree. Money and religion were both good and necessary inventions, but like all inventions they can cause more harm than good when they interact with our shortcomings.
Money is lubricant for trade systems. It removes the need to go on a ridiculous fetch quest every time you want to trade for something and the supplier doesn't want whatever you can provide in trade. You just sell your services as a plumber to buy some milk so the store owner can buy some new shoes.
Religion is useful for imposing morality in situations where pure altruism might not cut it, and for giving order and structure in people's lives. Believing in a higher power is not in and of itself a bad thing even if it turns out to be all nonsense, since religion has driven people to push toward a kinder, more moral society.
However, combine money with greed, and you've got a problem. Combine religion with tribalism and a tendency to view other life forms as things rather than living, thinking beings like yourself, and you have a problem. But neither of these tendencies can be blamed on money or religion, they're survival strategies from spending 3.5 billion years in a system where whether you live or die depends on how well you can compete. Absent this built-in selfishness, money and religion are good things. Absent money and religion, this selfishness will still cause problems.
Our failings have less to do with "human nature" and more to do with "nature's nature." If fact, I'd say actual human nature, that which sets us apart from from other species on our planet, is to see more and understand that we need to push back on the built-in selfishness we were given. Though "human" nature might not be the best term, since any aliens we meet who get themselves off the ground and into space will probably have had to walk the same path of self-improvement.
More artificial scarcity......
Or, maybe the ETs never had the problems to begin with. Think about that one.
And to me, the competitive, dog eat dog, get them before they get you, way of life will be man's downfall unless man WAKES UP and realizes there is a better way.
Money = slavery via artificial status quo. Been uses as an incentive NOT to advance. The Stan Meyer tragedy begin a good example, as well as the 'war on drugs', which is nothing but a way to make MONEY, doubled if you considered that american prisons are now a for profit business. Not to mention that a day of warfare is more profitable than a year of peace, hence why we got so many damned wars. And evil people getting off scot-free, and poor people getting the book thrown at them. Like the old saying goes, behind every great fortune, lays a great crime.
Religion = MY god is better than YOUR god...let's fight! If you need a dusty old holy book to know how to be a good person, especially those that been edited and censored for the centuries for political and material gain....you're in bad shape. And being a transgirl, several religions wanna see folks like myself be either treated as a second class caste, or end up like Mathew Shepard, sooooooo I can live with out either of these 2.
You are confusing the symptom with the disease. None of the things you are blaming are actually the problem, and getting rid of them won't make anything better. Look deeper.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
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'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
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I have thought about it, and my conclusion is that yes, they will begin with the same flaws we have because those flaws are rooted in how physics and natural selection work. Any system which combines limited resources with life that strives for unlimited reproduction will inevitably lead to competition and predation, which are what gave rise to our problems. There is nothing special about our flaws, if you gave any species on this planet the tools and brainpower to do what we have done, they'll make the same sort of mistakes we have and have to learn how to overcome them just like we're doing.
I agree. It's a bad system that makes everybody in it miserable, but that's the system that created us and shaped our behavior, and it still holds power over us. There is a better way, and we've spent the last 5,000 years learning it, but it's hard to overcome the shackles that are built into our very biology. Heck, considering that nature's tyranny of natural selection has held sway for billions of years, the progress we've made in just 5,000 years is astounding.
Believe it or not, none of those problems are caused by money. They're caused by greed, which is much older than money, and indeed much older than humanity. Before greed for money, there was greed for food, territory, mates, etc. Getting rid of money wouldn't solve any of these problems, the exploitative would find a different way to exploit the people and things around them.
"My god is better than your god, let's fight" is just a specific expression of tribalism, which is much older than religion. If religion did not exist, you'd still have those sorts of conflict, just with a different excuse. Go watch some wolf packs and you'll see the same thing.
And yes, people do need dusty books to tell them how to be good people, whether that's a holy book or a book of secular philosophy. Morality does not exist in nature. Sure, there's love and loyalty to your pack and kin (which conveniently improve your ability to pass on genes), but that's not the same as a universal sense of right and wrong. Morality is something that had to be created by people and it must be learned.
When used properly, religion encourages people be better. When used improperly, it becomes a convenient excuse for the bad stuff people wanted to do anyway. You don't say "we should ban cars because people who want to kill me could run me over with one," because cars let us do good things and if someone was going to kill you they'd do it regardless of whether there were cars to be had.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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The notion comes out of Roddenberry's vision of the future and is very inconsistently applied. But there are ways to work it that can still make sense.
Take the restaurant thing. I'm a pretty good cook, but I don't always want to cook my own meal. Maybe the restaurant has something I don't have a recipe (replicator pattern) for. Maybe I don't have time to cook tonight because I'm busy writing and need to order a pizza. Or maybe I'm going for the experience of dining out.
You see, if it's possible to replicate anything, then skill, uniqueness, and novelty become scarce by comparison. No two hand-cooked meals are exactly alike, and no two visits to a restaurant are going to go exactly alike: different server, different table, maybe there's a special that was different.
Also, the energy needed to operate the replicator has to come from somewhere. So, you could theoretically define an "energy credit" by the production cost of the energy required to replicate a standard item, say, a liter of water.
Why don't other civilizations in Star Trek work this way? Simple: their replicators aren't as good. The Federation in the 24th century is known to restrict technology transfer even to other warp-capable powers and they consistently have the most whizbang new technologies (where the Klingons tend to rely more on older, well-proven technology).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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Have a nice day. -- StarSword-C
Not requiring it and not having it are different things. On Earth, post scarcity, we have everything a person needs available for free. Not everything a person wants.
In First Contact Cochrane claims he was building the Warp Drive to get rich.
In DS9, Sisko mentioned using up Transporter Rations as a cadet. (Rations are a form of currency, even if they are redeemable only for a single purpose and non-transferable.
Money is nothing but an accounting system. You get so much of this, so much of that, and we track it using this measurement called money, credit, rations, whatever. And it exists in Trek. It's just not visible, (already in the works today as cash moves to debit cards, and in a generation to implanted microchips.)
And the Farpoint Station was defined as literally being on the very edge of Federation space, while we were informed in DS9 that it was only the core worlds of the Federation that had become post-scarcity. Some medium of exchange is needed on the fringes - I doubt very much, for instance, that the proprietor of the Klingon restaurant on DS9 was just giving away gagh out of the goodness of his heart, and I know for certain that the drinks at Quark's weren't free.
Earth, we are told, is Paradise. There is no poverty, no hunger, no want. (And, as Sisko observed, it's easy to be a saint in Paradise.) On Earth, people create because they want to create, and give it away because they want others to enjoy the creation. (Kind of like what we do with our stories here, really.) In other parts of the galaxy, though, there is still exchange of cash (of whatever variety) for goods and services. There's still a need for it, too, I'm sure - I can't imagine, say, a Romulan Social Welfare office...
Then again, we're talking about Academy cadets. Without some pretty fundamental changes to human(oid) nature, and unlimited access to a planetary transporter system, too many cadets would wind up slacking off on Hawaiian beaches or African forests if there weren't some limitations on how often they could use it.
NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE...................................
Thanks to over fifty years of writing by the seat of their pants, the Federation is a messy web of contradictions and barely coherent societal wish fulfillment.
Along a similar train of thought, there is also the issue of real estate, with land effectively being a resource that can't be duplicated. Take the Picard family vineyard for example, who decides that they get to use that land and for how long? In a post scarcity world families would have no reason to ever give up land claims. For all intents and purposes the Picard family is effectively landed gentry within the Federation economic system.
Speaking of Picard, he was quite the hypocrite when it came to denouncing material acquisition while at the same time hording quite a collection of rare antiques in his quarters.
We also know that despite being post-scarcity there is a thriving black market in the Federation, with numerous members of Starfleet indulging in it to acquire contraband material such as liquor.
That's actually a very interesting question OP.
I would just assume that the social activity in itself would be interesting enough to keep doing it. Even when there is no ulterior motive.
Also, in an economy that can make products without restriction, services will likely become more important. We can already see that happening now, with ride hailing becoming more important than car ownership. So providing the service of allowing people to go shopping, or have out-of-home dinner could actually become a very important activity for those providing such services.
The fact that we go to a restaurant or to a cinema when you could also stay at home and 'consume' those products there in itself shows, I think, that such services would not disappear only because the products that are offered as part of the service become more readily accessible.
The reason it works on 25th century Earth is that food and clothing are such a tiny expense as to be inconsequential to the planetary energy consumption. This is actually what "post scarcity" means when talking about the UFP. It's not that the UFP doesn't have a budget, just that the budget is huge, and living expenses for citizens are a tiny piece of it.
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