I'm more reflecting the general consensus. That's communism, which is generally seen as a failed economic system, and difficult to practically enforce. Although maybe that all changes in a post-scarcity economy, like is Star Trek technically communist? Should the goal actually be GINI-0?
I think a system where one persons gets literally all the wealth would also be difficult to enforce or sustain.
However, without getting bogged down in the details of the implementation, I think GINI-1 would result in a society where no one has incentive to work because one person gets all of the benefit of that work.
Whereas with GINI-0 everyone benefits from their work, and anyone who produces more value than most others is still incentivized to work because they will still see a marginal gain in wealth, albeit reduced from what they would normally earn in a higher inequality system since it is somehow redistributed equally to everyone.
Perhaps the goal is not GINI-0 but as close as possible to it.
How much extra effort would you personally put in if I guaranteed that you got your “fair share” which just happened to be 4/350,000,000 assuming you had a family of four?
If you worked really hard to create an extra $1,000,000 in value, where shall we send your family literally the additional penny?
And that's exactly why perfect GINI score is not 0, but around 0.25 - it balances those two goals: ensuring that everyone has their needs met and still has motivation to put in extra effort.
Star Trek isn't communist; capitalism and communism are both approaches to the allocation of resources. Neither really applies in a post-scarcity society.
Which Star Trek is post-scarcity. They all [within the Federation] have trading and limitations of resources, no?
They're entirely egalitarian either, perhaps that's why you say they're not communist, see for example the luxuries that a captain has that crew do not and the preferences (larger quarters) that accrue with seniority.
Next Generation is post-scarcity. Replicators make fighting over a slice of pizza pointless. Just replicate another slice.
It's both a story-telling crutch and obstacle. It's a crutch in that they never have to explain how they provide for the entire crew while out in space. They just transform energy into matter.
It's an obstacle as they can't really tell a story that involves a limited resource unless they explain why it can't be simply replicated. Now, sometimes, they say just that. But it's always something they have to acknowledge.
And we have to bow to the fact that Star Trek is entirely fiction. We don't really know how a post-scarcity society will function. So we will wind up still projecting contemporary mores on them. So the captain gets a special office and larger quarters.
DS9 has replicators, but they're also trying to be the "wild west frontier" Star Trek, so they're not available to everyone and there are non-Federation societies present. And those societies aren't post-scarcity, so money exists. (And then there are the societies that are both technically post-scarcity, yet still materialistic which is just weird)
Voyager has replicators on the ship, but their solution is to remove the ship from the Federation and handwave the fact that for the most part, starships don't require fuel in a traditional sense. I think the fuel for starships would be antimatter, but it's never an issue on the show unless it needs to be.
