The one thing about Star Trek that I’ve always had to sort of ignore in order to enjoy it is that they’re supposed to be living in a post-scarcity society where nobody uses money, but they still have people that do the absolute shit miserable jobs that nobody wants to do today.

Voyager touched on this when they had sentient holograms in perpetual servitude cleaning, Picard touched on it in the creation of “Freecloud” and DS9 touched on it with all the ferengi stuff…

But it’s never explained why people like Joseph Sisco are running restaurants for free, why Picard ‘owns’ Chateau Picard, etc…

Nor is it explained why when Nog goes to Sisco’s restaurant he is using his transporter credits…free?

There’s a lot in-universe that is unexplained and comes down to naive idealism, but that doesn’t mean that we as a society can’t strive towards it.

Someone smarter than I once said “practice doesn’t make perfect, but practice does make better.”