How Star Trek's Future Works – Money, Work and Property

49 thoughts on “How Star Trek's Future Works – Money, Work and Property”

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• I humbly disagree replicators are the threshold tech of Star Trek. I would say that its the very very powerful energy source they eventually developed that powered all tech. Thats what post scarcity would hinge on.
  Also, replicating the power source for the same replicators wont work. No system is perfect and there will always be some energy loss through em radiation.

• I'm not sure about the so-called "menial labor" examples in the vid. Welding takes a lot of skill. Underground, aboveground, and up top construction and repair takes a lot of skill. Along with many other varied jobs. I've worked in, taken pride in, and appreciated participating in all of these fields. Some of these may have been eliminated in the future, but the ones remaining would have still had many people enjoying the craft. Heavy equipment operation is another skill I learned when I was in my teens. Is that also "menial labor?" I can understand eliminating some of the actual menial, and to be honest, degrading jobs of today, but there are some crafts that people will continue to take a great personal pride and enjoyment in, even in the future.

  Other than that minor quibble, excellent video.

• 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.

• It's like Etsy vs factory made..

• Because people's basic needs are taken care of decently, the whole series – all of them – and the movies – HAVE to take place on other planets with other species and cultures. It is why DS9 is the best! It is on the frontier with all kinds of other economic systems interacting.
  BESIDES there seems to be some kind of credit everyone is spending to do make small purchases like drinks at a bar and so on.

• ok but how are the replicators powered? THermo dynamics would dictate that the replicator could not efficiently replicate fuel for itself. it would always spend more fuel than it could create per unit of mass of fuel that is

• The most unbelievable idea in Star Trek is the lack of currency. You touched on gifts, but didn’t explain how original gifts like a rare baseball card, or Bone’s antique glasses were acquired? Who gets bottles of wine from the Picard winery? A lottery? And who gets sweet California ocean side property, while others are stuck in Iowa welding plates on the Enterprise? Human nature doesn’t change. We want max comfort with as little effort as possible. Communism provided us with answer to these questions. Forced labor and kick back and favors from the central government (aka the Federation). Oh, and replicators didn’t his the scene until TNG.

• What if instead of money you got something akin to " upvotes" so if your restraint was successful you could continue with it. Otherwise you'd lose it. Maybe to own a restraint you have to spend 5 years doing every job in a restraint to qualify and you get on wait lists

• Your premise is flawed. Replicators don't produced everything out of nothing. On a starship they have to store base materials that the replicators use to produce whatever. They can produce stuff from energy but that would require tremendous amounts, for example the energy from Hiroshima bomb would've produced a particle smaller than a grain of sand. Replicators are more analogous to microwave ovens. Energy has to be produced to run them, and materials have to be gathered or produced to use them. There's no such thing as a perpetual motion device

• Matter = Energy = Matter. Federation citizens get energy credits. For dealing with exterior space nations, they can use energy reserves to replicate precious materials for exchange. The more they mine, the more energy they have, the more they can make. Within the Federation most of what they need is provided because their fusion unlocks enough energy for that level of civilization. On top of that, there never were laws prohibiting accumulation of personal wealth, although most don't worry about it. On DS9 for example, it would have been crazy for those officers to not save some latinum even from their own energy credit allocation. Or, like Chakotay, make a pocket watch as a gift.

• Pretty good explanation. To expand on work (or comission in Star Fleet) gives people access to certain things that one may not have access to. It could be that. While human does not use money, other races do like Ferrengi. (Gold pressed Latinum – which I believe cannot be replicated) There is a theory that when people have their basic, there will be others who will work for personal fulfillment.

• If money were no issue at all, I'd be a college or university professor for the love of it.

• Replicators are an analog for means of production. If you have the tools to make what you need, what do you need money for? In Star Trek's society, everyone has equal access to the means of production. Therefore, money serves no purpose. Money exists to facilitate the exchange between the workers and the owners of the means of production.

• 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".

• Can't wait until you address the Ferengi, the obvious elephant in this room.

• I’m sorry but your understanding of physics is problematic for this video. Matter cannot be created, only changed from one form to another. This is what replicators do – they reform energy to matter and matter to energy.
  But they cannot create matter or energy so therefore need “fuel”

• Ultimately, we should remember that money is actually a relatively new concept for us Humans. 7th century BC by some estimates so, less than 3000 years old to be sure. Which is a blip in our species history. So for ALL that time prior, we did just fine without money, thus the idea that we NEED money is misnomer! And since we invented the damn thing, then if we're not prepared to completely do away with money, we can at least alter the concept to make our Civilizations more effective and efficient.

  Because, in it's current form, money is actually a drag on our collective potential! Resources, under this system, flows mostly into the hands of the elites… While the crumbs fall to the rest of us! That's not exactly efficient now is it?!

  So yeah, I think it's actually deeply insightful and helpful to use fictional utopias, like Star Trek… As a means of analysing and critiquing ourselves on the current way we're doing things… And if we could do them better! On our long Journey towards a possible utopian, post-scarcity Civilization!

• The problem is that Star Trek believes that people are intrinsically good. They may not be evil but humans are definitely not good. Ideas of Utopia tend to tern into hell, like Communism or even Fascism who both though they were creating a perfect society. Dostoevsky is probably correct in saying that if you created a world where all you had to do was eat cake and reproduce. people would end up pulling it down. Actually it would probably be worse, the replicators would secretly put mind control drugs in the food, or yours would shut down because the powers that be don't like what you said. Or people would just abuse the system so badly it stops working. Remember the Internet was held up as a technology that would only be a benefit to humanity? Remember how people have screwed that up?

• It's like a genie that gives you 3 wishes and on wish 3, you ask for 10,000 wishes.

• I have wounder how money will be used during Jesus christ rule ship time of his 1000 year rule. That should be around the 23-30 Century?

• Replicators can not replicate power, not without operating at a loss. Major plot point of Voyager is that the lack of a power source repiicator use was rationed. Presumably power is still generated from solar station or hydrogen scooped from gas giants. So there's still a power grid replicators need to be tied into.

• I don't see why a replicator wouldn't need continual use of outside energy. Otherwise you'd have a perpetual motion machine equivalent and that doesn't seem possible.

• The welding was one example of how JJ made choices to connect with an audience over staying true to an ideal. Not liking or disliking it.. just pointing out the most likely marketing reason for the choice… and of course I think it was only in the marketing.

• the one thing i have to ask is how the replicators can make more fuel than they use? the thing is if a replicator can make the fuel it is using and for there to be an infinite supply means that the replicator must be able to make more fuel than it uses. if this is a 1 to 1 ratio it would be impossible for a replicator to make its own fuel and be sustainable…

• Even with replicators there are things that can't be replicated. Desirable real estate is a finite resource, if you want a free home you'll get one in some remote part of Ireland. If you want a home near Buckingham Palace, you'll have to pay somehow.

• Considering the replicator even makes the crockery and glasses (you never see anyone putting an empty plate there to receive the nosh), what happens to all the trash? Does it de-replicate once used and fizzle away in a puff of quarks?

• Replicators is what we're driving at …

• I'd like to point out, replicators don't totally enable off-grid living. Trek still at least plays lip service to a limited form of scientific realism, so conservation of mass-energy is still a thing. And that means you can't just replicate fusion fuel out of nothing. At least not forever, you'll get diminishing returns without a fresh supply of energy from somewhere else. And given how much energy is contained in even a little mass, even a glass of water is going to require a buttload of energy. Even with waste recycling, there's going to be losses. Based on that, the Federation probably grants each citizen a generous daily energy credit stipend, possibly based on providing some form tangible service to society if able. Agricultural and manufacturing jobs are probably given a bonus to account for the extra effort, and to incentivize those jobs being done, to offset the need for a lot of the energy for the replicators.

• I want to own a chateau too…but my family hasn't owned one for generations and money doesn't exist? How do I get one? 🙁

• It's a utopia where they still have humans working in slave like conditions in dangerous mines. What did they mean by this? Really boggles the noggin.

• Nope, misses the "fact" entirely, sorry to say. Many the comments reflect the attachment of a "money god!"

• Replicators take an extreme amount of energy. People have limitations on how much of replicators they can use for personal use.

• I retired about 3 years ago. Really was “forced” to retire because I could no longer do my professional work. I was fortunate enough to have a comfortable retirement. So I spend my time, learning a language, learning the piano, and working on my health and appearance (dress, style, makeup)
  Additionally, I make sure to maintain my friendships, thus requires me to travel a few times a year out of state to see them. I also have to reach out and see friends two or three times a week.
  Improving the quality of my cooking, volunteering of causes I believe in, and cleanliness of the household more than fills any “extra time”, a myth if there ever was one. I haven’t even mentioned family, or religion which itself could fill time.
  Pets, romantic interests, exploring new music (or old music you didn’t know), new media, foreign media, news, history, travel, meditation, etc. The lists are endless and limited by your imagination. I have some retired friends and they are likewise busy. Many, if not most of these activities, are near zero cost.
  I believe if you really do spend all your time on a couch,I believe it is not natural for a human being to do so, and is a mental illness at work. There is even an unnatural aura of sadness that surrounds the concept. It just isn’t healthy.

• Trekkies get too hung up on the replicator as the solution to the question of how Trekonomics works. If the replicator were invented tomorrow, it would only accelerate the accumulation of wealth in the hands of whoever controlled the patent. Anyone operating an unauthorized replicator would have lawyers and, ultimately, cops (the enforcement arm of capitalism) knocking down their door.

  We have the resources to provide for everyone's basic needs now. We don't need a magical invention, we need more equitable social, political, and economic systems.

  Technology can't save us from capitalism. We have to do that ourselves.

• Replicators can also crash a barter society. Imagine if every person in your town was awarded 5 million dollars. "I'm rich! I don't have to work anymore. I'm gonna order a pizza.' But the pizza guy also won 5 million. So he doesn't have to deliver pizzas anymore. Everyone quit at the grocery store and all the truck drivers quit who deliver food to the store. Now you have a town that has everyone with 5 mill but has no way of obtaining goods or services: this makes the value of the money drop virtually to zero as you can't purchase anything with it. You might as well use it for lining your bird cage. In order for society to work there must be those with money and those that crave money who are willing to work for it. Going from no money then saying well it's because of Replicators is just kicking the can down the road. Ok, everyone has Replicators and now nobody will lift a finger to work or do anything because they have no motive, they do not crave anything and thus will not work to do anything. Sociatal growth and invention would grind to a halt as people would not agree en masse to do anything without the lucrative carrot of getting rich, or at the very least providing for their family. Ok, why should I do your yardwork or make and deliver your pizza?

• It only works because of the replicators no longer does anyone need to work to provide anything to anyone else and people who work do it basically to prevent boredom or advancement of interest or duty to the whole

• If replicators make production cheap, you still need to pay:
  1) the guy who installs it
  2) the cleaner of the office toilets 🚽
  3) your doctor
  4) and so on

  The material costs of a building may be zero, but you have to pay for the land, and the construction workers.

  Except you have forced labor/ slaves like the Borg (who failed in AI to build robots).

• It's excellent. I've studied this for a long time, and written books about it. Here are the basics for understanding and explaining how it is possible to achieve a free world:
  The means of production, the social contract, the cultural practices that flow from it, the spirit of service to others according to one's abilities.
  If replicators are the basis of the industry, that obviously makes things a lot easier. Today's 3d printers are the premise. Theoretically, with sufficient energy, space can be bent to produce mass. But before we get to that, which solves a lot of problems, the questions that arise are, as you pointed out, infrastructure-related. It is infrastructure that makes possible the evolution that leads to these innovations. Today, these innovations would be opposed to the existing infrastructure. What it boils down to is: how do we assess things? This is the question of the entire economy, and of human society as a whole. How can we measure, concretely and objectively, what is good or bad? Certainly by introducing concepts currently ignored by our system: the long term, and the search for quality.

• The only criticism I have about this theory is it's not so much replicator technology but transporter technology, transporter technology gave way to replicator technology transporters breakdown matter and store them as patterns. These patterns are stored as data. Replicators take existing matter and reorganize it into whatever components are demanded. In Voyager it stated human waste products are reconfigured into building materials for example.

• They might be able to replicate fuel for fusion power, but it would have to be equivalent to less or at best the same as the amount of fuel required to produce that fuel. I think the high energy requirement of using replicators was an issue in season 1 of Voyager.

• 10:53 if you are skilled enough to be welding on a star ship, your work is not 'menial'

• Can I replicate Gold pressed latinum?

• It's a tv show about an impossible future using impossible tech and achieving impossible societal outcomes. It's fantasy and should be treated as such.

• What about all that gold pressed latinum?

• A long passage worth considering in this context, imho, as it answers a whole lot of commonly posed questions:

  Responding to/criticizing a proposed program plank: "The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor."
  …
  What is "a fair distribution"?

  Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?

  To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

  "To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? What remains then of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor? Only to those members of society who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of all members of society?

  But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society every worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of labor".

  Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

  From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

  These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

  There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

  Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

  Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion – namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

  The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

  Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.

  Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

  What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

  Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

  Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

  In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

  But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

  But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

  In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

• As for the work that nobody wants to do:
  I would think that in various trades and professions, there is still a process of "paying dues" by performing the less technical & more menial tasks while learning how things work – a vital element of on-the-job training. That takes care of a whole lot of the less pleasant work that needs doing.
  And for anything that needs to be done by a human & not a non-sentient machine, but nobody actually wants to do, and isn't part of a career track, I propose something akin to "national service" for a year or two starting around age 18, during which everyone has to do a job from the list.

• What motivates men like Harry Mudd to commit crimes in this post-scarcity society? What is the concept of greed in the 23rd-24th centuries? Is it considered a mental illness?

• I dont think Gene Roddenberry envisioned replicators as the means for his futuristic society. What he propably meant that we humans were able to finally build a just society. Goods already have a low value, almost nil after you buy them. Anyone who had the obligation to dispose of the items in a houshold of a deceased relative will know that you get almost nothing from old, worn furniture and appliances, they are not worthless but to remove them from the premises is a chore. The cost of removal is often the same what you will get from these items. We already have an overabundance of everyday items, entirely without replicators. So, in part our society already has developed the abundance of the futuristic society that star trek envisioned.

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