I don't know why people hate the idea of evolved humanity. If we project backwards in time the same number of years Trek is set in the future we have people being burned for witchcraft and widespread human slavery
I think it was too often presented to excuse something in TNG that looked more like sanctimony and complacency than anything else. It's true that I did come to cringe whenever Picard started lecturing somebody about how humanity had "evolved beyond" the need for this or that. Even just in terms of dramatic decisions -- some forms of progress
should take place, but eliminating things like money really can become a storytelling straitjacket (note that DS9 had to reintroduce cash).
Yeah, in a world in which warp drive and transporters work, postulating significant changes in human culture after surviving World War III and making First Contact seems quite reasonable. Agreed that more unreasonable would be postulating that there would be no culture changes whatsoever in the face of such monumental events.
Of course, especially in the first season of TNG but still also in the second, that didn't stop the pontificating from being quite annoying and, as you essentially said, cringeworthy. I consider it perfectly fair to wonder whether such monumental events would lead to a culture that favored
that kind of behavior. Plus, there's the meta issue of whether good ideas in theory are really good ideas in the practical context of a TV show that needs to foster a connection with a contemporary audience.
My problem with the no-money premise wasn't that I found it unbelievable in principle.
The problem was that it wasn't well thought-out, and, even when it was well thought-out, it was inconsistently applied. Given that, arguments such as that
it doesn't make sense are natural reactions on the part of viewers and writers alike. One would expect a similar reaction from anybody, if you forced them to really build a working FTL engine, transporter, or other piece of magical Treknology.
What the premise needed was to have been seriously developed in consultation with actual economists of stature, and then consistently illustrated by example as necessary in appropriate circumstances (see example below).
The idea that money isn't needed for the allocation of certain classes of resources, which aren't scarce in a post-replicator economy, such as but not limited to food and clothing, is a perfectly rational idea. However, when you take it further, when push comes to shove, such as with respect to the allocation of scarce resources such as Kirk's apartment in San Francisco, then questions need to be answered.*
Star Trek never had a ready answer to such questions in the context of a money-less economy, and so it essentially had no choice but to invoke the contingency, "I bought it." Another obvious set of issues would be in the mechanics of how humanity realistically trades with aliens that
do use money.
I don't consider these issues insurmountable in principle, but I understand what you mean about a straight-jacket being applied. However, I believe that
in most cases, it really doesn't matter, by which I mean that
the only thing that needs to be affected is the dialog. Just like the story editor was supposed to make sure that the technobabble was consistent, so too would the terms of economics be normalized, in my way of envisioning it. For example, in
"Encounter at Farpoint", instead of:
EaF said:
"Thank you. I'll take the entire bolt. Send it to our starship when it arrives. Charge to Doctor Crusher."
read:
CC said:
"Thank you. I'll take the entire bolt. Send it to our starship when it arrives. Charge to the Bank of Humanity in the name of Doctor Crusher."
* - To questions such as how Kirk would get his apartment, likely some form of socialism would be necessary to explain that, although I can sense the visceral rejection of
that idea before I've even hit
submit. I wonder whether real-world politics limited
Trek's collective desire, as it were, to pursue that train of thought to its logical conclusion.
All that said, I am so glad we got to hear Nog and Jake argue about money in DS9: "In the Cards" (by Ronald D. Moore). This scene is quite hilarious:
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo[/yt]
