I'll join the discussion by saying that mkr-hn might be trying to fit a Star Trek:TNG society onto today's world. (Though I add the caveat that this is just spe

I'll join the discussion by saying that mkr-hn might be trying to fit a Star Trek:TNG society onto today's world. (Though I add the caveat that this is just speculation on my part.) I certainly see a Trekkie answer to your concerns, anyway, you just have to swallow the sci-fi for a moment. ;) That hypothetical 24th century isn't such a bad place to live, at least compared to 21st century Earth. (My major beef with it is that people still die. Death isn't that hard of a problem, especially when you have teleporters!) In the 24th century, many humans still do purposeful work to better themselves and better humanity. Those that don't work live unexciting lives on some unknown colony planet, but so long as the Borg et al. don't attack, they can live their longer lives in peace and comfort, free of charge. Energy isn't free even in the Star Trek universe, but the society has moved beyond requiring people to toil for money in order to live. Such non-toiling has its costs, of course. Not every slacker can have their own galaxy class ship. In essence, with such technology, and with such a culture of "it's okay for people to be useless and their marginal cost for the Federation to support is close to 0 so why not", it's not that hard to see how they can get rid of money. They still have de-facto currency and capital, though. e.g. natural dilithium is a common source of conflict among the space-faring races. But such sources of capital typically have instrumental value apart from being able to get other stuff with it. This is all sci-fi speculation, though it can be useful to postulate various technologies existing and try and guess how humanity might be changed. I'll leave you with a simplified form of a particularly hairy one that some very smart people are spending their lives on right now. Will they succeed by 2100? 2500? Via I.J. Good: "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make."