@Alan & Doc: Good points! I'm not really thinking about anything, per se. But, by the TNG/DS9 era, they always present civilian Earth as a utopia where there is no need.
In FIRST CONTACT:
Alfre Woodard: "How much did a ship this size cost?"
Picard: "Money doesn't exist in the 24th century..."
Alfre: "No money? You mean you don't get paid?"
Picard: "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity."
So then, the question becomes how/why/what is the impetus of evolution and progress? If it's a utopia, which it's presented as on Earth, then what type of government operates this kind of social/cultural/economic world? There's a "President of Earth" we've seen. And we've seen multiple Presidents throughout Trek. So, there must be some type of governmental rule.
As for Quark and DS9 and the like, it's understood that Starfleet provides some type of bartering or payment system for worlds outside the Federation that they have trade with. The idea that neither has a matching economic system is very believable, given you're dealing with alien cultural compatibility issues. For example, the Ferengi Trade Alliance does all its biggest business with the Feds, as we've seen in DS9. But, how do the Feds pay them? Does Earth or other Fed planet have resources to trade with? We've seen countless mining colonies and the like in TOS. So, we know humans are out there sucking the resources off native planets to perpetuate their way of life on Earth. But, are they mining ore to trade with another culture for something else? Are they using it for Earth, as it seems we've eaten up all of our own natural resources (like fucking humpback whales for instance)? That's the kind of stuff I'm curious about.
We know they have something akin to "criminals", as we have seen Federation Penal Colonies (see VOYAGER pilot...if you really want to). They "rehabilitate" their criminals, which has very Orwellian overtones.
This is a subject that's been debated by many Trekkies over the past twenty-years. I don't believe any Trek ever would outright say that its a socialist utopia. But, if you take all the facts that have been presented, it's not hard to see it in that context. At least from modern perspectives. Could be a scifi future thing where we just evolve into higher thinking/learning, and therefore DO work to better ourselves as a whole, with no thought to the progress of the individual. I mean, it's not like we in the 21st century are an agrarian culture. We've moved past "the driving force for food during the winters".
But, also, as Al pointed out.....we usually only see their exploration/military organization StarFleet. We've never truly been exposed to enough of future Earth to know. And a lot of that can be chalked up to Roddenberry admitting outright in an interview that, like trying to land the ENTERPRISE on a planet, he had no idea how that future society would work without money. But, wanted to present it as such anyway. Thus, the never-explained-Earth of the 23/24th Century...
