Would money even be necessary at all at that point? I guess that would be my thinking. If everything was readily available, it might cause a shift away from the pursuit of money. Kind of like the talk about in Star Trek First Contact. I never watched the other seasons of Mr. Robot past the first one. I really need to circle back to that.
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Yes money is always necessary because the population can grow faster than the economy. If food is free and housing is free then people are running around having 10 kids like psychos. There must always be a reputation system in place to make sure a person or family can't endlessly drain the system. We could invent a more elegant and complicated reputation system that replaces money, but economics have shown that the simplest solution is often the best.
The only way money stops making sense is if the economy stops making sense: meaning everyone can directly produce every product they need without getting help from someone else. In essence everyone would have their own robot army that does everything for them... which is possible but just weird to think about. We'd have to colonize dozens of planets by then and would almost certainly be introduced to extraterrestrial life, which is a whole other thing.
This is not shown experimentally. Mouse utopia does not end in universal starvation, but social derangement and unanticipated failure of reproduction. The experiment we are undertaking at the advent of the Space Age is different, because what we currently experience is the utopian dystopia, and the advent of colonies is where the 10 kid psychos will burgeon.
Your remark about extraterrestrial life is a potential limitation that remains presently unable to be characterized. I have long advocated for colonization of Venus, because at ~50km elevation, temperatures and pressures are basically Earth normal, and the abundant CO2, Sulphur dioxide, and sunlight available creates an obscenely fecund potential for verdant production of biologicals based on the identical nutrient pathway that fuels ocean vent ecosystems.
However, a recent paper argues strongly that this niche is already occupied on Venus, and that certain chemistry is very likely to be the result of native ecosystems currently living in Venusian clouds. If that is true, it would be utterly unethical to simply start factory farming biologically and replacing the first extraterrestrial life we have discovered. How to promote ethical development if there is actually extraterrestrial life is an almost impossible dilemma, because enforcing laws drafted on Earth with armies from Earth is inconceivable.
Regarding the necessity of money, I think commerce can be facilitated with cryptocurrency by adapting money conceptually to emergent needs. Crypto doesn't need to be a traditional store of value like gold, but can be simply tally marks representing negotiated valuations of different products being exchanged, with any unexchanged remainders carried over for future exchanges, or transferred to other traders, or even other networks exchanging production of completely different products. Crypto can be just as bespoke as 3D printed light switch plate covers with initials or little sculptures of bears on them. It's whatever we decide it is.
I guess that is why it makes more sense in the world of Star Trek than it does in our world! :) Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm picking up what you are putting down.
Yeah in Star Trek, Captain Picard has a big ass estate with a farm and orchard and shit.
How did he get that?
What's the world population?
How much land is there per person?
How are these things decided?
They gloss over all of that because it's not possible to answer the question.
This guy who spends 99.9% of his time in space is allocated a huge estate just on the off chance that he happens to be visiting the homeworld? Make it make sense.
How many plebs are living inside a holodeck fucking imaginary pornstars? lol.
I would guess with more planets open for habitation, the limits on land aren't as pressing as they would be now. That's my assumption anyway. On the outer reaches of the galaxy, they use gold pressed latinum so currency hasn't entirely went away. I would imagine there are quite a few people living exclusively in a holodeck!
Haha yeah... but also...
But you make a great point in that money is necessary if only to interact with alien races. How do you trade with an alien race if you don't have the currency that they trade in? It's heavily assumed that there basically is zero economy and different factions don't trade with each other, which is a bit ridiculous, again refusing to open up the story to that kind of impossible complexity. They didn't even bother creating "Space Credits" like so many Sci-Fi shows have attempted before it.
Yeah, good points. I would imagine there has to be some kind of trade happening. They briefly touch on it in some episodes but never really dig into the meat of it. With the absence of currency, I am guessing you would simply barter for goods like they did at the beginning of time.