It’s only going to be a matter of time before they start requiring contracts, forcing you to stick with a service for long periods or face fees for dropping them.
They are capitalists, and so they must always profit more and more, never ending, for all of time. One of the things they will eventually do to hit that unsustainable proift motive is contracts. It’s what the cable companies did, and it’s only a matter of time.
They’ve also run things like the pioneer plaques (or maybe it was arecibo) past other scientists, who often have difficulty discerning the meaning behind them. If human scientists have difficulty discerning the meaning, I can only imagine what kind of difficulty aliens who speak in metaphor would have, let alone if they weren’t linguists/scientists, which appear to be the case in the episode.
We evolved to hunt, and so it is suspected that as a result of that, we understand arrows to indicate direction. A species that hasn’t evolved in such a way might not understand the meaning of arrows. Apply that same principle to language and you potentially have your problem.
I think half of the episode is the Tamarians genuinely struggling with human language. If the federations translation software wasn’t up to the task, it isn’t surprising that the Tamarian’s software wasn’t up for it either.
Based on the episode, it was posibly the first time Tamarians ever had friendly and successful first contact. Because if they had it previously, they might have asked for help translating when meeting new races such as with the Federation. The episode would have went a lot different if they had an Adorian ambassador with them saying “Yeah these guys talk in metaphor and only metaphor”.
it’s possible that they only use that weird allegory reference pattern when speaking formally to strangers or whatever
It seems like an awfully bad idea to use a communication method that doesn’t transfer what you mean if you have a better option available.
It’s also possible that their language in the original version makes more sense and is more practical and it just gets mangled by the universal translator.
I doubt that’s the case. I don’t see how a non-metaphor based language would get turned into a metaphor based one through a software bug. Some big hand waving would need to happen for that.
IMO the Tamarians probably have brains that are structurally different such that their metaphors come far more naturally.
They may have tried that in the past to no avail. The episode specifically mentions there was several failed attempts at first contact.
A guide only works if you understand the guide. Think of it like this, if I sent you all 1679 ones and zeros from the arecibo message to you, but you didn’t understand the concept of zero, you’d have a hard time understanding what the message meant, even if the message itself was self explanatory.
Their language isn’t just grammatically different, it is uses a fundamentally different structure, and the Tamarian brain might be structurally different as well, able to easily account for language when young. So there may not be much of a “base language” that the metaphors are built on so to speak.
It might be a similar line of though as the Goa’uld weaponry from SG-1. They aren’t meant for accuracy or range. They use weapons of terror that create an absolute massacre when they do by chance hit.
The Ferengi, and especially of that particular group were Ferengi pirates of some sort, probably wouldn’t be above such tactics.
But also it was very clearly not a well thought out episode, so I’m absolutely applying meaning where there is none.
The difference is that 9/11 was able to be channeled into xenophobia. The same can’t really happen with school shootings. The 40k mindset of hate being a valuable and limited resource hits way too close to home.
I haven’t heard that take before, which is actually a decent workaround for the “why can’t we replicate living beings?” question.
I doubt it would be detectable though. Because you’d have to be able to tell the difference between replicated molecules, and molecules that were transported, with only differences being individual atoms and subatomic particles. Neither of which I’d think somebody capable of discerning. Maybe it’s a bit if a placebo thing?
Or maybe it would be a “pure water has no taste” sort of thing, where replicators make things too pure, to the point where some consider it bland. A real tomato grew in dirt and still has at least some, and the soil effects it’s taste, whereas the same isn’t true for replicated foods.
There also may be some degree of intentionally making an excuse. Lots of people love gardening, and in a world with effectively infinite, free food, your hobby seems more valuable if you have an excuse that your home grown real food & liquor tastes better.
My point was that the way the economy is portrayed is such that we don’t get to see much of how it actually works, meaning that a lot of our understanding is speculation based on a handful of lines.
For sure, and it is rather frustrating. But it makes sense that they don’t outright explain the details, as it would just cause lots of people to complain.
The wildcard here is that we see Federation worlds that seem to still use money, namely the Bolians who are members of the Federation, but the Bank of Bolias is a major financial institution.
It also might be a planet to planet thing. Like, imagine if a ferengi colony world broke off and asked to join the federation? They would undoubtetly keep their currency. It would just be a question of whether or not it is seen as a dealbreaker for the federation. I’d wager it wouldn’t be, so long as said ferengi colony keeps to the “every one treated equal, with dignity, and sufficiently provided for” philosophy of the typical federation world.
It seems that replicators are not essential to eliminating money in the Trek universe, although I’m sure they’re a boon to the standards of living.
Yeah, that is a common theme that I’ve heard as well. If we had replicators in today’s world, it would only be for the rich, and even if it came down in cost it would still never be free to get one or operate. The philosophy of society itself has to change to agree to make sure everybody is housed, fed, and cared for sufficiently. Without that step, replicators aren’t going to do anything to get us to a post scarcity world.
all we know is that they don’t use money, except when they do. The writing is sort of fuzzy on the matter, which results (regardless of the intention) in an economy that doesn’t actually seem that different to our modern day in practice
At most they use credits, which at least according to this guy, are at most a peripheral, 3rd party currency, or at least a currency the federation uses for external trade, and that’s what makes most sense to me. Why would the average person care about federation credits when they’re only used on border systems at most, and your home replicator can make you pretty much anything you’d ever want? To a person living in such a world, for all practical purposes there is no such thing as money in the federation.
There’s no money, but people still own businesses and talk about buying stuff, which allows for the economic system to fade into a sort of forgettable background space.
They never seem to talk about buying stuff unless it is out on the frontier, exchanging with foreign entities, etc. It also doesn’t seem like businesses in star trek (at least the above board, earthlike ones) aren’t anywhere near today’s businesses. To me, it seems that they are treated as family businesses, with limited “employee” count, and with each “customer” getting their service/food/item for free, within reasonable limits. It’s like going over to your family’s house for dinner. You don’t pay, you’re family and they will happily feed you (within reason). And it seems that businesses treat everyone like that.
There is no stock market, profit motive, costs of running a business. It’s all done out of the goodness of people’s hearts.
I doubt it’s that big of a difference. If they have the tech to materialize full fledged humanoids regularly, millions of times a day, I’d think they’d also have the tech to make replicated food taste good.
But sure, I can see it being marginally better. But not enough to mean money is still in use.
It might be more of a “tomatoes I grew myself” type of thing for most cases.
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