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.
“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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh now I’m really looking forward to it. Thanks a bunch! These are really helpful tips!
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 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.
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
[…] 🎶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.
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
