Why Does Modern Trek Make Earth Out To Be A "Paradise"?

ECONOMIC! You're doing it to receive a benefit in exchange.

And, of course, one would have to ask what's in it for the Swedish bikini girls and whomever makes the sundaes...

Vast fortunes, to be sure.

You'll be a busboy for a few hours a week because you've got nothing better to do and you value the restaurant establishment as an end to itself. Because it has cultural and social significance and it's a nice thing to have.

You'll be a red shirt because you believe in national defense and exploration.

Is this really so hard to imagine?

1) Waiting tables was without a doubt the most 'fun' job I ever had. Laid back management, lively atmosphere, great coworkers, new girls coming through every week (I worked on the water in a resort town), man, that was the life.

2) My wife LOVES cleaning. Did it for a living for a bit, even had her own cleaning company.

3) Robots for bedpans, but there are most certainly people who get fulfillment from tending the sick and disabled.


Just b/c to you life is all about the Benjamins and without them it would have no purpose doesn't mean all or even most people feel that way.

People do volunteer work in the real world everyday and most of it is not glamorous.

While Earth is a paradise, not all of its colonies &/or offshoot worlds are by any means, such as Tasha Yar's home planet.

That doesn't mean I'm gonna do volunteer work all day every day, just for the self-satisfaction of it. Especially when the whole "no money" thing means someone else decides how much of what you may have. Otherwise, everyone on earth would be living in a mansion on a private island. Even a replicator requires energy, and energy would be at least somewhat rationed. Plus there would be items that are banned from the replicator menu.

No, I think 24th century Earth in Trek would be this haven for smug, ivory tower elitists who spout shit like "...more evolved sensibility...we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.."

I could easily see myself getting fed up with that long before adulthood, which raises the question of how a private civilian from Earth goes about obtaining his own interstellar craft...

If Harry Mudd is the example, with great difficulty.

Wait, you just moved the goalposts from 'who will do the work' to 'who will do the work all day everyday' which are not the same thing. Who's to say a 20 hour work week isn't the norm, or flex time, or whatever?

I dunno what everyone else's definition of "paradise" is, but let's look at the Earth posited by (AFAIK) all of the Trek "flavors":

• Medical Advances:
  - Disease - with the exception of rare genetic disorders and the common cold - has either been eliminated or can be easily controlled
  - Surgery is noninvasive and recovery is virtually instantaneous
  - Most severe injuries can be treated and regenerated almost instantly
  
  Hunger and Poverty:
  - The nations of Earth are no longer warring with each other
  - Artificial shortages have been eliminated
  - Agriculture, aquaculture, hydroponics, and replicator technology have made it possible to create food and consumer goods as efficiently as possible
  
  Work and Education:
  - Robotics have eliminated menial jobs
  - Credits have become the global exchange medium and, while they're never specifically defined, it's suggested they're a kind of direct-deposit/debit card medium whereby you work, you get paid, you have the means to spend. This also suggests the elimination of credit cards and credit card debt
  - It's implied that there is a process in place to assure that potential workers are screened for aptitudes and guided toward career paths that actually exist. This implies the universal availability of quality education
  
  Transportation:
  - While transporters aren't for everyone (too much traffic and everyone's molecules would end up colliding into an omelet), we can assume the term "gridlock" no longer appears in dictionaries
  - Flying cars? Why not?

That's just for starters. Drill down into any one of these, based on specific lines of dialogue from the various shows, and you can extrapolate the details of a much better world than the one we live in.

10k hours of labor at your local child care collective.

What motivates people to dress up and play-act war?
What motivates people to volunteer at charity shops?
What motivates people to go wave a placard about not wanting their government to bomb a country they couldn't find on a frigging map 6 months earlier?

Economic reward is just the most blatant reward we can see, doesn't mean it's the only one or an end unto itself, just means it's the most efficient method of buzzing those reward neurons and placing yourself in the troop whilst fully clothed.

In a post-economic world we'll still want rewarding, the mechanism will change and who knows what'll fall out of that one?

Currently people will spend hard-earned money to beat their friends at games, people will join the military because their friends do. People will go climb Kilimanjaro "just because", it's not a big leap that folk will go stick on a redshirt in exchange for seeing the galaxy.

It's not a big leap that someone will go work at Quarks to try and get in the knickers of a Dabo girl.

It's not a big leap someone will go work at Sisko's because they get a kick out of it.

There are people who fuck cars, in comparison wanting to be a waiter is positively normal.

There were no goalposts placed. Maybe you assumed they were there, but that's your problem.

I don't know how they get anyone to do the shit jobs at all, actually. When everything you need is handed to you for free, you're gonna get a lot of lazy, useless fucks laying around talking to their pets all day.

That's what you derive from Trek?

How could you possibly have been a fan?

Unless you took it as a satire/cautionary tale...

Explain how ANY of that applies to doing a menial task as a profession.

Again: WHAT WOULD MOTIVATE YOU TO SPEND YEARS OF YOUR LIFE DOING A MENIAL TASK?

I understand people have all sorts of motivations. But what motivates them to do THAT?

What kind of non-economic reward do you get out of being a janitor? And, actually, if you receive anything in exchange for your labor, the transaction is, in a sense, economic...

I'm not asking if someone COULD choose to have a menial job. I'm asking why would they if their economic needs were taken care of.

That's recreation. People get an enjoyment out of recreation that they don't get from doing menial, burdensome tasks.

And because they need a profession, too.

The redshirts in Star Trek don't strike me as as embracing an inner wanderlust.

Why would one have to work at Quark's to do that?

"Gosh, I just LOVE being a busboy! It's so satisfying!"

I don't think so.

Only in comparison.

No. Those guys will ultimately become lost in a haze of 24 hours a day 3D virtual Internet sex. Those who survive will be happy enough to be a red shirt for a few days each month.

It's right there on the fucking screen. Magic replicators powered by nearly limitless energy supply. Scarcity and starvation eliminated. All necessary plot points for attempting this bullshit utopia where nobody needs money or wants for anything.

There's plenty to like without embracing the collectivist propaganda. One might even argue that it mocks that sort of ideology by making the technology necessary to attain it ridiculously implausible.

Some of it, yeah.

Some jobs are fun. The question is: do you think most waiter's jobs are so much fun that people would do them even if they didn't have to in order to make a living? Based on the waiters/waitresses I know, my guess would be no.

Would she go do it for a stranger if not paid? Does she ever choose recreation over cleaning?

Perhaps. But how many get fulfillment being a janitor?

Didn't say it was ALL about money. I'm saying people won't do menial, burdensome work if they don't have to.

Want to come mow my lawn just for the fun of it? Want to paint my house just for the pride of workmanship you can attain? Doubtful.

Yes, people do give freely of some of their time to help others. But are you going to give of your time to clean someone's house? To mop bathrooms? To do landscaping work?

The question I keep asking has not been answered: why would someone (not an exception--the general case) spend a large part of their life working a menial job if (1) they didn't have to and (2) there was no economic reward in it for them.

I get answers like "Well, people do stuff and don't get money for it all the time." Sure. But that's not what I'm asking. Volunteering at the soup kitchen is not the same as pushing a mop 40 hours a week. Helping your neighbor fix his fence is not mowing lawns full time.

part of the apprenticeship to becoming a master restaurateur?

Yes, my wife often choses cleaning over recreation. I'm not lying when I say that if money were not a consideration she would clean and help people organize their house for recreation. Not full time, but about 20 a week easily.

You proceed from a false assumption.

So "ridiculously implausible" that its technology is showing up in today's headlines...

Why? No one has to do that now. And who enforces this apprenticeship rule?

The fascist robot police from ST09.

B/c that is the way they do it in the future.

The guy that runs the restaurant the apprentice wants to learn from.

What assumption is that? We've seen 24th century earth, we know about replicators, antimatter reactors, and the lack of money in the core systems.

3-D printers and fission are hardly replicators and warp cores.

yeah, they do.
or do you jsut walk in and say that you can cook and therefore should run the kitchen or that your winning smile alone makes you a maître d'.

Yeah, I worked my way from dishwasher to salad boy to cook in high school, and I'd have to say that's the best way to do it if you want to be in that business. But very few people who take jobs like that do it for the love of it, and you don't have any teenagers doing it to buy their first car. That shit was replicated in the garage the day they were old enough.

Then the future is arbitrary and inefficient and, apparently, more rigidly hierarchical than the present.

Okay, is the guy polishing the floor in TWOK working his way up to Academy Commandant?

And is running a restaurant--which we do in the 21st Century without such complex apprenticeship rules--such a secretive topic in the 24th Century, that the only way to acquire knowledge about it is to perform menial labor for someone who has the knowledge?

I would think the 24th Century would make it MUCH easier: "Computer, give me a summary of the rules and best practices for operating a restaurant. Also, locate the 50,000 most popular recipes for New Orleans-style French cuisine."

I think you would lose some authenticity that way, and there would be a strong market demand for genuine family restaurants.

Does lack of authenticity or family prevent people from flocking to chain restaurants now? Why would the future be any different?