Well, just imagine if you could suddenly dump a ton of money into the planetary economy. Nobody would necessarily have to fear poverty anymore, but that doesn't mean the economy would be inherently stable in the short term.
That's looking at the wrong part of history, though. I mean, hell yes, the arrival of a post-scarcity era would destabilize any current economic system based on scarcity. It's
supposed to. It's supposed to
replace it altogether, the same way democracy replaced monarchy, say. But
Star Trek is not set at the beginning of that process, it's set much later, when the new economic system is solidly in place and scarcity-based systems like capitalism are historical relics.
Plus, what happens if the relatively few replicators are solely owned by the government, which isn't necessarily interested in improving the welfare of the people?
What the hell are you talking about? Replicators in
Star Trek are ubiquitous. What's the point of making up a counterfactual that has nothing to do with what we're actually discussing here, which is
Star Trek's portrayal of
its future?
I agree that context plays a role, but I also think it's a Ship of Theseus problem (if I removed all of the ship's components and replaced them with ones that are functionally identical, is it still the same ship?). If the replicated version is every bit as real and authentic as the one the creator originally made, how can its value be less?
I already told you that! The value is not in the physical materials that make it up, it's in its direct connection to historical figures or events. The painting that was created by Leonardo's own hand has more value than the copy that was created by a replicator. I would have thought that entirely obvious.
And if we're talking a fictional setting like a marketplace, what's to stop an unscrupulous vendor from making plenty of "knockoff" copies that aren't physically cheap copies? They're real for all practical purposes, and in the right context I can become very wealthy even if my sales aren't entirely honest.
Artifacts have provenance. The location of the original would be known.
And again, we're talking about a post-scarcity economy where nobody cares about monetary value or wealth. Everybody would be insanely rich by modern standards, able to obtain any material object with the punch of a few replicator buttons, so there's no incentive for greed or cheating. If you wanted to own something, it wouldn't be because of some perceived, arbitrary conception of material value, but merely because you like it or find it useful.
A post-scarcity economy is an
information economy. Material objects don't have value when any piece of garbage can be reconstituted into a precious gem or a high-quality device. What has value is the data that defines the physical object, the replicator pattern that produces it. Only information would have value. And the difference between an original artifact and a replica is a difference of information -- the knowledge of the original's role in history.
For my part, I've come to have a sort of similar bias against the universal translator. I think it's an interesting concept, but I don't really see it replacing dedicated communication specialists to the extent that later series seemed to imply. I think those specialists would be a key part of any crew, and I think the UT would be an ongoing project that's always being improved but isn't always practical. Not unlike today how Google Translate isn't always the best tool, and is frankly pretty funny if you know how to abuse it properly.
Of course the UT is an implausible plot convenience. But post-scarcity economies are an entirely valid possibility that would likely arise from future technological advances like 3D printing, nanotechnology, and the harnessing of green power and the near-limitless resources of the asteroids. They aren't comparable at all. A universal translator is an eternal impossibility due to the intrinsic nature of how language works, but the end of scarcity would fundamentally transform how economics works.
I do recall reading - perhaps on Memory Alpha - that the TNG production crew/writers quickly came to dislike the concept of replicators, because they realized a 100% effectively perfect copying device would have as much potential to mess up economy and market as it would to provide benefits. Why would any historical treasures be particularly valuable, even rare, if anyone can simply duplicate them on an molecular level? Or currency like gold latinum (which conveniently "can't be" replicated for plot reasons, even though there's no apparent basis for that in terms of its substance)?
