Replicator Revolution?

[Baffalo]

So I got this message from Darmalus:

It's purely my own theory, put together for an RPG, but I put the "Replicator Revolution" between TOS and TNG. World War 3 blew up the IP and corporation laws (as well as the cities), which never recovered (unlike the cities). Then TOS happened. Then the replicator was perfected, and the consumer economy imploded almost overnight. With no IP laws to force me to hand over money for replicating a Carls Jr. brand burger (as far as the law was concerned, replicating at home was making it yourself) capitalism as we understand it just couldn't survive. They do have an economy at the "upper levels" for things like starships, dilithium supplies, latinum, and other unreplicatable things. For the Joe Average, who will never deal with any of that, it is effectively a communist utopia. Picard is the product of growing up with the "self improvement" propaganda by the government, intended to keep people with nothing to do all day from rioting/causing problems.

And I'm thinking that... while it's a nice theory, there has to be more to it. I know that sometimes, you can have a piece of technology revolutionize the way people live, like the personal computer. But taking something like the replicator and using it to completely indoctrinate an entire society the way Picard was just doesn't seem possible. I know I'm taking quite a bit of leeway with the almost complete lack of information between the Enterprise A and D, but I'm curious what others think about this particular theory.

[Stofsk]

I think you're laying it on a bit thick with the 'indoctrination' or 'propaganda' angle. Picard was idealistic, but so was Kirk. The whole 'TOS was capitalist, TNG was communist' thing isn't very convincing. So what if Scotty could buy a boat (for example)? That... means absolutely nothing.

The idea that replicators combined with more or less cheap energy would have an immense effect on society is a pretty good one though.

[Baffalo]

I think you're laying it on a bit thick with the 'indoctrination' or 'propaganda' angle. Picard was idealistic, but so was Kirk. The whole 'TOS was capitalist, TNG was communist' thing isn't very convincing. So what if Scotty could buy a boat (for example)? That... means absolutely nothing.

The idea that replicators combined with more or less cheap energy would have an immense effect on society is a pretty good one though.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist and want to think the worst of people.

[Sea Skimmer]

When I first saw this thread my immediate thought was all the replicators in star fleet turn self aware and churn out an arsenal of robot weapons, taking over the entire federation in minutes. That's a proper Replicator Revolution.

Capitalism can certainly survive with replicators. First because we already know they can't make everything even when its simple, or at least not economically as shown by the infamous warp core hatch which is just a steel plate more or less, and secondly because IP laws still well could apply. Just because a replicator can make something doesn't mean you can or it is legal to program it do so without patent rights. One would expect replicators to have all kinds of controls on them so someone can't make one crap out land mines while drunk and similar situations (food has all the chemicals needed to make certain explosives). Capitalism could also thrive in providing the energy and raw materials required to make replicators function.

[Serafina]

There is still a lot of labor to perform, services to render and such - and don't forget that replicator can't produce everything.
Replicators would certainly be a revolution, but from the capabilities we've seen they'd mostly make grocery markets obsolete. You'd still have to buy your personal computers, cars, plasmaTVs and such. You'd still spend money to get a haircut, to get a massage, to get an education, to let someone manage your finances and so on. You'd still spend money in bars and cinemas and operas and all other social events. You'd hire workers to repair your replicators and electric system and so on. People would still work in factories to build cars and TVs and Replicators and all their spare parts. You'd have to rent or buy houses and land and such.

I could go on like this for a looong time. Replicators are limited by scale, and there is no reason to assume that civilian replicators are capable of everything we've observed from Starfleet replicators. I doubt your replicator at home is large enough to replicate a car. Assuming that there are replicators that can do so, you'd most likely have to rent them or buy the car from their owners.
And even IF replicators can replicate everything a normal citizen needs, you'd still have services and labor that have to be performed. As long as there is anything that is in limited supply and has significant demand, you can have capitalism.

[Kane Starkiller]

As demonstrated by Voyager Replicators are so energy intensive that food production for 150 people has significant impact on energy reserves of a 700,000 ton starship. It is far cheaper to grow the food on the ship, gather the food on planets and haul/beam it up to the ship and have it cooked conventionally than it is to replicate it.
Therefore any replicated food will realistically be order of magnitude or more expensive than conventionally grown food.
Far from being the eliminators of poverty replicators could only be used by the obscenely rich who can afford the luxury of wasting enormous amounts of energy just for the privilege of having some exotic food RIGHT NOW.

[Darmalus]

Never expected that PM to see daylight.

It hinges on two ideas. That a planet's infrastructure (rather than a starships, which are subject to far more stress) can be so heavily and reliably automated that the number of people needed to build and maintain it in peacetime is <5%. I mean everything, resource extraction, farming, feedstock processing, power plants, sewers, hydrogen extraction, roads, replicator repair. The other idea is that IP laws, as we understand them, didn't survive WW3 and never recovered enough strength to be a serious political force when replicators became a household item.

I could post the entire thing, but it was designed for player consumption rather than public consumption, and makes enough small alterations that it should really go under User Fiction.

[Connor MacLeod]

You know, another thing that isn't addressed is that there is no reason that federation planets need to be equally developed or uniform. We hear about colonies and such all the time, and I would realistically expect that whilst they have certain levels of technology, they still can vary somewhat (some may be highly automated as implied in this thread, others.. less so.) That could be because of availability of technology, cultural reasons, deliberate choices, whatever. Maybe you have a planet of "green" types, or they do it for religious/spiritual reasons.

One other thing that is ignored I think is specialization: replicators are not neccesarily "do everything" devices. I mean we know they have to divvy up replicators at least in terms of scale - they have to have separate "industrial" replicators, as well as the more common ones we see used to provide food and drink and such. and there are the replicators tied to holodecks as well. Certain kinds of replicators probably are more advanced than other kinds (for example, they're probably neglecting the resources and designs for military tech during the post TOS/pre Borg or Dominion War era.)

And that of course doesnt' cover things they can't or don't replicate for various reasons (fuel, poisons, certain kinds of medicine, etc.)

edit: There's also the "quality" issue. Whilst I am sure that standard of living has been improved greatly through replicators (many needs and even some wants addressed.) that does not mean that replicators can address everything. Replicators aren't good at perfectly replicating taste for example (which is why some kinds of water, food, etc. can be better than replicated stuff.) That's still going to leave lots of room for trade and commerce of various types. Hell despite as ha been claimed in the past, I'm betting that "replicated" gold and real gold aren't neccesarily going to be equally valuable (they can tell replicated material from "authentic" stuff as I recall.) same for any precious material or gems.

[Baffalo]

I think that, yes, replicators have changed the Star Trek universe, and definitely for the better. Replicators are fast and reasonably efficient at producing goods that, hopefully, aren't going to require super special construction. I'm sure that, for someone with a hobby on the ship, replicating a specific piece of, say, a model starship is a great thing to do. But I also feel it's important to note that while replicators are useful in creating objects from scratch, I also think that they can be put to the most use beyond the individual market.

An example would be, say, demolition. You have your equipment and you break a building down. Instead of hauling the debris away to a landfill, you take it to a special plant that houses large industrial replicators. You just dump the material onto a conveyor and the replicators sort everything out. It pulls all the nails out by literally beaming them out, it can remove rotted wood, etc. And then it can either create, on the fly, new items such as brand new nails and other goods, or simply lump everything into chunks that can go off to refineries. It eliminates 99% of your refuse. Instead of landfills filled with dangerous chemicals, you have a facility that can process everything and recycle it all.

Another idea was something shown on the game Birth of the Federation. The Romulans had a building you could install on worlds that would take organic refuse from your farms and give you +10% of your food output simply by recycling the refuse from the farms and turning it into replicator stock. Imagine how wonderful that would be to take an already efficient agricultural system and making it that much more efficient? Extract everything undesirable from all your products and ensure that there's almost no waste. I'm sure almost every company out there would love to be able to eliminate almost all their waste and recycle everything back into the system and use it. That saves time, money, and energy.

I'm not saying it's bad to have individual replicators, far from it. If the captain of a starship wants something exotic every now and then, he deserves it. It's a perk for select few and on freighters, imagine how wonderful that would be. Instead of requiring bulk stores by the ton for long cruises, just bring a replicator on board. The crew can chose what they want to eat and that improves morale, plus you have that much more cargo space to work with. Now sure, I'd keep spare rations aboard incase of problems, but for the most part, I'd love to eat a meal that's custom for me.

Really, I think the major revolution comes not from the availability of food but the availability of energy. Energy is what drives the world, and we spend a fortune on gasoline. Yet, if we could get energy production costs down to pennies, think of how wonderful that would be? Less costs across the board means more money in everyone's pockets, because not only will their own energy bills go down, but the costs of producing goods goes down. Hell, most of the costs of Aluminum come from energy to refine it, so if that was dirt cheap, Aluminum would be the new steel. Cheap metal means cheaper machinery and goods, meaning your prices drop even more. Less energy means you can build machines bigger and better because you've got all the power you need. That's the true revolution right there.