No Money Economy-unrealistic and stupid

[Tyyr]

It's the only thing that makes the transition from TOS to TNG make sense.

I've got my own ideas on the Federations present economy that I think work quite well with everything that's been said about it before.

[Lazar]

The problem is that Gene changed his mind between TOS and TNG. He seemed to think that TOS was still too human so he tried to push the Utopian thing on TNG. A lot of the weirdness of TNG can be traced to when Gene was still holding the reins. When they finally pushed him out things got better, but a lot of the left overs from early TNG carried on creating the disjointed feel of the show and the Trek universe.

That's the thing about Gene - he pretty much gave us two good seasons of TV, but after that, things were better when he wasn't in control.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

How many references have there been to a moneyless society? I think weighed against the evidence of money... there's money. Or something like it.

Oh, and Sisko's dad ran a restaurant. No way in hell would the people work there for free.

Why not? Some people love to cook.

I worked in a restaurant for three years. No way would that happen without some form of compensation.

[Mikey]

Agreed. Cooking and running a commercial kitchen (much less just working in one) often bear little resemblance.

[Sonic Glitch]

Agreed. Cooking and running a commercial kitchen (much less just working in one) often bear little resemblance.

But this is a commercial kitchen of the future

[Aaron]

Agreed. Cooking and running a commercial kitchen (much less just working in one) often bear little resemblance.

But this is a commercial kitchen of the future

That just means you get yelled at in alienese.

[Sonic Glitch]

Agreed. Cooking and running a commercial kitchen (much less just working in one) often bear little resemblance.

But this is a commercial kitchen of the future

That just means you get yelled at in alienese.

Sorry, should've added [/sarcasm] tag or something

[BigJKU316]

Like I said, it's not the same at all if people no longer have to scramble to pay rent, or wonder how they're going to pay for electricity. People would only have to work to pay for extra things like vacations, holodeck time, and other fancy, extraneous bullsh*t.

What about living space? I assume that the top floor of our Utopian Tower is more valuable than the bottom. How do we decide who lives there? What about people we see who own large grape farms and tracts of land in France? That is basically impossible without money or some form of property ownership. I mean why does one family have the rights to a nice estate and land when presumably millions are crammed into little apartments elsewhere?

Simply put an economy without money is just not workable because people assign differential values to everything. In particular it is not workable when you clearly have property rights in the Federation future.

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm fairly certain I wasn't talking about the Federation anymore at that point.

[Graham Kennedy]

I worked in a restaurant for three years. No way would that happen without some form of compensation.

But that's you. It's not everyone.

Those who want a GOOD depiction of a moneyless society should look at the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. Unlike Trek, he actually worked out a background of how and why they don't have money and stuck to it.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

I worked in a restaurant for three years. No way would that happen without some form of compensation.

But that's you. It's not everyone.

Dude, trust me. No metter how advanced humanity supposedly gets, there's no one who's gonna work in a restaurant for free.

[Graham Kennedy]

I worked in a restaurant for three years. No way would that happen without some form of compensation.

But that's you. It's not everyone.

Dude, trust me. No metter how advanced humanity supposedly gets, there's no one who's gonna work in a restaurant for free.

Sorry, but no. You cannot look at a population of billions and say "Nobody would want to do X as a hobby".

[Mark]

However, if it was a moneyless society, then why not open up there own resturaunt? If payroll isn't an issue, and all your ingredients are free, and you have no overhead at all whatsoever, then why would you want to work for somebody else?

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Sorry, but no. You cannot look at a population of billions and say "Nobody would want to do X as a hobby".

Considering how stressful and physically demanding a kitchen can be... yeah. Yeah, I can. Or at least there wouldn't be enough people to run it effectively.

[Tyyr]

It's possible his dad was a dom and he made all his subs work in his restaurant.