Watch Part 2 Here: th-cam.com/video/lDFDmk0hoUw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=vGziE97eERt_IIXg P.S:- I probably should have gone into more detail about replicators. As many are pointing out in the comments, replicators making their own fuel would violate the laws of thermodynamics. I know that which is why that's not what I meant. As long as there is a ready supply of raw materials to feed the replicator (Star Trek Discovery suggested using human waste which is pretty clever IMO) then a replicator would be able to create the fuel for a small reactor - which itself can be built from replicated parts - or simply build a solar panel or some other means of power generation. That's what I meant. P.P.S:- I find it interesting that many Trekkies are perfectly fine with the many other technologies in Star Trek which overtly break the laws of physics, but apparently replicators don't get a free pass the same way gravity plating does. P.P.P.S:- I also should have clarified the purpose of this video series: This is not a lore video. My goal is not to explain the world presented to us in Star Trek, but merely to use Star Trek as a jumping-off point to imagine how a world LIKE Star Trek would function. Hence the headcanon stuff and references to other media like The Culture Series. I say this because I'm seeing a lot of comments like, "Um actually in [SHOW/MOVIE/EPISODE] [CHARACTER] says [THING] which contradicts what you just said." I know that, but Star Trek's universe isn't consistent so I'm choosing to mostly talk about the setting in broad strokes. Thank you for engaging with the video though. If you want to see the next video in the series early and ad-free, join me on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman
Well thanks for your thoughts. However I think it's a version of utopian communism, in a not so subtle way. As for asking your friends what they would do if money wasn't a problem..... (1) perhaps you have noble intelligent friends. (2) You haven't got out and about enough to really know 75% of humanity
Many questions remain unanswered in theory. The first repicators also have to be produced first, but where do the raw materials come from? The earth is plundered by then. Should the first colonies provide raw materials, or worse, they have to. But when the replicators are everywhere, there will be no need for labour for factories or production. What about the many people who have no jobs? Otherwise, why go through years of training or study if you can't use it? And let's be honest, for most people, "being needed" is also fulfilment. After all, "doing nothing" and just pursuing your hobbies is nice for a while, but unsatisfying in the long run. The result would be a massive population decline. (Would the colonies have to be abandoned again?) Perhaps even forced to some extent in order to pre-empt the dissatisfied and bored population. Many questions and a long way to Utopia.
Your views on powering a replicator is 100% wrong. The Energy and matter equation proves that Star Trek glosses over it. The hidden message of Star Trek is that marxism finally works which is why you know it's fantasy. You can't get something from nothing
4:23 - whoa there! Replicators need energy. If replicators could replicate the hydrogen needed for a fusion reactor to work, that would be creating energy out of nothing. But they don't. Instead you have bussard collectors to top up the reserves. This was even a major plot point of Voyager where replicator access had to be rationed. They're a miracle device, but not _that_ much of a miracle device!
There's also things a replicator just apparently can't make, complex "minerals" like dilithium seems to be one of them - though synthetics seem to come into play at one point - as well as deuterium apparently if memory of that episode serves.
It can't magic up a battery or a fusion reactor in my head canon, or the laws of physics. Deuterium, anti-matter and other resources are always mentioned as being required inputs for Star Ships. We know the toilets feed into the replicators, even in the 31st century, so an input of matter/ energy is always required to make any complex device made by a replicator to function. (Although self-replicating cloaked mines somehow get around this at a small scale...)
Replicators either change energy into matter or rearrange matter into new forms. So you need either stored energy, or stored matter. Although this may explain what happens in the bathroom on Star Trek. Maybe the sewage goes into the replicator for molecular rearrangement.
Since there's millions of people who want everything for free, we have basically 2 options, one are replicators the other one is slavery. Hopefully we will do the right thing and not use the old method again.
You're absolutely right that the replicators need outside energy to run. Indeed, the tech manuals mention that the replicators have raw material reserves to draw on for the purpose of making food, clothing, tools etc. While technically you can make matter from pure energy, the fuel/energy cost of doing so is prohibitively expensive; so with regards to stuff like latinum and dilithium, it's cheaper just to dig it out of the ground, so to speak. And like you say, the energy needed to replicate a deuterium atom would likely exceed the energy equivalent of said atom, meaning, replicating fuel like that would result in diminishing returns
For me, it still raises the question: Who gets the penthouse in the newly built apartment? Who gets the land by the beautiful river, and who has to settle for the first-floor apartment by the highway? There seems to be some corruption or nepotism at play, granting better options to some while leaving others with less desirable choices.
I have always headcannoned it as this: parcels of land or residences are awarded to people based on levels of service. If all you want to do is just be a bum and not contribute to society, you are awarded a Class D apartment. If you have been a Starfleet officer for 40 years, or an esteemed scholar or artist or some such, you might get a Class A homestead. OR something like that. So, because we primarily see Starfleet officers and not "regular folk," an example might be this- In Star Trek II and III, we see Kirk's apartment. It looks pretty damn nice! He's a well decorated Starfleet Admiral though. A brand new ensign might have to share a 2 bedroom apartment with another ensign.
A perfect example of this is Raffi. When Picard goes to recruit her in Picard, she's living in a pathetic hovel. Why? She's clearly not happy living there and likely would move somewhere else. So why doesn't she? What's stopping her from packing up and moving to the penthouse somewhere, or living on that land by the river?
@@tilarium2looking back over the show, it was possibly because she was punishing herself, living poorly while leaning heavily on depressive intoxicants.
It's fairly consistent in Star Trek that service has perks, because so many writers were ex-military. Nobody on Earth is poor or hungry if they don't want to be. But when there is scarcity, like the Holodeck can only hold so many people at a time, then rank makes a de facto currency. Like maybe the captain and engineer can commandeer the holodeck anytime for various reasons. And an ensign might find the holodecks are so overused you have to rank up before you'll ever find an open slot. Or if an ensign saves the ship thanks to some quick thinking, they get a holodeck credit. Just because Starfleet doesn't have money, doesn't mean holodeck slots aren't a form of currency.
@@tilarium2Raffi explains quite clearly that she’s done with Starfleet and wants to be off the grid and off their radar. Accepting base housing etc. would put her back under their thumb.
Love the inclusion of a reference to Banks' Culture series. Those books really explore a post scarcity society much more than Trek ever does. There's a bit in one of them where a character from outside the Culture is touring a ship and meets someone waiting table at a cafe, and the waiter explains why they do the job that could easily be handled by an automated drone: basically because it's a good way to meet new people and the recognition that there is a satisfaction to be had from a job well done, even if that job is as simple as bringing people coffee and then wiping up the table when they're done.
@@localhearthian2387 It depends. For example, Darrell from 'Sci-fi Odyssey' (a great YT channel) refers to the Culture series relatively often (he's read all the books), and therefore I happen to come into contact with it on a semi-regular basis.
Long time since I read that. I might point out that the man could meet people just as easily by sitting in the cafe and NOT waiting tables. And it's not like his efforts are saving the cafe anything: the drone would be free. His efforts are to no purpose, so would he really enjoy an achievement that has no value?
@@davidchambers8697 there is a bit of a nihilistic bent to what the waiter says - something along the lines of: i could spend my time trying to compose great works of literature,, but ultimately even the greatest literature will eventually be forgotten. The Culture itself will one day die. As will the universe itself. So what is the point? The point would ultimately be *in the doing* and not the goal itself. I said nihilistic, but really it's kind of a zen thing. But it's up to the individual to decide whether that would be a meaningful existence. Indeed, that is kind of the whole point writing about a utopia. It's asking the question "is life worth living without struggle?" Banks' books don't actually come down cleanly on one side or another, really. As to whether he could meet people by just going to the cafe... That's true in a sense, but even in that one facet of why he does what he does, you can make the case that if he just did it at his leisure, he'd be guided by his own biases. He'd choose who he'd interact with. By binding himself (however loosely given he can quit at any time) to the social contract of agreeing to provide a service, he's forcing himself to interact with whomever happens to come in. Are all those interactions going to be pleasant? No. But in a utopia where you *can* only have pleasant experiences if you want, I think people would recognize the value in subjecting yourself to unpleasant experiences. If anything, it gives you stories you can tell your friends.
In one episode, Sisko mentioned that he used all his transporter quota when he started the academy when going home every night. I don't think Replicator can be completely "free". Somewhere I read that the replicator have some raw matter stored, that the can convert in something useful. So you would need to "feed" with matter. And each machine would create waste heat when operating so also a replicator would run out of energy after a while. For fusion the enterprise has the bussard collector to mine interstellar hydrogen. On Voyager they introduced replicator ration, to converse energy. That implies that replicator use a lot of energy, but that is that an issue when in Federation space.
The Sisko example gets used often but they never defined what the quota was exactly. Was it just for cadets using transporters to leave campus for personal use or is it for all citizens for general transporter use? Was it cos he beamed directly to the location (been years but I think he said he beamed right into his living room) rather than to a transporter hub in New Orleans and taking a taxi to the house?
Yes, replicators may use a lot of energy, but I still think that if you were to find a way to power it through different processes then yes we would still need the power grid and essentially we would have to figure out how to power that power grid so that everybody can use the replicator whenever they want to And once you’ve got it charged up yeah it would run down, but you hook it back up to the power grid or you leave it hooked up to the power grid and it only collect enough power, but you would still have to buy the wrong materials to use it so the idea of an entirely self-contained unit is Beyond the realm of possibility at this point because you’re not just using pure energy. The energy is used to create the object, but you still need the raw materials so the replicator would need those materials and that might be where money comes in so you might still need money for some things butessentially you could eliminate the need to work more than a few days a month if you’re fortunate enough
Seems like something a school would implement to ensure their students don't just take off every chance they get... socializing with your peers and being around other cadets seems like a critical bonding period that would be lessened if they could just take off whenever... especially when they were new.
@@kabobawsome it's not free but if they are feeding large crews of 200-300+ people on replicator food, the energy density and cost of replicating food must entirely outweigh the cost of transporting food in space.. it just takes slightly more energy to start moving and slightly more to stop moving considering the ship would weigh in the realm of megatons while the food in maybe a thousand tons for a years long expedition... so there is that to consider.
The question I didn't hear you address here for me is why the particular plots of land go to specific people. Chateau Picard and Sisko's appear to both be on prime land for their products. Surely there are other cajun/creole chefs who would love to run a restaurant in the French Quarter, and likewise with vintner's looking for prime French winemaking land. What is it that gave Sisko and Picard the "right" to use those prime locations over others? Money or no, it still seems like there is a system of "value" that gives priveleged options to certain people/families. So there may well no longer be money or monetary classes, but there still seems to be some sort of hierarchical class system that allocates limited resources like prime land. If t's based on historical claims, then it just replicates the old class system, but even if it's based on "contrinutions" opr other social capital type structures, it still amounts to a class system the gives more privelege to people like the Sisko's or Picard's than family's that may want the same areas they do "business" in.
This is where I think social status comes in. Assuming property can be owned and inherited, what use would a property be if inherited by someone who didn't plan on using it? They can't sell it, they can't charge rent, the only thing they could do is give it to someone who plans on using it. That would mean property would tend to be put to use by people with the highest social status and desire to use it. It would also mean families who own property have a motivation to maintain the traditions required to put the property to use.
@@DeanRockne Ya, agreed ... that was sort of my point. While Trek is often portrayed as a fully egalitarian society because of the replicators and the like, there are still CLEARLY "social classes" of various kinds who are awarded extra privileges as a result of their class. Now, in the Trek world we largely see that being done through "social contribution" such as Star Fleet service or things like past status as "landowners" transferring forward as long as they use it. But I also wonder, for example, if the Picards had just wanted a nice acreage in France and left the wine-making in the past, would the land have been seized from the family to be given to a wine-maker? Or would the Picards be able to do whatever they wanted on it until they voluntarily gave it up? I think there are quite a few unanswered "class" questions in Trek that aren't obvious at first glance, but come up when you think more about the details. Does Joeseph Sisko get to keep his prime New Orleans location if all he wants is a nice house in the French Quarter?
@@MotherShipMedia it's also possible there are more specific historic preservation laws that apply to some of these situations. If future France has an interest in maintaining the wine making tradition, maintaining an active vineyard might be a requirement attached to those land deeds. Same goes for the French Quarter. These desirable properties then become an obligation to run living museums of a kind. When you get outside of Earth, there's much more available property and probably less of a public interest in controlling it's use. To your point, there would still be classes and privilege, but it would either be earned through accomplishments, or come with societal obligations (owning a restaurant).
What leads you to think there are chefs or vintners who were not able to acquire the storefront or land they requisitioned? This is a world where you can terraform and colonize planets, I think they can build more storefronts and till more fallow land. There's about 2,000,000 acres of french vineyards today. There would need to be a LOT of people with a very specific desire for an archaic lifestyle for them to even start crowding up that land! And it's not like he's doing all the hard labor himself, there are robots tending to the larger vineyard. I doubt he even "owns" any of it, they probably could just use replicators to plop houses down willy-nilly until the retiree dies and then they erase it and replant. All the harvests would be free-for-all as well, since the harvest bots can scan every single fruit bunch for later direct replication. They're not going to be shipping grapes across the universe ofc, they'll be replicating them. Need more areas for restaurants in the French Quarter? You can literally build them for free... Now they probably wouldn't let you take up the entire island of Australia to be your personal suntanning bed if you just don't do anything. But calling that evidence that there's still "class" distinctions would be absurd. Because NOBODY is allowed to do that. There's one set of rules that everybody follows that prevents people from taking more than they need for their self-actualization.
@@fez-._.-zik Sure, you can terraform all sorts of planets, but There's only one true French Quarter. Not everyone who wants a French Quarter restaurant can get one ... Doesn't matter how many copies you make elsewhere, they aren't "The French Quarter" in New Orleans ...
I imagine that for an engineer or a starship enthusiast, welding panels onto the flag ship would be a dream come true. Just think of how many futuristic "train guys" there must be in a universe with warp capable starships.
Plus, those are likely Starfleet jobs. Just as plenty of volunteer servicemen today do whatever they are assigned, I assume the same applies to enlistees in Starfleet. It's an entirely different working environment than the wider world of civilian life. Rather than for just a paycheck, you might be doing it as a matter of family tradition, to serve your country, to see the world, or to "defend freedom and democracy".
@@PongoXBongo I find it strange that in such an enlightened society that anybody would "have" to go enlisted! Shouldn't everybody get decent education, so everybody can be an officer? So why would anybody become a crewman (so basically somebody all the officers dump on - seriously, if you aren't Chief O'Brien (who should have been fast tracked into an enlisted officers program, as it's a waste of his potential to not allow him command down the line! I mean the guy could give Geordie La Forge and even Scotty a run for their money!) you are basically "trash" as a crewman!)
yeah, for some people welding panels might actually be fun, and getting it right, might well give them more fulfillment than some other job. It might also be a training job, to give you the right to a more creative job in the same field...
Very disappointed Rowan missed the Enterprise episode where the damaged ship gets to a repair bay, and its industrial replicators completely replace the damaged parts with replicated replacements, installed by automated machines. Its a lot like getting an oil change, if by oil change we meant complete replacement of large parts of a spaceship ! The older episodes don't show this, I presume because OUR technology wasn't good enough to show this happening on screen, but it makes a lot of sense for spaceships to be entirely built by machines, since they can repair large pieces of ships, why not do ALL the initial heavy lifting ?This actually leaves only the internal maintenance of the ship, which I suppose Emergency Repair Holograms will take care of, once they become standard issue for all ships, like the Doctor on Voyager.
10:52 there are actually a lot of people who enjoy welding and construction and it would be a point of pride to be someone who welds star fleet ships together.
Not to mention that if you want to be chief engineer on a starship someday, you probably start out doing some pretty basic jobs and work your way up as you demonstrate competency and reliability. Even today, money isn't the only motivator for why people work or what they choose to do.
Humans would be much slower and far less exact than an advanced robot (like right now with many roles in car manufacture), so humans would not perform such tasks except on hobby projects and definitely not on important projects like starfleet ship construction.
@@michaelbone6894 Whilst I don’t necessarily disagree, there are still roles where you might need a human. E.g. if welding a star ship is more like welding a car than you’re right. If it’s more like a submarine, and no robot has been produced that can do the job, than a human will do it. Given they have the android Data in the setting, it’s likely a robot does do the bulk of not all of this work.
There are numerous mentions in TOS to "credits" as a unit of currency, and I believe that Quark says at one point that he will accept Federation credits as payment in his bar, meaning that they are around at this point. While you could argue that credits are only used when dealing with people outside of the Federation, in The Trouble with Tribbles, Uhura paid 10 credits for a Tribble on Deep Space Station K7, which was obviously a federation station. Also, Cyrano Jones, in the same episode, is obviously driven by a desire to make a profit, as is the guy who runs the bar. Also at one point in TOS Kirk jokingly tells Scotty that he has earned his pay for the week. This would seem to indicate that Star Fleet personnel earn some kind of salary.
And one of the crimes Harry Mudd is wanted for is selling technology patented by Vulcans without paying them their royalties. This no money thing didn't start until Star Trek IV, when they say the people in 1986 are "still using money" and Kirk had to pawn his antique glasses to get some. But even here the line could just mean that they don't have 1986 US currency.
TOS is influenced by Roddenberry's experiences during WW2. The military takes care of its men, almost all of it is just logistics to keep the bodies warm and mobile. So there is no need to worry about money within Starfleet, but there is little mention of how anything works in the Federation outside of Starfleet. In Mudd's Women, the protagonist (not Mudd) is a prospector mining lithium to become rich. (That's the gold rush myth, of course; the people selling the picks and shovels and the assayers were the ones who became rich(er), not the prospectors.) That episode was written by Roddenberry himself, and my impression is that it was a meditation on his relationship with Majel Barret. (And Roddenberry was still looking for ever new enterprises to make money with back then.) So yes, money is a thing in TOS, but Starfleet personnel don't need to worry about it. By TNG, money has explicitly become obsolete within the Federation, as explained in The Neutral Zone. DS9 is very, very different from any previous Star Trek.
And, in the first episode of TNG, Beverly Crusher charges a bolt of cloth on Farpoint Station to her "account." So there must have be some vestigial system in place for using money, maybe on bleeding edge frontier systems or brand new member worlds that haven't been fully updated or integrated into the Federation economy. It is also worth noting that money doesn't need to be totally gone for it not to be the main driving force in society to the point it is rarely used or thought of. Maybe there was just a mass realization near the end of the post atomic horror, or as humanity started to recover from it after first contact, that once you have the first two or three layers of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs covered for life, or even just the foreseeable future, Having more money/stuff wouldn't make them happier, and, consequently, the definition of wealth and focus of society shifted to mean working toward a attaining a higher degree of self-actualization, not things, which gave people a path forward and hope for a better future. Given that every scene on Vulcan screams minimalism, I can imagine that they would have strongly agreed with and encouraged this point of view if not preached it outright. Maybe it was not the ending of poverty that ended war and hopelessness, but the ending of the war, the regain of hope, and the quest for self-actualization that ended poverty. Just me rewriting my head canon again.
@@rdtradecraft The Federation is a lot like the Soviet Union or like China used to be back then in that they do trade with foreign powers, but don't use their domestic currency to do so. To that end it would make sense that Crusher has an allowance in foreign money to spend while on Farpoint. That doesn't mean that the Federation uses money internally. Crusher not carrying any money on her even suggests that she is not used to needing to. (Or maybe it's because the uniform has no pockets, although that's what purses are for.) She isn't carrying a credit card or debit card either, or any personal identification. When she asks to charge her account on the Enterprise, it is not clear how the salesman is supposed to do that. (But the episode does suffer a lot from stilted dialogue.) Maslow's hierarchy is not normative, it is descriptive, not of human behaviour or needs, but of how the humans he surveyed felt about their needs. As a description of actual human needs, it is dead wrong. Not only wrong, but manipulative: It suggests that depriving people of things reduces their needs for other things. (How convenient.) As money is still a thing in TOS, abandoning it could not have been a result of the Eugenics Wars. The difference is indeed the replicators: TOS doesn't have them, in TNG they are omnipresent. It could be argued that a money-based economy would not allow replicators to be developed. In that case, the abandoning money would have had to precede the proliferation of replicators. Unfortunately we don't have any data on societies abandoning money permanently, and no records, only artefacts, of pre-money societies. (The earliest written records are debt tables. Book money in today's parlance, although not yet currency as we understand it today.) So there is no template for how that would or could come to pass. The Vulcans could be an important influence in that, their society being organised around principles of pacifism and logic as explained and shown in The Savage Curtain. (And in stark contrast to Amok Time. TOS struggled a lot with understanding the concept of logic at first. And DS9, VOY, and ENT even portray the Vulcans as utterly irrational and warlike.)
One thing I liked about Star Trek: Enterprise, is it showed how transporters and warp developed side by side. This makes replicators the next step of their turning point of technology.
Love this video 🎉 My head cannon for starship production not being fully automated is the societies need to not loose a skill base. For example, Utopia shipyard and starfleet may mandate a need for manual welders to keep the manual skills up. Perhaps it's even part of an engineers academy work before being assigned to a ship, if the automation ever failed in deep space, the skills would still exist to perform maintenence and repairs 👌
@@Varitok1 If you didnt need to pay for food, housing, etc then an internship system that seperates the skilled/motivated from rest makes sense ... time is still somthing that is not limitless so its the only thing that actually has value. So for both the trainer and the trainee ... both sides of that equation need to be able to know if this is the path for you
@@michaelgrant4867 “Time is still something that is not limitless, so it’s the only thing that actually has value.” Excellent observation. 👍🏼 I need to think about that more. 🤔 Thanks.
Very true! And Star Trek has really shown that society places great value on the artistry/efforts/decision making of humans/living beings being the centre of technological systems, so it makes sense that highly skilled trades like welding would be a worthwhile and fulfilling way to spend ones time (ideally with the futuristic tools to make it easier)
I rather like what Orville adds to this idea: people earn a reputation as well. What that translates to is unclear except in trust with things like captaining a spaceship. Possibly everyone gets a large ration of energy to spend. They may apply to get an extra ration for large projects. So, if you make good gumbo and run a good restaurant, you get likes that could be used as support for a renovation that may exceed what most people can spend. edited to add an additional comment.
@palmercolson7037 That's exactly what I wanted to comment. It's clear that not everybody on a starship gets the same privileges as the high-ranking officers. Most crew don't seem to have large private cabins just for themselves. Okay, but that's on a starship, where there is limited space and a clear hierarchy. What about on an Earth-like planet? Well, quite likely it will still be similar. Space is still limited, even though less so than on a spaceship. There would still be hierarchies, as various jobs that require multiple people, would require organization. Some people's positions would inherently be more critical. Some people would be more skilled and experienced than others. At minimum, a single person living by themselves might receive a small room in an apartment block, with a shower and toilet, and an "internet" terminal. They might not have a personal replicator, but have to go to a cantina. They would get free access to basic clothing, but if they want more interesting designs, would have to earn access to them. So if they wanted more, they would have to work for it. Perhaps people with good jobs have software access to give the people working for them various material benefits. Perhaps there is an official social hierarchy in the civilian (non-Starfleet) life, and advancement in it is similar as advancement in the Starfleet hierarchy. I'm just speculating here, of course. *Edited because I forgot to write some lines.
In Trek on Earth - Reputation means not extra rations (as these are free), but people wanting what you do ... Sisko's restaurant is popular because he has a good reputation On a starship resources (space and power) will always be limited and so different rules apply ... you get to be on the starship, by wanting to be, and by earning a reputation for being reliable and good at a job that is needed onboard
@@icecold9511 Because, on an isolated little ship with no guaranteed resources for resupply, the crew of _Voyager_ were no longer in a post-scarcity situation. VOY should never be used as an example of how things normally work in the Federation or Starfleet, because they had to operate as an independent unit for those seven years. It occurs to me that VOY would have made a lot more sense if they'd had a scene early on talking about "emergency orders in the event of extended isolation from outside support." A lot of the show could have been explained as the result of Janeway struggling to thread the needle between Starfleet's ideals and the first-draft-y, inadequate emergency guidance.
To be honest I don't actually see there being bad apples in the way we usually see them aka stealing for profit since as stated in the video, replicators have essentially removed that need. And yes as Quark said to Nog that without creature comforts we devolve into past versions of ourselves. But at the same time hearing of all people a Ferenghi say that coming from a society still governed by the acquisition of wealth, is funny since I'm sure certain murders for profit and status are quietly covered up on Ferenghar. Anyway bad apples do exist, they are just driven by different reasons such as revenge. And if they are driven by wealth, they tend to rule over civilisations that still economic based or live outside Federation space like those seen in season 3 of Picard.
Maddox in the Picard continuity went outside of the Federation to continue his research, and fight an unclear shadow conflict with the Romulan secret secret police with his own sleeper androids...
@@DarkLordDiablos Is it possible for two parties to mutually profit from a deal they voluntarily entered into that doesn't involve anyone else? Really, just asking if you feel that all profit is or must be a result of theft.
10:28 a lot of people in the trades take great pride in their work. I could easily see someone welding the panels of the enterprise not only enjoying the work but taking the time to make their welds perfect. I would have to say the trades will never die because people enjoy creating things by hand, and if money weren’t an issue then more people who enjoy these jobs would pour their effort into making their work the best work
"people go to restaurants in Star Trek for the same reason people go to restaurants today"! -thank you for confirming that this is literally the future.
Something in the real world that serves as an example of value of items. That today we can readily recreate many works of art very exactly and cheaply, but original works of art still have great value, both sentimentally and intrinsically.
...Most of the worth of works of art and other unique items are in their provenance, not in the object itself a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that nobody can prove is by him, is worth only as much as a good painting of the era, even though it's an original If you had a painting that is an exact replica at the atomic level, and is indistinguishable by any means, why is it worth any more than any other copy, and why is "the original" worth more when you can't tell which one is the original ....
@@anon_y_mousse Interesting that you set a time limit on your view. In truth, art should not have worth in a monetary sense, but it should have value, which you may interpret in any number of ways, from insight into the human condition to an evocation of the world around us. A video all of it's own I suspect.
@@wowmanhaha It's not a time limit, but a time frame of when art has sucked. Prior to the current period we're in, and then some depending on how you count periods, art wasn't nearly all garbage. I'd say art got good around the late 1300's, and most was great until the early 1900's when it started to suck donkey balls.
Art, like everything else, has exactly as much market value as you can sell it for. Artworks therefore have to preserve or increase their value if they are to keep functioning as devices for tax avoidance, or for storing wealth through times of war or hyperinflation. There's also the sentimental value of owning a historical artefact. Or just the pleasure of enjoying the art, but for that, a replica would also do in most cases.
It's important to keep in mind that the Federation's education, culture, and values are very different than current day world. When we ask the question of why anyone would want to be a waiter, we assume that being a waiter in the Federation is like being a waiter today. We assume that it's a bad job where they get treated like crap by their customers and their bosses, they're disrespected and looked down upon, they're constantly under stress, they have to work long hours for little pay, and they have to do the job or they'll lose their home. But I would bet that being a waiter in the Federation is not a bad job because of their different culture. Customers are not rude jerks. Restaurant managers don't overwork or mistreat them. Their livelihoods are not dependent on the job. People are respected for doing a job and doing it well because they are contributing to society. They aren't mistreated or looked down upon for the type of job they do like in our world today.
I think waiters in Trek are future restauranteer. They are apprentice learning how to run a restaurant before trying it themslves. When there is no need for money, every job becomes an educational opportunity to choose from. This is why I think despite having automation tech, the culture in Trek will always be open to menial task as a way for people to learn the basics or fundamentals before moving on to more difficult subject.
Yeah , it can be fun, the are plenty chatrity or just club funding events, wher epeople are waiters, and its voluntary and a lot do it, or ccompany. Or selling on a flea market, can be fun, and fulfilling. Or at a farm, most farmers dont make nearly enough money to justify the work if they didnt like the work. Dunno there are probably enough weirdos who love cleaning. And sure enoughdo free charity work for people . Feeling good and doig good can be its own reward, orr whatevetr people love about cleaning.
So humans aren't humans anymore. La Tabula Rasa gommies have always sought. Even before there was $ there wasn't this magic. You don't see it in nature. There is always a hierarchy. You are forlorn that humans are human and not borgs.
@@Drak976 Borg literally also has a hierarchy dude. Also for Fs' sake prime ST timeline literally has some Vulcan "helping hand" for quite some time before UFP is a thing.
Couple quibbles. Replicators weren't invented yet, or at least weren't available on starships, in the TOS era, which was still post-money enough for the crew to be unfamiliar with using it. However, they did have synthesizers. We've seen TOS-era synthesizers create food and clothing. It seems likely that the difference is a synthesizer is specialized for a particular type of good, while a replicator can produce effectively anything just using a software update. Synthesizers would still have led to the post-scarcity era, but only if they could be powered at effectively no cost. Cheap and readily available fusion power was probably the first step down that road. Second point: replicators can't produce enough fusion fuel to be self-powering. Star Trek doesn't claim to have broken thermodynamics. That's why starships have Bussard collectors to gather hydrogen fuel for fusion. Likewise see Voyager, where crewmembers had "replicator rations" -- the replicators had to be rationed because Voyager was outside Federation space and not getting regularly refueled and resupplied. On a planetary scale, though, it certainly seems like energy was readily available enough to be basically free.
Well said. I personally tend to focus on that last sentence. Also, I wonder how long it takes a young adult to have free access to the family's replicator before they get tired of just piling up random toys, and start paring their collection down to the ones that really matter? That's probably a period of every child's life in the Federation, one that trains them to only replicate what will have meaning for them.
Yes, as others pointed out in these comments, thermodynamics would forbid creating more matter from energy than that amount of energy the replicated matter can release in complete annihilation (M/AM reaction) I saw somewhere I think on Reddit that Enterprise already mentions (or implies) they were post-scarcity before replicators or even protein or other resequencers. A lot of this doesn't even need to come from technology, just the allocation of resources. We *already* have the resources today to meet the basic needs of all humans on earth but we grossly misallocate them. This is at this point a social problem, not a technological one
@@vinapocalypse That's a *great* point! We sci-fi fans tend to get hung up on post-scarcity as a term for being able to generate near-infinite resources via replication tech, renewable energies, and so on. Post-scarcity really just means having more than we need. It's more logistics than physical technology. Nobody would starve anywhere on Earth today if enough people in leadership positions cared to cooperate and spread the food around. _That's_ the first thing Earth found a solution for in Star Trek: valuing people as more than resources for other people to exploit.
The replicators must use some store or supply of matter and/or energy. In Voyager they often speak of replicator rationing... you can't create something out of nothing...
Take a drink every time Rowan says "Star Trek". I'm watching his previous retrospectives and man, it's literally every 3 seconds. Watch the first four minutes of the 2009 film video as one of many examples if you don't believe me, you'll hear it 40+ times.
I guess that in the StarTrek society, to conduct a huge event at a restaurant, is probably as cheap as for a kid to bake a cookie nowadays. And, I mean, when your kid gives you a cookie they baked, it's not like he or she is going to say "Oh, why did you JUST say "thank you"!? I expected you to pay me 5 dollars for this!!". And if he or she gives you a cookie as a gift, you won't just say "Oh, it's worthless! I can't even sell it FOR MONEY, duh!" No, you're just going to eat a cookie and say thank you to you kid. The same is probably true of a restaurant owner on the Star Trek Earth. The very act of different guests visiting his or her restaurant would probably already give great joy to the owner. In the Star Trek, they probably also have some system of redistributing land. Maybe something similar to what we used to have in the USSR, where all the land of the Capitalist oligarchs was confiscated and given to every citizen for free if a citizen would use it productively. Some people had built a little summer house on the little patch, or what most people did, they started growing their own fruits and vegetables to share with their families (some also sold the little things on the market, because the Soviet Union was a Socialist society, and not Communist, like the Earth from Star Trek, but still, the land was mostly used for personal use). Just to show to you how valuable it can be, even after all these decades and the restoration of Capitalism in Russia, my grandmother is still obsessed with the garden that she created on the little patch of land that Soviet government had given to her, and she works there every year, growing lots of fruits, vegetables and berries. Even after her land became her private property in the 1990s, she never sells the vegetables, she just gives everything away for free to her relatives and friends. I am quite certain, that in the Star Trek society, they have a whole culture of giving away food and even some more complicated items just like that, for free.
Nicely done. I think there's an overlooked element though. Trek is showing us an energy economy. They don't need currency to buy goods, but they need energy to replicate goods or travel, which at the macro level means they still have a recognizable economy just with some form of energy placeholder as the medium of exchange. We see that most directly with Voyager and their rationing of replicator and holodeck use (which the crew accepted quite readily as though it weren't an alien or archaic concept) but the power limit is always subtly there throughout the franchise. It's clearly not a direct energy-backed Federation Dollar or something like that, but there is some relationship between work and available power to use for replicators, transporters, etc. Which could mean that working at the shipyard gives you way more matter-transmuting mojo than painting landscapes.
This! I was thinking the exact same thing. The true "currency" of their society is energy. Energy is converted to power or matter depending on the need. Their technological breakthrough was developing energy sources so efficient and cheap that energy could effectively be given away (Fusion, Matter/Antimatter, etc). This translates to people pursuing "passions" as main motivator. My guess would be there is still a hierarchy of what passions "earn" what respective levels of energy use even if the "accumulation" of energy isn't the primary motivator for work.
Compared to the energy they burn for just crossing interstellar distances, a holodeck would not even be a rounding error. Time slots would still be limited.
Except that there is no mention anywhere in the Star Trek franchise that people are working for energy as payment, nor energy incentives. Reminds me of the Decepticons constant thirst for energon cubes. But that's just not Star Trek. That's Transformers. I think Rowan Coleman explained it well. There are personal replicators, and there are industrial replicators. The industrial ones will go to large groups of individuals and institutions, probably granted by the government after filing a request form. And the personal replicators go to family households. Star Trek's society has figured out how to collect this energy, one would figure from mining planets and asteroids, which are plentiful. But who will do all that work? An army of refurbished Emergency Medical Holograms. Free, never-ending energy. Shame Megatron never thought of that.
Another point about the replicators that can help factor into figuring this stuff out is that there are clearly limitations to the replicators. First, i'm pretty sure there are some items that the replicators are capable of making, but are prohibited from doing so. I think DS9 mentions that weapons are in that category. Second, there are things that the replicators can make, but what the replicators make is different from the real thing, mainly food and drinks. That's why things like resturants and vineyards would still have a reason to exist, the food and wine from those real sources would taste different, and to some far better, than anything that can come out of the replicator. Finally, we're told that there's at least 1 thing, that being latinum, that the replicator flat out can't make. That's basically the justification behind the entire Ferngi civilization. We're never even told if latinum has a use, but it's a limited resource in an otherwise limitless world and therfore has a potential use as a currency
The things banned... are for good reasons, on a Starship - Alcohol vs Synthahol, the food has all toxins removed, some of these add flavour ..and weapons without authorisation Elsewhere, probably weapons .. Latinum and Dithium were both made unreplicatable so that it was possible to have scarcity in a post scarcity society so that stories could happen... it's hard to comment on things that don't exist anymore ...
Gold's only actual use was "it looks pretty" until electricity, which it is a good conductor of, was discovered. Yet, it's considered incredibly valuable and has been the standard of currency. Latinum could easily be the same.
@@matthewpatrick7263 Gold isn't a particularly good electrical conductor It had four properties it was valued for 1 it's pretty - and so easily recognised 2 it's rare - and so expensive 3 it's very malleable, and so easy to work 4 it's very corrosion resistant Most of the uses today, are to do with the combination of its corrosion resistance, and its electrical or thermal properties Latinum has only one property that it is valued for, it's inability to be replicated making it the *only* rare substance
Because, firstly, they are still greedy buggers 🙂 and, secondly, the replicators still require a LOT of energy to turn it into the baryonic matter. Hence the implementation of the 'replicator rations' on USS Voyager when the ship got stranded in the Delta Quadrant. P.S. - I know you from OrangeRiver. 🙂
@@subraxas Hi. I still don't like the replicator; it seems like it exists solely to get rid of capitalism. If you're saying that capitalism is so strong that the only way you can end it is to invent something that needs made up science to work, are you really anti-capitalist?
@@subraxas So the commie federation has a monopoly on kindness in the galaxy? Money based races like the Ferengi are irredeemable? Oh yes only if you're connected to the commie hive then you have free energy. Because having free energy on voyager would have ruined the entire show. Weird how you can just seesaw around this depending on what you want that show to say. The federation seem like greedy buggers in Kurtzman trek.
0:17 -- Considering in one episode they try to get Jake's dad a 1951 Bowman Willie Mays rookie card...they should know that there will always be the need for money. After all, it is impossible to replicate antique/vintage items/collectibles, because if you did it wouldn't be antique/vintage anymore!
Replicators are energy in energy out. It would take energy to make hydrogen for a fusion reactor and to start the process to break down materials. Both in TNG and VOY energy is carefully managed, so energy most likely has taken the place of money in a certain sense. Everybody probably gets enough to cover their basic needs and then some, and perhaps having a job gets people extra. Edit Also some things are automated like house cleaning in an episode of TNG Riker says the ship cleans itself.
Sure Rowan, your family _say_ they would do all those enrichment things if they didn't need money because of replicators, but I think the past few years have shown that for all their Grand Plans, we'll just watch "The Office" for the millionth time. I come back to "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." If it wasn't for us being forced to work for our survival, we wouldn't have gotten out of the caves.
I think there is some truth to that. People think if they only had more time then they'd go travel or do a project or whatever. But people don't think of the time cost and challenge of writing a novel, say, or rather, they have and that's why they're not writing NOW. The pandemic forced a lot of people to live off a dole at home, and when you can't even enjoy going out to a restaurant or go anywhere without a mask on, you would naturally resort to TV and movies to fill in the time. (The pandemic did little to change my life at all, except that I lost my job and immediately got rehired to do something else - I was working full-time throughout the pandemic). Now, I'm unemployed, and yes, I watch a lot of TV and TH-cam - but that's mostly because it's there and it's habitual. I'm not in the habit of writing, especially something challenging like a novel. And the same thing that has held me back for writing online or making my own YT videos - my own self doubt - has not changed. And the pressure to go get a job is near-constant, so I'm worried all the time about that and about money, not fulfilling my dreams. Honestly, I'd love to go travel the world or go back to school right now, but I don't have the money to do it. It's not a lack of a job that's holding me back, although it sure would make a lot of my life easier - it's simply the lack of capital, and being saddled with debt on top of that. Also bad timing - I missed the deadline for program applications for Master of Library and Information Sciences which is probably the degree I'd go back to school for, so now I have to wait until this fall to apply for next year. And hope I can get a decent job or two in the meantime. Being unemployed in today's society is really the pits. Being unemployed in Star Trek society - sure I'd be spending a lot of time Holodecking, but I'd also crave doing *something* in the real world, and I bet getting a job to just be productive and earn a reputation isn't nearly as hard as it is now. You'd still be able to do poorly at the job and get fired, but you likely wouldn't be competing against hundreds of applicants just to get the same job opening in the first place.
@@DataLal Computer make a chair with a face sized hole in it. Next make a 2x as large as normal Deanna Troi right after she's had 3 Chocolate Sundays in 10 Forward and she is extremely lactose intolerant and needs to sit down. Computer disengage safety protocols. -Barkley probably
The person doing the welding is also a part of an organization. People in organizations tend to do what the hierarchy in the organization asks them to do. Now turn over could be quite high in an organization that has voluntary enrollment requirements and lax reasons for existing, so that could lead to better managers, but in an organization such as Star Fleet with tough entrance exams, and a driven purpose for existence then I'd assume that when your manager tells you to weld a plate, you weld that plate.
I think the idea is money is still used as a means of buying scarce resources (land & certain luxuries) and labor (skilled craftpersons, professions where it's nice to have a living being in that position, other private employees, et cetera), but most items are not scarce and as such are free. You don't need money to survive or live comfortably, but it's still needed to thrive, essentially.
I'm glad you brought up Player of Games, not only for the Culture / Federation similarities. I had the book recommended to me by it being described as an excellent episode of TOS.
For some manual labour, the DOT droids we see in discovery and probably in SNW help complete the picture. Although not mentioned by the same name, Geordi references droids loading the photon torpedoes in Picard season 3. Honestly, droid assistance that we never see helps explain how Voyager stays so squeaky clean through most of its journey. Humans might do welding, etc, work for pride, self fulfillment, etc, but it seems necessary to shift 99% of the work onto robots/droids.
"Droid" is the word they use in Star Wars for robots. I haven't seen Picard and don't plan to, I wouldn't be surprised if it is actually Star Wars dressed up as Trek. Interior maintenance can be done by replicators. Farscape bothers to explain the concept, in a way that very apparently made it into Harry Potter
I think one small thing that contributes is the placebo effect, i've always imagined the food tastes exactly the same but some people think it doesn't. Like how some people think records sound better than cds.
The question I have isn't why someone would go to a restaurant in the Star Trek universe, it's why would anyone work at a restaurant in that universe if they didn't own the restaurant or have some connection to it? How would you convince someone who has everything they need to take food orders and buss tables.
I'm a musician and I feel so privileged to earn my money by doing, what i love. Sure, there are days, when work is still work and not fun, but overall i would still do, what i do even if i wouldn't have to worry about money anymore. Keep up the good work. You make the best Star Trek video-essays on TH-cam!
@@Apple2-ux8uo Does it matter? His base needs are taken care of meaning he can make whatever music he wants. If he craves prestige and recognition for his work he will act accordingly.
@@palmercolson7037There's also the fact that the quantity of energy involved in atomic transmutation is comparable to the energy released by the fission of a similar mass of uranium. As such, the energy needs of a replicator making a meal are similar to those of a small atomic bomb.
There are people who would, if there was no need for money, kill to personally build with their own hands the greatest scientific and engineering feats of the age assuming the safety and work culture of the 24th century. I think that robots definitely do a lot of automation but the personal touch is essential in fostering a sense of common purpose and striving for fulfillment. When the flagship defends humanity from an incomprehensible threat, there are thousands of people on Earth who share in that accomplishment and have given their time, expertise and labor to make that feat possible.
I think the whole 'no money' idea was a misstep that came later in the Star Trek canon than most people seem to remember. In TOS, there were multiple references to 'Credits' as a unit of currency. So, in TOS, they still 'had' money; it was probably all electronic, and to the 1960s viewers, it would have seemed futuristic. The first real reference to 'no money' was in the movie "The Voyage Home," and the way Kirk referenced that they don't "use money" may have been more of a reference to Federation currency being electronic and not physical like bills or coins. It wasn't until TNG that it really became hard canon that "they don't use money," but even there, there were references to buying 'things' (In Farpoint, Dr. Crusher bought something and told the vendor to charge it to the ship account). The strongest reference to "no money" was in TNG season 1; after that, they basically avoided the subject. When we got to Voyager and DS9, the crew was very quick to embrace "Gold-Plated Latinum" and "Replicator Credits," so this "no money" society was not deeply ingrained into their worldview, and they had no problem adapting to cash societies. I suspect that the "no money" idea is a sort of political stance to which people are conditioned to pay lip service, with more or less personal buy-in, and people just ignore that there is plenty of bartering and an under-the-table economy going on, perhaps using the currency of other cultures.
With basic needs met, we would exponentially advance in arts, culture, and science. This makes the idea of exploring space even more sensible in this world.
I take it that some menial labors are a form of education/mentorship others are traditions. The welders and other builders are in the process of understanding how starships are built before moving up to a position that oversees that aspect of construction. Similar to the waiters at a restaurant. It isn't just about learning how to cook, but how to create an atmosphere, present the food, take up the food, and how to treat patrons. Then there are menial task that are traditional, to keep the cultural heritage and knowledge of the past alive. Take it to the extreme, if there are no menial task in Trek and everything is automated, then it would be very easy to bring civilization into a dark age like Warhammer 40K. In 40K, humanity used to have fully automatics society but no one learned how things were made, so when technology failed, the entire civilization fell. With the preservation of menial tasks in Trek, if every replicator failed, people still retain the skills and knowledge to help society self sufficient.
Well humanity in 40k kind of lost due to the machines AI being possessed by demons and turning on them and cutting off all planetary space travel. But yeah they did have machines where if they gathered the necessary materials it would form them from you but it isn't really stated that they were lazy just understood that everyone is not gonna know everything there is to know, served more as a vast library of human knowledge.
The main problem with replicators is that if they could exist, their energy requirements would likely be insanely nasty... Unless you're using something like transporter technology to convert matter to energy and then reconstruct matter in an alternate form (also sounds likely to be very wasteful) But I'm still optimistic that futuristic 3D printing is going to make things better in terms of easier access to stuff... Like meat for example... It has to be possible to make meat without the whole process of an animal being born, being raised for years, and then slaughtered for food... That just sounds insanely inefficient.
I think the main reason for the absence of automation is the budget and perhaps the writers not foreseeing how common place it might be already in the near future. I mean, we already have self-working vacuums and such. And we see cleaning drones in one episode of Star Trek Discovery when something spilled in the mess hall. And someone would have to clean the dust off house rooms and ship’s quarters.
You can't do away with scarcity. For example, how do you decide who gets to live in the penthouse, or who gets first row seats at a concert, or who gets to have a beachfront house, or... you get the idea. There will always be things that exist in less supply than the demand for them, and you will need money to allow people to prioritize what they want more. So one person might value first row concert seats more than living on the beach, while someone else could have the opposite priority. People must sacrifice things they don't care as much about in order to get the things they really do care about, and money is the most efficient way to do that. You can't replicate fuel. Or at least you can't replicate more fuel than it took to fuel the replicator to replicate the fuel. It always must be a net loss. The 2nd Law of thermodynamics is a thing.
Came to say something like this. The concept of "post scarcity" cannot exist outside fiction, because scarcity is itself relative: it moves with the alternative uses that exist for resources, which change with new advances in technology.
Except money has not existed for most of human existence, only a few thousand years, and still doesnt exist in some societies today. Labor for things beyond survival/sustenance were and are still performed in those societies. A post scarcity society is possible but requires a shift in thinking along with removing scarcity. such a society may also be smaller in population as fewer people are needed, we've seen this happening already as birth rates drop in many places around the world. This could also reduce the competition for the same things.
@@adrianwebster6923Those societies were also smaller, less sophisticated, and most importantly, could support *FAR* fewer people. Specialization is what allowed civilization to progress, and money allows specialization to work. The only way to reduce competition for things is to not have scarce things people want. That means all you can have access to is a very limited selection of common items. So sure, if you want to destroy modern society, kill billions, and have people revert to only having what they and their close friends and family could produce by themselves, then you can do away with money. Otherwise, you need it.
@@KenMathis1 When your means of production can support large numbers without needing money those factors stop mattering. the point is that scarcity would be a thing of the past with a replicator. It is a revolution like agriculture and the industrial revolution. societal organization changes. The sacrifices you describe are no longer necessary thus motivation will be based on other needs and desires. Creativity, curiousity etc. things which exised in human society regardless of the existence of money or levels of scarcity.
Just from a pure physics point of view, you wouldn't be able to use a replicator to produce the fuel for the fusion reactor that powers it. That would either break the second law of thermodynamics if there are no energy losses or the first law of thermodynamics if there are energy losses but the replicator would produce enough fuel to fuel the fusion reactor. Perpetual mobile is not allowed.
That was something I appreciate about how The Orville explained future society. It directly references how in the future, people pursue social capital and prestige rather than money.
Yeah and that when horrible. I remember the episode where he was going to jail because of something and they had to make it up by convincing people he was a good person. Imagine that in today's society.
I've tried explaining ideas like this to people but you have done it so clearly and concisely here, I'll probably just refer people to this video next time my friends and I get into a discussion on Star Trek. Great video!
Those who are familiar with Korean BBQ, hot pot, or fondue restaurants where you cook your meal rather than restaurant staff, they are place of social gathering where people socialize with friends and family as their food slow cooks. And personally, drinking at a bar feels more fun than drinking at home, drinking beers from cans or bottles. Its the ambience I call it. Plus, some bars have microbrewery so I like to have different taste.
So there is money in the Star Trek universe in the federation. 1. When star fleet goes to worlds with money they have a personal spending budget. 2. There is instances within the federation where some credit system is used. For example in Deep Space 9, there is a short 1 line where Benjamin Sisko talks to his dad about using his credits to come home while he was at the academe when he was younger. I think this indicates things that are super super super cheap like food is free since whatever is done is likely offset in society. But things where there is only so much (like if they can teleport people 100,000 times a day. A few bad apples using this over and over will easily cause it where others won't have access to the teleporters. So in this they have to pay. Now the question is, do they get credits in some UBI system where everyone can use the services and everyone gets x credits a day? Or is it, you have to do x to get credits? That isn't clear Like the way I view it is it's like tap water. Most places will not charge you for tap water. A glass of water is extremely cheap, so like the replicators making food. It just isn't worth charging citizens. Where like the restaurant knows it will make a ton of money on other things than the water, Star Fleet knows it will make a ton of money on whatever citizens produce or automation.
In a Star Trek utopia, knowledge is the currency and your job title is your wealth. The smarter and more patience someone is to learning, the better quality of life they will have.
What if you want to own something "extra"? Like a cottage in the mountains (ST:Generations), a personal space shuttle (let alone some spacious warp-capable *yacht), or a "simple" hover-car? And let's say that you want to pursue a hobby that is more "expensive"? Like for example, whilst speaking of the hover-cars, you want to become a racer? In that case you'd "need" more than just a "simple" hover-car, ain't it right? And what about the process? You'd waltz into some local **office/institution and brashly announce to them that you want all those things and they would then simply provide you with them? Well, I do not think that this would be that easy. Among others, the society does not owe you 'these' things. Maybe you "have to" work certain jobs for a certain amount of time (like 'years') in order to earn the right to be "allotted" such non-essential stuff. Like doing something mundane and uninspiring (welding panels all day long) or do something dangerous (joining Starfleet; especially as a "redshirt" 😀). * - Over the decades, we've seen on Star Trek examples of people who at least seemed to be.... ehm.... "rich". ** - Once again, why would anyone want to willingly work on such a 'dorky' job; like long-term or permanently? One could potentially come up with hundreds of such examples.
In the "Original" series there are several references to MONEY. I recall a specific line spoken by Kirk to "Scottie"; "If you can DO THAT, Mr. Scott; you'll have earned your Credits for the month!" So WHEN exactly did Star Trek dispense with MONEY? There is that line in "The Voyage Home" where Kirk says "WE don't" (use money!) That, I think was when the Communist cross-over occurred. IT WAS NOT a part of Mr. Roddenberry's Original vision.
So... let me get this right - the thing that obviates the need for money in the Star Trek universe is... the breaking of all of the laws of thermodynamics. If you can get enough (or more) energy out of a replicator, through the replication of fuel, you're getting something for nothing. Not even the Star Trek universe works this way.
Sorry to interject, but "personal" property is an anti-concept (An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept, in this case, Private property.) as all Property is Private property regardless of what it is the case is. My personal theory is that, since we only see a moneyless society from Star Fleet personnel i.e. a wing of the government, there could be some other forms of currency used for items that replicators can not make for one reason or another, so they don't need money. So it is not a moneyless society; it's just reserved for things that humans value over their basic needs. But to understand this, one needs to fully understand the true nature of Money.
"all Property is Private property" Did you mean "all personal property is private property"? Because "public property" is a thing and it's certainly not "private property".
@@JannPoo Absolutely not! The term 'personal property' is an anti-concept crafted to undermine the true essence of private property. Regardless of whether you utilize a piece of property for personal use or economic gain, it unequivocally remains your private property. Furthermore, 'public property' is a misnomer; it should rightfully be termed government property, and its legitimate scope of ownership is far more limited than commonly perceived.
The replicator is the futuristic scifi version of fantasy's "soft magic." Soft magic is basically when the magic is not well defined and can do anything. A "hard magic" version of the replicator would look something like Star Gate Universe, where they had a system that made energy and water and food, but they had to stop at stars and planets for rescources.
The reason Gene Roddenberry doesn't have any robots in Star Trek. Because he said anytime you do a Scf-Fi show and put robots in it. Everyone only cares about the robots. He wanted people to care about the character's stories in this tv show. Not the robots.
I feel like there's a lot of social credits in the Federation. Picard still has the biggest quarters on Enterprise; the lower deckers sleep in the hallway. Everyone gets the basics, but if you want more, you have to contribute to the greater good, not just to yourself. I think that's why a lot of people join Starfleet: if you do, opportunities open up.
I’m telling you for a fact I loved my job. I welded,fit metal,did complex calculations, engineering, rigged and placed components, fabricated whole items and parts , metallurgy, repaired the largest machines on the planet , and directed crews ect. I loved every minute of it even though it was hard,dirty and unhealthy. If I could have afford to done it for free I would have especially if I knew my work was a value to all mankind. If I lived in a post scarcity world I would have done that same job I did for a living for free. I think I loved the noise and the smell of burnt ozone as I heliarc pressure tubes together. I might take more time off but yes I would love to build a star ship or a giant space station.
10:43 Certain job may also be desirable because of the experience they provide. Welding together star ship hulls might be a useful or enriching experience to have if you plan to go into star fleet later. Knowing you put your own sweet and work into the ship you are traveling the galaxy in.
Well, just not as much as conventional physics would speculate is needed for like a transporter or a warp drive, but they do have full access to space and fusion and wondrous transmuting gadgets and everything, energy is not something Earth is really short of.
If it's not money then it's something else. In a society larger than the scope of a measily small village, the value of the individual is impossible to weigh without an external tracker like currency or an account of deeds. The only way to live without money is to go back to villages or tribal societies, where everyone knows everyone in their village/tribe & their values are easily judged (if you're capable but don't work, you get ousted from the village)
I am retired. Money is now a solved problem for me. I do AI art, I write programs - small ones that scratch a simulation itch for me, large ones like a classic sort of StarTrek computer game. I spend time watching things that interest me on TH-cam, like this post.
If you're really interested in this topic, you should read a novel called "Looking Backward" written by Edward Bellamy in 1888. I think many of the systems and concepts discussed there could be adapted to help explain the Star Trek economy.
Fair points. I would still work if money was not a thing. In fact I have gotten in trouble for working off the clock and I have even said that if they are worried about the cost of my overtime, just limit the amount of hours I get paid for and not the hours I work. Even though I am introverted, I still like being around people. Being a QC technician means I have a reason to be around people. It is a great purpose in life. Sitting around doing nothing seems like a waste. Everyone should contribute their time to society.
Iain M Banks's Culture series are brilliant Sci-fi books. I highly recommend them to everyone. Also one of the things the ST universe is missing is Drones to do all the like welding hull plates on to Starships.
I think you need to start thinking of tradesman as artist who take a lot of pride in their work and passing on their knowledge to an apprentice.(we see this often in Star Trek with other professions) and if you spend any time on social media following tradesmen you will find they take pride in being good at their craft if not the best. That welder gets to tell everyone he built that Star ship with his two hands and next may lead the team that builds a space station(it may sound corny to us but I think in the Trek future people are very supportive of everyone’s chosen occupation or passion). You also have to notice that that welder is probably not an independent contractor but a member of Star fleet and that maybe his first post on the way to being a chief engineer(remember the engineers we see in series work on everything on the Star ship: replicators and holodecks to the warpcore and weapon systems. Star fleet engineers are appliance repairmen and nuclear technicians and literally everything in between.
Interesting video that poses some very valid solutions to the "economics of the future" (as Picard calls it), but still leaves some interesting questions. I think we see more of "money issues" on DS9 than any other Star Trek show because our Federation characters have to deal with non Federation characters often, who still deal in money (mainly the Bajorans and all their shops on the Promenade, and of course, Quarks). Since DS9 is not a Federation station, but a Bajoran one, it would be assumed that everything on the Promenade requires money, including the various restaurants and even the Replomat where we often see our characters hanging out (the likely exception to this being the Infirmary run by the government). This begs the question of where do our Starfleet characters get Bajoran money and the Latinum that the Ferengi treasure? Possibly doing odd jobs for them, but I doubt that Starfleet would charge the Bajorans for the services they provide, or do they? O'Brien and his Starfleet engineers don't get "paid" as it were, but we see Rom quit working for his brother at Quark's and becomes a Bajoran engineer, which certainly has a salary (Rom and Leeta discuss money issues more than once). Still a very good video, I'll have to check out your others.
Ferengi pay in latinum which is valuable but the Bajorans can probably just print up a million space bucks of fiat currency and hand it over to the federation for office supplies and whatever other stuff they need to govern. Starfleet is often giving them replicators and making a big deal out of it so there could be some buckeronis going back the other way and you can probably mine latinum it's probably just rare. The federation probably has it's unpaid commies out there mining it to trade.
Laws of thermodynamics - replicators are matter energy converters, we have this today with particle colliders, but you can’t make more energy out of nowshere
This was well done and reminded me of how close this might be done today. We already have 3D printers of various types (not just plastic) and energy could be met using thorium reactors (thorium is plentiful and in theory could be mined robotically). Since both the fuel for the reactor and the building of the reactors themselves as well as running them could be basically automated, that means we could literally have energy for free. Add in some robotic mining, shipping, etc to our 3-D printers and we are nearly in a Star Trek world. Some things are more complicated (cars and phones for example) and would need more complex assembly (for now) but a lot of things could just be printed. If the energy and materials are all free, why do you need money - at least for personal property?
As someone who enjoys welding, yes the guys welding on spaceships DO love it. There are plenty of examples of people who enjoy menial jobs, drivers, cafe workers, farmers, janitors, etc. Automation will still be needed for scale but like the jobs themselves the automation will be optional. Space is still a premium in any post-scarcity society and priority could be given to people who perform needed jobs or jobs deemed to be of greater service than others. Sophisticated AI could literally track everything everyone does and how much it benefits others and to what degree. A benevolent version of the social credit score idea where there are no negatives for not helping enough but rather perks for helping more like being able to jump the queue for a penthouse with an ocean view or tract of land.
One correction about replicators, they do need a power source. Gene Rodenberry was a science conscious person, and he was very aware of energy conservation. The replicator's power supply can be used to make fully charged energy cells, but that exhausts its own energy. So you can't keep making nuclear reactors to replace the replicator's own supply.
One of my buddies LOVES welding. When he's not doing it for class he is in his garage doing it for fun, trying new techniques, or trying to invent new ones. If he had the opportunity to weld in space, with unlimited equipment and time, he would be in heaven. I think it would be the same with most blue collar jobs, some people just love manual labor. Especially if your parents are manual laborer's. It would be a point of pride to these people to build with their own two hands what everyone relies on to survive. Perhaps in the future social credit is the currency, with people who do more vital jobs get faster entrances to restaurants, holodecks, etc.
Was kinda drifting between watching this a reviewing materials for a midterm. Pretty sure it wasnt mentioned but I may have missed it, has foreign currency exchange for star fleet members ever been addressed? If starfleet doesnt pay people and the federation doesnt use money, how does the DS9 crew afford to buy things at quarks, or at far point station when the TNG crew is browsing the market.
The point that always gets missed is the replicator does not make things out of thin air. It needs a stored of raw materials to organize into the patterns
I've been rewatching the series' and there is a lot of talk about needing to get spare parts. DS9 talks about self-sealing stem bolts and other parts often. Voyager sends out mining expeditions. To me, the replicators don't create matter from energy, but they use that stored raw materials and move it around as needed. That's why replicators recycle, as shown on DS9, Voyager, and Lower Decks. Chakotay made Janeway a watch and she commented that it should be recycled into something useful. The matter energy equations don't give energy from converting matter into energy. So, they must need the raw materials and in some cases alloys. Latinum is sealed into worthless gold slips and bars. Replicators for whatever reason can't make it. So, that also goes inline with your statement and my agreement that they need the raw materials.
It’s important to listen carefully, “they don’t need money” “the pursuit of wealth no longer preoccupies us.” They don’t *care* about money-but there still is money. There’s A LOT of automation, I think the computer and all the frictionless booking of resources…the disposition of, well, money-and as for those robots, you see them-majel’s voice is that robot. She just doesn’t need a localized body, just like the minds of Culture.
The welder example is key. I know welders who would like nothing better than to lay bead all day. Not having to think about the input cost would allow for this, also any imperfections could be instantly revealed (through tech in the helmet) to the welder whom could correct immediately, or corrections could be made by a replicator. These corrections could even be subsurface leaving the handiwork of the craftsman visible yet the subsurface molecularly "perfect". As for the "property" question, we already have individuals and groups who value their digital property above most physical property, therefore a holodeck can provide any property to any individual or group as they wish.
I think the issue of no money confuses people because a lack of money doesn't necessarily mean a lack of currency. The existence of replicaters and high levels of energy production simply makes things so incredibly cheap that it doesn't matter what you have the replicator make. So a expensive steak dinner today costs mere pennies from a replicators. I like the idea of energy credits like in Star Trek Online. In cannon these energy credits would represent a certain amount of energy. The more complex a meal or tool the more energy is required; hence it's more "expensive". Because the Federation is really good at energy production, energy is plentiful and people are relatively rich.
“It’s the thought that count” has new meaning when you make anything. You really need to think about the relationship you have and what things means to that person. Its not just about dropping a lot of cash
3:13 *Picard drops trou and begins vigorously shitting into the replicator. About halfway through this weeks staff reports, the chime indicating a request to enter his ready room was heard. 'Come', Picard uttered like a man with no sense of humor."
My take on why some people work on not very exciting jobs: -They need money to purchase things outside of Federation (and we know Federation credits exist) -It`s light punishment instead of a prison😀
I would point out that some people really enjoy jobs others would not. That welder is probably there because he likes to work with metal and was given the opportunity to work on a space ship which is not only a really cool project but one that implies he is very skilled so there would be some degree of prestige
In the GURPS TTRPG, Prime Directive, one receives a stipend of Federation Credits. Federation Credits represent certain amounts of energy. This energy can be used on federation replicators and transporters.
Oof the repeating that there is a difference between personal and private property and the absolute wickedness of the concept of the social contract, uniqueness is what makes something scarce
One point I haven't heard in the video or seen in the comments (though I could have missed it) is the massive change in the value of physical property after the advent of FTL. With the rich abundance of space more and more easily available, pre-replicator economic changes would be inevitable. Even today, the idea of being able to mine our own asteroid belt sends shivers through economists hearts when they think of the price of rare earths dropping to less than dirt if we ever manage to harvest even one of the hundreds of thousands of rocks floating freely out there. With FTL, and advancing secondary space based industrial processes, nothing on Earth would hold it's value. The exact moment money becomes useless is the moment the first warp 1 freighter arrives with more raw materials on board than has ever been harvested in all of Earth history.
On the point of welding panels onto starships, those are likely Starfleet jobs. Just as plenty of volunteer servicemen today do whatever they are assigned, I assume the same applies to enlistees in Starfleet. It's an entirely different working environment than the wider world of civilian life. Rather than for just a paycheck, you might be doing it as a matter of family tradition, to serve your country, to see the world, or to "defend freedom and democracy".
Memory Alpha: Replicating large numbers of items could require significant amounts of power to be diverted from the warp core. (TNG: "The Child") Complex elements such as anicium and yurium also required large amounts of energy to replicate. (TNG: "Night Terrors") During emergency situations, the use the replicators might be restricted to save power for vital systems or because they were unreliable; requiring rations to be replicated instead of more elaborate food (TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise"; VOY: "Year of Hell", "The Killing Game", "Demon"; DS9: "The Siege"), rationing of replicator usage (VOY: "The Cloud", "Real Life", "The Void"), or the use of traditionally-prepared food. (DS9: "Covenant"; VOY: "The Cloud") It was sometimes necessary to take the replicators completely offline to conserve power. (DS9: "Covenant"; VOY: "Dark Frontier", "Demon"; PRO: "Terror Firma") Looks like replicators were consistently depicted as a non negligible energy consumer. A pass? Well. If you assume the newer series are a new continuity you can ignore all that old stuff and it would match pretty well with the insanely jacked up technology level. My limited Sci-fi repertoire actually has something like you suggest. Mr. Fusion on the upgraded DeLorean. It's fed by whatever crap Doc Brown deems worthy to throw in there. It literally says Fusion Home Energy Reactor on it. Almost nothing said about how it does or doesn't work.
The psychology of this will be a matter for any post-scarcity society: You will not need to work to live, but what do you want to live for? The fulfillment of mastering a craft, or satisfying your curiosity with exploration of STEM subjects, archaeology or traveling to new frontiers? This will also be a question that needs to be answered with longer lifespans, what will you do if you have perfect health and live for 400 years?
Replicators still need mass to reformat. It needs organic matter to make food, it needs inorganic matter to make objects. It is possible for a replicator to run out of 'fuel' for its replication of things. You can recycle matter, which helps, but additional mass requires resupply.
Some things: TLDR: Physics and human nature would keep this society from happening. Replicators still need mass. They can make molecules, they cannot create atoms. On the Enterprise D, the technical manual mentions reusing the crew's excrement for food and scooping more exotic materials (for building) from space as the ship moved. On Earth, you'd have to get that mass from somewhere and scarcity could still occur. People SAY they will do other, more creative things if they could stop working, but they rarely DO it. An anecdotal example of this behavior comes from my old job. To get health insurance lower, they were asking people to start going to the gym. EVERYONE said it was too expensive. So my old company offered to buy everyone family memberships to LA Fitness. About a quarter of my coworkers took them up on the offer and less went regularly. You cant liberate people from human nature.
In Starfleet you're working your way up some kind of para-military hierarchy so you'll work welding those plates knowing that someday you could be a chief engineer, or bridge officer, or whatever. Even with the automation, doing manual labor could be part of some kind of training program or hazing ritual. The Star Trek/ Culture universe eliminates the bottom two levels of Maslow's pyramid, but you still have to work your way up the other three. You can only buy your way up those two levels with money.
Replicators aren't just the ultimate tool of self-sufficiency, they're also the ultimate plot device-or, at least, the unsung hero of plot devices. They make an entire story world possible, and can even be used for story material. So, I guess they can even replicate meta, lol.
These are things stated or implied at one point or another by characters. 1- the population is star trek is in constant growth. 2-the replicator doesn't break the laws of physics. It makes stuff by consuming energy (and/or matter in the case of the enterprise series) but it cannot provide it's own fuel. 3-massive scale production and trade still exists in star trek. Mainly energy (anti-matter) production, difficult to manufacture materials (uranium for instance would be terribly difficult to make with a replicator) or very specific goods that are not on the replicator's memory banks for one reason or another (like the perfect cheese pizza made by a chef. You could strive your whole life and then make the replicator memorize it after you're done. But it would still take your whole life to make a single perfect pizza that you would be happy to see replicated ) 4-manual work exists as the norm and robots as the exception. People work to learn (which is a need if your ship or colony home breaks down in the middle of nowere) and robots pick up the extra slack. This guarantees that practical knowledge of how things work is never lost. 5- people will learn for most of their lives and are socially incentivized to do so. This means that no one is completely clueless of any one subject and that they take menial jobs in order to learn specific skills (I've also argued myself that everyone should do client support at least once in their lifetimes to learn people skills and get some empathy towards people in those jobs). We usually forget how massive the scale of star trek is (and most sci-fi settings for that matter) to the point were individuals have basically access to everything because Wealth is measured in planets. A colony is needed for either it's resource production or it's space to get homes for people but everyone there gets to do wateaver they like because they walk around with nuclear reactors on their pockets... Everything else they do it's either because they like or learn from it (like having a more advanced form of UBI if you will)
Watch Part 2 Here: th-cam.com/video/lDFDmk0hoUw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=vGziE97eERt_IIXg
P.S:- I probably should have gone into more detail about replicators. As many are pointing out in the comments, replicators making their own fuel would violate the laws of thermodynamics. I know that which is why that's not what I meant. As long as there is a ready supply of raw materials to feed the replicator (Star Trek Discovery suggested using human waste which is pretty clever IMO) then a replicator would be able to create the fuel for a small reactor - which itself can be built from replicated parts - or simply build a solar panel or some other means of power generation. That's what I meant.
P.P.S:- I find it interesting that many Trekkies are perfectly fine with the many other technologies in Star Trek which overtly break the laws of physics, but apparently replicators don't get a free pass the same way gravity plating does.
P.P.P.S:- I also should have clarified the purpose of this video series: This is not a lore video. My goal is not to explain the world presented to us in Star Trek, but merely to use Star Trek as a jumping-off point to imagine how a world LIKE Star Trek would function. Hence the headcanon stuff and references to other media like The Culture Series. I say this because I'm seeing a lot of comments like, "Um actually in [SHOW/MOVIE/EPISODE] [CHARACTER] says [THING] which contradicts what you just said." I know that, but Star Trek's universe isn't consistent so I'm choosing to mostly talk about the setting in broad strokes.
Thank you for engaging with the video though. If you want to see the next video in the series early and ad-free, join me on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman
As well done as your video are, I am confused by the fact that you don't have like 500k subscribers
Well thanks for your thoughts.
However I think it's a version of utopian communism, in a not so subtle way.
As for asking your friends what they would do if money wasn't a problem.....
(1) perhaps you have noble intelligent friends.
(2) You haven't got out and about enough to really know 75% of humanity
Many questions remain unanswered in theory.
The first repicators also have to be produced first, but where do the raw materials come from? The earth is plundered by then. Should the first colonies provide raw materials, or worse, they have to.
But when the replicators are everywhere, there will be no need for labour for factories or production.
What about the many people who have no jobs?
Otherwise, why go through years of training or study if you can't use it? And let's be honest, for most people, "being needed" is also fulfilment.
After all, "doing nothing" and just pursuing your hobbies is nice for a while, but unsatisfying in the long run.
The result would be a massive population decline. (Would the colonies have to be abandoned again?)
Perhaps even forced to some extent in order to pre-empt the dissatisfied and bored population.
Many questions and a long way to Utopia.
Your views on powering a replicator is 100% wrong. The Energy and matter equation proves that Star Trek glosses over it. The hidden message of Star Trek is that marxism finally works which is why you know it's fantasy. You can't get something from nothing
@@zeddik99 Why does no politician or celebrity promote any MFM?
4:23 - whoa there! Replicators need energy. If replicators could replicate the hydrogen needed for a fusion reactor to work, that would be creating energy out of nothing. But they don't. Instead you have bussard collectors to top up the reserves. This was even a major plot point of Voyager where replicator access had to be rationed. They're a miracle device, but not _that_ much of a miracle device!
There's also things a replicator just apparently can't make, complex "minerals" like dilithium seems to be one of them - though synthetics seem to come into play at one point - as well as deuterium apparently if memory of that episode serves.
It can't magic up a battery or a fusion reactor in my head canon, or the laws of physics. Deuterium, anti-matter and other resources are always mentioned as being required inputs for Star Ships. We know the toilets feed into the replicators, even in the 31st century, so an input of matter/ energy is always required to make any complex device made by a replicator to function. (Although self-replicating cloaked mines somehow get around this at a small scale...)
Replicators either change energy into matter or rearrange matter into new forms. So you need either stored energy, or stored matter. Although this may explain what happens in the bathroom on Star Trek. Maybe the sewage goes into the replicator for molecular rearrangement.
Since there's millions of people who want everything for free, we have basically 2 options, one are replicators the other one is slavery. Hopefully we will do the right thing and not use the old method again.
You're absolutely right that the replicators need outside energy to run. Indeed, the tech manuals mention that the replicators have raw material reserves to draw on for the purpose of making food, clothing, tools etc. While technically you can make matter from pure energy, the fuel/energy cost of doing so is prohibitively expensive; so with regards to stuff like latinum and dilithium, it's cheaper just to dig it out of the ground, so to speak.
And like you say, the energy needed to replicate a deuterium atom would likely exceed the energy equivalent of said atom, meaning, replicating fuel like that would result in diminishing returns
For me, it still raises the question: Who gets the penthouse in the newly built apartment? Who gets the land by the beautiful river, and who has to settle for the first-floor apartment by the highway? There seems to be some corruption or nepotism at play, granting better options to some while leaving others with less desirable choices.
I have always headcannoned it as this: parcels of land or residences are awarded to people based on levels of service. If all you want to do is just be a bum and not contribute to society, you are awarded a Class D apartment. If you have been a Starfleet officer for 40 years, or an esteemed scholar or artist or some such, you might get a Class A homestead. OR something like that. So, because we primarily see Starfleet officers and not "regular folk," an example might be this- In Star Trek II and III, we see Kirk's apartment. It looks pretty damn nice! He's a well decorated Starfleet Admiral though. A brand new ensign might have to share a 2 bedroom apartment with another ensign.
A perfect example of this is Raffi. When Picard goes to recruit her in Picard, she's living in a pathetic hovel. Why? She's clearly not happy living there and likely would move somewhere else. So why doesn't she? What's stopping her from packing up and moving to the penthouse somewhere, or living on that land by the river?
@@tilarium2looking back over the show, it was possibly because she was punishing herself, living poorly while leaning heavily on depressive intoxicants.
It's fairly consistent in Star Trek that service has perks, because so many writers were ex-military. Nobody on Earth is poor or hungry if they don't want to be. But when there is scarcity, like the Holodeck can only hold so many people at a time, then rank makes a de facto currency. Like maybe the captain and engineer can commandeer the holodeck anytime for various reasons. And an ensign might find the holodecks are so overused you have to rank up before you'll ever find an open slot. Or if an ensign saves the ship thanks to some quick thinking, they get a holodeck credit. Just because Starfleet doesn't have money, doesn't mean holodeck slots aren't a form of currency.
@@tilarium2Raffi explains quite clearly that she’s done with Starfleet and wants to be off the grid and off their radar. Accepting base housing etc. would put her back under their thumb.
Love the inclusion of a reference to Banks' Culture series. Those books really explore a post scarcity society much more than Trek ever does. There's a bit in one of them where a character from outside the Culture is touring a ship and meets someone waiting table at a cafe, and the waiter explains why they do the job that could easily be handled by an automated drone: basically because it's a good way to meet new people and the recognition that there is a satisfaction to be had from a job well done, even if that job is as simple as bringing people coffee and then wiping up the table when they're done.
The lack of appreciation for the Culture series is absolutely criminal
@@localhearthian2387
It depends.
For example, Darrell from 'Sci-fi Odyssey' (a great YT channel) refers to the Culture series relatively often (he's read all the books), and therefore I happen to come into contact with it on a semi-regular basis.
Long time since I read that. I might point out that the man could meet people just as easily by sitting in the cafe and NOT waiting tables. And it's not like his efforts are saving the cafe anything: the drone would be free. His efforts are to no purpose, so would he really enjoy an achievement that has no value?
@@davidchambers8697 there is a bit of a nihilistic bent to what the waiter says - something along the lines of: i could spend my time trying to compose great works of literature,, but ultimately even the greatest literature will eventually be forgotten. The Culture itself will one day die. As will the universe itself. So what is the point? The point would ultimately be *in the doing* and not the goal itself.
I said nihilistic, but really it's kind of a zen thing. But it's up to the individual to decide whether that would be a meaningful existence. Indeed, that is kind of the whole point writing about a utopia. It's asking the question "is life worth living without struggle?" Banks' books don't actually come down cleanly on one side or another, really.
As to whether he could meet people by just going to the cafe... That's true in a sense, but even in that one facet of why he does what he does, you can make the case that if he just did it at his leisure, he'd be guided by his own biases. He'd choose who he'd interact with. By binding himself (however loosely given he can quit at any time) to the social contract of agreeing to provide a service, he's forcing himself to interact with whomever happens to come in. Are all those interactions going to be pleasant? No. But in a utopia where you *can* only have pleasant experiences if you want, I think people would recognize the value in subjecting yourself to unpleasant experiences. If anything, it gives you stories you can tell your friends.
@@davidchambers8697 btw, I am moderately certain the passage is from Use of Weapons
In one episode, Sisko mentioned that he used all his transporter quota when he started the academy when going home every night.
I don't think Replicator can be completely "free". Somewhere I read that the replicator have some raw matter stored, that the can convert in something useful. So you would need to "feed" with matter. And each machine would create waste heat when operating so also a replicator would run out of energy after a while.
For fusion the enterprise has the bussard collector to mine interstellar hydrogen.
On Voyager they introduced replicator ration, to converse energy. That implies that replicator use a lot of energy, but that is that an issue when in Federation space.
The Sisko example gets used often but they never defined what the quota was exactly. Was it just for cadets using transporters to leave campus for personal use or is it for all citizens for general transporter use?
Was it cos he beamed directly to the location (been years but I think he said he beamed right into his living room) rather than to a transporter hub in New Orleans and taking a taxi to the house?
Yes, replicators may use a lot of energy, but I still think that if you were to find a way to power it through different processes then yes we would still need the power grid and essentially we would have to figure out how to power that power grid so that everybody can use the replicator whenever they want to And once you’ve got it charged up yeah it would run down, but you hook it back up to the power grid or you leave it hooked up to the power grid and it only collect enough power, but you would still have to buy the wrong materials to use it so the idea of an entirely self-contained unit is Beyond the realm of possibility at this point because you’re not just using pure energy. The energy is used to create the object, but you still need the raw materials so the replicator would need those materials and that might be where money comes in so you might still need money for some things butessentially you could eliminate the need to work more than a few days a month if you’re fortunate enough
Seems like something a school would implement to ensure their students don't just take off every chance they get... socializing with your peers and being around other cadets seems like a critical bonding period that would be lessened if they could just take off whenever... especially when they were new.
Yeah, it likely takes more energy for a replicator to make fuel than that fuel will make, it's not free
@@kabobawsome it's not free but if they are feeding large crews of 200-300+ people on replicator food, the energy density and cost of replicating food must entirely outweigh the cost of transporting food in space.. it just takes slightly more energy to start moving and slightly more to stop moving considering the ship would weigh in the realm of megatons while the food in maybe a thousand tons for a years long expedition... so there is that to consider.
The question I didn't hear you address here for me is why the particular plots of land go to specific people. Chateau Picard and Sisko's appear to both be on prime land for their products. Surely there are other cajun/creole chefs who would love to run a restaurant in the French Quarter, and likewise with vintner's looking for prime French winemaking land. What is it that gave Sisko and Picard the "right" to use those prime locations over others?
Money or no, it still seems like there is a system of "value" that gives priveleged options to certain people/families. So there may well no longer be money or monetary classes, but there still seems to be some sort of hierarchical class system that allocates limited resources like prime land. If t's based on historical claims, then it just replicates the old class system, but even if it's based on "contrinutions" opr other social capital type structures, it still amounts to a class system the gives more privelege to people like the Sisko's or Picard's than family's that may want the same areas they do "business" in.
This is where I think social status comes in. Assuming property can be owned and inherited, what use would a property be if inherited by someone who didn't plan on using it? They can't sell it, they can't charge rent, the only thing they could do is give it to someone who plans on using it.
That would mean property would tend to be put to use by people with the highest social status and desire to use it. It would also mean families who own property have a motivation to maintain the traditions required to put the property to use.
@@DeanRockne Ya, agreed ... that was sort of my point. While Trek is often portrayed as a fully egalitarian society because of the replicators and the like, there are still CLEARLY "social classes" of various kinds who are awarded extra privileges as a result of their class. Now, in the Trek world we largely see that being done through "social contribution" such as Star Fleet service or things like past status as "landowners" transferring forward as long as they use it. But I also wonder, for example, if the Picards had just wanted a nice acreage in France and left the wine-making in the past, would the land have been seized from the family to be given to a wine-maker? Or would the Picards be able to do whatever they wanted on it until they voluntarily gave it up?
I think there are quite a few unanswered "class" questions in Trek that aren't obvious at first glance, but come up when you think more about the details. Does Joeseph Sisko get to keep his prime New Orleans location if all he wants is a nice house in the French Quarter?
@@MotherShipMedia it's also possible there are more specific historic preservation laws that apply to some of these situations. If future France has an interest in maintaining the wine making tradition, maintaining an active vineyard might be a requirement attached to those land deeds. Same goes for the French Quarter. These desirable properties then become an obligation to run living museums of a kind. When you get outside of Earth, there's much more available property and probably less of a public interest in controlling it's use. To your point, there would still be classes and privilege, but it would either be earned through accomplishments, or come with societal obligations (owning a restaurant).
What leads you to think there are chefs or vintners who were not able to acquire the storefront or land they requisitioned? This is a world where you can terraform and colonize planets, I think they can build more storefronts and till more fallow land. There's about 2,000,000 acres of french vineyards today. There would need to be a LOT of people with a very specific desire for an archaic lifestyle for them to even start crowding up that land! And it's not like he's doing all the hard labor himself, there are robots tending to the larger vineyard. I doubt he even "owns" any of it, they probably could just use replicators to plop houses down willy-nilly until the retiree dies and then they erase it and replant. All the harvests would be free-for-all as well, since the harvest bots can scan every single fruit bunch for later direct replication. They're not going to be shipping grapes across the universe ofc, they'll be replicating them. Need more areas for restaurants in the French Quarter? You can literally build them for free...
Now they probably wouldn't let you take up the entire island of Australia to be your personal suntanning bed if you just don't do anything. But calling that evidence that there's still "class" distinctions would be absurd. Because NOBODY is allowed to do that. There's one set of rules that everybody follows that prevents people from taking more than they need for their self-actualization.
@@fez-._.-zik Sure, you can terraform all sorts of planets, but There's only one true French Quarter. Not everyone who wants a French Quarter restaurant can get one ... Doesn't matter how many copies you make elsewhere, they aren't "The French Quarter" in New Orleans ...
I imagine that for an engineer or a starship enthusiast, welding panels onto the flag ship would be a dream come true. Just think of how many futuristic "train guys" there must be in a universe with warp capable starships.
Volunteer-led steam-engine restoration and maintenance is a great parallel to draw from!
Plus, those are likely Starfleet jobs. Just as plenty of volunteer servicemen today do whatever they are assigned, I assume the same applies to enlistees in Starfleet. It's an entirely different working environment than the wider world of civilian life. Rather than for just a paycheck, you might be doing it as a matter of family tradition, to serve your country, to see the world, or to "defend freedom and democracy".
@@PongoXBongo I find it strange that in such an enlightened society that anybody would "have" to go enlisted! Shouldn't everybody get decent education, so everybody can be an officer? So why would anybody become a crewman (so basically somebody all the officers dump on - seriously, if you aren't Chief O'Brien (who should have been fast tracked into an enlisted officers program, as it's a waste of his potential to not allow him command down the line! I mean the guy could give Geordie La Forge and even Scotty a run for their money!) you are basically "trash" as a crewman!)
yeah, for some people welding panels might actually be fun, and getting it right, might well give them more fulfillment than some other job. It might also be a training job, to give you the right to a more creative job in the same field...
Very disappointed Rowan missed the Enterprise episode where the damaged ship gets to a repair bay, and its industrial replicators completely replace the damaged parts with replicated replacements, installed by automated machines. Its a lot like getting an oil change, if by oil change we meant complete replacement of large parts of a spaceship ! The older episodes don't show this, I presume because OUR technology wasn't good enough to show this happening on screen, but it makes a lot of sense for spaceships to be entirely built by machines, since they can repair large pieces of ships, why not do ALL the initial heavy lifting ?This actually leaves only the internal maintenance of the ship, which I suppose Emergency Repair Holograms will take care of, once they become standard issue for all ships, like the Doctor on Voyager.
Take a drink every time Rowan says "replicator"
Drunk in 13 minutes…
Noo, its a trap
I wish i could watch this with someone haha
I dont want to die...
Better do it with synthehol.
10:52 there are actually a lot of people who enjoy welding and construction and it would be a point of pride to be someone who welds star fleet ships together.
And if it’s anything like a submarine today, would be a highly skilled and specialised job.
Not to mention that if you want to be chief engineer on a starship someday, you probably start out doing some pretty basic jobs and work your way up as you demonstrate competency and reliability. Even today, money isn't the only motivator for why people work or what they choose to do.
This "is" part of the answer!
Humans would be much slower and far less exact than an advanced robot (like right now with many roles in car manufacture), so humans would not perform such tasks except on hobby projects and definitely not on important projects like starfleet ship construction.
@@michaelbone6894 Whilst I don’t necessarily disagree, there are still roles where you might need a human. E.g. if welding a star ship is more like welding a car than you’re right. If it’s more like a submarine, and no robot has been produced that can do the job, than a human will do it. Given they have the android Data in the setting, it’s likely a robot does do the bulk of not all of this work.
There are numerous mentions in TOS to "credits" as a unit of currency, and I believe that Quark says at one point that he will accept Federation credits as payment in his bar, meaning that they are around at this point. While you could argue that credits are only used when dealing with people outside of the Federation, in The Trouble with Tribbles, Uhura paid 10 credits for a Tribble on Deep Space Station K7, which was obviously a federation station. Also, Cyrano Jones, in the same episode, is obviously driven by a desire to make a profit, as is the guy who runs the bar. Also at one point in TOS Kirk jokingly tells Scotty that he has earned his pay for the week. This would seem to indicate that Star Fleet personnel earn some kind of salary.
And one of the crimes Harry Mudd is wanted for is selling technology patented by Vulcans without paying them their royalties. This no money thing didn't start until Star Trek IV, when they say the people in 1986 are "still using money" and Kirk had to pawn his antique glasses to get some. But even here the line could just mean that they don't have 1986 US currency.
TOS is influenced by Roddenberry's experiences during WW2. The military takes care of its men, almost all of it is just logistics to keep the bodies warm and mobile. So there is no need to worry about money within Starfleet, but there is little mention of how anything works in the Federation outside of Starfleet.
In Mudd's Women, the protagonist (not Mudd) is a prospector mining lithium to become rich. (That's the gold rush myth, of course; the people selling the picks and shovels and the assayers were the ones who became rich(er), not the prospectors.) That episode was written by Roddenberry himself, and my impression is that it was a meditation on his relationship with Majel Barret. (And Roddenberry was still looking for ever new enterprises to make money with back then.)
So yes, money is a thing in TOS, but Starfleet personnel don't need to worry about it. By TNG, money has explicitly become obsolete within the Federation, as explained in The Neutral Zone.
DS9 is very, very different from any previous Star Trek.
Humans don't need money, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't still like it.
And, in the first episode of TNG, Beverly Crusher charges a bolt of cloth on Farpoint Station to her "account." So there must have be some vestigial system in place for using money, maybe on bleeding edge frontier systems or brand new member worlds that haven't been fully updated or integrated into the Federation economy.
It is also worth noting that money doesn't need to be totally gone for it not to be the main driving force in society to the point it is rarely used or thought of. Maybe there was just a mass realization near the end of the post atomic horror, or as humanity started to recover from it after first contact, that once you have the first two or three layers of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs covered for life, or even just the foreseeable future, Having more money/stuff wouldn't make them happier, and, consequently, the definition of wealth and focus of society shifted to mean working toward a attaining a higher degree of self-actualization, not things, which gave people a path forward and hope for a better future.
Given that every scene on Vulcan screams minimalism, I can imagine that they would have strongly agreed with and encouraged this point of view if not preached it outright. Maybe it was not the ending of poverty that ended war and hopelessness, but the ending of the war, the regain of hope, and the quest for self-actualization that ended poverty. Just me rewriting my head canon again.
@@rdtradecraft The Federation is a lot like the Soviet Union or like China used to be back then in that they do trade with foreign powers, but don't use their domestic currency to do so. To that end it would make sense that Crusher has an allowance in foreign money to spend while on Farpoint.
That doesn't mean that the Federation uses money internally. Crusher not carrying any money on her even suggests that she is not used to needing to. (Or maybe it's because the uniform has no pockets, although that's what purses are for.) She isn't carrying a credit card or debit card either, or any personal identification. When she asks to charge her account on the Enterprise, it is not clear how the salesman is supposed to do that. (But the episode does suffer a lot from stilted dialogue.)
Maslow's hierarchy is not normative, it is descriptive, not of human behaviour or needs, but of how the humans he surveyed felt about their needs. As a description of actual human needs, it is dead wrong. Not only wrong, but manipulative: It suggests that depriving people of things reduces their needs for other things. (How convenient.)
As money is still a thing in TOS, abandoning it could not have been a result of the Eugenics Wars. The difference is indeed the replicators: TOS doesn't have them, in TNG they are omnipresent.
It could be argued that a money-based economy would not allow replicators to be developed. In that case, the abandoning money would have had to precede the proliferation of replicators. Unfortunately we don't have any data on societies abandoning money permanently, and no records, only artefacts, of pre-money societies. (The earliest written records are debt tables. Book money in today's parlance, although not yet currency as we understand it today.) So there is no template for how that would or could come to pass.
The Vulcans could be an important influence in that, their society being organised around principles of pacifism and logic as explained and shown in The Savage Curtain. (And in stark contrast to Amok Time. TOS struggled a lot with understanding the concept of logic at first. And DS9, VOY, and ENT even portray the Vulcans as utterly irrational and warlike.)
One thing I liked about Star Trek: Enterprise, is it showed how transporters and warp developed side by side. This makes replicators the next step of their turning point of technology.
Love this video 🎉
My head cannon for starship production not being fully automated is the societies need to not loose a skill base. For example, Utopia shipyard and starfleet may mandate a need for manual welders to keep the manual skills up. Perhaps it's even part of an engineers academy work before being assigned to a ship, if the automation ever failed in deep space, the skills would still exist to perform maintenence and repairs 👌
That's true but it also relies on a steady stream of engineers. If that ever dips, that means no more ships or incredibly reduced output.
@@Varitok1 Which in and of itself is a good basis for a story, and also fairly representative of some countries around the world at the moment.
@@Varitok1 If you didnt need to pay for food, housing, etc then an internship system that seperates the skilled/motivated from rest makes sense ... time is still somthing that is not limitless so its the only thing that actually has value.
So for both the trainer and the trainee ... both sides of that equation need to be able to know if this is the path for you
@@michaelgrant4867 “Time is still something that is not limitless, so it’s the only thing that actually has value.”
Excellent observation. 👍🏼 I need to think about that more. 🤔 Thanks.
Very true! And Star Trek has really shown that society places great value on the artistry/efforts/decision making of humans/living beings being the centre of technological systems, so it makes sense that highly skilled trades like welding would be a worthwhile and fulfilling way to spend ones time (ideally with the futuristic tools to make it easier)
I rather like what Orville adds to this idea: people earn a reputation as well. What that translates to is unclear except in trust with things like captaining a spaceship. Possibly everyone gets a large ration of energy to spend. They may apply to get an extra ration for large projects. So, if you make good gumbo and run a good restaurant, you get likes that could be used as support for a renovation that may exceed what most people can spend.
edited to add an additional comment.
@palmercolson7037
That's exactly what I wanted to comment.
It's clear that not everybody on a starship gets the same privileges as the high-ranking officers.
Most crew don't seem to have large private cabins just for themselves.
Okay, but that's on a starship, where there is limited space and a clear hierarchy.
What about on an Earth-like planet?
Well, quite likely it will still be similar.
Space is still limited, even though less so than on a spaceship.
There would still be hierarchies, as various jobs that require multiple people, would require organization.
Some people's positions would inherently be more critical.
Some people would be more skilled and experienced than others.
At minimum, a single person living by themselves might receive a small room in an apartment block, with a shower and toilet, and an "internet" terminal.
They might not have a personal replicator, but have to go to a cantina.
They would get free access to basic clothing, but if they want more interesting designs, would have to earn access to them.
So if they wanted more, they would have to work for it.
Perhaps people with good jobs have software access to give the people working for them various material benefits.
Perhaps there is an official social hierarchy in the civilian (non-Starfleet) life, and advancement in it is similar as advancement in the Starfleet hierarchy.
I'm just speculating here, of course.
*Edited because I forgot to write some lines.
To oversimplify your point into an easy-to-remember statement: In the Federation, they trade in trust.
In Trek on Earth - Reputation means not extra rations (as these are free), but people wanting what you do ... Sisko's restaurant is popular because he has a good reputation
On a starship resources (space and power) will always be limited and so different rules apply ... you get to be on the starship, by wanting to be, and by earning a reputation for being reliable and good at a job that is needed onboard
But then that ration then becomes.....money. As shown in voyager, it was treated as money.
@@icecold9511 Because, on an isolated little ship with no guaranteed resources for resupply, the crew of _Voyager_ were no longer in a post-scarcity situation.
VOY should never be used as an example of how things normally work in the Federation or Starfleet, because they had to operate as an independent unit for those seven years.
It occurs to me that VOY would have made a lot more sense if they'd had a scene early on talking about "emergency orders in the event of extended isolation from outside support." A lot of the show could have been explained as the result of Janeway struggling to thread the needle between Starfleet's ideals and the first-draft-y, inadequate emergency guidance.
"What about the bad apples?"
Cut to Commander Maddox.
Harsh... ;)
To be honest I don't actually see there being bad apples in the way we usually see them aka stealing for profit since as stated in the video, replicators have essentially removed that need.
And yes as Quark said to Nog that without creature comforts we devolve into past versions of ourselves.
But at the same time hearing of all people a Ferenghi say that coming from a society still governed by the acquisition of wealth, is funny since I'm sure certain murders for profit and status are quietly covered up on Ferenghar.
Anyway bad apples do exist, they are just driven by different reasons such as revenge.
And if they are driven by wealth, they tend to rule over civilisations that still economic based or live outside Federation space like those seen in season 3 of Picard.
Maddox in the Picard continuity went outside of the Federation to continue his research, and fight an unclear shadow conflict with the Romulan secret secret police with his own sleeper androids...
@@DarkLordDiablos Is it possible for two parties to mutually profit from a deal they voluntarily entered into that doesn't involve anyone else? Really, just asking if you feel that all profit is or must be a result of theft.
@@DarkLordDiablosOn Ferenginar, murder is only illegal if it fails to turn a profit.
10:28 a lot of people in the trades take great pride in their work. I could easily see someone welding the panels of the enterprise not only enjoying the work but taking the time to make their welds perfect. I would have to say the trades will never die because people enjoy creating things by hand, and if money weren’t an issue then more people who enjoy these jobs would pour their effort into making their work the best work
"people go to restaurants in Star Trek for the same reason people go to restaurants today"!
-thank you for confirming that this is literally the future.
Something in the real world that serves as an example of value of items. That today we can readily recreate many works of art very exactly and cheaply, but original works of art still have great value, both sentimentally and intrinsically.
...Most of the worth of works of art and other unique items are in their provenance, not in the object itself
a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that nobody can prove is by him, is worth only as much as a good painting of the era, even though it's an original
If you had a painting that is an exact replica at the atomic level, and is indistinguishable by any means, why is it worth any more than any other copy, and why is "the original" worth more when you can't tell which one is the original ....
@@davidioanhedges Truthfully, most art over the past 100 or so years has had no worth except to people who have more money than sense.
@@anon_y_mousse Interesting that you set a time limit on your view. In truth, art should not have worth in a monetary sense, but it should have value, which you may interpret in any number of ways, from insight into the human condition to an evocation of the world around us. A video all of it's own I suspect.
@@wowmanhaha It's not a time limit, but a time frame of when art has sucked. Prior to the current period we're in, and then some depending on how you count periods, art wasn't nearly all garbage. I'd say art got good around the late 1300's, and most was great until the early 1900's when it started to suck donkey balls.
Art, like everything else, has exactly as much market value as you can sell it for. Artworks therefore have to preserve or increase their value if they are to keep functioning as devices for tax avoidance, or for storing wealth through times of war or hyperinflation.
There's also the sentimental value of owning a historical artefact. Or just the pleasure of enjoying the art, but for that, a replica would also do in most cases.
It's important to keep in mind that the Federation's education, culture, and values are very different than current day world.
When we ask the question of why anyone would want to be a waiter, we assume that being a waiter in the Federation is like being a waiter today. We assume that it's a bad job where they get treated like crap by their customers and their bosses, they're disrespected and looked down upon, they're constantly under stress, they have to work long hours for little pay, and they have to do the job or they'll lose their home.
But I would bet that being a waiter in the Federation is not a bad job because of their different culture. Customers are not rude jerks. Restaurant managers don't overwork or mistreat them. Their livelihoods are not dependent on the job. People are respected for doing a job and doing it well because they are contributing to society. They aren't mistreated or looked down upon for the type of job they do like in our world today.
I think waiters in Trek are future restauranteer. They are apprentice learning how to run a restaurant before trying it themslves. When there is no need for money, every job becomes an educational opportunity to choose from. This is why I think despite having automation tech, the culture in Trek will always be open to menial task as a way for people to learn the basics or fundamentals before moving on to more difficult subject.
Yeah , it can be fun, the are plenty chatrity or just club funding events, wher epeople are waiters, and its voluntary and a lot do it, or ccompany.
Or selling on a flea market, can be fun, and fulfilling. Or at a farm, most farmers dont make nearly enough money to justify the work if they didnt like the work. Dunno there are probably enough weirdos who love cleaning. And sure enoughdo free charity work for people .
Feeling good and doig good can be its own reward, orr whatevetr people love about cleaning.
So humans aren't humans anymore. La Tabula Rasa gommies have always sought. Even before there was $ there wasn't this magic. You don't see it in nature. There is always a hierarchy. You are forlorn that humans are human and not borgs.
@@Drak976 Borg literally also has a hierarchy dude.
Also for Fs' sake prime ST timeline literally has some Vulcan "helping hand" for quite some time before UFP is a thing.
Couple quibbles.
Replicators weren't invented yet, or at least weren't available on starships, in the TOS era, which was still post-money enough for the crew to be unfamiliar with using it. However, they did have synthesizers. We've seen TOS-era synthesizers create food and clothing. It seems likely that the difference is a synthesizer is specialized for a particular type of good, while a replicator can produce effectively anything just using a software update.
Synthesizers would still have led to the post-scarcity era, but only if they could be powered at effectively no cost. Cheap and readily available fusion power was probably the first step down that road.
Second point: replicators can't produce enough fusion fuel to be self-powering. Star Trek doesn't claim to have broken thermodynamics. That's why starships have Bussard collectors to gather hydrogen fuel for fusion. Likewise see Voyager, where crewmembers had "replicator rations" -- the replicators had to be rationed because Voyager was outside Federation space and not getting regularly refueled and resupplied.
On a planetary scale, though, it certainly seems like energy was readily available enough to be basically free.
Well said. I personally tend to focus on that last sentence. Also, I wonder how long it takes a young adult to have free access to the family's replicator before they get tired of just piling up random toys, and start paring their collection down to the ones that really matter? That's probably a period of every child's life in the Federation, one that trains them to only replicate what will have meaning for them.
Yes, as others pointed out in these comments, thermodynamics would forbid creating more matter from energy than that amount of energy the replicated matter can release in complete annihilation (M/AM reaction)
I saw somewhere I think on Reddit that Enterprise already mentions (or implies) they were post-scarcity before replicators or even protein or other resequencers. A lot of this doesn't even need to come from technology, just the allocation of resources. We *already* have the resources today to meet the basic needs of all humans on earth but we grossly misallocate them. This is at this point a social problem, not a technological one
@@vinapocalypse That's a *great* point! We sci-fi fans tend to get hung up on post-scarcity as a term for being able to generate near-infinite resources via replication tech, renewable energies, and so on. Post-scarcity really just means having more than we need. It's more logistics than physical technology. Nobody would starve anywhere on Earth today if enough people in leadership positions cared to cooperate and spread the food around. _That's_ the first thing Earth found a solution for in Star Trek: valuing people as more than resources for other people to exploit.
22nd century: Matter Re-sequencer
23rd century: Food/Goods Synthesizer
24th century: Replicator
The replicators must use some store or supply of matter and/or energy. In Voyager they often speak of replicator rationing... you can't create something out of nothing...
Take a drink every time Rowan says "Star Trek". I'm watching his previous retrospectives and man, it's literally every 3 seconds. Watch the first four minutes of the 2009 film video as one of many examples if you don't believe me, you'll hear it 40+ times.
I guess that in the StarTrek society, to conduct a huge event at a restaurant, is probably as cheap as for a kid to bake a cookie nowadays.
And, I mean, when your kid gives you a cookie they baked, it's not like he or she is going to say "Oh, why did you JUST say "thank you"!? I expected you to pay me 5 dollars for this!!". And if he or she gives you a cookie as a gift, you won't just say "Oh, it's worthless! I can't even sell it FOR MONEY, duh!"
No, you're just going to eat a cookie and say thank you to you kid. The same is probably true of a restaurant owner on the Star Trek Earth. The very act of different guests visiting his or her restaurant would probably already give great joy to the owner.
In the Star Trek, they probably also have some system of redistributing land. Maybe something similar to what we used to have in the USSR, where all the land of the Capitalist oligarchs was confiscated and given to every citizen for free if a citizen would use it productively. Some people had built a little summer house on the little patch, or what most people did, they started growing their own fruits and vegetables to share with their families (some also sold the little things on the market, because the Soviet Union was a Socialist society, and not Communist, like the Earth from Star Trek, but still, the land was mostly used for personal use).
Just to show to you how valuable it can be, even after all these decades and the restoration of Capitalism in Russia, my grandmother is still obsessed with the garden that she created on the little patch of land that Soviet government had given to her, and she works there every year, growing lots of fruits, vegetables and berries. Even after her land became her private property in the 1990s, she never sells the vegetables, she just gives everything away for free to her relatives and friends. I am quite certain, that in the Star Trek society, they have a whole culture of giving away food and even some more complicated items just like that, for free.
Nicely done. I think there's an overlooked element though.
Trek is showing us an energy economy. They don't need currency to buy goods, but they need energy to replicate goods or travel, which at the macro level means they still have a recognizable economy just with some form of energy placeholder as the medium of exchange. We see that most directly with Voyager and their rationing of replicator and holodeck use (which the crew accepted quite readily as though it weren't an alien or archaic concept) but the power limit is always subtly there throughout the franchise. It's clearly not a direct energy-backed Federation Dollar or something like that, but there is some relationship between work and available power to use for replicators, transporters, etc.
Which could mean that working at the shipyard gives you way more matter-transmuting mojo than painting landscapes.
This! I was thinking the exact same thing. The true "currency" of their society is energy. Energy is converted to power or matter depending on the need. Their technological breakthrough was developing energy sources so efficient and cheap that energy could effectively be given away (Fusion, Matter/Antimatter, etc). This translates to people pursuing "passions" as main motivator. My guess would be there is still a hierarchy of what passions "earn" what respective levels of energy use even if the "accumulation" of energy isn't the primary motivator for work.
Antimatter makes energy not scarce anymore.
Compared to the energy they burn for just crossing interstellar distances, a holodeck would not even be a rounding error. Time slots would still be limited.
@@davidwuhrer6704 exactly
Except that there is no mention anywhere in the Star Trek franchise that people are working for energy as payment, nor energy incentives. Reminds me of the Decepticons constant thirst for energon cubes. But that's just not Star Trek. That's Transformers.
I think Rowan Coleman explained it well. There are personal replicators, and there are industrial replicators. The industrial ones will go to large groups of individuals and institutions, probably granted by the government after filing a request form. And the personal replicators go to family households. Star Trek's society has figured out how to collect this energy, one would figure from mining planets and asteroids, which are plentiful. But who will do all that work? An army of refurbished Emergency Medical Holograms.
Free, never-ending energy. Shame Megatron never thought of that.
Another point about the replicators that can help factor into figuring this stuff out is that there are clearly limitations to the replicators. First, i'm pretty sure there are some items that the replicators are capable of making, but are prohibited from doing so. I think DS9 mentions that weapons are in that category. Second, there are things that the replicators can make, but what the replicators make is different from the real thing, mainly food and drinks. That's why things like resturants and vineyards would still have a reason to exist, the food and wine from those real sources would taste different, and to some far better, than anything that can come out of the replicator. Finally, we're told that there's at least 1 thing, that being latinum, that the replicator flat out can't make. That's basically the justification behind the entire Ferngi civilization. We're never even told if latinum has a use, but it's a limited resource in an otherwise limitless world and therfore has a potential use as a currency
The things banned... are for good reasons, on a Starship - Alcohol vs Synthahol, the food has all toxins removed, some of these add flavour ..and weapons without authorisation
Elsewhere, probably weapons ..
Latinum and Dithium were both made unreplicatable so that it was possible to have scarcity in a post scarcity society so that stories could happen... it's hard to comment on things that don't exist anymore ...
Gold's only actual use was "it looks pretty" until electricity, which it is a good conductor of, was discovered. Yet, it's considered incredibly valuable and has been the standard of currency. Latinum could easily be the same.
@@matthewpatrick7263 Gold isn't a particularly good electrical conductor
It had four properties it was valued for
1 it's pretty - and so easily recognised
2 it's rare - and so expensive
3 it's very malleable, and so easy to work
4 it's very corrosion resistant
Most of the uses today, are to do with the combination of its corrosion resistance, and its electrical or thermal properties
Latinum has only one property that it is valued for, it's inability to be replicated making it the *only* rare substance
Umm.. if replicators make it so that money is no longer needed, why do other nations in Star Trek still use money while also having replicators?
shhhhhhhhh! You'll ruin the illusion!
Because, firstly, they are still greedy buggers 🙂 and, secondly, the replicators still require a LOT of energy to turn it into the baryonic matter.
Hence the implementation of the 'replicator rations' on USS Voyager when the ship got stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
P.S. - I know you from OrangeRiver. 🙂
@@subraxas Hi. I still don't like the replicator; it seems like it exists solely to get rid of capitalism. If you're saying that capitalism is so strong that the only way you can end it is to invent something that needs made up science to work, are you really anti-capitalist?
I would say because it is necessary but not sufficient
@@subraxas So the commie federation has a monopoly on kindness in the galaxy? Money based races like the Ferengi are irredeemable? Oh yes only if you're connected to the commie hive then you have free energy. Because having free energy on voyager would have ruined the entire show. Weird how you can just seesaw around this depending on what you want that show to say. The federation seem like greedy buggers in Kurtzman trek.
0:17 -- Considering in one episode they try to get Jake's dad a 1951 Bowman Willie Mays rookie card...they should know that there will always be the need for money. After all, it is impossible to replicate antique/vintage items/collectibles, because if you did it wouldn't be antique/vintage anymore!
Replicators are energy in energy out. It would take energy to make hydrogen for a fusion reactor and to start the process to break down materials. Both in TNG and VOY energy is carefully managed, so energy most likely has taken the place of money in a certain sense. Everybody probably gets enough to cover their basic needs and then some, and perhaps having a job gets people extra.
Edit Also some things are automated like house cleaning in an episode of TNG Riker says the ship cleans itself.
Sure Rowan, your family _say_ they would do all those enrichment things if they didn't need money because of replicators, but I think the past few years have shown that for all their Grand Plans, we'll just watch "The Office" for the millionth time.
I come back to "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." If it wasn't for us being forced to work for our survival, we wouldn't have gotten out of the caves.
I think there is some truth to that. People think if they only had more time then they'd go travel or do a project or whatever. But people don't think of the time cost and challenge of writing a novel, say, or rather, they have and that's why they're not writing NOW.
The pandemic forced a lot of people to live off a dole at home, and when you can't even enjoy going out to a restaurant or go anywhere without a mask on, you would naturally resort to TV and movies to fill in the time. (The pandemic did little to change my life at all, except that I lost my job and immediately got rehired to do something else - I was working full-time throughout the pandemic).
Now, I'm unemployed, and yes, I watch a lot of TV and TH-cam - but that's mostly because it's there and it's habitual. I'm not in the habit of writing, especially something challenging like a novel. And the same thing that has held me back for writing online or making my own YT videos - my own self doubt - has not changed. And the pressure to go get a job is near-constant, so I'm worried all the time about that and about money, not fulfilling my dreams.
Honestly, I'd love to go travel the world or go back to school right now, but I don't have the money to do it. It's not a lack of a job that's holding me back, although it sure would make a lot of my life easier - it's simply the lack of capital, and being saddled with debt on top of that. Also bad timing - I missed the deadline for program applications for Master of Library and Information Sciences which is probably the degree I'd go back to school for, so now I have to wait until this fall to apply for next year. And hope I can get a decent job or two in the meantime.
Being unemployed in today's society is really the pits. Being unemployed in Star Trek society - sure I'd be spending a lot of time Holodecking, but I'd also crave doing *something* in the real world, and I bet getting a job to just be productive and earn a reputation isn't nearly as hard as it is now. You'd still be able to do poorly at the job and get fired, but you likely wouldn't be competing against hundreds of applicants just to get the same job opening in the first place.
I know you from OrangeRiver! 🙂
@@DataLal Computer make a chair with a face sized hole in it. Next make a 2x as large as normal Deanna Troi right after she's had 3 Chocolate Sundays in 10 Forward and she is extremely lactose intolerant and needs to sit down. Computer disengage safety protocols. -Barkley probably
The person doing the welding is also a part of an organization. People in organizations tend to do what the hierarchy in the organization asks them to do. Now turn over could be quite high in an organization that has voluntary enrollment requirements and lax reasons for existing, so that could lead to better managers, but in an organization such as Star Fleet with tough entrance exams, and a driven purpose for existence then I'd assume that when your manager tells you to weld a plate, you weld that plate.
I think the idea is money is still used as a means of buying scarce resources (land & certain luxuries) and labor (skilled craftpersons, professions where it's nice to have a living being in that position, other private employees, et cetera), but most items are not scarce and as such are free. You don't need money to survive or live comfortably, but it's still needed to thrive, essentially.
I'm glad you brought up Player of Games, not only for the Culture / Federation similarities. I had the book recommended to me by it being described as an excellent episode of TOS.
For some manual labour, the DOT droids we see in discovery and probably in SNW help complete the picture. Although not mentioned by the same name, Geordi references droids loading the photon torpedoes in Picard season 3. Honestly, droid assistance that we never see helps explain how Voyager stays so squeaky clean through most of its journey. Humans might do welding, etc, work for pride, self fulfillment, etc, but it seems necessary to shift 99% of the work onto robots/droids.
"Droid" is the word they use in Star Wars for robots. I haven't seen Picard and don't plan to, I wouldn't be surprised if it is actually Star Wars dressed up as Trek.
Interior maintenance can be done by replicators. Farscape bothers to explain the concept, in a way that very apparently made it into Harry Potter
I saw a notification for a Rowan video. MUST WATCH!!
I think one small thing that contributes is the placebo effect, i've always imagined the food tastes exactly the same but some people think it doesn't. Like how some people think records sound better than cds.
The question I have isn't why someone would go to a restaurant in the Star Trek universe, it's why would anyone work at a restaurant in that universe if they didn't own the restaurant or have some connection to it? How would you convince someone who has everything they need to take food orders and buss tables.
I'm a musician and I feel so privileged to earn my money by doing, what i love. Sure, there are days, when work is still work and not fun, but overall i would still do, what i do even if i wouldn't have to worry about money anymore.
Keep up the good work. You make the best Star Trek video-essays on TH-cam!
But without money giving preference information would you produce songs that match what people prefer?
Money is revealed preference.
@@Apple2-ux8uo Does it matter? His base needs are taken care of meaning he can make whatever music he wants.
If he craves prestige and recognition for his work he will act accordingly.
Energy is where this analysis goes wrong. Conservation of energy is sancrosanct and cannot be violated.
Yes, there is no know way to get around that. You can't create an energy source that is just as powerful as the replicator that created it.
@@palmercolson7037There's also the fact that the quantity of energy involved in atomic transmutation is comparable to the energy released by the fission of a similar mass of uranium. As such, the energy needs of a replicator making a meal are similar to those of a small atomic bomb.
A multi planetary civilization that might have pseudo Dyson Spheres has a lot of energy though.
There are people who would, if there was no need for money, kill to personally build with their own hands the greatest scientific and engineering feats of the age assuming the safety and work culture of the 24th century. I think that robots definitely do a lot of automation but the personal touch is essential in fostering a sense of common purpose and striving for fulfillment. When the flagship defends humanity from an incomprehensible threat, there are thousands of people on Earth who share in that accomplishment and have given their time, expertise and labor to make that feat possible.
I think the whole 'no money' idea was a misstep that came later in the Star Trek canon than most people seem to remember.
In TOS, there were multiple references to 'Credits' as a unit of currency. So, in TOS, they still 'had' money; it was probably all electronic, and to the 1960s viewers, it would have seemed futuristic.
The first real reference to 'no money' was in the movie "The Voyage Home," and the way Kirk referenced that they don't "use money" may have been more of a reference to Federation currency being electronic and not physical like bills or coins.
It wasn't until TNG that it really became hard canon that "they don't use money," but even there, there were references to buying 'things' (In Farpoint, Dr. Crusher bought something and told the vendor to charge it to the ship account).
The strongest reference to "no money" was in TNG season 1; after that, they basically avoided the subject.
When we got to Voyager and DS9, the crew was very quick to embrace "Gold-Plated Latinum" and "Replicator Credits," so this "no money" society was not deeply ingrained into their worldview, and they had no problem adapting to cash societies.
I suspect that the "no money" idea is a sort of political stance to which people are conditioned to pay lip service, with more or less personal buy-in, and people just ignore that there is plenty of bartering and an under-the-table economy going on, perhaps using the currency of other cultures.
With basic needs met, we would exponentially advance in arts, culture, and science. This makes the idea of exploring space even more sensible in this world.
I take it that some menial labors are a form of education/mentorship others are traditions. The welders and other builders are in the process of understanding how starships are built before moving up to a position that oversees that aspect of construction. Similar to the waiters at a restaurant. It isn't just about learning how to cook, but how to create an atmosphere, present the food, take up the food, and how to treat patrons. Then there are menial task that are traditional, to keep the cultural heritage and knowledge of the past alive.
Take it to the extreme, if there are no menial task in Trek and everything is automated, then it would be very easy to bring civilization into a dark age like Warhammer 40K. In 40K, humanity used to have fully automatics society but no one learned how things were made, so when technology failed, the entire civilization fell. With the preservation of menial tasks in Trek, if every replicator failed, people still retain the skills and knowledge to help society self sufficient.
Well humanity in 40k kind of lost due to the machines AI being possessed by demons and turning on them and cutting off all planetary space travel. But yeah they did have machines where if they gathered the necessary materials it would form them from you but it isn't really stated that they were lazy just understood that everyone is not gonna know everything there is to know, served more as a vast library of human knowledge.
The main problem with replicators is that if they could exist, their energy requirements would likely be insanely nasty... Unless you're using something like transporter technology to convert matter to energy and then reconstruct matter in an alternate form (also sounds likely to be very wasteful)
But I'm still optimistic that futuristic 3D printing is going to make things better in terms of easier access to stuff... Like meat for example... It has to be possible to make meat without the whole process of an animal being born, being raised for years, and then slaughtered for food... That just sounds insanely inefficient.
I think the main reason for the absence of automation is the budget and perhaps the writers not foreseeing how common place it might be already in the near future. I mean, we already have self-working vacuums and such.
And we see cleaning drones in one episode of Star Trek Discovery when something spilled in the mess hall.
And someone would have to clean the dust off house rooms and ship’s quarters.
You can't do away with scarcity. For example, how do you decide who gets to live in the penthouse, or who gets first row seats at a concert, or who gets to have a beachfront house, or... you get the idea. There will always be things that exist in less supply than the demand for them, and you will need money to allow people to prioritize what they want more. So one person might value first row concert seats more than living on the beach, while someone else could have the opposite priority. People must sacrifice things they don't care as much about in order to get the things they really do care about, and money is the most efficient way to do that.
You can't replicate fuel. Or at least you can't replicate more fuel than it took to fuel the replicator to replicate the fuel. It always must be a net loss. The 2nd Law of thermodynamics is a thing.
Came to say something like this. The concept of "post scarcity" cannot exist outside fiction, because scarcity is itself relative: it moves with the alternative uses that exist for resources, which change with new advances in technology.
I posted the same thing, but I think you worded it better.
Except money has not existed for most of human existence, only a few thousand years, and still doesnt exist in some societies today. Labor for things beyond survival/sustenance were and are still performed in those societies. A post scarcity society is possible but requires a shift in thinking along with removing scarcity. such a society may also be smaller in population as fewer people are needed, we've seen this happening already as birth rates drop in many places around the world. This could also reduce the competition for the same things.
@@adrianwebster6923Those societies were also smaller, less sophisticated, and most importantly, could support *FAR* fewer people. Specialization is what allowed civilization to progress, and money allows specialization to work. The only way to reduce competition for things is to not have scarce things people want. That means all you can have access to is a very limited selection of common items.
So sure, if you want to destroy modern society, kill billions, and have people revert to only having what they and their close friends and family could produce by themselves, then you can do away with money. Otherwise, you need it.
@@KenMathis1 When your means of production can support large numbers without needing money those factors stop mattering. the point is that scarcity would be a thing of the past with a replicator. It is a revolution like agriculture and the industrial revolution. societal organization changes. The sacrifices you describe are no longer necessary thus motivation will be based on other needs and desires. Creativity, curiousity etc. things which exised in human society regardless of the existence of money or levels of scarcity.
Just from a pure physics point of view, you wouldn't be able to use a replicator to produce the fuel for the fusion reactor that powers it. That would either break the second law of thermodynamics if there are no energy losses or the first law of thermodynamics if there are energy losses but the replicator would produce enough fuel to fuel the fusion reactor. Perpetual mobile is not allowed.
I really like the reasoning placed in this monetary system. Great job.
STAR TREK is a don't ask to many questions future. Just believe and enjoy. It doesn't bear up under scrutiny.
That was something I appreciate about how The Orville explained future society. It directly references how in the future, people pursue social capital and prestige rather than money.
Yeah and that when horrible. I remember the episode where he was going to jail because of something and they had to make it up by convincing people he was a good person. Imagine that in today's society.
I've tried explaining ideas like this to people but you have done it so clearly and concisely here, I'll probably just refer people to this video next time my friends and I get into a discussion on Star Trek. Great video!
Those who are familiar with Korean BBQ, hot pot, or fondue restaurants where you cook your meal rather than restaurant staff, they are place of social gathering where people socialize with friends and family as their food slow cooks.
And personally, drinking at a bar feels more fun than drinking at home, drinking beers from cans or bottles. Its the ambience I call it.
Plus, some bars have microbrewery so I like to have different taste.
So there is money in the Star Trek universe in the federation.
1. When star fleet goes to worlds with money they have a personal spending budget.
2. There is instances within the federation where some credit system is used. For example in Deep Space 9, there is a short 1 line where Benjamin Sisko talks to his dad about using his credits to come home while he was at the academe when he was younger.
I think this indicates things that are super super super cheap like food is free since whatever is done is likely offset in society. But things where there is only so much (like if they can teleport people 100,000 times a day. A few bad apples using this over and over will easily cause it where others won't have access to the teleporters. So in this they have to pay.
Now the question is, do they get credits in some UBI system where everyone can use the services and everyone gets x credits a day? Or is it, you have to do x to get credits? That isn't clear
Like the way I view it is it's like tap water. Most places will not charge you for tap water. A glass of water is extremely cheap, so like the replicators making food. It just isn't worth charging citizens. Where like the restaurant knows it will make a ton of money on other things than the water, Star Fleet knows it will make a ton of money on whatever citizens produce or automation.
In a Star Trek utopia, knowledge is the currency and your job title is your wealth. The smarter and more patience someone is to learning, the better quality of life they will have.
What if you want to own something "extra"?
Like a cottage in the mountains (ST:Generations), a personal space shuttle (let alone some spacious warp-capable *yacht), or a "simple" hover-car? And let's say that you want to pursue a hobby that is more "expensive"? Like for example, whilst speaking of the hover-cars, you want to become a racer? In that case you'd "need" more than just a "simple" hover-car, ain't it right?
And what about the process? You'd waltz into some local **office/institution and brashly announce to them that you want all those things and they would then simply provide you with them? Well, I do not think that this would be that easy. Among others, the society does not owe you 'these' things.
Maybe you "have to" work certain jobs for a certain amount of time (like 'years') in order to earn the right to be "allotted" such non-essential stuff. Like doing something mundane and uninspiring (welding panels all day long) or do something dangerous (joining Starfleet; especially as a "redshirt" 😀).
* - Over the decades, we've seen on Star Trek examples of people who at least seemed to be.... ehm.... "rich".
** - Once again, why would anyone want to willingly work on such a 'dorky' job; like long-term or permanently? One could potentially come up with hundreds of such examples.
I'll go over this in the video in the series.
@@RowanJColeman
❤
In the "Original" series there are several references to MONEY. I recall a specific line spoken by Kirk to "Scottie";
"If you can DO THAT, Mr. Scott; you'll have earned your Credits for the month!"
So WHEN exactly did Star Trek dispense with MONEY?
There is that line in "The Voyage Home" where Kirk says "WE don't" (use money!)
That, I think was when the Communist cross-over occurred. IT WAS NOT a part of Mr. Roddenberry's Original vision.
I trace it back to the 80s. Late original movies and early TNG.
@@genmaicha.lapsang
Yup! With The Next Generation series.
So... let me get this right - the thing that obviates the need for money in the Star Trek universe is... the breaking of all of the laws of thermodynamics.
If you can get enough (or more) energy out of a replicator, through the replication of fuel, you're getting something for nothing.
Not even the Star Trek universe works this way.
Sorry to interject, but "personal" property is an anti-concept (An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept, in this case, Private property.) as all Property is Private property regardless of what it is the case is.
My personal theory is that, since we only see a moneyless society from Star Fleet personnel i.e. a wing of the government, there could be some other forms of currency used for items that replicators can not make for one reason or another, so they don't need money. So it is not a moneyless society; it's just reserved for things that humans value over their basic needs. But to understand this, one needs to fully understand the true nature of Money.
"all Property is Private property"
Did you mean "all personal property is private property"? Because "public property" is a thing and it's certainly not "private property".
@@JannPoo Absolutely not! The term 'personal property' is an anti-concept crafted to undermine the true essence of private property. Regardless of whether you utilize a piece of property for personal use or economic gain, it unequivocally remains your private property.
Furthermore, 'public property' is a misnomer; it should rightfully be termed government property, and its legitimate scope of ownership is far more limited than commonly perceived.
The replicator is the futuristic scifi version of fantasy's "soft magic." Soft magic is basically when the magic is not well defined and can do anything.
A "hard magic" version of the replicator would look something like Star Gate Universe, where they had a system that made energy and water and food, but they had to stop at stars and planets for rescources.
The reason Gene Roddenberry doesn't have any robots in Star Trek. Because he said anytime you do a Scf-Fi show and put robots in it. Everyone only cares about the robots. He wanted people to care about the character's stories in this tv show. Not the robots.
"How does Star Trek's Future Society Work?", Answer. It Doesn't!
It makes perfect sense. It is called Communism.
It makes perfect sense. It is called Marxism.
I feel like there's a lot of social credits in the Federation. Picard still has the biggest quarters on Enterprise; the lower deckers sleep in the hallway. Everyone gets the basics, but if you want more, you have to contribute to the greater good, not just to yourself. I think that's why a lot of people join Starfleet: if you do, opportunities open up.
I’m telling you for a fact I loved my job. I welded,fit metal,did complex calculations, engineering, rigged and placed components, fabricated whole items and parts , metallurgy, repaired the largest machines on the planet , and directed crews ect. I loved every minute of it even though it was hard,dirty and unhealthy. If I could have afford to done it for free I would have especially if I knew my work was a value to all mankind. If I lived in a post scarcity world I would have done that same job I did for a living for free. I think I loved the noise and the smell of burnt ozone as I heliarc pressure tubes together. I might take more time off but yes I would love to build a star ship or a giant space station.
10:43 Certain job may also be desirable because of the experience they provide. Welding together star ship hulls might be a useful or enriching experience to have if you plan to go into star fleet later. Knowing you put your own sweet and work into the ship you are traveling the galaxy in.
It will take an enormous amount of energy to make this utopian world a reality. Not just replicators. Unimaginable amounts of energy
Well, just not as much as conventional physics would speculate is needed for like a transporter or a warp drive, but they do have full access to space and fusion and wondrous transmuting gadgets and everything, energy is not something Earth is really short of.
If it's not money then it's something else.
In a society larger than the scope of a measily small village, the value of the individual is impossible to weigh without an external tracker like currency or an account of deeds.
The only way to live without money is to go back to villages or tribal societies, where everyone knows everyone in their village/tribe & their values are easily judged (if you're capable but don't work, you get ousted from the village)
I am retired. Money is now a solved problem for me. I do AI art, I write programs - small ones that scratch a simulation itch for me, large ones like a classic sort of StarTrek computer game. I spend time watching things that interest me on TH-cam, like this post.
If you're really interested in this topic, you should read a novel called "Looking Backward" written by Edward Bellamy in 1888. I think many of the systems and concepts discussed there could be adapted to help explain the Star Trek economy.
Fair points. I would still work if money was not a thing. In fact I have gotten in trouble for working off the clock and I have even said that if they are worried about the cost of my overtime, just limit the amount of hours I get paid for and not the hours I work. Even though I am introverted, I still like being around people. Being a QC technician means I have a reason to be around people. It is a great purpose in life. Sitting around doing nothing seems like a waste. Everyone should contribute their time to society.
Iain M Banks's Culture series are brilliant Sci-fi books. I highly recommend them to everyone.
Also one of the things the ST universe is missing is Drones to do all the like welding hull plates on to Starships.
I think you need to start thinking of tradesman as artist who take a lot of pride in their work and passing on their knowledge to an apprentice.(we see this often in Star Trek with other professions) and if you spend any time on social media following tradesmen you will find they take pride in being good at their craft if not the best. That welder gets to tell everyone he built that Star ship with his two hands and next may lead the team that builds a space station(it may sound corny to us but I think in the Trek future people are very supportive of everyone’s chosen occupation or passion). You also have to notice that that welder is probably not an independent contractor but a member of Star fleet and that maybe his first post on the way to being a chief engineer(remember the engineers we see in series work on everything on the Star ship: replicators and holodecks to the warpcore and weapon systems. Star fleet engineers are appliance repairmen and nuclear technicians and literally everything in between.
Interesting video that poses some very valid solutions to the "economics of the future" (as Picard calls it), but still leaves some interesting questions. I think we see more of "money issues" on DS9 than any other Star Trek show because our Federation characters have to deal with non Federation characters often, who still deal in money (mainly the Bajorans and all their shops on the Promenade, and of course, Quarks). Since DS9 is not a Federation station, but a Bajoran one, it would be assumed that everything on the Promenade requires money, including the various restaurants and even the Replomat where we often see our characters hanging out (the likely exception to this being the Infirmary run by the government). This begs the question of where do our Starfleet characters get Bajoran money and the Latinum that the Ferengi treasure? Possibly doing odd jobs for them, but I doubt that Starfleet would charge the Bajorans for the services they provide, or do they? O'Brien and his Starfleet engineers don't get "paid" as it were, but we see Rom quit working for his brother at Quark's and becomes a Bajoran engineer, which certainly has a salary (Rom and Leeta discuss money issues more than once). Still a very good video, I'll have to check out your others.
Ferengi pay in latinum which is valuable but the Bajorans can probably just print up a million space bucks of fiat currency and hand it over to the federation for office supplies and whatever other stuff they need to govern. Starfleet is often giving them replicators and making a big deal out of it so there could be some buckeronis going back the other way and you can probably mine latinum it's probably just rare. The federation probably has it's unpaid commies out there mining it to trade.
Laws of thermodynamics - replicators are matter energy converters, we have this today with particle colliders, but you can’t make more energy out of nowshere
This was well done and reminded me of how close this might be done today. We already have 3D printers of various types (not just plastic) and energy could be met using thorium reactors (thorium is plentiful and in theory could be mined robotically). Since both the fuel for the reactor and the building of the reactors themselves as well as running them could be basically automated, that means we could literally have energy for free. Add in some robotic mining, shipping, etc to our 3-D printers and we are nearly in a Star Trek world. Some things are more complicated (cars and phones for example) and would need more complex assembly (for now) but a lot of things could just be printed. If the energy and materials are all free, why do you need money - at least for personal property?
Love the use of STO music in the background!
As someone who enjoys welding, yes the guys welding on spaceships DO love it. There are plenty of examples of people who enjoy menial jobs, drivers, cafe workers, farmers, janitors, etc. Automation will still be needed for scale but like the jobs themselves the automation will be optional. Space is still a premium in any post-scarcity society and priority could be given to people who perform needed jobs or jobs deemed to be of greater service than others. Sophisticated AI could literally track everything everyone does and how much it benefits others and to what degree. A benevolent version of the social credit score idea where there are no negatives for not helping enough but rather perks for helping more like being able to jump the queue for a penthouse with an ocean view or tract of land.
One correction about replicators, they do need a power source. Gene Rodenberry was a science conscious person, and he was very aware of energy conservation. The replicator's power supply can be used to make fully charged energy cells, but that exhausts its own energy. So you can't keep making nuclear reactors to replace the replicator's own supply.
One of my buddies LOVES welding. When he's not doing it for class he is in his garage doing it for fun, trying new techniques, or trying to invent new ones. If he had the opportunity to weld in space, with unlimited equipment and time, he would be in heaven. I think it would be the same with most blue collar jobs, some people just love manual labor. Especially if your parents are manual laborer's. It would be a point of pride to these people to build with their own two hands what everyone relies on to survive. Perhaps in the future social credit is the currency, with people who do more vital jobs get faster entrances to restaurants, holodecks, etc.
Was kinda drifting between watching this a reviewing materials for a midterm. Pretty sure it wasnt mentioned but I may have missed it, has foreign currency exchange for star fleet members ever been addressed? If starfleet doesnt pay people and the federation doesnt use money, how does the DS9 crew afford to buy things at quarks, or at far point station when the TNG crew is browsing the market.
The point that always gets missed is the replicator does not make things out of thin air. It needs a stored of raw materials to organize into the patterns
I've been rewatching the series' and there is a lot of talk about needing to get spare parts. DS9 talks about self-sealing stem bolts and other parts often. Voyager sends out mining expeditions.
To me, the replicators don't create matter from energy, but they use that stored raw materials and move it around as needed. That's why replicators recycle, as shown on DS9, Voyager, and Lower Decks. Chakotay made Janeway a watch and she commented that it should be recycled into something useful. The matter energy equations don't give energy from converting matter into energy. So, they must need the raw materials and in some cases alloys.
Latinum is sealed into worthless gold slips and bars. Replicators for whatever reason can't make it. So, that also goes inline with your statement and my agreement that they need the raw materials.
It’s important to listen carefully, “they don’t need money” “the pursuit of wealth no longer preoccupies us.” They don’t *care* about money-but there still is money.
There’s A LOT of automation, I think the computer and all the frictionless booking of resources…the disposition of, well, money-and as for those robots, you see them-majel’s voice is that robot. She just doesn’t need a localized body, just like the minds of Culture.
The welder example is key. I know welders who would like nothing better than to lay bead all day. Not having to think about the input cost would allow for this, also any imperfections could be instantly revealed (through tech in the helmet) to the welder whom could correct immediately, or corrections could be made by a replicator. These corrections could even be subsurface leaving the handiwork of the craftsman visible yet the subsurface molecularly "perfect". As for the "property" question, we already have individuals and groups who value their digital property above most physical property, therefore a holodeck can provide any property to any individual or group as they wish.
I think the issue of no money confuses people because a lack of money doesn't necessarily mean a lack of currency. The existence of replicaters and high levels of energy production simply makes things so incredibly cheap that it doesn't matter what you have the replicator make. So a expensive steak dinner today costs mere pennies from a replicators. I like the idea of energy credits like in Star Trek Online. In cannon these energy credits would represent a certain amount of energy. The more complex a meal or tool the more energy is required; hence it's more "expensive". Because the Federation is really good at energy production, energy is plentiful and people are relatively rich.
“It’s the thought that count” has new meaning when you make anything. You really need to think about the relationship you have and what things means to that person. Its not just about dropping a lot of cash
Brilliant! Spot on! Yes, this is where we are going!
3:13 *Picard drops trou and begins vigorously shitting into the replicator. About halfway through this weeks staff reports, the chime indicating a request to enter his ready room was heard. 'Come', Picard uttered like a man with no sense of humor."
My take on why some people work on not very exciting jobs:
-They need money to purchase things outside of Federation (and we know Federation credits exist)
-It`s light punishment instead of a prison😀
I would point out that some people really enjoy jobs others would not. That welder is probably there because he likes to work with metal and was given the opportunity to work on a space ship which is not only a really cool project but one that implies he is very skilled so there would be some degree of prestige
In the GURPS TTRPG, Prime Directive, one receives a stipend of Federation Credits. Federation Credits represent certain amounts of energy. This energy can be used on federation replicators and transporters.
David Graeber was a friend of mine and an inspiration. Rowan J Coleman gets the future. Subbed.
Great subject. Thanks for making the vid. This is a subject Iv though about for many years.
Oof the repeating that there is a difference between personal and private property and the absolute wickedness of the concept of the social contract, uniqueness is what makes something scarce
One point I haven't heard in the video or seen in the comments (though I could have missed it) is the massive change in the value of physical property after the advent of FTL. With the rich abundance of space more and more easily available, pre-replicator economic changes would be inevitable. Even today, the idea of being able to mine our own asteroid belt sends shivers through economists hearts when they think of the price of rare earths dropping to less than dirt if we ever manage to harvest even one of the hundreds of thousands of rocks floating freely out there.
With FTL, and advancing secondary space based industrial processes, nothing on Earth would hold it's value. The exact moment money becomes useless is the moment the first warp 1 freighter arrives with more raw materials on board than has ever been harvested in all of Earth history.
On the point of welding panels onto starships, those are likely Starfleet jobs. Just as plenty of volunteer servicemen today do whatever they are assigned, I assume the same applies to enlistees in Starfleet. It's an entirely different working environment than the wider world of civilian life. Rather than for just a paycheck, you might be doing it as a matter of family tradition, to serve your country, to see the world, or to "defend freedom and democracy".
Memory Alpha:
Replicating large numbers of items could require significant amounts of power to be diverted from the warp core. (TNG: "The Child") Complex elements such as anicium and yurium also required large amounts of energy to replicate. (TNG: "Night Terrors") During emergency situations, the use the replicators might be restricted to save power for vital systems or because they were unreliable; requiring rations to be replicated instead of more elaborate food (TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise"; VOY: "Year of Hell", "The Killing Game", "Demon"; DS9: "The Siege"), rationing of replicator usage (VOY: "The Cloud", "Real Life", "The Void"), or the use of traditionally-prepared food. (DS9: "Covenant"; VOY: "The Cloud") It was sometimes necessary to take the replicators completely offline to conserve power. (DS9: "Covenant"; VOY: "Dark Frontier", "Demon"; PRO: "Terror Firma")
Looks like replicators were consistently depicted as a non negligible energy consumer.
A pass? Well. If you assume the newer series are a new continuity you can ignore all that old stuff and it would match pretty well with the insanely jacked up technology level.
My limited Sci-fi repertoire actually has something like you suggest.
Mr. Fusion on the upgraded DeLorean.
It's fed by whatever crap Doc Brown deems worthy to throw in there.
It literally says Fusion Home Energy Reactor on it.
Almost nothing said about how it does or doesn't work.
Of course if you have access to say, the Solar System, there's plenty of matter and energy for everyone to work with.
The psychology of this will be a matter for any post-scarcity society:
You will not need to work to live, but what do you want to live for?
The fulfillment of mastering a craft, or satisfying your curiosity with exploration of STEM subjects, archaeology or traveling to new frontiers?
This will also be a question that needs to be answered with longer lifespans, what will you do if you have perfect health and live for 400 years?
Replicators still need mass to reformat. It needs organic matter to make food, it needs inorganic matter to make objects. It is possible for a replicator to run out of 'fuel' for its replication of things. You can recycle matter, which helps, but additional mass requires resupply.
Look forward to more of this series thank you for this work
Some things: TLDR: Physics and human nature would keep this society from happening.
Replicators still need mass. They can make molecules, they cannot create atoms. On the Enterprise D, the technical manual mentions reusing the crew's excrement for food and scooping more exotic materials (for building) from space as the ship moved. On Earth, you'd have to get that mass from somewhere and scarcity could still occur.
People SAY they will do other, more creative things if they could stop working, but they rarely DO it. An anecdotal example of this behavior comes from my old job. To get health insurance lower, they were asking people to start going to the gym. EVERYONE said it was too expensive. So my old company offered to buy everyone family memberships to LA Fitness. About a quarter of my coworkers took them up on the offer and less went regularly. You cant liberate people from human nature.
You need fuel, raw materials, and designs which would have pattens. You still need a medium of exchange to obtain these inputs.
In Starfleet you're working your way up some kind of para-military hierarchy so you'll work welding those plates knowing that someday you could be a chief engineer, or bridge officer, or whatever. Even with the automation, doing manual labor could be part of some kind of training program or hazing ritual. The Star Trek/ Culture universe eliminates the bottom two levels of Maslow's pyramid, but you still have to work your way up the other three. You can only buy your way up those two levels with money.
Replicators aren't just the ultimate tool of self-sufficiency, they're also the ultimate plot device-or, at least, the unsung hero of plot devices. They make an entire story world possible, and can even be used for story material. So, I guess they can even replicate meta, lol.
These are things stated or implied at one point or another by characters.
1- the population is star trek is in constant growth.
2-the replicator doesn't break the laws of physics. It makes stuff by consuming energy (and/or matter in the case of the enterprise series) but it cannot provide it's own fuel.
3-massive scale production and trade still exists in star trek. Mainly energy (anti-matter) production, difficult to manufacture materials (uranium for instance would be terribly difficult to make with a replicator) or very specific goods that are not on the replicator's memory banks for one reason or another (like the perfect cheese pizza made by a chef. You could strive your whole life and then make the replicator memorize it after you're done. But it would still take your whole life to make a single perfect pizza that you would be happy to see replicated )
4-manual work exists as the norm and robots as the exception. People work to learn (which is a need if your ship or colony home breaks down in the middle of nowere) and robots pick up the extra slack. This guarantees that practical knowledge of how things work is never lost.
5- people will learn for most of their lives and are socially incentivized to do so. This means that no one is completely clueless of any one subject and that they take menial jobs in order to learn specific skills (I've also argued myself that everyone should do client support at least once in their lifetimes to learn people skills and get some empathy towards people in those jobs).
We usually forget how massive the scale of star trek is (and most sci-fi settings for that matter) to the point were individuals have basically access to everything because Wealth is measured in planets. A colony is needed for either it's resource production or it's space to get homes for people but everyone there gets to do wateaver they like because they walk around with nuclear reactors on their pockets... Everything else they do it's either because they like or learn from it (like having a more advanced form of UBI if you will)