Captain Picard promotes a Resource Based Economy

This clip is from Star Trek The Next Generation season 1, episode 26 The Neutral Zone. The crew of the Enterprise has rescued three people that were frozen in the past and Captain Picard is explaining how things work in the future. Some of these ideas are similar to the Resource Based Economy proposed by The Zeitgeist Movement / The Venus Project.

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  Education

[chadinterrupted]

You're absolutely right and I completely 100% agree with everything you just said. It's funny too because the more you start to learn about this stuff the more you start to see the patterns in your everyday life that most people would overlook and not even notice. A lot of the human nature concept slowly starts to fall apart and not make sense anymore. That's why when I tell people about these concepts I stress how important it is to first learn about "free will" and human behavioral studies.

[Chris Ulmer]

The only economic system that will work is to make all goods and services free and available to everyone thereby eleminating the class structure (of which Communism and Socialism could never do because they're still monetary systems).. Our monetary system is the element of corruption and destruction itself because it also creates the false perception of scarcity, thus creating social heirarchy (social Darwinism). I take it you've seen the Zeitgeist movies?

[TheGoodNews01]

You're right, that's why abolishing money may not be enough. Power needs to be decentralized, too. Think of the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists during the 1930s. They abolished money and replaced it with mutual aid. But they also set up workers' self-management and implemented federalism (in the Proudhonian sense not Jeffersonian) to decentralize power. "Some collectives did in fact abolish money. They had no system of exchange. Not even coupons." The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff.

[MrThundaro]

Unfortunately we are not ready for a resourced based system. We are close and I do think if we can stave of the globalists and tyrants. We can see this happen in the next 50 or so years... However as long as hard labor exists as the sole means of production. We will never achieve this. Besides the UFP is NOT a resource based economy. That would imply they have finite resources in regards to "needs". They do not. They in actuality do not even have an economy as we understand it. One day...

[HornyDude83]

picard is a cultural maxist moral relativist, multi-culti pot-smokin' hippy.

or that's how fox news or readers of the Daily Telegraph would describe him ;D

[Marilyn Zumwalt]

No, if you get rid of the use for money, then people stop striving for money. Power is a different beast though.

[maeon3]

Picard was wrong on this one, he's implying that the wants of men are finite and that if you give a man a certain number of toys, he will stop striving for power and money. Picard is channeling the spirit of Che Guevara and the great communists of old time.

[DrProfessorPi]

Everyone needs to keep in mind two things when deciding whether or not they agree with Picard.

1. Picard is a fictional character whose ideas are merely words on a script written by a director who has his own agenda, whose professional experience is probably limited to cinematography, and who accepts Picard's world is a fictional utopia.

2. The only reason why a resource-based economy is feasible in this fictional world is because they have fictional replicators that take care of every need

[Redneck3141]

one vid ya act all Redneck which ya aint an now tryin ta sound smart ha ya live double life we all knew ya were pathetic ya cnt hide tha truth

[Chris Ulmer]

That's all part of the process of what is happening right now anyway. If you look at the statistics, right now more than any other time in history, for example, people are questioning religious institutions and leaving en mass. This is unprecedented and at it's accelerating rate the Catholic Church for example, won't be around in the next 50 years.You're only describing the process because an exponentially growing number of people are also feeling the same way.

[Superpureeliteful]

I am not one who believes in favor,The break down in society that you are talking about,is not really a problem in society,or education,the problem is in consciousness,every body's consciousness,media companies corporations,religious groups,schools,need to stop programming people,that's doing a lot of harm to consciousness,they have turned people into conformists,but they don't see themselves as conformists,they think they are free from ignorance,but they are living in it,they are part of it.

[Chris Ulmer]

The entire monetary system is living on borrowed time. What you are describing is just part of the process of evolution towards a resource based economy. All pieces of the current machine are connected and as one part breaks down, other parts break down connected to other parts which also break down. Part of this process will involve great upheaval. There's no way of getting around that. It will either be Paradise or absolute oblivion. I think it will work out in our favor though.