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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Why is it inconsistent?

Because it isn't internally consistent.

> It's consistent with techno-anarchy: scarcity is a solved problem.

You seem to think that I was using "inconsistent" to mean "inconsistent with some external expectations" or "inconsistent with my expectations of what is plausible", but I was referring to internal consistency, not consistency with external expectations.

> Without finite resources there is no longer any point to capitalism, a system which allocates finite resources.

Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

> So people are left to live life how ever they see fit.

This is rather emphatically not a consistent feature of the economy of Star Trek.

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>Because it isn't internally consistent.

Example?

>Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

It is in the earth economy. Other cultures still have money, but humans do not.

>This is rather emphatically not a consistent feature of the economy of Star Trek.

Well, obviously you can't just go be a star ship captain because so many want to do this. But you certainly don't have to flip burgers at McDonald's. You can pursue any dream and it will only be your talents that decide, not your financial situation.

> > Neither the absence of finite resources nor the absence of capitalism are consistent features of the economy in Star Trek.

> It is in the earth economy. Other cultures still have money, but humans do not.

Well, yeah, that's claimed sometimes, but at other times the Federation does have a currency [1][2], and at least some resources are apparently rationed on Earth aside from the use of money [3].

If you want to rationalize the presentations into near-constitency, you could assume that the Federation has a monetary system but also has (or at least, core worlds like Earth have) a (by early 21st century standards) extraordinarily generous ration of most commonly used goods and public services, such that most people rarely bother to acquire or use money, though some non-hobby style jobs (including Starfleet!) exist that pay money, and interaction outside of the Federation (and, quite probably, off the core worlds within the Federation) frequently requires money (as occasionally might interactions on the core worlds.) But that's just a rationalization of what is pretty clearly an incoherent body of fiction, rather than what the designed reality of the fiction is.

[1] http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Federation_credit

[2] http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Money

[3] http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Transporter_credit

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