this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

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I'm glad there is no money in the Federation. Unless you count credits. Which are not money. Unless you use thousands of them to pay the Barzans. Or give them to Starfleet officers to buy things like tribbles and drinks at Quark's.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (5 children)

There is no money in the Federation itself. Places like DS9 however are not part of the Federation. It is easy to forget that because the Federation is in charge of daily operations of the station, but it is a Bajoran station, and they do have ultimate control.

Whenever we see monetary exchanges, it is with non-Federation species. Quark is Ferengi, and is operating a business on a Bajoran station. The Barzans were not Federation members at the time of the Barzans Wormhole episode.

While money isn't needed in daily life inside the Federation, when interacting with other species there needs to be some form of payment available to exchange for those goods and services. Starfleet clearly has some system for officers to use to pay for that stuff when operating out of places like DS9 or when vessels interact with species outside the Federation.

I think I remember an episode of Voyager where they are on a planet and "charging" purchases at a market to the ship. I'd assume those charges are totaled up and Voyager as a whole comes to some sort of trade arrangement to pay for it all instead of trying to figure it all out individually when it's not a situation where Starfleet is interacting with the species on a constant basis to have something like set exchange rates.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

We could be in a post-scarcity world, if certain mentally unwell individuals had less power.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

But that gives them inherent value

Yes.

and would end up being traded internally.

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.

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.

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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Truly a paradise, except when it isn't

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Feels to me like we're almost at World War III, which starts in 2026 (as we all know). After that Zefram Cochrane is going to invent the warp drive and we're going to get there.

🎵 It's been a long road
Getting from there to here
It's been a long time
But my time is finally near
[...] 🎶

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