Whenever there’s a storyline with quark, they talk about money/latinum.
I remember in one of the next gen episodes that there was discussion about money and Picard said something about how they’ve moved away from money.
So do Starfleet get paid now?
Update: thank you for the quick responses. From what I’m gathering the tldr is that the following is the answer
- Ferengi love for money/not being a post scarcity society by design
- Bajorans being so near their slavery times and not post scarcity yet
- Quark creating an atmosphere of camaraderie/gambling/upgraded replicators/actual food
All this requires some form of currency.
DS9 is a Bajoran station, not a Federation one. The Bajoran economy is not post-scarcity and still runs on money. Either Starfleet officers get a stipend to purchase things when posted on such assignments, or Quark simply bills Starfleet. Either way, Starfleet/the UFP likely has a reserve of latinum and other resources for trade with other nations.
Ok so next question. If the computer can magically create anything. And they are on almost all space stations (including cardassian/federation ones) what’s the point of a bar?
Gambling makes sense. Paying for food/drink when you have a replicator doesn’t.
No one said the replicator can perfectly create the most delightful and exquisite flavors and aromas associated with the real thing. Also the bar is like a real bar in a way, you’re not paying for just the food/drink but also the atmosphere.
Also also it’s a Bajoran station, so maybe Quark has to pay an energy bill even for using the drinks replicator.
Also also also Quark makes the point that he had programmed the drinks replicator to be even better than a regular one, so you’re also paying for that.
I think Sisko threatened to charge Quark for rent and utilities in one episode as a way to get Quark to do something Sisko wanted.
Quark may be billing Starfleet for his services, but I’m sure he understands how to be in the good graces of his cop landlord.
Also also also Quark makes the point that he had programmed the drinks replicator to be even better than a regular one, so you’re also paying for that.
Great point.
And to be clear, by “programmed” we mean “installed weird sketchy dark web firmware, some of which he happened to write and sell himself” and by “even better” we mean “breaks lot of Federation food safety rules in fun ways”.
This makes much more sense. On my first run through of ds9 and this has been bothering me
maybe Quark has to pay an energy bill even for using the drinks replicator.
I think this is the main part. Things cost money on DS9 because the energy used to run the replicators is a finite resource, given that they are in such a remote location.
You can buy alcohol cheap from a store in real life, along with all the ingredients to make drinks, yet people still go to bars where cocktails cost more than a meal. They’re not going just because of superior bartending skills, they’re going as part of the experience of drinking with other people. Because on DS9, your other option is basically to drink in your quarters, which is no fun.
There are more options for food on DS9, but people still go to Quark’s for the atmosphere. It’s lively and fun, which is probably hard to come by otherwise on a remote space station. I doubt people are coming to Quark’s in droves for the food though, it’s more just something you get if you’re already there.
There has been several episodes that talk about how poor the quality the food and drink are. Plus Starfleet replicators cannot make alcohol.
They can in TNG at least. There is an episode about people being cryogenically frozen in the past, because of uncurable illnesses. They unfroze them, and one dude ordered alcohol. He even said it was the best glass he has ever had.
Plus Starfleet replicators cannot make alcohol.
I don’t think that’s accurate, we saw an episode of lower decks where the group were discussing that Starfleet replicators use a similar chemical that has much shorter lived symptoms.
The exact quotes were tense asking how they were all so drunk when x thing existed and Mariner replying she had started asking real alcohol after the 2 drink.
@aredditimmigrant @VindictiveJudge later in lower decks it’s revealed that quark has “done some work” to his replicators that make them produce results you can’t get in your quarters/mess hall
The computer can’t create everything, that’s why gold is near worthless and latinum is eternal.
Paying for food or drink would be for recipes not programmed into your own replicator, or when you’re not at home with your own. Star fleet seems paternal about healthy stuff like synthehol.
Latinum is chosen as the default currency, exactly because it is not replicable. In ST:Outpost there’s an episode where they find an alien tech that is able to replicate latinum, but only for a couple days before it dissolves. That is than used by ferengi pirates for obvious malicious reasons. ST:outpost is a fan production though, so not canon, but I do believe this is how it is. It is briefly mentioned in the apendices on latinum’s memory alpha page
The Bajoran economy is not post-scarcity
So I understand the above items (latinum being the most important and fungible) being non-replicatable. But at the point where Starfleet is permanently on your station and has easy access to both replicators and infinite energy, why aren’t the Bajorans also post-scarcity? You’d think that tech, while powerful, is a far more important thing to trade for and Starfleet has an incentive to uplift societies it isn’t at war with to prevent scarcity wars and instability.
Bajor isn’t part of the Federation, so they don’t have immediate access to all Federation tech. Also, even when they join, I’m not convinced that the Federation just hands new members everything. The Prime Directive is all about not interfering in a society’s natural growth, and although achieving warp travel is the major barrier to initiating First Contact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were additional steps along the way once a planet has joined the Federation.
Star Trek was pretty inconsistent with money. Riker often gambled for money, and they certainly treated specific items as “valuable” (historical items, weapons, and especially liquor.)
I think some of the writers just didn’t know how to picture a post-money world. But by DS9 they mostly treated things like latinum an inter-species trading valuable (especially to/from the Ferengi) or just something that’s needed in the outskirts of the Federation.
and they certainly treated specific items as “valuable” (historical items, weapons, and especially liquor.)
Historical items definitely have non-monetary value. They can’t truly be replaced since, no matter how accurate the replica, only the one chair will be the Enterprise-A’s captain’s chair, for example. Replicators have software restrictions on what you can make with them, so you can’t just replicate weapons under normal circumstances, which creates scarcity and gives them value. Starfleet replicators also seem to be restricted from creating alcohol, which means most of the characters we see can only get it on shore leave, which also creates scarcity and therefor value. Alcohol is probably significantly less scarce when sourced through civilian replicators. The ones on DS9 are programmed with Starfleet’s restrictions, though.
That’s my point though. They don’t really address how McCoy got the glasses he gave to Kirk in Star Trek II. Did he buy them? Did he just ask someone for them? Did he barter for them for services?
Same thing with alcohol, some people pull out alcohol they obtained through some back alley, black market deal. But what was traded for this black market alcohol?
My SO and I say that all the chips they’re exchanging during the Enterprise-D poker games are exchangeable for sexual favors.
Complete tangent, it’s probably not too hard to get around the limits of a replicator if they prohibit or limit alcohol. Presumably you could have it create all the supplies needed for fermentation and make your own batch.
It would take a bit, but you’d have as much as you’d ever want.
Ferengi have never stopped caring about profit, it’s a fundamental part of their culture.
Gold pressed latinum is an interesting currency FWIW. IIRC latinum is so valuable that gold is just the container for it, adding little value.
Gold can be replicated, so it is worthless. I don’t know why gold is used to suspend Latium, but it is.
This guy wrote a pretty in-depth essay on the subject a decade ago: https://rickwebb.medium.com/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50
Overall seems to give a good picture how Treconomics, but I think he is wrong a in a few ways. The first being private property. There is definitely personal property, but no private property as “business” like the Sisko Family Restaurant and Picard’s vineyard aren’t charging anything from what we can tell. They operate like their customers are family, and you’re visiting them to eat/drink with/etc and then go home.
The second is his labeling of The Federation as a technically capitalist society. I don’t think that’s the case, as corporations don’t seem to exist aside from the ones that are owned and operated outside of Federation space. There are family “business”, but they don’t have stocks or a stock market. And because the “businesses” that do exist don’t charge or make profit, I don’t think it can be considered capitalist.
And they are indeed credited to and debited from each citizen’s “account.” However, the average citizen doesn’t even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not measured in currency units — definitely not Federation Credits.
I think this idea of each Federation citizen having a welfare account is probably wrong. I think it’s more likely that it’s just assumed that you won’t abuse the replicators/transporters, with a set limit of how much of something a user can use it.
So you can maybe replicate only a handful of basketballs a day, a couple hundred hotdogs, etc. But there is an inbuilt limit to the machine and electricity provided to your home. But it’s not an account.
Sure, I agree that there is absolutely somebody/some governing body controlling and tracking energy use. But again, no personal account.
As for the rest of what he said there, I am pretty much in full agreement.
How I’ve always seen it:
Starfleet (and perhaps a large portion of the UFP) do not use money or valuable materials to pay their workers and other organisations within Starfleet and likely those other UFP worlds under the same philosophy.
However, they do need to deal with many civilisations that do not subscribe to the same ideals. As such, they would likely maintain funds by trading to and from these civilisations.
It would be possible as others suggest to either bill Starfleet directly, or for officers to be able to requisition various precious items/currency as/when needed.
