"Federation is communist" article misses the point

[Darth Onasi]

Looks like the OP really is a one-post wonder.
What is it with people who think they have a silver-bullet argument then immediately vanish when people poke holes in it?

[Oskuro]

Same that those that emerge from their lairs only to discover that, unlike hentai dating simulators, real life girls can say things that you won't like.

[Aaron]

Looks like the OP really is a one-post wonder.
What is it with people who think they have a silver-bullet argument then immediately vanish when people poke holes in it?

It's around March Break which along with x-mas, and summer holidays are when the retards come out to play. Kids off from school and all that.

[Singular Intellect]

Even saying that replicators require raw materials, electrical power, and patterns seems like an over-generous statement. It's like saying that cars require only gasoline, tires, and a driver. I guess that huge business in automobile maintenance is just a mirage, right?

Why are we assuming that replicators are an utra low-maintenance device, like a clock radio? For all you know, they could be a very HIGH maintenance device. The fact that they usually work on a well-maintained starship doesn't exactly prove that you can stick one in the corner and have it run maintenance-free for the next 20 years. Nor does the fact that we know isolated colonies have them; for all you know, they're constantly maintaining them.

Actually, I don't recall the episode name, but it's one where the Enterprise D encounters the two remaining 'survivors' of some alien attack. Some little house of theirs surrounded by a destroyed colony. The woman survivor is just an illusion and the male turns out to be a super powerful entity of sorts.

Anyhow, in the episode in question, Picard wants to leave the two a small portable replicator system so they can take care of themselves.

This seems to indicate that the Enterprise can readily supply a portable replicator system that doesn't require any serious type of maintenance, since neither of the elder couple professed any technical skill or knowledge whatsoever.

[wjs7744]

That would be Survivors. The reason that they might not need much in the way of maintenance could be that making food for two elderly people isn't much in the way of a workload, compared to, say, providing for the entire command staff of DS9. I mean, everyone knows that there is a correlation between the ammount of use a system gets and the amount of maintenance required.

EDIT: Or maybe Picard doesn't realise that replicators need maintenance, he's not exactly a hands-on type, after all.

[masonwheeler]

What is it with people who think they have a silver-bullet argument then immediately vanish when people poke holes in it?

I didn't hide; I just haven't been back. I've been busy with real life for the last couple days. (And before anyone makes the inevitable sarcastic comments, have the admin check the server logs for my IP address if you don't believe me.)

The "refutations" seem to be mostly the same thing, repeated over and over. "Replicators require raw materials, so there's no post-scarcity society thing going on afterall, so you're wrong!"

Puh-leeze. If you have a Federation that spans a good portion of the galaxy, with hundreds of inhabited worlds, thousands of uninhabited worlds and heaven only knows how many resource-rich asteroids and nebulae, you can find any pretty much any raw material you're looking for. Yes, you'll need mining equipment--which could simply be a specially-calibrated transporter. Or you could simply scoop up dirt and rocks and have plenty of minerals and organic compounds in raw form. And if you really do need mining equipment, have the replicator build it. If you need energy, have the replicator build some solar panels or other device capable of producing energy. With the addition of a few warp-capable freighters (and a few armed escort ships, if necessary,) such a system would become self-sustaining very quickly.

And bringing up Voyager doesn't refute my point in the least; it underscores it. Voyager was an example of unusual circumstances. The crew of Voyager find themselves cut off from their supply lines. They no longer have the virtually unlimited resources that they're used to. They don't have freighters or worlds and asteroids to mine. They don't have industrial equipment. They're a science vessel. And so what do the crew do? They revert back to capitalism. People trading replicator rations for goods and services was mentioned various times in the first couple seasons. Heck, Tom Paris even ran a lottery with them for a while! If that's not "money," then what is?

[Darth Wong]

Puh-leeze. If you have a Federation that spans a good portion of the galaxy, with hundreds of inhabited worlds, thousands of uninhabited worlds and heaven only knows how many resource-rich asteroids and nebulae, you can find any pretty much any raw material you're looking for.

And of course, you are so childish that you assume the exploration and extraction and transportation costs of these materials are ... nothing?

Yes, you'll need mining equipment--which could simply be a specially-calibrated transporter.

We've seen Federation mining colonies. It's not just a transporter.

Or you could simply scoop up dirt and rocks and have plenty of minerals and organic compounds in raw form.

The same could be said today, moron.

And if you really do need mining equipment, have the replicator build it. If you need energy, have the replicator build some solar panels or other device capable of producing energy. With the addition of a few warp-capable freighters (and a few armed escort ships, if necessary,) such a system would become self-sustaining very quickly.

And where do you get the exotic elements you need in order to build everything? Advanced technology tends to be quite reliant upon special materials, and replicators cannot transmute elements; they can only rearrange them at the molecular level (and with poor accuracy, which is why medicines are often transported by starship).

And bringing up Voyager doesn't refute my point in the least; it underscores it. Voyager was an example of unusual circumstances. The crew of Voyager find themselves cut off from their supply lines. They no longer have the virtually unlimited resources that they're used to. They don't have freighters or worlds and asteroids to mine. They don't have industrial equipment. They're a science vessel. And so what do the crew do? They revert back to capitalism. People trading replicator rations for goods and services was mentioned various times in the first couple seasons. Heck, Tom Paris even ran a lottery with them for a while! If that's not "money," then what is?

I love the way you contradict yourself. In the preceding paragraph, you said that any isolated mining colony should be completely self-sufficient due to the magic "replicator solves all problems" trick. But Voyager had replicators too, moron. According to you, they should have been completely self-sufficient and living in the lap of luxury, since they can simply fly past uninhabited planets and effortlessly extract materials from them to make whatever they want.

Oops! I guess the "replicator solves all problems" trick doesn't work when it's just Voyager instead of the whole Federation, right?

[Darth Onasi]

And bringing up Voyager doesn't refute my point in the least; it underscores it. Voyager was an example of unusual circumstances. The crew of Voyager find themselves cut off from their supply lines. They no longer have the virtually unlimited resources that they're used to. They don't have freighters or worlds and asteroids to mine. They don't have industrial equipment. They're a science vessel. And so what do the crew do? They revert back to capitalism. People trading replicator rations for goods and services was mentioned various times in the first couple seasons. Heck, Tom Paris even ran a lottery with them for a while! If that's not "money," then what is?

How the hell is trading rations capitalism?
Can you invest these rations? Do they gain interest?
Nevermind that the use of rations in the lottery was illegal. And that these rations existed in the first place because Voyager's energy and material resources were finite meaning that a replicator isn't self-sufficient.

[CaptJodan]

Puh-leeze. If you have a Federation that spans a good portion of the galaxy,

Not even a "good portion" no.

with hundreds of inhabited worlds, thousands of uninhabited worlds and heaven only knows how many resource-rich asteroids and nebulae, you can find any pretty much any raw material you're looking for.

You mean like how Voyager was passing by hundreds or thousands of worlds, asteroids and nebulae, and even stopping frequently for sightseeing tours, and running into extractable resources left and right, right? Oh wait...

If you need energy, have the replicator build some solar panels or other device capable of producing energy. With the addition of a few warp-capable freighters (and a few armed escort ships, if necessary,) such a system would become self-sustaining very quickly.

You're right. I forgot the part where Voyager was having power shortages, and they deployed their solar arrays to make more power. Hell, they used the replicator to replicate anti-matter on a constant basis. Wait...no...that's a different show too.

And bringing up Voyager doesn't refute my point in the least; it underscores it.

No, it really doesn't. As has already been mentioned, you seem to think that a replicator that can build anything cannot build anything on Voyager.

They no longer have the virtually unlimited resources that they're used to. They don't have freighters

No, just a hungry starship that needs the materials.

or worlds and asteroids to mine.

No? All those planets and asteroids they're passing by with advanced Borg sensors, and a captain who is happy to investigate dangerous phenomenon at the drop of a hat?

They don't have industrial equipment.

Then replicate it. You're the one who says they can do this.

They're a science vessel. And so what do the crew do?

Replicate it. Or replicate the base components and build it. They built two never-before-built giganto shuttlecraft with Borg technology. If magic mining is so easy and labor free as you claim, then these magical machines that will do all the work for them should be just as easy to create by Voyager as they would be in your hypothetical scenario.

Time and again we've seen that mining and processing raw materials is not a care-free, laborless job. That was the whole basis for Deep Space Nine...you know...an orbital refinery run by slave labor (the mining on the planet ALSO done by slave labor, incidentally). We see DS9 possesses replicators. Amazing that they don't have these self-sustaining machines at work for them, when it would certainly cut down on the sabotage efforts by their Bajoran slaves.

[brianeyci]

First welcome to the board.

Second, it's just that a lot of arguments are heard before, so people are tired or have canned responses. Everything you've said hasn't been particularly insightful or original. My suggestion is for you to define what a post-scarcity environment truly is, and compare it with Star Trek. I think you'll find that Star Trek doesn't come close to matching it.

Second, I suggest you figure out what a perfect Marxist society is (no it is not Stalin's Russia), and compare it with the Federation. You miss the fact that the ideal Marxist society is exactly what is represented by Star Trek. You say there's infinite resources so it doesn't have to be allocated... that's hogwash, since medicine and replicator rations need to be allocated, and so do living quarters. The ideal Marxist society is as Stas Bush (a Russian poster in N&P) put it, a nanite factory where everybody goes to a communal warehouse to pick up their goods. Just like Star Trek.

Third, I suggest you read this article, from a user called Publius. You say that Mike's articles on his website aren't that authoritative or sourced and "misses the point" but come back after reading that article and say that Mike "missed the point." Mike's articles on the main site are written from the point of view of an Imperial officer wanting to take over the Federation so if the writing style seems unbearable that's why it's like that.

[Patrick Degan]

What is it with people who think they have a silver-bullet argument then immediately vanish when people poke holes in it?

I didn't hide; I just haven't been back. I've been busy with real life for the last couple days. (And before anyone makes the inevitable sarcastic comments, have the admin check the server logs for my IP address if you don't believe me.)

The "refutations" seem to be mostly the same thing, repeated over and over. "Replicators require raw materials, so there's no post-scarcity society thing going on afterall, so you're wrong!"

Do explain to the class how that requirement refutes the objection, Mr. Wheeler.

Puh-leeze. If you have a Federation that spans a good portion of the galaxy, with hundreds of inhabited worlds, thousands of uninhabited worlds and heaven only knows how many resource-rich asteroids and nebulae, you can find any pretty much any raw material you're looking for. Yes, you'll need mining equipment--which could simply be a specially-calibrated transporter. Or you could simply scoop up dirt and rocks and have plenty of minerals and organic compounds in raw form.

And what of the fuel for any of these processes? Does that come free?

And if you really do need mining equipment, have the replicator build it.

Your evidence from any series entry or movie for heavy mining equipment being replicated. Right now, please. Debate Rule n. 6.

If you need energy, have the replicator build some solar panels or other device capable of producing energy.

Your evidence from any series entry or movie for solar panels or other fuel extraction devices of large scale being replicated. Right now, please. Debate Rule n. 6. Oh, and again, where does the fuel for these processes come from?

With the addition of a few warp-capable freighters (and a few armed escort ships, if necessary,) such a system would become self-sustaining very quickly.

In a word, bullshit. For reasons already addressed in this thread and which you think you can get away with ignoring.

And bringing up Voyager doesn't refute my point in the least; it underscores it. Voyager was an example of unusual circumstances.

You'll pardon us for laughing, I trust.

The crew of Voyager find themselves cut off from their supply lines. They no longer have the virtually unlimited resources that they're used to. They don't have freighters or worlds and asteroids to mine. They don't have industrial equipment. They're a science vessel.

Right. Just keep pretending that nothing costs anything and the energy and matter conservation laws have been repealed. You're well on your way to a Village Idiot title in these parts.

And so what do the crew do? They revert back to capitalism. People trading replicator rations for goods and services was mentioned various times in the first couple seasons. Heck, Tom Paris even ran a lottery with them for a while! If that's not "money," then what is?

That isn't capitalism, that's barter. Go back to Remedial Economics 065.

[NecronLord]

The thing that irritates me about the treatment of replicators in Star Trek is this:

It's so poorly thought out.


If people were so liberated from mundane tasks, why do we not see oodles of little red starships? If I never had to study, work, or do anything that kept me in one location, and had money to burn, I'd probably make my main residence on a cruise ship, yacht or even better, a commercial size jet (I've seen a concept of one of those with a whole house inside, done for some Russian Millionaire) of some sort, just for the pleasure of being able to go where I would; never mind cars, and such. The people of the UFP don't get to do this, they have to wait for some state owned transport, as far as I can tell.

Similarly, Robert Picard maintains the vinyard. Very good, I can see why he might want to, it's been going since 1932 (well, the real Chateau Picard has). How does he get rid of the wine? Does he really have that many friends to get drunk on it? Does he have a waiting list? Does Jean-Luc get shot of it all at the Enterprise's receptions? If it's publically available, is it truly fair to prevent people buying it with some common medium of exchange? Clearly, UFP dogma says it's not.


While a magic-box replicator would have massive impact, it wouldn't instantly do away with money, people would still want to eat out, with waitresses and professional cooks, they would still want to be entertained by real people (holodecks aside) and they would still want to buy antique things; all these can't be done by a replicator. Similarly, it appears that the canon replicators can't provide transport very well.

Interestingly, it appears that even the tiny shuttle-pods aren't replicated. In The Mind's Eye Data is tipped off by Romulan tampering in the fact that the isolinear chips in a shuttle have been replicated.

[brianeyci]

The people of the UFP don't get to do this, they have to wait for some state owned transport, as far as I can tell.

Yeah it's pretty bad. Looking at it this way The Jetsons is closer to post-scarcity than Star Trek.

[wjs7744]

The "refutations" seem to be mostly the same thing, repeated over and over. "Replicators require raw materials, so there's no post-scarcity society thing going on afterall, so you're wrong!"

Actually, I for one never said any such thing. I pointed out that all you did was say what you thought was the reason for the Feddie communism, which is a classic example of a red herring.

People trading replicator rations for goods and services was mentioned various times in the first couple seasons.

I'm sure you have quotes to back this up.

Heck, Tom Paris even ran a lottery with them for a while!

And promptly got thrown in the brig for doing so.

Let me get this straight, you think that providing reasons for the adoption of communism somehow refutes the fact of communism, you think rations=currency, you invent trivia about Voyager out of thin air to support this, and in the only example you deign to present us with, the man in question was arrested for his actions. Tell me again why you think you are winning?

[Connor MacLeod]

I have a simple question for wheeler to answer: If you can use your magic replicators to build solar panels and mining equipment to easiyl extract the needed materials - what perchance is all that built out of, ,and where do they get the raw materials to build it? Something has to provide that in order for the stuff you mentioned to be built - it cannot be built out of thin air.

And then there's also the small matter of why the magic replicators couldn't provide (as others have noted) neccesities to Voyager. As I recall there was more than one episode centering around them needing resources of one kind or another to supplement what they have (IE they couldn't just replicate it - such as deuterium, dilithium - the latter of which actually needed to be refined, I might add - etc..)

And a "barter economy" as Degan noted, is not the same thign as capitalism. In fact it probably refutes the idea - they have no better trade medium than basic necessities which everyone needs (IE food.), so that is what they use for trade and whatnot.

[Junghalli]

While a magic-box replicator would have massive impact, it wouldn't instantly do away with money, people would still want to eat out, with waitresses and professional cooks, they would still want to be entertained by real people (holodecks aside) and they would still want to buy antique things; all these can't be done by a replicator.

Not to mention that even if there was nothing that couldn't be replicated it would only be "free" in the sense that electricity is free. It would still need a fairly hefty infrastructure behind it to supply it with power and raw materials, which would have to be built, run, and maintained at considerable expense. Power companies, if nothing else, will survive just fine.

[Thanatos]

Question for Mr Wheeler: Who's designing the templates for the replicators? Replicators need templates to make anything. They can not divine from the aether a ham sandwich, they need someone to have designed a ham sandwich.

You want a folding stock, short barrel carbine Type III phaser rifle with red dot sight, picatinny rails, forward pistol grip, backup iron sights, three point sling and a customized finish? Someone is going to have to design it for you.

Your magic box needs an infrastructure of skilled designers and engineers to design anything that you want, even if you magically cut out every other form of infrastructure.

[montypython]

I've always considered a replicator economy to be focused more on energy/skilled labor than issues of production and material scarcity, so exchange mediums such as Credits would primarily reflect quantities of energy needed for goods and services.

[Darth Wong]

I wonder why people like MoronWheeler think that the principle of supply and demand is somehow magically invalidated in the future.

Let's take a utopian scenario in which raw materials are cheap and plentiful, and so is energy, so there is a replicator installed in every home. Let us further assume that MoronWheeler's furious wanking is correct and these replicators are essentially unlimited in terms of what they can make, and at what quality, so that they represent a wholesale replacement of all industry and agriculture. And let us further assume that the existing service economy has been rendered completely irrelevant for some reason, as per yet another of MoronWheeler's bizarre assumptions.

So now that we're living in MoronWheeler's utopian Star Trek fantasy, what would happen now? Everyone lives happily ever after, right? Well, not exactly. We've observed that not everyone has a giant mansion, nor does everyone have his own personal starship. Given the unlimited capabilities assigned to replicators by MoronWheeler, people would eventually start replicating these things for themselves: vehicles and luxury goods and even starships. Naturally, since the baseline level of energy and material supplies has been set by the previously observed living standard on Star Trek, this increase in the living standard would result in a sharp increase in the demand for both energy and raw materials.

As per the principle of supply and demand, this would naturally result in a sharp increase in the price of energy and raw materials. Ergo, the government would have to institute rationing. Realistically, we can probably assume that if the Replicator Economy exists, the government has probably instituted rationing already, which is the other possible reason why we don't see people living in replicated castles (the first one being that the replicators aren't as capable as MoronWheeler believes).

So let's assume that we're still living in MoronWheeler's Replicator Economy. Replicator resources are rationed by the government. But let's suppose someone wants to replicate something big. Let's say it's his spoiled daughter's "sweet 16" party and she wants to throw a huge party. OK, so you have to borrow rations. But how do you borrow rations? The government won't just let you violate the rationing system at will; this would defeat its entire purpose. But you could ask someone else to lend you his rations. Of course, this would beg the question of how he would eat, so you'd probably want a whole lot of people to lend you a little bit of their rations. But this would be difficult to organize, unless someone created an institution to manage deposits and loans of rations ... let's call it a ration bank.

Mind you, this ration bank would have to do a lot of work to manage these transactions, so they would want to make some kind of profit. And ... well, you can see where this is going. The idea that the Replicator Economy would magically rewrite all the rules of economics is just childish fantasy.

[Junghalli]

I wonder why people like MoronWheeler think that the principle of supply and demand is somehow magically invalidated in the future.

I think a certain amount of utopianism goes into it, like with nanowankers who insist that nanotech will destroy capitalism because everyone will be able to make anything he needs with his magic home nanofac. They see capitalism as an evil of society, and think that surely at some point advancing technology will eliminate it.

[Isolder74]

I wonder why people like MoronWheeler think that the principle of supply and demand is somehow magically invalidated in the future.

I think a certain amount of utopianism goes into it, like with nanowankers who insist that nanotech will destroy capitalism because everyone will be able to make anything he needs with his magic home nanofac. They see capitalism as an evil of society, and think that surely at some point advancing technology will eliminate it.

Yes just like computer were suppose to make paper die off. It didn't did it.

No matter how wonder a technology becomes it still requres that someone build it. With all the single bit error that are talked about I wouldn't feel safe using a replicated replicator. So that means for safety's sake some one had to manufacture the replicator. There's cost there. Design it. There's cost there. etc.

[Lord Revan]

only way I could see that this moron's argument would have any weight on it would violate most laws of physics (if not all), for example replicators would have have more then 100% effiency aka produce energy/matter out of nothing (and even 100% effiency is essentially a physical impossibility).

also it would violate trek canon as it has show numerous times that replicators aren't end all items but rather just a new tool.

this might come as a shock ( ) but there's always a prize to be paid and people don't work for free, it might not be USD but they want something for their time/work (unless you use force/slave labor in which case there's the problem of work force uprisings).

what would you call an "argument" that ignores all evidence that doesn't support it or in counterdicts it's claims over false assumptions?

[Darth Onasi]

In the end some people choose to believe in this utopian fantasy simply because the characters say so.
Picard says they've evolved beyond want, there's no need for rationing, supply and demand, etc. so it must be true!

In a way it's similar to the "no lasers" argument. What characters say must be true no matter if they're exaggerating, misinformed or lying and no matter if it's constantly contradicted by on-screen evidence.

[PainRack]

I wonder if replicated parts would be more prone to failure than manufacture parts. Replicated materials do have "single bit errors" after all. I would guess that if you serially replicated something, you would probably end up with an unusable version after some of replications, much as photocopies lose resolution if you keep making copies of copies.

If they replicate stuff based on the initial pattern, that shouldn't be the case. It would be more akin to printing copies of that first initial scan.......

[BountyHunterSAx]

I wonder if replicated parts would be more prone to failure than manufacture parts. Replicated materials do have "single bit errors" after all. I would guess that if you serially replicated something, you would probably end up with an unusable version after some of replications, much as photocopies lose resolution if you keep making copies of copies.

If they replicate stuff based on the initial pattern, that shouldn't be the case. It would be more akin to printing copies of that first initial scan.......

Even so, the point about non-manufactured parts being more prone to mechanical failure seems to be right on the mark to me. What is known for sure about the Federation shipyards? Do they replicate their ships?

I made a non-refuted [iirc] point earlier that the transporter re-assembles matter according to a stored pattern in much the same way that a replicator does; albeit at a 'quantum-level of accuracy' that is 'suitable for the human body'. If shipyards are based off of replicators (big if), then might it point to the existence of quantum-level replicators?

-AHMAD