No Money Economy-unrealistic and stupid

[Captain Seafort]

It's the best explanation for why certain things are beyond the current tech.

[Deepcrush]

So, then its a cut between simple (needing only energy to produce) and complex (needing both energy and raw material).

[Captain Seafort]

That doesn't make sense. If they could replicate things from energy, then why would they require raw material to replicate others? it would be a simple matter of building up the chemical chains. If, on the other hand they're unable to replicate from energy, then it would naturally limit their ability to build up those strings, leading to the numerous items that can't be replicated at all.

[Graham Kennedy]

In the non cannon world, replicators are said to use stocks of base matter which they turn into other forms; they don't just beam mass out of pure energy. It makes sense, but like I said - non canon.

Even so, there's an awful lot of matter around in the universe. If you can cram any old crap into the replicator, push a button and have it become gold bars...

Money is, essentially, a method of rationing out resources. Balancing supply and demand. But if replicators make the means of production comprehensively outweigh demand... why have money?

[Captain Seafort]

Even so, there's an awful lot of matter around in the universe. If you can cram any old crap into the replicator, push a button and have it become gold bars...

The trouble is that they can't. If they were capable of elemental transmutation why can't they replicate blood?

[Deepcrush]

So then, replicators need material... just not the material they are going to make. Just any material will do???

[Sionnach Glic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't gold still stated to be valuable?

[Captain Seafort]

Depends which Ferengi you listen to - in "The Last Outpost" it was, but in "Who Mourns for Morn?" Quark called it worthless. Of course, in the former incident they were trying to convince Portal that the Federation were the bad guys, and in WMFM Quark may have been comparing it to latinum, so both need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

[Graham Kennedy]

Even so, there's an awful lot of matter around in the universe. If you can cram any old crap into the replicator, push a button and have it become gold bars...

The trouble is that they can't. If they were capable of elemental transmutation why can't they replicate blood?

Blood isn't an element.

They can't replicate anything living, and that's the only canonical limit we've ever known to be placed on replicators. We can speculate that there are substances that can't be replicated - Latinum is often suggested - but so far as I know, "nothing living" is the only canonical limit ever stated.

Me, I'd guess that they can't replicate Latinum, and a handful of other weird and wacky compounds - they still mine stuff sometimes so it must at least be cheaper to do that than replicate it. But gold should be an easy one, based on the fact that it's considered worthless.

[Deepcrush]

I thought that they mixed Gold with Latinum in order to spread it out further and give it a solid form.

[Captain Seafort]

They can't replicate anything living, and that's the only canonical limit we've ever known to be placed on replicators. We can speculate that there are substances that can't be replicated - Latinum is often suggested - but so far as I know, "nothing living" is the only canonical limit ever stated.

Actually they can replicate tissue - the Romulans did it as part of their transporter accident ruse in "Data's Day". The molecules of Romulan blood, however, are "too complex" for the replicator, they have to manufacture nanites rather than replicate them, and they can't do fancy rainwater or a hundred and one types of ore. There's also evidence that gold, for all Quark's complaining, is still valuable, given that it's cited as such in "The Last Outpost", "The Perfect Mate" and "Past Prologue".

[Graham Kennedy]

The question when something's value is raised is always "Valuable to whom?" Gold is referred to as valuable by the Ferengi in The Last Outpost, but the context if anything makes it clear that it's NOT valuable to the Federation since the Ferengi complaint is that they're treating it like it's worthless. And then value changes over time - it's Quark who calls gold worthless later on in DS9. We even see it in TOS, where Kirk goes from describing diamonds as an "incredible fortune" in Arena to only a short while later where on being offered gems like diamonds they reply "We could manufacture a ton of these on our ship. They mean nothing to us."

Point remains, whilst there certainly do SEEM to be things that can't be replicated, the only limit we've ever been specifically told of is living stuff. Yes, dead tissue can be replicated; you can probably replicate a whole corpse. Just not a living person.

[Captain Seafort]

Point remains, whilst there certainly do SEEM to be things that can't be replicated, the only limit we've ever been specifically told of is living stuff. Yes, dead tissue can be replicated; you can probably replicate a whole corpse. Just not a living person.

Not the case - we were explicitly told that Romulan blood couldn't be replicated. The same is true of the fancy rainwater. Most of the rest are deducible as such since you don't use your biggest ship as a courier for stuff that can be magicked out of thin air. Likewise if you could replicate stuff why would you manufacture it?

[Coalition]

If replicators only needed raw mass that could be converted into energy, I'd wonder about Voyager's supply issues. Just stop off at any asteroid, feed the material into the replicator converter so it turns iron ore into energy, and use that to make whatever is needed (coffee).

The key issue is DS9. It was originally set up as a mining facility, and was later used as a trading location. Why would people trade physical stuff if all they have to do is feed in some raw mass, press a button on a replicator, and out comes the finished product?

"Evolution" stated that the nanites were made in a factory, in Dakar Senegal. "Sins of the Father" said they could not accurately replicate caviar. Heck, remember "Phantasms"? The replacement part was made in a Starbase using an experimental interphase fusion process. Not replicated. "Galaxy's child" had them picking up scientific equipment, rather than replicating the equipment either on board, or the destination facility. "Firstborn" had the Duras sisters trying to buy mining equipment because they found 'magnesite ore'.

"Progress" in DS9 had the Noh-Jay Corporation trading items back and forth. If replicators could solve needs, then DS9 wouldn't have that purpose. We saw traders, freighters, haggling, all sorts of things that would not be as necessary if replicators could solve everything. You would have people haggling with Starfleet over access to the replicators.

"Treachery, Faith, and the Great River" is an excellent example:
O'Brian needs a Graviton stabilizer to fix the Defiant. Nog offers to help.
Nog borrows Sisko's Desk to let one person take a holophoto next to it, in exchange for an induction modulator.
The induction modulator is traded for a phaser emitter.
The phaser emitter is then traded for a graviton stabilzer.

A replicator that can handle mass -> energy -> mass would have made that side plot a lot shorter.

"Data's Day" showed us that Replicators introduce single-bit errors, and "The Mind's Eye" showed us that the pattern on errors could be used to deduce who made the replicated item (important note for sneaky types - don't leave any replicated items lying around). This is likely the reason why the caviar never tasted right.

Replicators would provide a compact means to make a variety of small critical items, but those items would have to be overengineered to handle the errors that would be introduced in replication. Chances are most equipment on a Starship already takes this into account. However, a dedicated manufacturing facility would be more efficient for actual production of items. It would be best for a certain set of items, need more surface area, but it would be better.

[Mikey]

The gold issue may be easy enough to reconcile - the term "gold-pressed latinum" seems to imply (and there may be canon to substantiate this, I don't recall exactly) that latinum needs to be bound or encased in gold. Therefore, gold may not be a precious metal of itself, but its required use in currency makes it valuable. The Ferengi in TNG: "The Last Outpost" would then be suitably outraged by using it for its "mere" conductive properties.

And I know Seafort will recall the ep, but wasn't the E-D unable to replicate a hatch cover of (presumable) commonplace tritanium?