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Star Trek - who will clean the toilets?


gwalchmai
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I've been watching ST:TNG reruns this week and have run into a couple of references to their "post-currency economy". The theory is that once replicators become common no one will use currency since every consumer good will be available to everyone ("according to their needs", I guess). But what about services? How do you entice someone to perform a service if you have nothing to offer them? I asked my son about it and he essentially fell back on the "people will work because they love the work" mantra.

I guess I need Ocassional Cortex to 'splain it to me... ;)

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34 minutes ago, minderasr said:

Wouldn't you have to pay for the energy to run the replicator?  Or are dilithium crystals freely available to all?  Maybe the replicator replicates the dilithium crystals it requires to run.  Cold fusion!

Maybe a replicator can replicate another replicator

does that violate Asimovs Law or something

 

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44 minutes ago, minderasr said:

Wouldn't you have to pay for the energy to run the replicator?  Or are dilithium crystals freely available to all?  Maybe the replicator replicates the dilithium crystals it requires to run.  Cold fusion!

I'm sure it's explained (somewhere) that by then energy will be too cheap to meter.

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I suppose you could track down the technical experts who would inset [Tech Stuff] into the script that was later filled in.  Or, if you're truly interested in the bathroom habits of the actors, you could contact Patrick Stuart, as Patrick Stuart is Patrick Stuart's favorite person, and would probably tell you his bathroom schedule.

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On the TV version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Yes, there was a TV version made as a serial, and a movie version), civilization advanced to the point that they got selective about their citizens. 

They decided to get rid of the pay phone cleaners.  These were the guys that went from pay phone to pay phone disinfecting the handsets.  Society decided that they were the least necessary of all, and they made up a story that the world was going to end, and sent the pay phone cleaners on an intergalactic voyage to no where, just to get rid of them.

The world was overtaken by a plague that killed almost everybody.  It is said that the plague started by the lack of disinfection of pay phones. The pay phone cleaners survived and started a new civilization on a new planet.

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2 hours ago, janice6 said:

On the TV version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Yes, there was a TV version made as a serial, and a movie version), civilization advanced to the point that they got selective about their citizens. 

They decided to get rid of the pay phone cleaners.  These were the guys that went from pay phone to pay phone disinfecting the handsets.  Society decided that they were the least necessary of all, and they made up a story that the world was going to end, and sent the pay phone cleaners on an intergalactic voyage to no where, just to get rid of them.

The world was overtaken by a plague that killed almost everybody.  It is said that the plague started by the lack of disinfection of pay phones. The pay phone cleaners survived and started a new civilization on a new planet.

It was in the second book of the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

 

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7 hours ago, gwalchmai said:

I've been watching ST:TNG reruns this week and have run into a couple of references to their "post-currency economy". The theory is that once replicators become common no one will use currency since every consumer good will be available to everyone ("according to their needs", I guess). But what about services? How do you entice someone to perform a service if you have nothing to offer them? I asked my son about it and he essentially fell back on the "people will work because they love the work" mantra.

I guess I need Ocassional Cortex to 'splain it to me... ;)

I think illegal immigrants to the federation and Ferengis cleaned the loos.

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7 hours ago, gwalchmai said:

I've been watching ST:TNG reruns this week and have run into a couple of references to their "post-currency economy". The theory is that once replicators become common no one will use currency since every consumer good will be available to everyone ("according to their needs", I guess). But what about services? How do you entice someone to perform a service if you have nothing to offer them? I asked my son about it and he essentially fell back on the "people will work because they love the work" mantra.

I guess I need Ocassional Cortex to 'splain it to me... ;)

Alex Occasional Cortex would say that in the perfect Socialist economy people will work at whatever job they're given because the government would know what job was best for everyone.

But don't ask Alex any questions about science fiction because her field of expertise is economic fiction and not science fiction, and definitely not anything having to do with science or mathematics.

alex1k.jpg

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1 hour ago, Cougar_ml said:

It was in the second book of the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

 

Dirk Gentley's Detective Agency on Hulu is pretty good too. I had read Hitchhiker's and watched both movie versions. 

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14 minutes ago, Moshe said:

Dirk Gentley's Detective Agency on Hulu is pretty good too. I had read Hitchhiker's and watched both movie versions. 

In the TV version they were on the Improbability drive space ship watching the Galactic News about the President stealing the ship. 

"....Eccentrica Gallumbits is the far-famed triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six. Some people say her erogenous zones start some four miles from her actual body. Ford Prefect disagrees, saying five.[1] It is possible that the Big Bang was actually one of her orgasms. She wrote The Big Bang Theory - A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits and It's Just One Boob After Another.

It was reported that Zaphod Beeblebrox, whom she described as "the best bang since the Big One," had delivered a presidential address from her bedroom on at least one occasion...."  https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Eccentrica_Gallumbits

Edited by janice6
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