WTS 3 runabouts, will take 900 gold pressed latinum

Posted on May 15, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 34 Comments

From Star Trek Online’s FAQ:

Will there be an economy?

As in the series, an economy will be present and fully functional.

Uh… guys, in ST: TNG there was no economy. The Federation was a pure communist society. This was actually a plot point in the final episode of the first season, where confused 21st century colonists rescued from a sleeper ship (translation: Fred Everyman from the present) try to figure out how Enterprise crewmembers get paid.

Offenhouse asks what he will do now that his money and office are gone. Picard points out that material needs do not exist in the 24th Century. Offenhouse then asks “What’s the challenge?”. Picard responds, “The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich your life. Enjoy it.”

Once the series moved on to Deep Space Nine, and more importantly the utopian Gene Roddenberry died, the economy perpetuated by the caricatures of rapacious capitalism, the Ferengi, moved throughout the Federation. But based on the answer to this rather fundamental question, I can only await the forum threads as this game draws closer to release.

This entry was posted in Geek, _. Bookmark the permalink.
  • Eso

    Hah, thats amusing.

    I believe the federation was the utopian society, but anything outside was not. However, assuming that there will be plenty of federation players, that really doesn’t work economy wise. There were several points in TNG where crewmembers mentioned that the synthesized food was missing something from the real thing, and that “real” food was an uncommon luxury.

  • http://artificialmonkeys.blogspot.com/ Goemagog

    it wasn’t a communist society. according to the communist manifesto, in a communist society, it would be unlawful to use anything that you didn’t manufacture in it’s entirety by yourself, unlawful to eat anything that you didn’t grow, or to have/do anything that everyone else doesn’t have/do because it may give you a raised social status.

    the st:tng economy is entirely based on stalinistic propaganda of what a communist economy looks like.

    Goe, thinks you should know your enemy.

  • scottj

    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” In other words, what you consumed was completely divorced from what you produced; the labor of your efforts would be poured into a common pool from which *something* (effectively, the state, although Marxist thought in its purest form denies the state will exist) redistributes the results of those to whomever needs whatever.

    In Leninist theory the individual farmer was completely anathema as they were in fact independent of the state distribution system. A few decades of state-imposed famine solved that problem.

  • Mortarion

    I’ll trade you one thousand self-sealing stembolts.

  • Toastrider

    Yeah, between that and the ‘dekulakization’ brigades (think state-authorized thieves)…

    The Federation was very much a ‘utopian’ society. Replicator technology made a lot of issues moot. If you’ve ever read Peter Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn series, the Edenist conclaves work along very similar lines (even if you’re student-poor, you can have a small apartment with a biotech food replicator).

    –TR

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    This game is barreling towards trainwreck at warp speed.

    I love it!

  • http://www.psychochild.org/ Psychochild

    No problem. Let me go up to my local replicator and get those latinum chips for you right away.

    This is the problem with a license, in that sometimes it just doesn’t fit what a game needs. Of course, I think it would have been interesting if they had designed the game to work even with Star Trek’s utopia economy in effect.

    But, designing games is hard.

  • Freakazoid

    For what it’s worth, Federation Credits will probably apply to outside federation stuff. It makes sense to me: not all galactic societies are as utopian as the Federation. Sometimes, they need a monetary device to represent their worth, not for their own people but to interact with others outside the federation.

    I don’t see what the big deal is here.

  • =j

    I can see it now. Which movies are better? SW or ST? Now it will be: Which MMORPG is worse?

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    I’ve actually thought about the economics on and off this afternoon whilst I should have been doing actual work.

    Picture this: On Federation worlds/space wherein you are dealing with other federation members you are either given a specific allocation of whatever you may need but everywhere else you have to barter/quest/steal/kill/etc.

    Of course that would introduce ridiculous amounts of inventory to track and (more than likely) create a playerbase frustrated because they can’t generate latinum by grinding tactical operations around Saturn’s nub zone.

    Be intersting to see it tried though…

  • http://www.eqclerics.org Boanerges

    Don’t mess with Lum, Goe. He’s actually played games AS Communists. If you need proof just look at what happened to Paris Hilton’s bodyguards. Don’t make him walk up to you and taunt you a second time!

    A lot of the first and second season of TNG and DS9 was hyper-idealistic just like the original ST was. Think about this for a second: a society of peaceful social-communist-type people builds huge ships to go out and be benevolent scientists and stuff. They can’t understand why anyone would hate them but they build ships with at least decent weapons that are at least powerful enough to keep people at bay (which is a huge oxymoron). I think Roddenberry realized the utopian ideals were dated (remember, the 60s were about peace, love and dope) and so he began to move away from a perfect world. For better or worse he created a pop culture icon with the Borg and made “assimilate” a permanent resident. Oddly enough he probably made less utopian sci fi possible (consider most previous sci fi had big evil races vs utopian socialists).

    To be perfectly honest I’d love to see ST be redone in the style of BSG where you can keep the same principles but make it not based on, say, proven failed social structures.

  • scottj

    Thanks for the link Freakazoid, I added it to the story.

  • http://ambernight.org Amber

    Shows you what I know about the ST economy. I thought it was quatloo-based. I really want to play a pulsating brain.

  • MechaCrash

    No problem. Let me go up to my local replicator and get those latinum chips for you right away.

    Latinum can’t be replicated, which is why it’s used as currency. It’s “gold pressed” because latinum is naturally a liquid, so it’s put inside relatively valueless gold because mumble mumble treknobabble bullshit mumble.

  • http://www.beafraid.com Hellfire

    Nerd.

    On the moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moonrocks!

  • http://www.fiercekitten.com/ Georgia

    Well if there’s an economy, I certainly hope I can play a Ferengi.

  • Mandella

    I don’t think it is exactly fair or accurate to call the Federation economic system communisim, as the availibility of both cheap replication and cheap automated labor makes the basic assumption of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” rather nonapplicable.

    Do we *have* a term for a technology supported economic system where no one has to work if he doesn’t want to, and still enjoy a luxury lifestyle?

  • scottj

    “Fantasy”

  • http://artificialmonkeys.blogspot.com/ Goemagog

    there’s a problem with “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as it relates to communism, in that if need and ability don’t match, then they are either exploiting the labor of others or their own labor is being exploited, the exploitation of labor being far more central to communist ideology than needs or abilities.

    Goe, not afraid of lum.

  • http://cnn.com ubvman

    I’m just puzzled that the entire society of TNG did not collapse, burn and die the moment Holodeck virtual sex became indistinguishable from the real thing.

  • Freakazoid

    Theoretically speaking, a holodeck is owned and restricted by Starfleet only. It would not be hard to imagine that most cadets, offcers, and the like are trained (or just filtered out from the academy) to behave themselves.

    A Holosuite though, that is an interesting point to tackle. You could say that due of the Federation’s belief in bettering ones self, that lots of people are simply capable of not resorting to just spending their lives having sex with virtual partners. Just as it feels unrealistic that humanity set aside their differences and are all working in harmony, it also includes not falling into extreme temptation.

    You could also say that the entire Federation simply has laws forbidding most earthlings or even most federation-ites from owning or operating holosuites. Exceptions apply when necessary, as was the case for DS9, where they needed a ferengi presense on the station to show that in fact everyone can get along, even though it meant quark made his money letting people have sex with holographic images.

    In either case, you’re more likely to see me with my pants down talking about Star Trek knowledge than getting spanked with moonrocks, so take it as you will.

  • http://www.edgecase.net/devsite Cael

    Goe wrote:

    “there\’e2\’80\’99s a problem with \’e2\’80\’9cfrom each according to his ability, to each according to his needs\’e2\’80\’9d as it relates to communism, in that if need and ability don\’e2\’80\’99t match, then they are either exploiting the labor of others or their own labor is being exploited, the exploitation of labor being far more central to communist ideology than needs or abilities.”

    Yeah, that’s why the USSR was defined as State Capitalist rather than Communist, but only by outide observers.

    You might not be afraid of Lum, but you’re still wrong.

  • http://www.psychochild.org/ Psychochild

    Latinum can\’e2\’80\’99t be replicated, which is why it\’e2\’80\’99s used as currency.

    Sadly, I knew that factoid. But, this is an online game we’re talking about. Duping currency happens in each one, no matter what the Hollywood writers say. ;)

  • Nicademus

    Someone should really study the link between ST trivia and exposure to Poli-Sci classes. Its like one predisposes individuals to the other. A virtuous cycle of geekery.

    And who the fuck could ever think the ST movies were better than the SW ones?

  • Steve

    “And who the fuck could ever think the ST movies were better than the SW ones?”

    Anyone who only saw SW episodes 1-3.

  • scottj

    Yeah, that\’e2\’80\’99s why the USSR was defined as State Capitalist rather than Communist, but only by outide observers.

    True communism is, much like all utopias, extremely improbable since it denies fundamental human nature (we like to acquire bright and shiny things).

    In practice the USSR veered very sharply among several actual economic states. “War Communism” was the first; so called because it was supposedly a response to the ongoing Russian Civil War, it sought to impose a military structure on the entire economy. Trotsky literally sought to draft every industrial worker in “labor brigades” and simply order them to do whatever the state needed. In one memorable quote he stated that allowing workers to do the jobs they wanted – in other words, not being slave laborerers – was “the milky way to socialism”. (Socialism, in Soviet cant, being the utopian ideal the state eternally strove for.) Needless to say about the only thing that worked in War Communism was the state; the bureaucracy mushroomed to unbelievable levels and money became so valueless as to be irrelevant, which some leftists of the time considered a plus.

    The Bolsheviks realized that War Communism wasn’t going to work in the long term, chiefly because the entire country was starting to blow up out of control in peasant revolts, which unlike the White armies were unable to be easily contained. Thus the “New Economic Policy”, which restored a measure of capitalist rationality to the economy. Russia under the NEP was much like Sweden today; much of the economy was state run and the government was still huge but people at least had the right to engage in commerce.

    After Stalin took over he sought to re-impose a form of War Communism, only without the chaos of the war and a state that actually could impose direct control over pretty much everything. The result, Stalinism, resulted in the collectivization of agriculture, the industrialization of the Soviet economy, oh, and the deaths of several million people who were in the way.

    Once Stalin died the USSR began a decades long slide into terminal corruption and ennui. Gorbachev tried to restore something similar to the NEP in the 80s, but by then it was far too late.

  • http://artificialmonkeys.blogspot.com/ Goemagog

    the communist manifesto says that labor brigades will be a required part of communist society. attempts to work around the flaws in both the manifesto and marx’s capital led to the formation of fascist parties as a way to functional socialism.

    Goe, not writing a book on the subject like mr. goldberg.

  • slog

    It would appear that there is disagreement as to the existence of money in the source material. Good luck making a MMOG from this mess

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Federation_credit

  • http://www.camelotherald.com Sanya

    Nerds.

  • http://artificialmonkeys.blogspot.com/ Goemagog

    sanya = poopiehead

    Goe, because the nest said so.

  • http://www.camelotherald.com Sanya

    /admits it in shame

  • http://www.psychochild.org/ Psychochild

    Sanya wrote:
    Nerds

    ZOMG! Who invited a girl to the party?! ;)

  • winter

    If I were designing the game, I’d come up with some sort of system whereby as you grow in rank with Starfleet, you gain access to better levels of equipment through the replicator system. To me this kinda makes sense as just because you have a replicator does not mean that it will create a gun for a 10 year old kid.

    Next up you have the whole issue of things that can’t be replicated, I’m guessing there are materials other than latinum that can’t be replicated. Is it trilithium or whatever that they use to power their warp engines? That stuff probably has to be obtained normally, perhaps the active part of phasers also needs to be obtained normally or natural versions are better than artifical versions. This way you can still have “drops” in the game.

  • Freakazoid

    Winter, I have read somewhere (probably on wikipedia, seems like the popular reference material lately) that besides federation credits, you also establish influence points. I guess you get those by doing the usual starfleet stuff, going on away missions and whatnot. Anyway, as part of being a commander, those influence points get you better ships to command. For other jobs, I assume they let you go up in rank and have access to more complicated stuff, like an engineer might start out working on panels in a jeffry’s tube, then they rank up enough to hit chief engineer and he’s commanding several people to operate a warp engine on a galaxy class starship.