Interesting (for someone who isn’t an economist) opinion on how Star Trek’s economy works.
https://medium.com/editors-picks/29bab88d50

I always considered it this way : Star Trek is definitely a post-scarcity society. They have effectively infinite energy and a way to turn a given amount of energy into any form of matter. So there's literally no 'need' left in their economy. If you want something mundane, you can pretty much have it. So it always seemed to me that people in Star Trek weren't doing jobs because they were being paid to do them - I don't remember pay ever being mentioned on Star Trek at any point - but because they WANT to do them. Everything is essentially a hobby, or you're given a 'job' because you're good at it. Functional objects have no value as they can easily be recreated so the only objects with value are those with an intrinsic uniqueness i.e. works of art. And even then, if you're an artist, you don't need to sell your art to buy food or clothes or anything, so why not just give it away to someone who likes it and start the next one?

So the overall economy of Star trek is barter in the loosest sense and it's very small scale anyway. Economics on the grand scale simply doesn't exist, because all the normally traded commodities - raw or processed materials - have no value and everyone can make whatever they need, so there are in general no companies selling goods or services to invest in. They have, is essence, a vast oversupply of energy, raw materials and labour. Under those conditions, how can any sort of economy as we now understand it exist?

To me, Star Trek should be very similar to the Banks's 'Culture' but they haven't developed the overarching Minds to run everything. They do that stuff themselves to give them something to do. That and hassling other societies who haven't got that far yet, which they seem to do almost every other week despite their ethics apparently forbidding them from doing so.


Jon

And the Ferengi? And all the other trading revs? The ensigns losing a months pay to the officers playing poker? It seems that they are provided with the basics in turn for their work and they earn some money for buying luxuries. They also used gold plated latinum for trading with some other races, such as the above mentioned ferengi.

Likewise they gad to pay or earn time on the holodeck. And they had to pay for power rations, especially replicator rations in Voyager.

IIRC, the Ferengi traded as much as a religion as a necessity. They defined their social hierarchy by their ability to trade well. Plus I was generally talking about the Federation rather than any of the other cultures or societies. There's nothing to say whether the Ferengi or whoever had reached the same 'post scarcity' stage as the Federation.


Voyager may be a special case - it was effectively cut off from the rest of the Federation and thus the resource situation is different. It may be in that story there are things a ship replicator can't make but if you're in federation space are easy to get, whereas way across the galaxy.. if you're marooned, everything is suddenly scarce.

Not read the article fully nor ever watched TOS but certainly agree that there seemed to be some money involved in ST:TNG. People had credits, they gambled, they spent money. I recall bartering for goods but I also recall that the value and meaning of life had changed from living to work to living to learn, grow and expand in various forms.

I also suspect that meals were probably on a "tab" and may well have been docked against wages automatically. Guests on board probably didn't have to pay and may well have been subsidised..

When playing poker, you'll notice that they played for duty shifts and other such items of worth. In Voyager, the currency was replicator rations.

As the article states, there is very likely a cash reserve of other non federation currencies which can be traded with if needed. The average federation citizen is so wealthy (ie energy rich, not cash rich) that they would not really need cash in the forms we know it.