This topic came up quite a bit on r/daystrominstitute and there was a generally accepted head canon, at least for me.
The people bussing tables and waiting on customers are there because they’re genuinely learning a trade. Maybe theyre interested in opening a restaurant in the future. In order to do so they need to learn the full ins and outs of how they operate, starting from what is considered the menial tasks of cleaning dishes. I’m sure Joseph Sisko didn’t wake up one morning living in a post-scarcity society, decided he wants to open a creol restaurant, and just walked down to an empty building and started cooking for customers the next day
See, that sort of works, but there’d still be a chronic shortage. Once they leave, you’d now probably double the demand for staff.
My personal head cannon is that Picard (and everyone else,) is full of it. Same way people screaming about how great America is are full of it. He was saying what was necessary to keep his timeline from being borg-ified.
Or like the guy that was thawed out. That totally sounds like a party line.
But this makes sense since we also know that Picard loves to spout nonsense propaganda about the enterprise not being a warship, star fleet not being a military organization, and the federation being totally peaceful. Except all the battles with the romulans, the Klingons. The borg. The dominion. The cardassians… I’m sure I’m missing a few…
Could be that startrek uses a more realistic version of UBI. Everyone is provided enough for a house, healthcare, a few basic luxuries and a hobby, but if you want more than that (say money for an expensive hobby or to go on vacation to the party planet ragealon 6) you gotta work.
Are you guys intentionally ignoring replicators? You don’t need money. You could replicate a whole ship if you wanted to. Your house would be replicated. Same with any hobbies or luxuries, which wouldn’t be luxuries because there is no such thing in post scarcity, you’d just replicate what you want.
Everyone in the Trek universe just does things if they like to do it. Some people like serving people. Other people like to pilot ships. I’m sure the more desirable jobs are more competitive but the only incentives are really going to be the value others see in your work. So someone like Sisko the Elder has people who work for him because they know he is a renowned chef and they want to absorb his knowledge.
