I'm not sure if this comes across as the compliment I mean it as, but on my last rewatch of this episode I was trying to remember which TNG episode it reminded me of, only to realize that I was thinking of ... this episode of The Orville. The 2D universe feels like something that could have made a great TNG episode, but instead it made a great Orville episode. Phrased differently, I'm just very happy with this episode as a spiritual successor to old-school Trek.
It's nice to get some background on how society operates in a post-scarcity culture. The answer is kind of "the same way it works in Star Trek," but having the Kelly describe how a person's reputation has replaced money as the marker of success is a nice bit of world-building which doesn't really change much about this episode beyond making the world a bit deeper.
I'm also glad to see a bit of character-repair for LaMarr after what "Majority Rule" did to him. As I said on that episode, I do like the character in other episodes and this one explores his nature much better. MacFarlane has talked about trading the LaMarr and Malloy comedy double-act for a deeper character:
There's a little bit of sacrifice because they're so good together; you can no longer have them sitting next to each other, but what we gain is an identity for the character that really ended up A, giving us a story, and B, gave us an anchor to this rogue's gallery down in engineering.
On first viewing, I remember being kind of disappointed to see LaMarr get Scotty'd, but having somebody important down in engineering does make those scenes more compelling in future episodes. Compare to "Firestorm" last week when that redshirt got bonked: it felt quite disconnected from the main cast, since our only inroad there is Larry Joe Campbell's Lt. Commander Newton, who we know very little about. It's a solid change.
Lastly, it's a small bit of work, but Isaac reassessing LaMarr after he chews out the science team for mocking Yaphit is more great faceless acting from Mark Jackson. Love to see him convey his changing opinion of LaMarr with just a "look", if it can even be called that much.