I wish we lived in a post-scarcity Star Trek world where there’s no money except there is but not in the Federation except when it IS in the Federation and no one has any needs except when they do.
I wish we lived in a post-scarcity Star Trek world where there’s no money except there is but not in the Federation except when it IS in the Federation and no one has any needs except when they do.
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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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 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.
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.