this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Pretty sure officers are provided with a stipend when they're deployed to places that use money. I remember sisko mentioning something along the lines of receiving pay but not having much use for it. That's reflected in how he handles situations where he has to pay for something, buying information from quark comes to mind. He barters as a formality/to keep quark from getting too big headed and then just kinda chucks latinum at him, like it doesn't mean much at all.
As for siskos family restaurant, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, I think Benjamin's dad was the first one to have it. In which case it doesn't really contradict the private property aspect. This goes a bit into anarchist concepts of private property so fair warning. There's this concept called usufruct, which is a progression of roman ideals of ownership. Basically "use it or lose it", where you can occupy land for any given purpose (in this case a restaurant) so long as it's being used you're welcome to occupy it. When you die or decide to close up shop, the land isn't passed to someone in your family, it goes back into the Commons for another person to use. Picards vineyard does throw a wrench into that though, because it's clearly established that his family has owned the land for generations. Which is pretty wack
I'm old, and that term is now to me, sorry if I am thinking incorrectly on this. With Usufruct, if Picards family was operating the Vinyard and no other's were interested or had the ability to be part of their business management infrastructure, it could be "handed down" through management of the business which would happen to be the members of their family? May not be completely likely to happen, that no one else would be part without some nepotism, but for storyline sake let's say it happened. Would that make it work? It is a complicated business infrastructure and could be argued the housing/estate is part of the usage agreement as it leaves other properties available in the community? Rearranging a working Vinyard just to reallocate the housing portion seems like it could damage the business goods long term.
Thanks for any input, I have been learning lots of new things since joining the fediverse!
Usually communities that implement usufruct put systems in place to avoid pitfalls like nepotism. Agriculture is a very common area for usefruct or some similar system to be implemented too so we have plenty of realworld examples to draw comparison from. Lottery systems are popular, where all of the plots will be put into a pool every x amount of time (anywhere from 1-5 years usually) and randomly granted to people in the community. And there are often measures in place to make sure people aren't given a plot that's not too far from their house to avoid logistical/infrastructure complications.There's plenty of other ways it's handled as well, I'd be happy to link some stuff if you're interested.
I'm not familiar with how this is handled with things like vineyards or other crops that are heavily dependent on certain soil and climate conditions and as such couldn't be relocated as simply. Usufruct in its modern forms is largely considered within the scope of the degrowth movement, where local independence and sustaianability is heavily emphasized. So instead of large monocultures community members are encouraged to practice forms of subsistence farming, having more crops grown on one plot that would enable people to feed themselves and their community. Rather than a town having a vineyard, several people would have a handful of rows of grapes on their land. What they do with them after that is their prerogative. Towns could have a communal winery or perhaps those interested in making wine may just have a few barrels tucked away in their basement. It's also worth mentioning that communities that implement a system like this would likely have very different ideas of personal and private property than you or I. Something like an estate may be consciously avoided to avoid the concentration of wealth or power within a given family.
To bring this back to star trek; they're living in a post scarcity society that has food replicators. And as such picards home town may have done away with conceptions of usufruct in the way we know them today. They may be a-ok with family estates, perhaps with certain parameters in place to maintain equality in some manner. Land isnt intrinsically tied with wealth and power (at least on earth) at that time. I could go on for ages about axes of domination, inequality, the principles of free association and plenty of other stuff that could be involved with how picards family may have come to have a vineyard in an allegedly socialist, libertarian society but I'll leave it here for now lol.
Thanks for commenting, it was fun being able to share some knowledge and chew on it a little!
Hey, thank you! That was super interesting. I would imagine working communities like that would be much more localized for infrastructure of daily needs. Since I do not have much to offer on the real world side of things, and I like to idealize the Star Trek future, I'll share what my brain is using as a place holder for this one at the moment.
Maybe his family's vineyard is so good and well liked, that not just the community but the whole region enjoys being known as the home of that wine. Since the Picard's are good people they do not take advantage of their place as caretakers of the Vinyard. Maybe there are large gatherings and events even, that take place on the grounds. Fall festivals, weddings, Bah Mitzvah's (sp?), etc.