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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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While Federation Credits are money, I was under the impression they were only really used when you want to buy stuff outside of the Federation from sellers who don't share the same socialist society that the Federation has. On a Federation world I believe they wouldn't have much value.
DS9 was not a Federation station, and the Bajorans were clearly ok with a capitalist presence. Giving Starfleet personnel a stipend seems pretty unavoidable if they want their officers to be able to partake in practically anything on DS9.
But that gives them inherent value and would end up being traded internally. And then people would buy up stuff from outside the Federation and charge people in the Federation for those things in credits so that those people don't have to travel off-planet to get those desirable things.
And as I said, they gave thousands of credits to the Barzans, so credits are obviously worth something when exchanged back to the Federation too.
On top of that, in TOS, there is a scene where someone wagers with credits (conceptually, but it basically sounded like a thing). To add to that, credits were being used on Space Station K-7, a Federation space station, or Uhura would not have been able to purchase a Tribble and Cyrano Jones wouldn't have been there selling them.
I'm afraid we will have to accept that Federation economics makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I think it's more of a universal basic income sort of deal. Every federation citizen has all their needs met without being required to work. But that doesn't mean there isn't an economy or there's no money.
But then we have this problem dialogue from First Contact:
You could argue that he was simplifying things, but I think Picard would have understood that Lily was smart enough to not make that necessary. He could have just as easily said just said the "economics of the future are somewhat different" part without the money part and the whole section of dialogue would have made much more sense. Saying that money doesn't exist is pretty much just a lie.
So I still maintain that none of it makes sense because it's all contradictory.
I've always been interested by his family winery and the family who've worked for his family for generations. Like who owns the land? What do the workers get for working? If real organic wine is a premium product that can't be adequately replicated does that hint at a two-tier market?
I'm wondering why anyone would be a waiter in Sisko's father's restaurant in New Orleans.
"This is the Federation, son! It's a cashless society! There's a vast galaxy out there! You can be whatever you want to be when you grow up!"
"I wanna be a waiter at a New Orleans creole food restaurant."
"..."
"And work for a big old jerk!"
"Okay, we're going to get you DNA tested because I'm thinking I'm not your real father."
In a civilisation that can beam food to your table a waiter is a performer, not service staff. And I do believe there are some entertainers who would find satisfaction in putting on a performance for an audience of two, whose attention is going to be somewhere else most of the time.
Presumably the Picard family owns the land. That’s why the Federation isn’t truly post-scarcity. They can’t replicate more wine estates in the French countryside. Nor chalets in the Alps, nor beach houses in Southern California.
Some people have those things. Others don’t. Maybe everyone gets a tiny apartment in NYC with a replicator and holosuite. I’d pass on that. I can’t stand being around people too much. I’d rather be working my own garden in the countryside, getting lots of fresh air and taking walks in the forest.
You can say that they will have holo versions of the countryside but we all know it’s not the same. Every time a character has wanted to spend all their time on the holodeck they were treated as having a mental illness or some kind of trauma and subjected to an intervention.
Gardening on the holodeck is no more meaningful than gardening in Stardew Valley and everybody knows it. That’s why real land like the Picard family owns has real value, and everything you can produce with a replicator and every experience you can have on the holodeck is ultimately meaningless. You might as well be living off food stamp-provided microwave dinners and playing video games all day, something you can do right now.
As for the real “meaningful” activity of traipsing around the galaxy meeting aliens and risking death every week, I think most people today would view that as incredibly reckless and irresponsible behaviour. The Enterprise is a ship full of families, not just crew! Why are they always taking them into mortal danger?
I imagine it works the way sovereign citizens think it does. The Federation maintains trade within itself and other entities. A kind of fungibility has been established to facilitate that trade. Those units of fungibility, or 'credits', are given to citizens when they need to engage in extra-federation trade. Every citizen is probably guaranteed some portion of the total fungible capacity of the Federation for personal use.
Yes.
Maybe. But pretty much everything is provided for free on Earth (and presumably elsewhere in the Federation?), so while it has value, I imagine the vast majority wouldn't care, it'd be valueless to them.
If replicators and such can provide basically everything free of charge, you'd have very little desire to earn money and buy things.
I don't really remember anything about the Barzans or the giving of credits to them, so I can't really talk about that.
And as for TOS, yeah, TOS is all over the place. They also have hundreds of mirror Earths, a German Nazi planet, Gangster Earth, etc. the whole series is a little all over the place and contradictory.
It's also established that there are things which can't be replicated, or not replicated properly, so they have to buy those.
And we can't just say, "well TOS just doesn't count" because it's canon. Very established canon in many, many ways. And Lower Decks especially has gone out of its way to make everything people don't like about Star Trek part of the canon.
As far as the Barzans-
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Barzan_wormhole
Credits obviously have significant value.
True. Although this is usually stuff needed for maintaining starships, for plot reasons. Not stuff that a random person might want.
I'm not saying it doesn't count, just that it's contradictory. You can probably point to parts of TOS that back up or dismantle either point. I wouldn't really say your point earlier proves they use money on Earth or widely within the Federation, though.
Ok, looking at your summary and your link, it says they aren't part of the Federation. So where's the inconsistency?
Of course the Federation, at a governance level, deals with money when they have to work with Capitalist governments. But that doesn't mean that society within the Federation is a capitalist society.
To some, yes. To a random person on Earth, almost certainly not. They have very little need to spend them, since they can get virtually anything they want free of charge.
The Federation only really seems to use money as a way to trade with capitalist societies, which can't really be avoided unless they were intent on converting everybody to socialism by force.
Maybe they only buy one and store the data within the replicators. Meow it’s free for all within the federation.
This is why I don't really consider the economics of the federation to be socialist. It's all some vague idealist futuristic economy that lacks any semblance of democracy by only having two representatives per planet, regardless of population size.
This was commonly brought up on DaystromInstitute on reddit, but while DS9 is a Bajoran station it's run and maintained by Starfleet. Quark still has to "pay" for using the staion's power, using station personnel for repairs and maintenance, and likely some form of rent. In lieu of actually paying money to fulfill those debt, the equivalent amounts are credited to the station personnel. Which they can use to order drinks or meals, reserve the holosuite, play darts or dabo, and so on.
In one episode Inparticular, Sisko was leveraging into Quark about actually charging his rent..so it kinda lines up.
Yet, people still work normal jobs on earth. You have people serving tables because they feel like it? Families like the Picards that have vast orchards and a huge manse for generations?
The utopia has never really made sense outside of starfleet having their own internal economy that's basically only limited by raw resources for energy to construct more starships / space stations.
As for the first one... Yes! People run restaurants and such because they enjoy it.
This is most notable with Siskos dad who is very upset on any day he can't work because his work makes him happy.