One of the interesting things about Star Trek is that it’s not an economy based on scarcity. Within the limitations of energy (and there is a whole lot of it even if you don’t think it’s quite enough to stop Implosion to a New Singularity) and ingenuity one may just say to the Computer, “Make it so,” and so it is. 3-D Printing on a molecular scale.
People pretty much get to do what they want and for every Reginald Endicott Barclay III who has a burning desire to be a Starfleet Officer despite appallingly little aptitude for it, and who is jollied along because one of the “leadership challenges” one must face to be good is to give even your most useless team members a task that will contribute to your over all goal and give them a sense of accomplishment without being too patronizing; you’ll find a dozen Roberts (pronounced the same as Colbert) who don’t like Computers or Replicators or Space and think it’s a perfectly fine and worth application of talent to grow Grapes in the same soil using the same methods as your family has for thousands of years.
Once we were a people who could aspire to goals like that.
11
Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.