rodneyy said:
CrystalShadow said:
Vivi22 said:
mattttherman3 said:
I would sincerely hope, Star Trek. Warp Drive aside, what humanity does is great, replicators, no money(yes, there is Latinum, but Earth has no actual currency), people strive to better themselves instead of being selfish and all about money(looking at you oil companies and banks!!!!). Humanity has stopped fighting itself(in general). Also, it seems that God is RARELY mentioned outside of DS9, and that is quite an encouraging thought.
I agree with you. Though one thing that never bothered me as a child but has come to interest me now is the concept of there being no money in the Federation. It makes sense with respect to replicators to some degree since material goods lose a great deal of value when they can simply be replicated in seconds with no real labour or materials cost. But there are two questions which arise relating to it.
1) You can't replicate planets so how is land and living space allocated?
2) Replicators still require energy which is still a finite resource, though clearly much more plentiful, but should really have some method of rationing it.
Now I get it's a sci-fi TV show and they probably didn't have actual answers for sustainable systems which are fair that can accomplish this efficiently. It just boggles my mind lately since money is, despite its inherent problems, a pretty efficient and impartial way to allocate resources.
As for what future is actually most likely, probably something involving a massive ecological disaster. Looking at agriculture alone we're already well on our way, to say nothing of our growing use of oil (BP oil spill anyone). Frankly, I'll be surprised if we don't destroy our present civilization within 200-300 years. Accidentally or otherwise.
*snip*
1)they go out and teraform new planets, it might not be replicating them but its close. i always thought the houses were just allocated as you need them. if you want something bigger you ask for it and someone sees if your reason is good enough for a bigger living space.
2) they do have rationing of a sort it is just never showed how much each person gets. in an episode of ds9 sisko is back in his dads resteraunt and reminising about the old days and there is a line something like "in my first month at the academy i used up 6 months transporter rations coming back here every night" i think the numbers might be a little wrong but thats the gist of it. there was also talk of some form of mass transit when picard went home to visit his brother something about taking a shuttle form the village or something similar.
as too the land issues that crystalshadow brought up yes there are places that are not so nice deserts etc but as you see in the episodes set on risa there exsist very advanced weather controle systems. also when picard went home there was talk of raising the sea bed and using some fancy tech to reinforce the underside of the mantle i think giving it enough strenth to support new land mass.
as to the car arguments you made yes you could have cars that last a long time but wile some reselling of things is purley from a money pov there are others that are from a safetly pov. there was a bit on top gear a wile ago about how older cars, even only 5-6 years old, did compared to new cars in crash tests. so wile car companys do go out of their way to sell you the newset modle its not always out of avarice sometimes it comes coupled with things that help the driver and other road users stay safer.
i know its not exactly the point you were trying to make but just because you can make something to last a long time does not always mean that it will still be functional and safe by future standards.
sorry i didnt comment on all your points but as you said you did ramble a little in your post and i dont really have time to reply to everyhing. it was a good read though
Those are some good points though. It's a complicated subject. I mean, if we had all the answers to this already, we'd probably be using them for something. XD
With regard to rationing, it clear they ration some things. We can conclude perhaps from the nature of what seems to be getting rationed that it uses a lot of resources and/or energy to do it.
I think the main problem with Star Trek remains the fact that we see very little of civilian life, so we have little context for what life is like outside of starfleet.
But the transporter example is an interesting case:
We know transporters are convenient and fast for getting from one location to another.
But, we also know that on a planet, especially one with a large degree of infrastructure (like earth) there may be other means of transportation (be it trains - either conventional, maglev, anti-gravity, vacuum tube, whatever. - or shuttles/space hoppers) that can travel long distances in fairly short periods.
They'd be slower than transporters, sure, but the difference between taking several hours to get somewhere, or a couple of minutes might not always matter.
And if the energy used for a transporter is substantially more than the alternatives (even if energy use isn't a critical resource problem), then there may be rationing just for the sake of encouraging the use of more energy efficient methods.
Encouraging the use of less energy hungry means of transportation for instance, might be a good idea even if you technically have the resources to just ignore the issue.
Especially if your energy resources are very large, but not actually infinite.
As for vehicles... Yes, that's true. Part of the problem with older vehicles though is that because it costs money to get your car serviced, a lot of people don't have them maintained anywhere near as well as they would need to be to last a long time.
For instance, my parents often owned really old cars, and would often only get them checked for faults if something obvious was wrong. This can quite clearly miss all kinds of things.
Another example would be that trains are designed around having a life of about 30 years.
But this assumes constant maintenance of things such as the brakes, wheels, and suspension (in the case of high-speed trains, the checks often amount to minor checks on a daily basis, and major ones on a weekly one, and minor overhauls every couple of months. Compare that to what the owner of a private car does...)
Also, while designed for 30 years, you'd often find that the entire interior fittings, as well as the engines, electrical components (including interior components) and the like will be largely replaced after about 15 years.
But, as a point of comparison when arguing about efficiency, I can give some figures for the ICE 1...
A standard trainset consists of 2 power cars, and 12 intermediate cars.
The cost when purchased amounted to the following:
in deutschmarks - 8.7 million for a power car, 4 million for a dining car, 3 million for the service car (one per train), and 2.7 million for a normal car (there are 10 in a set), making the total cost for a brand new set 51.4 million deutschmark. - A fixed conversion to Euros was implemented when the currency was changed, setting the conversion rate at: DM 1.95583 = ?1
Which means the converted cost, ignoring inflation, of a single brand-new trainset would've been roughly ?26.3 million.
So, after 15 years, the trainsets were more or less worn out, but rather than replace them, they refurbished them. This cost ?3 million per set, or just slightly more than 10% the replacement cost (but that ignores about 15 years of potential inflation).
And that included replacing the bogie frames, and in 1/3 of the trains all the power conversion electronics, the interior wiring, replacing most of the interior fittings (and refurbishing the rest), the brake equipment in some of the trains, and refurbishing the motors.
The point being, that doing a major rebuild like this on a train is still substantially cheaper than replacing it.
I would assume there's no reason why the same wouldn't be true for cars, especially if they were built with it in mind.
