Star Trek and Money: The Economics of the Star Trek Universe

Anyone who has known me for nearly any length of time will know that I am what qualifies as a gigantic Star Trek fan; whether it is the Original Series with Kirk and Spock, The Next Generation with Picard and company, or Voyager with Captain Janeway. With the upcoming release of the next Star Trek feature film, Star Trek XI (okay, in December 2008, but I'm already counting down), I thought I would devote a little blog space to the economics of Star Trek. Of course, Star Trek as a franchise is big money for Paramount Pictures, but I am here concerned with the internal economics of the fictional Star Trek Universe. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used his fictional universe as a way of putting forward his own Utopian ideals about what an ideal human society would be like at some unspecified future date. But does Roddenberry's vision of the Star Trek Utopia make a plausible candidate for a desirable direction for our species to take?

While occasionally the Star Trek characters use "Federation credits" or "gold-pressed latinum" to make purchases, it has been explicitly stated in Star Trek (such as Picard's statement in Star Trek: First Contact) that money does not exist anymore in the 24th century, and that humans had advanced beyond the drive for material wealth and possessions. Aside from the practical implausibility of this ever coming to fruition, it is worth asking if this should even be the abstract ideal (something along the lines of the idealized society in Plato's Republic) for human society.