You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century

[Adam Reynolds]

Conceded on this issue. I was under the impression that it was likely that Federation soldiers could somewhat easily tell they were on a holodeck and this would color their perceptions. Given that it appears to not be the case, it would indeed be extremely effective.

Obviously holodecks can do the exact same thing, with much more flexibility and fine control. Phasers can be set to 'stun and/or hurt like hell'. Fake explosions can use carefully controlled force that will bruise and wind but not kill people. In the very first episode in which the holodeck appeared, we saw it make real water that made Wesley actually wet. If the Federation wanted to simulate something sinking, for some reason, they could do so, with the refinement that the water would be removed if someone loses consciousness. Of course they could disable the safeties completely and make it just as deadly as the real thing, but they don't (on purpose) because they're not idiots. Neither the US military nor the Federation is psychopathic and while it realises that training needs to have risk, in the sense that it can seriously hurt when you screw up, it would prefer to avoid killing recruits. No one learns anything from being dead and if the US military could remove the risk of actual death from training (while keeping the experience otherwise equivalent), it would.

The point I meant was a psychological one, that it won't be fully equivalent. Knowing that you are in a safe environment tends to weaken the adrenaline response that is created by live fire. Despite the effectiveness of things like simunition(glorified paint ball) rounds, and simulators that more accurate simulate the reality of a shooting scenario, law enforcement agencies also heavily uses live fire training in which officers maneuver around each other with live weapons. Especially for more tactically oriented units.

This is also why many martial arts students often do poorly in real fights. They are trained in an environment wholly removed from reality. An obvious example is the difference between throwing a kick barefoot on a mat as opposed to on an icy street wearing boots. More generally, kicking techniques are designed to protect bare feet. The majority of people who expect to get into fights(and would actually train to do so) wear combat boots.

If it is possible that the holodeck can get around this problem, then it would indeed be extremely effective.

They might if they were facing the prospect of fighting a massively superior foe in open warfare. Since the US Navy has never faced a comparable threat, it's no surprise that they haven't done so.

In the context of Starfleet it would make more sense. It also would encourage the types of more creative tactics that Starfleet generally uses to win.

Incidentally, this was also the plot of the film Down Periscope.

The US did a great deal of training and maneuvers prior to World War Two, and the IJN routinely did training maneuvers that were idiotic wankfests designed to support Japan's preconceived ideas about how a war with the US would go. What actually happened is nowhere near as simple as you appear to believe.

That was mostly at the strategic level. At that level the US was indeed superior, more or less following prewar planning. In the majority of tactical conditions, the IJN was superior at the outbreak of the war. Including their excellent naval aviators. There is little chance that American aviators would have been able to pull off Pearl Harbor had they been put in that position in some way. I was talking about the specific issue of fighting at night in unpredictable conditions. That was a condition that the USN failed to train in much at all.

[Simon_Jester]

Conceded on this issue. I was under the impression that it was likely that Federation soldiers could somewhat easily tell they were on a holodeck and this would color their perceptions. Given that it appears to not be the case, it would indeed be extremely effective.

They'll still know, but it won't matter much; see below.

The point I meant was a psychological one, that it won't be fully equivalent. Knowing that you are in a safe environment tends to weaken the adrenaline response that is created by live fire. Despite the effectiveness of things like simunition(glorified paint ball) rounds, and simulators that more accurate simulate the reality of a shooting scenario, law enforcement agencies also heavily uses live fire training in which officers maneuver around each other with live weapons. Especially for more tactically oriented units.

Thing is, they don't shoot at each other. You may be in a real environment with weapons that could conceivably shoot someone, but you're not using it. And you're certainly not dealing with environmental hazards like being shelled with artillery. Because that would kill the people you're trying to train.

So which is more 'realistic,' a "live-fire" training in which you don't experience actually getting shot at, or a "simulated" training in which you get shot at with nonlethal weapons?

This is also why many martial arts students often do poorly in real fights. They are trained in an environment wholly removed from reality. An obvious example is the difference between throwing a kick barefoot on a mat as opposed to on an icy street wearing boots. More generally, kicking techniques are designed to protect bare feet. The majority of people who expect to get into fights(and would actually train to do so) wear combat boots.

Since the holodeck can use spontaneous, reactive force fields to protect you from falling and hitting your head or the like, and since hologram practice dummies don't get crippled when someone kicks them wearing army boots, those problems go away.

If it is possible that the holodeck can get around this problem, then it would indeed be extremely effective.

That was mostly at the strategic level. At that level the US was indeed superior, more or less following prewar planning. In the majority of tactical conditions, the IJN was superior at the outbreak of the war. Including their excellent naval aviators. There is little chance that American aviators would have been able to pull off Pearl Harbor had they been put in that position in some way.

The British managed despite outdated equipment and an antiquated air arm at Taranto. I suspect you are grossly underestimating everyone else's level of training here and playing up that of Japan.

I was talking about the specific issue of fighting at night in unpredictable conditions. That was a condition that the USN failed to train in much at all.

Well yes- but that's because the Japanese practiced night fighting with torpedoes and concealed the fact from the US, leading the US to believe the Japanese were poor night fighters because (among other things) racism. Not because the US didn't know how to construct a realistic training exercise.

[Zixinus]

This is also why many martial arts students often do poorly in real fights. They are trained in an environment wholly removed from reality. An obvious example is the difference between throwing a kick barefoot on a mat as opposed to on an icy street wearing boots. More generally, kicking techniques are designed to protect bare feet. The majority of people who expect to get into fights(and would actually train to do so) wear combat boots.

Nothing can fully prepare you for a real fight except already being a real fight. Nothing can prepare you for being shot. At the best, training can teach you what to do and good training can make you remember even under stress. If the training environment does not prepare you for the real thing, then the teacher or school is doing something very wrong.

For example, many martial arts students often do poorly in real fights because their training did not feature enough practice of real fights, that is, they do not spar. This is sadly typical of several real martial art schools, that completely neglect proper sparring in favor of just practicing set moves in a set context because that's easy and safe. Or using the time to do general exercise, padding out training time.

If sparring were useless, MMA and boxing and other such sports would also not do well in real fight but these are the people actually most likely to without necessarily needing real-fight experiences. This is not even getting into the fact that some martial arts schools/instructors are crap and clueless because there is no check of quality of them. Or into things that certain martial arts (modern fencing and kendo) has become gamified, meant to be used in a context of sport/game and not for real fighting.

Why do they do this? Because even with very good protective gear and preparation, sparring is dangerous and likely gets someone hurt. The person you are hitting in a spar is you friend or at least member of the same school. People that you don't actually want to seriously harm. It can be too easy to do serious harm during sparring, depending on the moves used. Such injuries can range from minor bruises and pain to serious, crippling injuries or even death. As you can imagine for most martial arts instructors, they do not want that to happen at all and sometimes even the students refuse to do it under the genuine risk of death. Even if you enter a profession where the martial art is life-or-death, you still minimize risk and just do more training more intensively because it is careless to lose recruits.

Serious practitioners of any martial art accept this risk. Serious martial artists actually have training regiments where they do nothing but hit each other just enough to cause pain (but minimal harm) to the other person so they'd be prepared for pain in a real fight.

Do you know what would be even better than sparring? Some sort of artificial, reusable, human-like machine against whom you can fight full force, who behaves and acts like a human being both in action and body but has no self-preservation yet will have perfect control in attacks towards you. Essentially a robot who you can brake as many times as you want but can still put up a good fight. Maybe by an AI, maybe presence-controlled by a teacher or advanced student or something.

To which a holodeck is a superior option. You have realistic-looking people whom you can interact realistically enough that is as good or superior to sparring. You can go full force, you have no knowledge or need to have regard for your opponent. Your opponent is controlled by an AI that you can upgrade and tweak. And so on. The Holodecks seen even in early Star Trek has always been convincing enough that it is difficult to separate from reality up to the point where characters can confuse holodeck simulation for reality. The only thing that might be a problem is creating pain and discomfort in the one needed to be trained, which either already exists in the holodeck or can be added if they wanted to.

The holodeck is the perfect training tool for anything and is only limited by the creator of the simulation. The general problem in Star Trek, from what I recall, isn't the lack of tools but a seriously impaired attitude towards having a military and being military. Star Fleet refuses to be a straight-up military and train their members accordingly, unless there was a war on. The problem isn't the holodeck, but that Star Fleet doesn't put recruits trough training regiments preparing them for harsh combat. Or if they do, they do it rarely and not seriously. The perfect training tools go to waste if the people doing the training get the wrong training or the person teaching has no idea.

[Welf]

The point I meant was a psychological one, that it won't be fully equivalent. Knowing that you are in a safe environment tends to weaken the adrenaline response that is created by live fire. Despite the effectiveness of things like simunition(glorified paint ball) rounds, and simulators that more accurate simulate the reality of a shooting scenario, law enforcement agencies also heavily uses live fire training in which officers maneuver around each other with live weapons. Especially for more tactically oriented units.

This is also why many martial arts students often do poorly in real fights. They are trained in an environment wholly removed from reality. An obvious example is the difference between throwing a kick barefoot on a mat as opposed to on an icy street wearing boots. More generally, kicking techniques are designed to protect bare feet. The majority of people who expect to get into fights(and would actually train to do so) wear combat boots.

If it is possible that the holodeck can get around this problem, then it would indeed be extremely effective.

I'd say the psychological aspect is actually the most interesting part about the holodec. I think training for military units has the target of making war more "gamey". The worst thing that can happen to a unit under fire is that its members stress out and break formation. For that the instructors hammer the drills into them until they become reflexes. In RL nothing can prepare recruits for seeing friends and comrades die a gruesome death, but in Star Trek they can show you that. Multiple times. In full HD 3D expanded director's cut. And Star Fleet does use it to mind fuck with their officers, there is the Kobayashi Maru test, where you see your entire crew die in a no-win scenario, and the Bridge Officer's test, where you have to send someone under your command, and a personal friend, into death. That is pretty hardcore stuff.

The holodeck is the perfect training tool for anything and is only limited by the creator of the simulation. The general problem in Star Trek, from what I recall, isn't the lack of tools but a seriously impaired attitude towards having a military and being military. Star Fleet refuses to be a straight-up military and train their members accordingly, unless there was a war on. The problem isn't the holodeck, but that Star Fleet doesn't put recruits trough training regiments preparing them for harsh combat. Or if they do, they do it rarely and not seriously. The perfect training tools go to waste if the people doing the training get the wrong training or the person teaching has no idea.

I wonder how much that is reasonable. You can create ruthless killing machines with he holodec. In one VOY episode a alien species manipulates the rather humanistic Chakotey into hating their enemy species with a simulation. They showed him how a bunch of nice people he befriends (holograms) get killed by the enemy species (also holograms). The same could be used by the federation. And even if they try to avoid racist propaganda, they will destroy something in their soldier's minds. If they for example want to prepare for a war against the klingons, the best way would be to let their service men and women simulate dozens or hundreds of fights against klingons; letting them kill klingons until they don't even hesitate for a moment, and let them see their comrades die until it won't slow them in combat. But there wouldn't much left of the ideals of the Federation, and achieving peace and good terms with the klingons would be harder later. And once you start with such training, it might be difficult to find a point where to stop.

Obviously, the "free stuff" in restaurants is being offset by the cost of products people purchase in real life, but it's an interesting point. If you didn't want to waste a ton of resources, you'd need a pretty incredibly powerful and responsive computer system/network to constantly adjust production and distribution in response to utilization, and a means of quickly recycling resources back into the system to be used again if they go unused. It's easier to see how that might be done in Star Trek. If folks don't use stuff anymore but don't want to have them as keep-sakes, you dump them back into the replicator system to recycle into resources for future products. In civilian life, the computer systems are constantly monitoring to adjust the amount of resources that need to be available in particular areas for replicator and other usage.

Some stuff would still be scarce, though, and you'd probably have to ask the Federation for extra resources (or if they had a market economy to go with it, you'd use credits to buy it). As brought up above, land in particular areas would still be scarce - maybe the Federation has nationalized all land and rents/lends it out as needed, allowing people to queue for particularly valuable plots of land. You'd also want some way to input new information and designs into the Replicators if you want new stuff.

I wonder how much a society needs money to transport information. Currently governments can easily influence behaviour with taxes. Taxing sodas or plastic bags both makes people act more economically and signals that something should be avoided. Maybe that can be replaced by some kind of scoring system, in which you get points for good behaviour. We already have a lot of technical gadgets like the Apple watch that do this. These devices can strongly influence people's mindsets by simply showing them the effects of their behaviour on themselves. maybe we get something similar to show us what effects we have on society and environment? Although that has a very 1984 like feeling, with a government that watches and rates hat we do all day.

[Zeropoint]

"Achievement Unlocked! Soda-free for 90 days!"

[Zixinus]

A thought about the OP post:

The more I read the more I gather the impression I have of old communist/socialist times. There, you could be in a situation where you could afford to buy a car but couldn't get it because you lacked the appropriate connections. Your loyalty the the Communist party and the favor of its members were more important than how capable you were and so on. Which is kind of how the black market thrived during those times.

The problem I have with "there is no money in the future, everything is free" is, what would happen if I wanted to have an Enterprise-level of spaceship and do carelessly dangerous things with it? I am fairly confident that I would never get the chance. So the everything isn't free. There are limits to the resources and those limits have to managed and enforced. If replicators made most or all essential goods available to all, then the economy will merely change to start valuing and exchanging things that cannot be replicated. Land, spaceships, non-replicated replicable goods that are worth more as non-replicated (wine perhaps whose replicated version is inferior?), services, houses (even if the materials are free, building one will require work). The economy will simply shift into the valuing of those. And people who work will work in exchange for the work of people who uphold the whole thing in the first place: people who work to make and maintain replicators, holodecks, etc.
What I am curious about, is if it ever mentioned to what happens to those that abuse the system? Those that waste or hoard? Because overabundance doesn't matter if one raises the costs of lifestyle until they consume order of magnitude more than otherwise. Humans are very good at basking in deeper and deeper into excessive luxury and being extremely wasteful. It might damage their reputation seriously but what if they don't give a damn? Either they will hit some sort of quota limit (hence replicator-rations and such, which would be logical as replicators do not have infinite production capability) or their behaviour will be opposed by some sort of ideological grounds. So, Federation doesn't have money, they either have extremely complicated rationing system or have some sort of ideology-guard that have the legal power/authority to tell you to do stuff or not do stuff.

Regarding the second article quoted in the thread:
The problem I have with "there is no money because everything is free" is that nothing given is free. The second article that talks about Starbucks having free water, free napkins and so forth? They are not actually free. They are funded by your purchases of expensive coffee and other goods from them. They make such a large profit that they can afford to give free napkins and such. The other reason they are free for costumers is that it would be seen incredibly petty to ask money for those which would alienate costumers (not to mention how much more it would cost to account for these small items), something that Starbucks does not want and would rather suffer a profit loss. This is the same reasons why they allow non-costumers to use the facilities.

So Starbucks is happy to give free water and electricity because the people that enter Starbucks are almost always going to be costumers who will pay enough to cover the costs of those free things. If coffees ever become free in Starbucks that would only happen if I instead buy something equally expensive from them and in which profit's the coffee and other stuff is balanced out.

The same goes for all other freely-given services like open museums and such. They are free to people because taxpayers paid for them. They are free to tourists because tourism will bring money in to the country. Canadians and others pay for their free healthcare by higher taxes. And so on. If I were to abuse these resources I would be punished by law or other means. It isn't that people are magically not wasteful, it is that they have good reasons to be like that.

[Guardsman Bass]

They're not free, but Milanovic makes a good point that norms have arisen so that people don't just stuff their pockets full of the apparently "free" napkins and utensils simply because the price appears to be zero. Instead, there's a tacit agreement that you only take what you need, and if someone is abusing that they get a warning (or eventually banned from the store). It could be the same thing with civilian life and replicators in the Federation - you take what you need, but if your replicator is showing abnormally huge amounts of consumption of goods such that it's creating a strain on the system, you get a visit from law enforcement asking why you're consuming so much.

In fact, the Replicator Economy makes that tracking much simpler. With a regular economy where goods and services are provided from a vast range of sources, it would be very difficult to try and track all of someone's consumption - advertising companies IRL can only dream of doing so. But in the Federation, it's probably as simple as the computer network running the replicators noticing that John Q. Civilian is producing unusually high quantities of certain goods, far beyond what he usually consumes.

[Elheru Aran]

It would be simple enough to set a high enough bar for ownership of a starship beyond a certain size that you would never accomplish it without some serious commitment or sacrifice on your part. Want to have a ship the size of the Enterprise? No problem, just start young and go to Starfleet Academy. What's that, you're already 50 and past your learning years? OK, do you have a massive wad of resources you can exchange, as well as the ability to prove bonafides regarding capability to operate said ship? No? Buy a holodeck ticket and have fun.

I would not be very surprised if in such a society, there were many people straight up living out a chunk of their existence in holodecks, purely because it's simply easier. Reminds of 'Ready Player One', where even homeless people are able to access free links to the MMO that's central to the novel.

[Purple]

Honestly what surprises me is that most people don't spend all their time in a holodeck and not in the way you are talking about. Like if I had a choice between a home with a built in holodeck or a home that IS a single room holodeck I'd pick the later. It's the ideal customizable dream home. You can have as many rooms as you want and generate more on demand. You can redecorate with a though. And if you live on a civilized planet where power outages are rare there are no down sides really.

[Zeropoint]

Regarding private ownership of starships, I'd imagine that even in a world where everything is replicatable, there are mass and energy rations. Thus, someone who wants a starship would either have to save up their mass and energy rations for a long time, or find a way to get more than a normal ration for the project. This could be as simple as getting people to contribute, or as complex as finding a way to use your replicator rations to bootstrap some kind of mining and power generation scheme.

[Batman]

Since when is everything replicable? Nevermind the slew of stuff that apparently isn't, there's a reason starships are still built in shipyards. Having amassed a couple million tons of replicator rations (and good luck with that) doesn't get you access to an actual construction facility.

[Zeropoint]

I didn't say that everything is replicable in Star Trek. I was making the point that even in a world where that WERE the case, you might not be able to get a starship with a few mouse clicks.

Also, if you had enough replicator rations and a place to put it, you could build yourself a construction facility.

[Batman]

Really. 'Do' elaborate.

[biostem]

Honestly what surprises me is that most people don't spend all their time in a holodeck and not in the way you are talking about. Like if I had a choice between a home with a built in holodeck or a home that IS a single room holodeck I'd pick the later. It's the ideal customizable dream home. You can have as many rooms as you want and generate more on demand. You can redecorate with a though. And if you live on a civilized planet where power outages are rare there are no down sides really.

The only issue is that you'd only physically have the floor space of your single room - you couldn't have a dozen friends over and all be doing different things in different "rooms". Also, as long as energy is a concern, it would be foolish to expend it to maintain carpet, chairs, etc.

Do keep in mind that, at least in DS9, Quark was depicted as running several "Holosuites", which appeared to be fairly small holodeck rooms - not the large ones like the Enterprise had... but given the type of "entertainment" most of its users partook in, you probably wouldn't need all that much room.

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more small-scale uses of holodecks - like a holo-table where a child could play with blocks or w/e toys/crafts they wanted, without making a mess. They could save their projects, which could be fully viewable from any angle via a PADD or other display. A small "holo-mat", maybe 8' x 8' should suffice to prototype and test most ideas as well...

[Adam Reynolds]

Honestly what surprises me is that most people don't spend all their time in a holodeck and not in the way you are talking about. Like if I had a choice between a home with a built in holodeck or a home that IS a single room holodeck I'd pick the later. It's the ideal customizable dream home. You can have as many rooms as you want and generate more on demand. You can redecorate with a though. And if you live on a civilized planet where power outages are rare there are no down sides really.

The fact that people don't do this indicates that the energy costs are likely too high. Star Trek doesn't have the same level of energy production as Star Wars. And even in SW they don't waste energy in a manner this frivolous.

Also, if you had enough replicator rations and a place to put it, you could build yourself a construction facility.

Except for the fact that there is little evidence of anything on this level. It is probably that replicators are more expensive for industrial applications. If they were cheaper, why we ever see any indication of heavy industry?

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more small-scale uses of holodecks - like a holo-table where a child could play with blocks or w/e toys/crafts they wanted, without making a mess. They could save their projects, which could be fully viewable from any angle via a PADD or other display. A small "holo-mat", maybe 8' x 8' should suffice to prototype and test most ideas as well...

That really would be an interesting concept. It would be like Iron Man's table but with the advantage that you could physically interact with the object. The only problem would be that for truly new designs, how well would you trust the computer's model of it?

[Starglider]

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more small-scale uses of holodecks - like a holo-table where a child could play with blocks or w/e toys/crafts they wanted, without making a mess. They could save their projects, which could be fully viewable from any angle via a PADD or other display. A small "holo-mat", maybe 8' x 8' should suffice to prototype and test most ideas as well...

Perhaps in the TNG era, that kind of holoprojection could only be done fully enclosed rooms. Yes there was the projected biplane game in ST3, but that was simple coloured vectors only. Sisko got a holo-communicator that projected a realistic person-sized image from a mat on the floor in DS9 season 5, and it was portrayed as bleeding edge technology. Similarly the emitters for the holo-doctor on Voyager were bleeding edge and so expensive they only put them in sickbay (later expanded to the whole ship for Prometheus). It might take a few decades for that kind of tech to diffuse out to 'common home item' status.

[Zeropoint]

Really. 'Do' elaborate.

Eh? I'm not sure why the concept requires any explanation, but here's my take on it:

You start with a replicator, a large supply of energy and mass, and a really big vacant lot. You want a starship construction facility. You use the replicator to make the components of a larger replicator. Repeat this process until you have one that's "big enough", however big that is. Use your large replicator to make whatever equipment and structural elements you need for your starship construction yard, as well as the proper construction equipment to put them all together. Use the construction equipment you just made to assemble the the shipyard.

Is this going to be a lot of work? Of course it is. You're not going to find a lone nut building Galaxy-class ships out in the desert, but I don't see why someone with a big enough budget couldn't build a DS9 Runabout over the course of a few years. Right here in the 21st century, we have people doing stuff like this and this as a hobby.

[FaxModem1]

Also, if you had enough replicator rations and a place to put it, you could build yourself a construction facility.

Except for the fact that there is little evidence of anything on this level. It is probably that replicators are more expensive for industrial applications. If they were cheaper, why we ever see any indication of heavy industry?

There are examples of them, they were the major plot device of the DS9 episode "For the Cause".

They are called Industrial replicators. The UFP sent Cardassia twelve Class 4 industrial replicators, however these were hijacked by the Maquis. Eddington notes when Kira complains that Bajor only got two of them, and Cardassia got twelve, that Bajor is only one world, while the Detapa Council were trying to rebuild an entire empire after the Klingon conquest.

[Guardsman Bass]

That makes sense. Unless there's a size limitation on how big you can build replicators (or on what you can replicate), it doesn't seem unusual to imagine replicators capable of creating ships. They're related to transporter technology, and transporter tech can recreate incredibly complex human beings' bodies with enough fidelity so as to be unnoticeable to those transported - they could probably replicate something as complicated as a spacecraft.

Actually, I'm a little surprised they don't do that. Maybe the energy costs are prohibitive for something of that size, or the errors large enough with big-object replication as to make it more worthwhile to replicate components and assemble starships the conventional way. Or they just didn't think of the implications.

[Zixinus]

Or maybe the spaceships considered suitable for the era have non-replicable components (like various exotic matter that's in the reactors or other stuff) that it needs more than just large replicator to do it.

[Guardsman Bass]

Still, you could replicate 99% of the spaceship and then install the core later.

[Patroklos]

That's probably what they do, and what we see at shipyards is just the mating of prefab sections. Thats how we build ships now, but even if the prefab portions were magiced into existance those mating operaions equal years of further shipyard time for something like an aircraft carrier.

I liken these things to really advanced 3D printers. Due to the limitation of a printers material laying mechanisms there are some shapes or they simply can't make depending on which one you are using. designers either design around this or do minimal follow on fine tuning to fully complete the object. For instance for a versions depositing resin from the top in horizontal layers they could not create vertically oriented holes unless there was a top arch with angles that allowed them to build it gradually. So they would just build a paper thin buttress that would be removed later.

Similarly I bet there are a whole host of specific limitations to replicators. It might be at the molecular or atomic level, but I bet they are there.

[Welf]

A thought about the OP post:

The more I read the more I gather the impression I have of old communist/socialist times. There, you could be in a situation where you could afford to buy a car but couldn't get it because you lacked the appropriate connections. Your loyalty the the Communist party and the favor of its members were more important than how capable you were and so on. Which is kind of how the black market thrived during those times.

The problem I have with "there is no money in the future, everything is free" is, what would happen if I wanted to have an Enterprise-level of spaceship and do carelessly dangerous things with it? I am fairly confident that I would never get the chance. So the everything isn't free. There are limits to the resources and those limits have to managed and enforced. If replicators made most or all essential goods available to all, then the economy will merely change to start valuing and exchanging things that cannot be replicated. Land, spaceships, non-replicated replicable goods that are worth more as non-replicated (wine perhaps whose replicated version is inferior?), services, houses (even if the materials are free, building one will require work). The economy will simply shift into the valuing of those. And people who work will work in exchange for the work of people who uphold the whole thing in the first place: people who work to make and maintain replicators, holodecks, etc.
What I am curious about, is if it ever mentioned to what happens to those that abuse the system? Those that waste or hoard? Because overabundance doesn't matter if one raises the costs of lifestyle until they consume order of magnitude more than otherwise. Humans are very good at basking in deeper and deeper into excessive luxury and being extremely wasteful. It might damage their reputation seriously but what if they don't give a damn? Either they will hit some sort of quota limit (hence replicator-rations and such, which would be logical as replicators do not have infinite production capability) or their behaviour will be opposed by some sort of ideological grounds. So, Federation doesn't have money, they either have extremely complicated rationing system or have some sort of ideology-guard that have the legal power/authority to tell you to do stuff or not do stuff.

I think Star Trek gets around that problem by just assuming that people are too enlightened to abuse the system.
I don't believe that a break down of such a system is inevitable. In a lot of modern societies a lot of people try to act responsible without an enforcing mechanism. Take for example the environmental protection movement, where a lot of people invested and invest their time and resources for something that doesn't benefit them directly.

But I also think the concept of post scarcity is a bit fuzzy. If we consider it a state where everyone can have everything, we end up with something like the Q. If we consider it something like what Marx had intended, where physical need is covered and people can pursue art and other things they want, we are almost already there. We can have housing, food, health care, education and access to art and information. Compared to 1840s England the 1970s Russia probably was utopia, but it sucked in comparison to contemporary western countries.

Honestly what surprises me is that most people don't spend all their time in a holodeck and not in the way you are talking about. Like if I had a choice between a home with a built in holodeck or a home that IS a single room holodeck I'd pick the later. It's the ideal customizable dream home. You can have as many rooms as you want and generate more on demand. You can redecorate with a though. And if you live on a civilized planet where power outages are rare there are no down sides really.

The only issue is that you'd only physically have the floor space of your single room - you couldn't have a dozen friends over and all be doing different things in different "rooms". Also, as long as energy is a concern, it would be foolish to expend it to maintain carpet, chairs, etc.

Do keep in mind that, at least in DS9, Quark was depicted as running several "Holosuites", which appeared to be fairly small holodeck rooms - not the large ones like the Enterprise had... but given the type of "entertainment" most of its users partook in, you probably wouldn't need all that much room.

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen more small-scale uses of holodecks - like a holo-table where a child could play with blocks or w/e toys/crafts they wanted, without making a mess. They could save their projects, which could be fully viewable from any angle via a PADD or other display. A small "holo-mat", maybe 8' x 8' should suffice to prototype and test most ideas as well...

Maybe there will be larger public holodecs available for that? Keep all the necessary data for your apartment on a remote server or space dropbox, get a reservation at the next public holodec, and login when you get there with your friends. Which would make moving in the future incredible easy.

[Adam Reynolds]

That makes sense. Unless there's a size limitation on how big you can build replicators (or on what you can replicate), it doesn't seem unusual to imagine replicators capable of creating ships. They're related to transporter technology, and transporter tech can recreate incredibly complex human beings' bodies with enough fidelity so as to be unnoticeable to those transported - they could probably replicate something as complicated as a spacecraft.

While the human body is incredibly complex, the chemical elements that make up the human body are made up the most common in the universe(apart from noble gases). I doubt the same is true for starship components.

Has anyone ever come up with an explanation for why it is that transproters aren't used for full on cloning? At least apart from the Riker accident.

[Zeropoint]

Based on what I remember of the TNG Technical Manual (admittedly not canon), there are no technical issues preventing anyone from using transporters for cloning, backups, or sending expendable copies of personnel on away missions. It seems more like a whole society has a blind spot, probably mostly deliberate, to a lot of potential transporter applications.

I will observe, though, that although the transporter offers a quick and easy way to fork a person, there's no obvious way to merge branches. No, wait, they put the two halves of Kirk back together that one time, and there was the Tuvix incident.

So, the obvious way to do an away mission would be to fork your best team and send one set on the mission, then merge any that return with the instances who stayed behind (after screening them for problematic issues).