The Problem of Money in Star Trek Economy

1. Merrick
   March 29th, 2009 at 2:38 am

   It wasn't exactly as though they were terribly consistent about this- one episode Picard is saying they've eliminated the need for possessions, another episode his family owns a vineyard.

2. c0ldfish
   March 29th, 2009 at 2:52 am

   yes, the early episode where the crew unthaws cryogenically frozen people from 20th century earth is a good example of an episode where picard addresses the differences between our modern world and that of star trek's future. one of the people unthawed was a businessman and he has trouble coming to grips with the lack of finances in the future. they also have trouble restraining themselves from disobeying the orders they are politely aske to follow. you never really think about the fact that on the enterprise, you can go anywhere and talk over the intercom without any passwords or keys until this episode. on the subject of money, i feel that it is important to realize that the majority of what happenes in star trek is essentially military operations. on a modern battleship people eat food in a mess hall and money is not really as relevant as it is in civilian cities. i think it might be possible that on earth,in star trek, civilians still trade money for goods. replicators might be able to make standard things, but could they create a stylish new dress? you would still need a designer to create the concept. occasionally you also hear people complain that certain dishes aren't prepared as well via replicator as the ones prepared by hand. in regard to the holodeck and it's infinite possibilites, one might reference other works of science fiction which dwell on the idea of simulated realites. a highly resolute person would seem to often conclude that it is better to toil for the sake of others in reality than delude yourself in falacies. weaker people might become immersed but star trek often refers to the humans of it's age as being wiser than this.

   i'm a dork.

3. striatic
   March 29th, 2009 at 4:02 am

   "Who’ll do the scut work?"

   there IS no "scut work". everything is designed to clean itself and work indefinitely.

4. wendy gunther
   March 29th, 2009 at 5:19 am

   Rent. You gotta pay your rent. Even if you don't have a grocery bill or a liquor bill any more, real estate is not an infinitely replicatable good; it's limited, and therefore, there will be rent.

   Rent will be less because the walls can be replicated, but there still has to be labor unless the replicators are big enough to cough up a whole house (and then who transports and sets up the replicator? And does it run on electricity? Then the electric bill is part of the fee for the house).

   So when you buy a house, you're buying land, which will not be free, and you're buying the bill for the replicated house. If you're renting, you're paying the landlord for owning the land and paying the replicator bill. Bills, as parts break with time, and have to be replaced; and labor has to install the replacements, unless you're redoing the whole house every time someone makes a ding in a wall.

   Once you've still got the mortgage, you've got bills. If you won a lottery of say $34,000, would you quit your job?

   And the tonier the neighborhood (ie the more limited the resource you desire), the higher the rent will be. It'll still cost a fortune (relatively) to live in Manhattan, even if the walls and art can be replicated. Come to think of it, you wouldn't buy replicated art if you were that high-status. It would be like putting up a framed cheap reproduction- hmm.

5. K!P
   March 29th, 2009 at 6:42 am

   i have book called Gismo by Damon Knight, and it bassicly revolves around the invention of a duplicator, and the sociaty that forms from it. Liked the concept.

6. Terry
   March 29th, 2009 at 7:08 am

   You forget one critical thing.

   Replicators use energy and energy isn't free.

7. HollywoodBob
   March 29th, 2009 at 7:56 am

   To quote Captain Picard from Star Trek: First Contact; "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

   Also from the Deep Space Nine episode "In the Cards":
   Jake: "I'm Human, I don't have any money."
   Nog: "It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement."
   Jake: "Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
   Nog: "What does that mean?"
   Jake: "It means we don't need money!"

   After Earth made contact with alien life, society shifted from a monetary based economy to a resource based economy. At the time it was easy to do because the world had been stricken by several massive wars over the last 70 years, that devastated the worlds economy and populations.

   The article assumes that the change in economics came with the advent of replicators, but it actually preceded the replicator, by 300 years, give or take. It really makes me wonder if the author is more than a passing viewer of Star Trek.

   It's difficult for us, people who have lived our entire lives thinking that money was a requirement of society, to think about doing away with it. We think about who will be garbage men, and street sweepers if there's no pay. Or what would drive a person to devote their time to becoming a doctor if they weren't going to make a fortune with their training. The simple answer is that most people in our society wouldn't do any of that stuff, without a financial reward. But that's because deep down most people are selfish, greedy individuals who focus on what they can better for themselves rather than being concerned how they can be a part of a society striving to better itself.

   As to the scut work, that is handled by automated systems of robots.

   There's a futurist from Florida, Jacque Fresco, who has been advocating the shift to a resource based economy for years. We're already equipped to provide for every person on the planet, the scarcity we face is in nearly every case artificial and used to playing with pricing and profit margins. One thing preventing it is the pathological need for people to acquire wealth, and that's a sickness that we may never overcome. Also although most of us claim we want equality for everyone, humans have an inherent need to separate into a class structure, in a society without money, financial inequality would be replaced by much more unpleasant class stratifications. And that is something I would really hate to see.

   Even though I long to see a society where everyone is provided for, where anyone wishing to go to college can, where money is no longer the only reason most people work, where artificial scarcity is not a constant menace, where banks don't control governments, where millions aren't killed over resources, where no one is homeless or hungry; I've sadly come to the realization that it isn't going to happen in my lifetime, humanity has too far to go before it can be without its money.

8. ted
   March 29th, 2009 at 8:13 am

   Wow, people are long-winded on this subject. Bottom line: Gene Roddenberry wanted to create a utopia by the time he got to the Next Generation, but that was way too bland (and often too pompous) for reality. Picard goes to his doctor: "I've got a headache - what's that?"

   Fortunately, Roddenberry's vision was made a little more palatable to modern audiences, but they still had to work out the differences between his Federation utopia and the rest of the universe.

   It didn't always work, and we ended up with DS9 - utopia clashing with dystopia. Did they pay for stuff, or didn't they? Who knows? wooooo....

9. Ricky Ricardo
   March 29th, 2009 at 8:49 am

   Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" also deals with a scarcity free / reputation based economy.

10. Lars
    March 29th, 2009 at 10:19 am

    The Federation doesn't use money, but plenty of other cultures in the ST universe do, including non-Federation earthlings. The implication is that non-Federation Earthlings still require money. I believe that the Citizens (soldiers) in Starship Troopers have a similar system to the Federation, while non-Citizens still deal in a credit based economy.

11. D Bozko
    March 29th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    There was always "scut" work, striatic. What about all that climbing around in the Jeffries tubes to fix something.
    I've pondered the question of what motivates the crewmen myself. Captain is one thing but it's still a job like all others. Duty assignments require you to be at a certain place at a certain time performing a certain task. That's work in anybody's book.

12. Kalel
    March 29th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    Off camera, they are trading chickens for dilithium crystals.

13. Johnny Cat
    March 29th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    I was under the impression that the Ferenghies were money-based. They ran a casino, didn't they? One that many Federation humans patronized.

14. The Foreigner
    March 29th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    Glad that HollywoodBob mentioned the DS9 episode, "In the Cards," because that one REALLY demonstrated the utter absurdity of Roddenberry's ST:NG economic vision.

    Jake wants to buy his father a real, authentic 1951 Willie Mays baseball card. But his society is "far too advanced" to use money anymore. So instead of a single cash (or latinum) transaction, Jake has to waste DAYS of his life engaging in elaborate barter schemes.

    BARTER. When confronted by scarcity, the best the poor citizens of the HIGHLY ADVANCED Federation can do is resort to economic practices used by civilizations existing in PREHISTORY.

    And forget about the scarcity problem -- what about the misallocation problem? Given the subject, let's use William Shatner as an example. The man's an actor, a sci-fi writer, and a LEGENDARY singer . How should he allocate his time, talents and efforts?

    In a cash economy, he knows that society values his acting skills quite highly, his writing skills somewhat, and his singing skills -- well, very little. He knows that he'll probably starve if he spends his life trying to cut albums. Society provides him with the incentives to devote his life to acting and writing.

    Contrast that result with the results under Roddenberry's moneyless utopia. Even if William Shatner were a 100% altruist, how would he know how to spend his time to maximize the benefit to society? He might very well err and torture us all with more of his albums. And that's the sort of mistake that would happen ALL THE TIME in the Federation of a ST:NG universe.

15. MIchaelS
    March 29th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    Why is everyone afraid of the "C" word? They're pretty clearly communists.

16. VonSkippy
    March 29th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    You know what else they don't use in Star Trek? Bathrooms. Apparently without money there is no reason to Poo in the future either.

17. Gadget Sleuth
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    The fact that people dissect the economy of a fake TV world makes me want to laugh.

18. required
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    scutwork is subjective

19. AK-00
    March 29th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Some of the arguments here strikingly reminiscent of the devoutly religious arguing that, without religion, there'd be no ethics, and with much the same flaws in reasoning.

    Before money, the so called "scut work" got done because it was recognised that it needed doing. I imagine that Star Fleet personnel would also recognise that, if they didn't crawl around inside a Jeffries Tube, something would stop working, the ship would break, and somebody could die.

20. seefish3
    March 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Doing something "for the good of Humankind" is impossible for this culture to understand, but I have to say I'd clean any alien race's toilet for a chance to get on the Enterprise.

    With my tongue.

21. Non
    March 29th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Maybe prestige is like currency. Basic needs are provided for, but you're looked down on (or even perhaps ignored more or less) unless you try to better humanity. Your social ranking goes up (like money) when you try harder, perhaps driving these future star trek people to work more?
    Think of it like our buddy the working canines out there. Herding dogs. True they get paid in kibble, but its more than that, that drives them to try harder. They desire approval.
    Maybe it works something like that?

22. Nyrath
    March 29th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    This has been discussed in various classic works of science fiction, such as Ralph Williams's "Business as Usual, During Alterations" Murray Leinster's The Duplicators, or George O. Smith's "Pandora's Millions".

    I ramble on about it on my website:
    http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3al.html#consequences

23. HollywoodBob
    March 29th, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    Deep Space Nine is a good case study for humanity's future economy. One example is Sisko's Creole Kitchen, the restaurant run by Joseph Sisko, the place is always busy, yet no one pays for anything. Joe runs the place because he loves it, not because of the money it would make him. Jake becomes a writer for the love of writing. Artists work for the sake of their craft, people in Starfleet enter for the opportunities that it presents.

    Someone mentioned rent and land values, land is only scarce if you can't leave the planet, millions of humans have migrated to the stars. Cityscapes are far more massive than they are now, and without the need to commute land that is currently uninhabited, could very well have been reclaimed and made into massive housing centers.

24. skidworth
    March 29th, 2009 at 9:00 pm

    "The fact that people dissect the economy of a fake TV world makes me want to laugh."

    no doubt.

25. Nicholas Dollak
    March 29th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    I'm glad to see so many attentive Trekkies & Trekkers (say 5 times fast) contributing!

    The Trek universe has never been terribly consistent regarding details, but has generally striven for a positive view of "the future," one in which the characters work to resolve problems. Money was rarely if ever discussed on TOS (aside from alien currencies). In Star Trek II (Wrath of Khan) we do see a janitor vacuuming a corridor at Starfleet Academy. In Star Treks III and VI we also see kitchen staff wiping down tables and preparing food. So "grub work" probably still exists. (The reason for these details is directorial choice. Nicholas Meyer [II & VI] liked to include familiar touches like books, eyeglasses, old-fashioned furniture.) One could argue that humans still need to do all these chores on Star Trek, and therefore money may still be the incentive. However, one could also simply draw a comparison with modern life & technology: The Roomba sure saves one a lot of vacuuming, but has trouble with corners and shag carpeting. Windshield wipers are great, but one still must squeegee the wildshield by hand on occasion. You can subsist on fast food, but nothing beats a home-cooked meal. So we may perhaps assume that in Star Trek, everyone on a starship has a chore list and probably puts in a couple of hours a week picking up a few dust-bunnies the Roomba missed. Also, some people really LOVE to cook.

    Besides, gakh is best served live. (And revenge is a dish best served cold.)

    Star Trek IV - Not meaning to be less than gentlemanly, Kirk nevertheless sticks the marine biologist with the restaurant bill. "Don't tell me you don't use money in the 23rd Century!" "Well, we don't."

    ST:TNG, pilot episode - We see Dr. Crusher buying some linen with some form of credit. My guess is that some form of money does exist, but seems to be unnecessary on Earth, in Starfleet, and possibly on all Federation worlds. This would make sense, but was never elaborated on. (A modern parallel would be the Euro, accepted all over Europe; Poland still uses zloty but did join the EU a few years ago.) Kirk probably also had credit for making purchases on a few participating worlds that still used money. But as any time-traveler quickly finds out, money from the future is not accepted in the past. (Unless it's made of "valuable" minerals. Klaatu's diamonds from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" are an example of this exception.) Kirk could not have paid for his spaghetti & Chianti, because in the 20th Century his account did not exist.

    I've often had to explain to people during economic discussions that we often forget that money is really worth what "we" agree it will be worth. (Problems arise when balances change, people get greedy, and everyone starts imagining that money is more solvent than it really is.) A global currency unit might be a bad thing, or a very good thing. It might even be a step toward a money-less economy.

    This, however, would require fully-automated trash collecting & recycling. And we'll all need to be taught from birth that one's happiness does NOT require another's misery (the root cause of greed). Otherwise, as HollywoodBob put it, society will get stratified all over again.

    Oh - and re: vonSkippy: They do poo in Star Trek. Check out the blueprints for the Enterprise, and you'll see the commode fixtures in the crew quarters' bathrooms. They just never appeared on the show, like the Brady Bunch.

26. Matt
    March 29th, 2009 at 11:01 pm

    I'm pretty sure those Tribbles weren't free.

27. Joe
    March 30th, 2009 at 5:07 am

    What???? Gene Roddenberry didn't work out all the details of his vision of 23rd century economics? Oh, no! Next you'll be telling me he never totally fleshed out the transporter beam, or the warp drive!

28. SWFL guy
    March 30th, 2009 at 8:12 am

    What about the episode where the highly advanced aliens were wagering "quatloos" or something like that ??

29. Noah Kleiman
    March 30th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    @The Foreigner

    Shatner's record, "Has Been", produced by Ben Folds is exquisite. Wouldn't accuse Shatner of pretending to be a singer, though. Spoken word combined with music and guest performances.

30. Kalel
    March 30th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    "What about the episode where the highly advanced aliens were wagering “quatloos” or something like that ??"

    That was on the episode called "The Gamesters of Triskelion", and 'quatloos' were never defined by the little glowing brain-beings that used them in wagering.

    Judging by the look of the humanoid Thralls, I'd say quatloos had to do with mascara, hairspray, and artificial bearskins.

31. The Foreigner
    March 30th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    @Noah Kleihman

    Didn't know he'd done another album.

    But his first one (1968) was ranked #45 on a list of the 50 worst albums ever made.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transformed_Man

32. Daneil
    March 31st, 2009 at 10:09 am

    Actually, they seem to use money in the TOS episode 'Mudd's Women'. The Enterprise is badly in need of lithium crystals and Captain Kirk tells the miners on Rigel XII that they'll receive the standard federation payment.

    Granted, he doesn't say cold hard cash, but there is clearly a scarcity / supply and demand system at play here.

33. The Foreigner
    April 4th, 2009 at 5:50 am

    Thomas Edison invents the replicator. (An April Fool's prank from 1878. Listed as #53 on a list of Top 100 April Fool's Jokes)

    http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/P50/

34. phoenixesper1
    May 4th, 2009 at 4:38 am

    If anyone watched the original star trek movies and the first TNG movie "generations" there are multiple instances that show currency of some kind must still exist either on at least a strictly civilian level. Like in the begining of undiscovered country when the crew is entering the briefing and Uhora Mentions that she just bought a boat. Also in Generations we see when picard and kirk are in the nexis kirk enters his home and states he sold it years ago. But there are also points that go to show that money may exist in some form through the early star trek timeline but that it may be totally fazed out by TNG era when replicators are common place..... like in star trek four when kirk goes back in time and realizes that money is still being used.... and has sense enough to barter his glasses for cash, if all forms of money were gone by kirks time he would never have had the sense to do that....it would be like a person from are time going back to say 1890 and using a telegraph for the first time without ever haveing seen or heard of one. it would just never occur to them to use it. I would say that most likely money still existed much as it does today by the time "ENTERPRISE" era started, that money was essentially an extravagence credit system By the "TOS" era, meaning food, shelter and essentials were provided for but anything else you had to work to aqquire, much like the lifestyle of finland is today. and by TNG " the magic and pixey dust system" where all humans live in absolute harmony and can do no wrong with one another, but tends to extend their former problems as a society onto everyone else...but in a flowery sugar coated passive aggressive method. Honestly i think currency exists on the civillian level, there's no other way to keep a planet of 9-11 billion individuals stable provided for... and most importantly Sane! the only way i see a truly free society existing is if the population were incredably small... like say under 10 million. that way the contributions of menial everyday life would serve a worthwile and meaningful purpose....like the aztecs of north america...minus the scrafices and eating of human hearts.

35. jerky7596
    May 9th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    no money society
    yes it is communism, sorta
    right now you work get paid to pay rent
    future you work as one to create a better universe
    taking care of each other.
    someone works on the pooh
    others work on building houses and ships
    other supplying electricty
    there is still supply and demand but it someone job to make it so.
    UTOPIA.
    on a side note dead people and pooh is what makes the replicators work.
    can not create something from nothing.

36. philton
    May 11th, 2009 at 3:53 am

    everthing is provied by the state its socialism in exchange for room bored goods and sevices people work.everyone gets there own lil piece of heaven and the all agree to n ot live outside theyre means cause its bad for all. as for the grub work it needs to be done so we do it. nobady pays you to clean ur house or ur bathroom or recycle or take out the trash but u do because u must. so we all do r part and the galaxy is a nice place to live.so then lets say some guy wants to be a writer like Jake sisco hes not contributing like a street sweeper or an engineer like chief obrien.but he does his thing he does what he wants what he loves. and hopefully some other good individual will pick ujp the slack. some people r good at engineering and cleaning and cant be artists or physicists i for one would probably flunk out of star fleet but i could be a lzy artist like jake. and in that sense im not contributing but maybe that also means i cant move up in my social caste. its like the difference between owning land like picards family chateau to a tiny lil apartment in the city. as a hard intrepid worker u can have a house w awhite picket fence and a half acre. but an artis or a writer can never ;ive above his basic needs he gets a small apartment room and bored and thats all and he can be hapy and productive that way. or he can strive for more by working harder and he can someday own a chateu in france.

37. drack
    July 23rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    "Replicators use energy and energy isn’t free."

    Unless they came up with a low cost energy source. Like Solar Energy, Cold Fusion or Antimatter . Besides its a sci-fi show.

38. Christopher
    October 19th, 2009 at 10:53 am

    The whole ST concept of economics is a load of crap. Like earlier posts stated, there will always be limited resources and disparities in talent and ability. Land cannot be replicated. Even if you can leave the planet, so what? Land on other planets can't be replicated either. And the cheapest land would be on far away planets with few people and little to no resources available, much like the western US in the 19th century, when the gub'ment gave away land if you promised to maintain it. Then there’s energy. It may be cheap and abundant, but it will not be FREE. Energy must be produced; it will require machines, labor, time, and transport. These factors mean that energy will have a value. If you want an example of a modern-day form of energy that’s relatively cheap and abundant, yet we still complain about its cost, look at oil. Milk is more expensive than oil. Hand lotion is far more expensive than oil. Peanut butter might be 5-10 times its cost. Yet we still go nuts at the price of oil. You don’t think people would act the same way regarding antimatter in the 24th century? I gurantee you there would be a zillion PADD articles on the predatory nature and inherent danger of the “Big Antimatter” companies.

    Then there will always be disparities in talent. You can see this in every episode by the mere fact of the ships hierarchy. Why is Jean-Luc a Captain and some random dude just a lieutenant? Because Picard is better than that other dude. He's smarter, more ambitious, a better ass-kisser, maybe simply more lucky. Whatever, the point is there will always be people who have less talent and luck than others. Hence you will have poverty. Maybe it won't be the abject poverty we see in some places of our time, but there will always be people who have less. For example: look at a poor person in America, compared to sub-Saharan Africa. A poor American likely lives in a small apartment, with few frills, bad heat and no AC, but there is little chance of dying from exposure. They can always go to an emergency room if they are ill, although quality of care is suspect. They will also have access to abundant amounts of cheap food, albeit very bad for you. An impoverished sub-Saharan African, meanwhile, likely has no shelter, little to no access to ANY kind of medical care, and is in a constant state of malnutrition. Being poor in America is a helluva lot better than being poor in sub-Saharan Africa, but poverty still exists in America. 24th century poverty might seem pretty sweet to us, but poverty will still exist.

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