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.
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:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century.
Lily Sloane: No money? You mean you don’t get paid?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. Actually, we’re rather like yourself and Dr. Cochrane.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.
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.
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’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-
Premier Bhavani of the Barzanian Planetary Republic hosted the bidding parties aboard the USS Enterprise-D. During the negotiations, Mendoza represented the Federation’s interests and presented their proposal, including: a lump sum payment of 1,500,000 Federation credits would be made upon conclusion of agreement, 100,000 credits per Barzanian year thereafter, the Barzanian Planetary Republic would be an equal partner in proceeds of operational revenues of venture, Barzanian personnel would be employed as principal operating staff of ground-based support facility, long-term economic, technical, and educational assistance would be provided by United Federation of Planets, and Barzan II would benefit from increased planetary security due to protection by Starfleet, with a potential agreement term that would have expired stardate 53000.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Barzan_wormhole
Credits obviously have significant value.
It’s also established that there are things which can’t be replicated, or not replicated properly, so they have to buy those.
True. Although this is usually stuff needed for maintaining starships, for plot reasons. Not stuff that a random person might want.
And we can’t just say, “well TOS just doesn’t count” because it’s canon.
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.
Barzans…
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.
Credits obviously have significant value.
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.
“Let’s see, time to write a Star Trek episode. Says here the Federation doesn’t use money. Welp, no idea how to write a story without it so… the Federation has money now. Man, this is easy!”
I think it works as a sort of reverse local currency that the federation administration exchanges at given rates for trade outside the federation, but cannot be spent within its domain and has no direct value to its citizens.
We also know that at least energy credits / transporter rations exist, so my guess is the actual currency is the power required to do things, like transport or replication. Average people in the federation probably have a fairly large allotment of energy to spend for themselves and rarely need any extra, so they have no real use for the currency aside from interacting with other cultures or possibly exchanging it with the federation’s external commerce administration.
The UFP doesn’t have an internal currency, per se, but other planets, species, etc do. In maintaining trade and relations they still provide goods and services which, depending on the race, would be more inclined to pay for it instead of trade or barter. Maybe those funds get distributed as sort of a UBI for all citizens, or added to a slush fund for those involved in said transactions? Bob the federation civilian has 10,000 Fed Credits, which can be used to purchase a bottle of Klingon Blood wine and hand crafted Mek’Leth the next time he catches a ride on a Federation transport to Qo’noS.
Maybe even on a starship, supply runs or something like it are done which ends in compensation of some sorts. Those funds can get distributed to the crew, so next time they’re in port on another planet they can purchase local goods.
I like to think the federation can synthesize latinum but keep it under wraps for fear of disrupting/inflating their trade agreements.
Edit: s/platinum/latinum
I just want a fucking replicator and a holodeck. I’d be set for life with those two things.
Also: Quark wouldn’t accept credits would he? I thought he only cared about gold pressed latinum, which is treated like cash and even comes in various denominations (slips, strips and bars). IIRC from one of the first season episodes of DS9, Starfleet stationed there are given like 5 slips a week or something. Which is barely anything at all.
Quark is ferengi, he’ll accept anything of value, for a modest fee of course oh and you’d have to factor in the premium for currency conversion + a little extra on top for the effort to go out and convert credits. Then there’s also the middle man fee, the convenience fee and the using-credits-on-a-weekend fee…
Oh you’re using a different bank than we do, best to take all of that and add si-eventy percent to it.
Yes, I’d love to have my own wine estate in the countryside, just like the Picard family!
I’ve always wondered about how they have to seemingly make the replicators suck at random shit, like how they can’t just make the fancy new tricorders (Lower Decks S1E3, I think) and have to compete for the chance to win one.
For TV writing, basically. If they actually used their technology to its full potential, the federation would never get into many of the problems they get into on the show.
Think of all those episodes where there’s intruders on the Enterprise or someone has gone missing but nobody noticed. What’s the first thing they do? Ask the computer to scan for life signs on the ship.
Turns out the computer is continuously monitoring the life signs of everyone on board! So why aren’t intruders immediately trapped with forcefields and security automatically notified? Why isn’t there an instantaneous, automatic amber alert when a crew member goes missing from the ship? Why aren’t injured/sick people automatically transported to sickbay instead of dying alone in their quarters or a low-traffic corridor?
The computer can also monitor life signs down on the planet, so it could and should transport people to sickbay instantly when they get injured. Otherwise, for dangerous planets with unstable atmospheres that block scanning and transporting they should not be sending crew down at all. Send probes! They can replicate tons of them, have them fly down to collect information, and return to orbit for rendezvous.
I always wondered why there is so much emphasis on mining. Why use bajoran/holographic slaves when you can just transport the ore directly to your cargo bay?
Plenty of episodes where crew members get trapped in caverns where the transporter can’t reach and they have to set up pattern enhancers. I would assume the miners are done ng just that, setting up pattern enhancers to increase range to whatever they’re trying to get to.
It also makes sense that ships would have overpowered, top of the line transporters and replicators. At least the best ships. I would assume that there are different spec l, lower quality devices in use. This was my main takeaway from lower decks. We’re used to seeing the best of the best on the enterprise. So yeah, if all of Starfleet was that good, both tech and people, they wouldn’t have so many problems. But it evidently isn’t.
Presumably the ore they’re mining can’t be transported safely at all because it’s explosive or something. It would also make sense that it can’t be replicated either, otherwise they’d just do that.
It still sort of makes sense, as others mentioned for working with non-federation entities. But the money-less thing makes more sense to me if you have replicators. The only “cost” there is the material you use for the replicator. So even if you had a money society, things --should-- be dirt cheap since most even outside the federation should have a replicator.
In some ways, I think it’d be harder to have a money and market system when replicators exist.
I assume replicators have some non-trivial energy debt, too. If my memory were better, I might even remember an episode where replicators couldn’t be used because they were on backup power. Like, compared to warp, it’s nothing, but if the warp core or main dilithium generators are offline, replicators don’t work.
I know we’re in tenforward, but another good post-scarcity-except-when-not is Iain Banks’ Culture. Intelligences still trade, but it’s more information/skillset/favors based.
Replicators being unusable because of power shortages was an early plot point in Voyager, and there are things that can’t just be replicated since they often had to trade with friendly civilisations that they encountered.
Of course, the real answer is that they went with whatever rules suited the plot at the time, consistency be damned.
I’ve been on a sci-fi kick recently and started reading more. I’ll add this to the list! Thanks!
Oh! In so glad I got to be the one to introduce you to Banks!!
A couple of caveats:
- There’s no starting point, and few overlapping characters. Start anywhere.
- Some people think some books are better than others (and some people have strong opinions about a couple of the books). There are a couple books in particular that are commonly considered the best, and the worst. Read at least two before giving up, just in case the first isn’t your cup of tea.
- Iain is dead; he passed away a few years ago at a relatively young age. He only wrote a dozen or so Culture novels, and there won’t be any more (from him).
- I went from liking him to him being one of my favorite authors over a period of a decade.
The novels really are all over the place. By the time I’d reached the end of his bibliography, I fell into a depression that there wouldn’t be any more. While other authors were his peers and friends, and some are put in the same general “feel” category, he really was quite unique and I haven’t yet found an author who could fill his shoes.
If you have time and interest, I’d suggest looking online at some fan sites suggesting entry points (and points to avoid starting with). All his books are good, but I do think a couple read better if you’re generally familiar with his writing than as first reads.
I envy you; you’re in for a treat. Banks was one of the greats.
Oh now I’m really looking forward to it. Thanks a bunch! These are really helpful tips!
You’re right that there is no starting point, but I would still start with Consider Phlebas. It was the first novel, so it’s a good jumping-in point in terms of being introduced to the basic concepts. It’s also still my favorite of the novels.
I wish they’d explored this more in Voyager, as rationing their energy reserves was always a narrative tension throughout the series. It would have been interesting to explore a crew used to post-scarcity economics have to wrangle with switching to scarcity economics and all of the problems that come with it.
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.
If it has no value inside the Federation, why would it have value outside the Federation? That makes no sense. Why would you negotiate to give a certain amount of credits to the Barzans in that case? Why not seventeen trillion? Why not a googol plex amount of credits? You can always “print” more credits since they have no internal value, right?
I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. The Federation is post-scarcity. They don’t need to worry about how much things cost inside their economic bubble.
Just because Federation citizens don’t need to think about money and buying things as part of their daily lives, that doesn’t mean things have no price. For federation citizens, that price means nothing and they’d likely never even see it. For a Ferengi buying something like replacement parts at a Federation station though, that price matters.
When you’re dealing with other cultures that do work with a monetary system, they have a monetary value for things. If you’re going to interact and buy/sell items back and forth you need to have some sort of system to facilitate that. So the Federation has a standard credit, and items are worth various amounts so the cost can be directly exchanged like we do currently comparing different currencies. That credit just doesn’t really matter to Federation citizens that don’t interact outside the Federation, which is likely the nearly all of them given the size of the Federation.
We only see it referenced several times because we’re watching Starships that interact with all these different cultures daily. We aren’t watching Mr. Wilson who lives on Earth and has never left Federation space. While he does travel, he goes to Risa for vacation, and that is inside the Federation still. So his daily work, recreation, and even vacation doesn’t involve needing any money.
But why would other cultures accept those credits if the citizens of the Federation consider them valueless? What good are they to those cultures?
I imagine they have value because they can be used to buy things from the federation itself.
It’s the same for any currency. Voyager had to barter for goods since credits don’t mean anything in the delta quadrant, but that is less convenient for both parties than a standard currency.
I like to imagine federation credits as something like Euros. If you live in the US, you don’t use Euros. You could go your whole life without using them. But if you travel you need them. If you are a government or military personnel you need them. You could say, “We don’t use Euros in the US.” In the same way Picard says " The federation doesn’t use money."
Some citizens in the US trade Euros. Some Federation members would trade Federation credits. But in general Federation citizens wouldn’t use Federation credits to pay for goods and services.
Living in the federation sounds great til Starfleet goes and provokes some horrific alien empire for the 9000th time
Or the entire Federation gets taken over by some corrupt entity or entities. Or it’s just inherently corrupt.
How, exactly, people are corrupted when everyone else is pretty chill and they can’t be bribed is always a bit of a puzzler.
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
[…] 🎶Truly a paradise, except when it isn’t
This is head cannon and I can’t really support it in universe but it’s the only way the Federation economy makes sense to me.
Every Federation citizen gets an energy allotment that they can use to replicate anything that they need. The allotment is well beyond what’s required to meet their basic needs. A Federation Credit is an allotment of a certain amount of energy that the holder can use to have the Federation replication something for them. The credits aren’t particularly valuable to Federation citizen living in Federation controlled space because they are already allotted a large amount of energy.
Unfortunately, your head canon doesn’t explain why credits were part of the negotiations with the Barzans for their wormhole. I suppose you could add the detail that the Federation was actually agreeing to provide a certain amount of energy to the Barzans. That might work. It would be a weird way to put it though.
I suppose you could add the detail that the Federation was actually agreeing to provide a certain amount of energy to the Barzans.
That’s pretty much what I was saying, maybe I didn’t say it well.
A Federation credit is a right to use a certain amount of energy on a Federation replecator. So if a non Federation group wanted to get 10k self sealing stem bolts from the Federation then Starfleet would look up the energy requirement to replicate the stem bolts and divide that by how much energy is represented by one credit and that’s how many credits the group would have to use to get the stem bolts.
We could be in a post-scarcity world, if certain mentally unwell individuals had less power.
There is money in every other series
