this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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They might have eliminated currency but they still had people working as baristas and waiting tables.
These are not jobs you do because they’re fun, and they’re totally unnecessary in a post scarcity world.
Dealing with most customers can be fun if you're not overworked etc.. People volunteer for those roles at community events and have a good time. People open cafés and restaurants because they want to (if you just want to own a small business, they're far from the best kind to start). It's the stuff that you'd hope would go away in Star Trek, like entitled customers and not being able to live comfortably between shifts or stop when you don't want to continue where the unpleasantness comes from.
Sorry but waiting tables (Sisko's dad probably had waitstaff, as well as dishwashers, probably a hostess to handle the front of house...) is not a job you'd do for very long because "its fun". they're doing it because they're being compensated for it.
Same goes for baristas. I might enjoy making an espresso when friends and family come over, but that doesn't mean it's going to be fun to make 300 drinks a day; for no compensation, just because some star fleet engineers need their morning joe and can't get it from a replimat.
Eh. I can see it working.
Humans are social creatures. We like to feel useful and connect with others. In a world with a replicator in every home, dining out is much more about the social experience than the food. Working in a restaurant would be about community and shared interest. People would volunteer to staff them for the same reason people do any form of volunteer work: they enjoy the sense of purpose, skill-sharing, and camaraderie that comes with it. Plus, with replicators making preparation and cleanup trivial, there's a lot less labor associated with food service.
Lastly, consider that post-scarcity dining establishments that would have no tolerance for rude customers. If someone went full Karen on a volunteer, they'd be banned in a hot second. The social dynamics of such an arrangement would entirely favor the staff: if there are no "paying customers" then there's no entitlement to go with it.
I don't find it all that difficult to envision a set of social incentives that would keep restaurants alive.
This topic came up quite a bit on r/daystrominstitute and there was a generally accepted head canon, at least for me.
The people bussing tables and waiting on customers are there because they're genuinely learning a trade. Maybe theyre interested in opening a restaurant in the future. In order to do so they need to learn the full ins and outs of how they operate, starting from what is considered the menial tasks of cleaning dishes. I'm sure Joseph Sisko didn't wake up one morning living in a post-scarcity society, decided he wants to open a creol restaurant, and just walked down to an empty building and started cooking for customers the next day
See, that sort of works, but there’d still be a chronic shortage. Once they leave, you’d now probably double the demand for staff.
My personal head cannon is that Picard (and everyone else,) is full of it. Same way people screaming about how great America is are full of it. He was saying what was necessary to keep his timeline from being borg-ified.
Or like the guy that was thawed out. That totally sounds like a party line.
But this makes sense since we also know that Picard loves to spout nonsense propaganda about the enterprise not being a warship, star fleet not being a military organization, and the federation being totally peaceful. Except all the battles with the romulans, the Klingons. The borg. The dominion. The cardassians… I’m sure I’m missing a few…
Could be that startrek uses a more realistic version of UBI. Everyone is provided enough for a house, healthcare, a few basic luxuries and a hobby, but if you want more than that (say money for an expensive hobby or to go on vacation to the party planet ragealon 6) you gotta work.
Are you guys intentionally ignoring replicators? You don't need money. You could replicate a whole ship if you wanted to. Your house would be replicated. Same with any hobbies or luxuries, which wouldn't be luxuries because there is no such thing in post scarcity, you'd just replicate what you want.
Everyone in the Trek universe just does things if they like to do it. Some people like serving people. Other people like to pilot ships. I'm sure the more desirable jobs are more competitive but the only incentives are really going to be the value others see in your work. So someone like Sisko the Elder has people who work for him because they know he is a renowned chef and they want to absorb his knowledge.
I thought Risa was the party planet?
Fuck it. Throw the whole table into the reclaimator and replicate new clean ones.
I was thinking just integrate them into the table. The entire surface gets cleaned.
Yeah I mean, people need to think more Star Teck-y. Transporter room, one dinner wreck to beam out. Done. Wipes Hands.
I don't remember that scene of I Robot....
Bc in that show, the Men were In White.
Guinan had an answer for those at least!
Quark was a bartender because he was a people person. He liked interacting with folks in that setting.
Quark is a bad example because the Ferengi are a highly capitalist society.
Guinan is a bartender at Ten Forward because she wants to be.
I remember a episode where he was promoted to grand nagus the bar was supposed to be a good standing ground.
Picard was also incorrect by omission that there was no money. United Earth on its own had rid itself of a monetary system, but has to barter goods/services with other systems.
As for total automation of "menial services"... I'm not sure how you get around that without the use of a semi-sentient intermediary. Plus maintaining those systems, which would fall under the purview of the most important man in all of Starfleet history.
The secret is that they could have replaced him with a machine long ago.
They decided instead to make him suffer.
And we're the sickos here, watching and thereby incentivizing it - that universe could have been allowed to die out long ago, but we keep spinning it up in our own version of a holodeck to keep his suffering fresh in our minds.
Joke's on you, after a while, the CBT is now one of his fetishes.
The rest, not so much, but he'll take what he can get.
.....why? why do they need to be sentient? we already have machines capable of doing just about everything we could want them to in terms of menial tasks. The biggest issue is a) they're usually hyper-specific in terms of what tasks they do, and b) universally expensive as fuck. It's just currently cheaper and more "efficient" to have a few humans doing most the tasks. but that's increasingly becoming less so. (I'm thinking of the deep sea mining robots that while awful for the environment are... pretty impressive engineering... and also the commercial floor cleaning robots my grocery store is starting to use.)
As for repairing stuff... replicator technology is way, way under utilized. (seriously.) Like. Seriously. Why starships, space stations... buildings...can't repair themselves I will never know. I mean, think about it. there's already hundreds, probably thousands, of replicators on the D, just an example. in every crew quarters, office, medical or engineering bay... i think the only prominent room that doesn't have one is actually the bridge... and there's one off in Picard's ready room not twenty steps away. You have to assume the notion has occured to every single starfleet engeering wonk every single time some EPS conduit blows out or worf's face gets imprinted in a wall to prove how strong a villian really is. (lets be honest, Geordi probably has a collection of wall-panels framed with Worf's face. I would.)
There's absolutely no reason that replicators can't be integrated into the structure as an array that could just automatically repair it. An array isn't even strictly necessary if you use the transporters.
Considering that the Delta Flyer and the Runabouts had a replicator on it, too, and I'm guessing other shuttles, that would suggest anything too small to have one themselves... would easily be replicated in something like a shuttle bay with an industrial replication pad. Storage, repairs. etc, all happen just by recycling it and printing another.
All salient points. My end of the argument lies squarely with the interaction portion of some services. An app/robot displays a message of "Thanks for your patronage" with all the heart of a trash can on wheels (No offense to R2). A medical scanner stating to a frightened child their ailments and odds of survival. That nonsense vs the relatively few people/androids/non-corporeal beings/etc. who are genuine in their task and appreciative of those around.
The self repairing station/ship idea was brought up in ENT s2e4 "Dead Stop" and never brought up again! While DISCO at least introduced the programmable matter concept, it still lacked the nuance of something that existed before Kirk's time in the chair. Between that and the absence of the Conspiracy bug's return, I've got the Krogan equivalent of a quad of nerdy sci-fi blue balls.
But again…. How human is the connection at Starbucks? Especially at 5am on your way to work?
Like. If a machine can spit out a Starbucks latte to order and there’s one less person? Hell yes.
In the Voyager episode (where Kim is somehow in an alternate timeline stuck on earth developing some kinda snazzy shuttle), it’s not a social thing. It’s a pop-in-get-coffee-and-go thing
For that level of task, absolutely. Simply suggesting that personable interaction is unlikely to be eliminated in all sectors deemed of lesser import.
Introverts would pick the choice with no interaction any day. For us, the dry protocol of getting a coffee by talking to someone is draining not rewarding.
In Farscape, EVERYTHING is alive. The universal translators are nanos, iirc you brush your teeth by putting dental worms into your mouth, the little Star Wars like robos underfoot are even sentient, being a mixture of biological and machine, and even the spaceship itself is alive, with new ones borne not built, and grow up over time!
Such a cool concept and show.:-)
irl too, actual scientists and engineers made bacteria that produce human insulin, so we're seeing not just metal and physics tech (like microwaves and Velcro) but also biotech too, as well as more abstract developments like generative language models. Which makes me wonder whether the sex dolls in the future will need consent? :-P (I'm just trying to work in a reference to Ghost in the Shell for being such an awesome anime:-)
That was quite the journey just to nod Ghost in the Shell. Well done. And Farscape is so bizarre to this day.
The work in was just the one sentence before:-).
Anyway, bizarre is good 👍
Chief Miles O'Brian
Oh you still have much to learn about humanity
Well. Guinan had reasons entirely separate from mixing drinks.
Can you imagine all the good intel she’d have access to if she were a romulan spy?
Seriously. Nobody would think they’re a military ship because of all the stupidity, if they didn’t go around taking Klingons and romulans and every other race on and handily smashing them.
The stupidity? Families. Civilians in the bar, who also double as a therapist… because the actual therapist is on the bridge moonlighting as… something.