http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html
I've seen that before. Although it still doesn't adequately address the ways a post-scarcity society may have notions about what constitutes 'wealth' turned on it's head.
Presuming basic human motivations for pride and status don't go away in the next 500 years, but they're placed into a post-scarcity society, the results may well look confusing to us.
For instance, do you know why old "country kitchen" style design or other antique styles of kitchen design have a set of copper gelatin molds hung around the room?
Like this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A3VBGk3Rb1w/To48H1fd8XI/AAAAAAAAALE/U5jQwvRs_hQ/s1600/045-2.jpg(My mother had the kitchen decorated with a row of these around the room during the 80's...)
That's because originally, those molds were a sign of wealth. It meant your household ate enough meat that you had bones and scraps to boil, or more likely your servants did, to make the gelatin foods. (Not even dessert flavored, other meat and veggie flavors and served as main courses... yeech)
Of course, industrial gelatin production made possible by the inclusion of meat into everyone's regular diet, and "Jell-O" becoming more of a lowbrow, picnic, or kids-food, this meaning was lost. People in the latter 20th Century started decorating with the molds, just because they looked "old-timey" and didn't know what they originally meant or represented anymore.
If people come to these choices of their own free will in the Star Trek universe, without any coercion by the state, due to the ramifications of a post-scarcity society, trying to judge people's personal, economic, and political freedoms is meaningless in terms of using their living spaces or posessions indicators of individual freedom.
Perhaps an analogy as a gun-collector would help.
If you had a machine that could make you any firearm you wanted and it's ammunition when you felt like handling it or shooting it, and could then dispose of it afterward (back into the machine presumably), would you still want a safe full of guns, except perhaps if they were original antiques? Would you still have cleaning gear? Would you still have crates of ammo? Targets? Spotting scopes? Reloading gear? Or any or all of the other accouterments that go with being a shooter or gun collector?
Worf had his Klingon nerd-sword. Riker the trombone. Picard had books or a fencing foil or something. (and that flute from the dead civilization, who used mind rays in that probe to make Picard live a whole simulated life in their society...) Presumably all family heirlooms that would lose their uniqueness if replicated. So that stuff is all people carry with them.
I know some people are comforted by "clutter", but (maybe I'm wrong) I think many people like it when their living spaces at least
look clean and uncluttered. If you needed no refrigerator, pots, pans, and things like clothing, eating utensils, and toiletries came and went as needed... I think all our living spaces would indeed look a lot more like they do in Star Trek.
Perhaps such a life is a joyless dystopian horror, but I think the critical point is that it does not require, nor does it prove the existence of an authoritarian Socialist or Communist state to make it that way.
Maybe the Star Trek writers are just lazy. Too lazy to explain why people keep working, when they don't need to. Too lazy to put some privately owned ships in the background. Too lazy to come up with recent works of art for their characters to appreciate.
Or maybe they just assume that the fans don't care about the universe outside of the particular plot that's being portrayed.
Of course, that's what the REAL answer is. For instance, the entire "transporter" technology exists because Roddenberry didn't have the budget for enough plywood, paint, and Christmas lights for the shuttlecraft set the first season. So a set was re-purposed as the transporter room, and an optical fade with a glass of water being stirred with craft glitter in it was substituted. Otherwise they'd have no credible way to explain how folks got down to the planets of green women.
But it's boring to discuss it.
