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.

  • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
    6•3 months ago

    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.

    • Flying SquidOPM
      2•3 months ago

      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.

      • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
        4•3 months ago

        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.