Latinum and Buying

[Plutodawn]

How did starfleet personnel and civilians get Latinum, or currency of any kind for that matter?

It has always struck me as odd that everyone stationed on DS9 from the Federation magically had Latinum, despite not obviously needing it, given the availability of replicators in quarters.

It's simple enough to say they received a stipen, but I can recall Captain Picard smiling saying the economics of the future worked differently.... soldiers being paid in precious metals (is it a metal?) on front line duty isn't exactly utopian economics, that's quite Roman actually.

Why would the federation be blowing it's Latinum reserves on troop pay, if troops had no "real reason" to receive payment They have free medical, quarters, any food they want, clothing replicates for free (they know what size they are, evidence the uniform), and can make computers likely.... really that much need to dip into federation reserves so they can get a professional tailor to sew, or gamble? Only remote excuse is DS9 lacked a public, free Holodeck. I doubt Quark allowed them to let them to hussle him and the customers without payment, and built up a large, ever growing latinum reserve from that miniscule beginning, everyone from the federation hussling Quark. Quark wouldn't tolerate a bar full of federation personal who only got their latinum originally from beating him, and only pay through further winnings.

Second question.... Jake had no money. I recall he told Nog that when they started selling junk for a profit.

If I am on earth, living in Hicksville, no real special trait about me, I can paint, write poetry, dug a ditch once, but not too deep, cause it was hot and I pulled a muscle, cause I'm a federation citizen and manual labor is too hard for me.... and I suddenly get it in my head I want my own shuttle craft.... so I can fly around Uranus and Alpha Centari for a year like a vagabon, painting asteroids.... how do I get one in this wonderful economic future?

Is there a waiting list for a industrial replicator to make me one? Do I get a Warp One shuttle only?

I'm presuming people have plans online for a "make your own shuttle craft" that replicators can make piece by piece, tools included, chunk by chunk, in a food replicator. Captain Janeway said weapons could be made.... but I'm guessing warp capable fuels can't. You gotta get that somehow, and walking with a gas can to a warp-fuel station to fill your shuttle parked out in the woods just doesn't seem like it would work.

Besides, I'm certain Quark would of stayed up all night replicating himself parts for his own ship, patching one together if it was that simple. But if you had a kitchen replicator (but no transporters), and no car (too poor).... and that replicator could make a car piece by piece, wouldn't it be tempting to just build one if you had tutorials?

I'm guessing most people lucked out of Latinum and personal Shuttlecraft. Year, I'm sure you could take a ship in the federation as easily as a bus today, but that's not the same as personal ownership.

Another reason I know most people economically couldn't have a shuttle craft is the Dominion War battles.

Listen.... What was if, 900 Billion dead or something in that war? If shuttle craft ownership was easy and plentiful, with do-it-yourself upgrades from the shuttlecraft replicators, the Dominion would of had 4-5 Billion shuttle craft with some motley offensive weapon attacked, ramming in mass the puny dominion fleet. For every 900 people killed, sure 4 or 5 would take to the offensive in their own shuttle craft, making the most advance lasers they could replicate. I sure wouldn't just sit around if the Federation was being steamrolled and works after world was butchered, if I and my buddies simply could fly up and harrass guerilla somewhere.

I'm left to conclude unless your a laborer, your not getting paid latinum, and the amount paid peeling potatoes will never suffice for a shuttle craft. Real industrial jobs like today near non-existant in the future, and while hologram AIs and Androids are rare, basic intellectual services via AI are plentiful. Basically the average blue and white collar worker can't get anything, other than a assurance of a room, replicator for most needs, and medical care.... and some travel passes.

Your not getting that shuttle craft, unless your stationed on DS9, and save up your Latinum. How often do they allow you to move, on earth, or to new planets? Can they say this place is over crowded, you gotta leave earth, live on a space station or another planet?

I'm really pessimistic looking at the little I can see of Federation Economics.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There is no latinum stipend but it is not illegal to possess latinum. Federation officers who deal closely with races from capitalist economies are afforded latinum for necessity purposes. And some like Riker may keep some on the side for fun.

For how shuttlecraft ownership works, I don't think anyone has a 'personal shuttlecraft' who doesn't need one for their job, but anyone can get transportation to any Federation world at will.

 

[Plutodawn]

Okay, so no Stipend for Latinum.... but you can be "afforded it for necessary purposes".....

So Quark's gambling facility was necessary purposes? Head down to the quartermaster, every officer checks out some crucial strips of Latinum for vital federation operations.... table gambling and non-replicated liqour?

You known, Sgt. Bilko managed to do all that without misappropriation of federal funds.

Did everyone on DS-9 have a side job? Took turns running a kiosk off shift, selling glasses with colored sand, or dehydrated starfish and sponges, beaded necklaces, whatever they could finger paint?

If hardly nobody could afford a shuttlecraft, the modern equivelent of a car, seems like quality of life, individual purchasing power, regressed from 20th century earth standards. In developed countries, most anyone could own a private means of transportation. In Star Trek.... your apparently completely at the will of a socialist government, one that doesn't care you don't want to spend another winter in Minsk, or on Earth, cause your not a priority on the housing roster for Hawaii, Baja, or Sri Lanka.... but your perfectly free to move to the crushing atmospheric pressure of Venus with its hellstorms, where nobody wants to live.

I'm just trying to imagine all the ways I would get pushed around and suppressed under such a system. Request a tropic location, mix up lands me in the Kuiper Belt. Find out I can't move back for years, too long a waiting list for Earth, cause everyone wants to live on Earth. That be my luck.

 

[Timo]

It doesn't sound likely that anything one can buy with latinum would actually have value to Starfleet employees who supposedly all enjoy UFP citizenship. It's just baubles to them - but the baubles do have value to the primitive natives, so every Starfleet employee who signs the form gets as many glass beads as he needs in order to make friends with the primitives.

Quark isn't in it for the money, either, not really, but for the thrill of selling that comes naturally for the species. If Sisko told him to give free beers and holonovels to all the Starfleet folks for the next ten years and dumped fifty tons of trivially replicated latinum into Quark's back pocket for compensation, nobody would be satisfied: the influx of money would crash the Ferengi system, Quark would not get his kicks, and Starfleet officers would get nothing but mean looks from the bartender for the next ten years.

Things that do have real value to our heroes would and could not be bought with latinum. If you want prime real estate on 24th century Earth, I very much doubt you can buy it at all - that is, regardless of any currency issues, you can't exchange X amount of wealth (hovercars, latinum palaces, whatever) for the real estate, because nobody wants that wealth and everybody wants the real estate. So the acres are divided according to some futuristic-socialistic scheme that doesn't touch upon the consumer market at all, and the consumer market in turn works smoothly enough with everything being free (or at least so cheap to produce that it would be more trouble than worth to charge it on the customer).

As for the production of "shuttlecraft" not being trivially cheap, the Dominion War was decided by numbers, with both sides having really big ones. There never seemed to be a shortage of ships, despite the Alphans constantly blowing up Dominion shipyards. The bottlenecks in availability appeared to lie elsewhere, outside our field of vision.

I doubt anybody would really want to buy a shuttle anyway. Just use the transporter, which can get you to a far greater number of places far faster, without the hassle of parking or donning special driving clothes or whatever. Poor folks might be forced to use vehicles - but I really don't see why, when the simultaneous transporting of seven billion people ought to be peanuts compared to what Starfleet does daily. (FWIW, LaForge in "Realm of Fear" says that mere "millions" use the transporter every day - perhaps he means that others use it less frequently, the daily total still amounting to billions?)

A dozen other interpretations are possible on this fascinatingly mysterious issue, and thankfully so. This just happens to be mine.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Old Mixer]

Does platinum come into this somewhere, or you want I should fix that typo?

 

[Timo]

It's always been platinum. It's just that Ferengi teeth and the consonant P don't really mix...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shawnster]

So Quark's gambling facility was necessary purposes? Head down to the quartermaster, every officer checks out some crucial strips of Latinum for vital federation operations.... table gambling and non-replicated liqour?

Did everyone on DS-9 have a side job?

Deep Space Nine was a Bajoran space station in Bajroan territory. Quark was not a citizen of the Federation, he did not live in the Federation and he did not work in the Federation. Bajor was not part of the Federation. You can't hold non-Federation people and locations up to Federation values. Bajor had a monetary based economy.

The Starfleet personnel that ran Deep Space Nine were simply that - they ran the station. It was not up to them to establish monetary policy.

 

[Jedi Marso]

How did starfleet personnel and civilians get Latinum, or currency of any kind for that matter?

It has always struck me as odd that everyone stationed on DS9 from the Federation magically had Latinum, despite not obviously needing it, given the availability of replicators in quarters.

It's simple enough to say they received a stipen, but I can recall Captain Picard smiling saying the economics of the future worked differently.... soldiers being paid in precious metals (is it a metal?) on front line duty isn't exactly utopian economics, that's quite Roman actually.

Why would the federation be blowing it's Latinum reserves on troop pay, if troops had no "real reason" to receive payment They have free medical, quarters, any food they want, clothing replicates for free (they know what size they are, evidence the uniform), and can make computers likely.... really that much need to dip into federation reserves so they can get a professional tailor to sew, or gamble? Only remote excuse is DS9 lacked a public, free Holodeck. I doubt Quark allowed them to let them to hussle him and the customers without payment, and built up a large, ever growing latinum reserve from that miniscule beginning, everyone from the federation hussling Quark. Quark wouldn't tolerate a bar full of federation personal who only got their latinum originally from beating him, and only pay through further winnings.

Second question.... Jake had no money. I recall he told Nog that when they started selling junk for a profit.

If I am on earth, living in Hicksville, no real special trait about me, I can paint, write poetry, dug a ditch once, but not too deep, cause it was hot and I pulled a muscle, cause I'm a federation citizen and manual labor is too hard for me.... and I suddenly get it in my head I want my own shuttle craft.... so I can fly around Uranus and Alpha Centari for a year like a vagabon, painting asteroids.... how do I get one in this wonderful economic future?

Is there a waiting list for a industrial replicator to make me one? Do I get a Warp One shuttle only?

I'm presuming people have plans online for a "make your own shuttle craft" that replicators can make piece by piece, tools included, chunk by chunk, in a food replicator. Captain Janeway said weapons could be made.... but I'm guessing warp capable fuels can't. You gotta get that somehow, and walking with a gas can to a warp-fuel station to fill your shuttle parked out in the woods just doesn't seem like it would work.

Besides, I'm certain Quark would of stayed up all night replicating himself parts for his own ship, patching one together if it was that simple. But if you had a kitchen replicator (but no transporters), and no car (too poor).... and that replicator could make a car piece by piece, wouldn't it be tempting to just build one if you had tutorials?

I'm guessing most people lucked out of Latinum and personal Shuttlecraft. Year, I'm sure you could take a ship in the federation as easily as a bus today, but that's not the same as personal ownership.

Another reason I know most people economically couldn't have a shuttle craft is the Dominion War battles.

Listen.... What was if, 900 Billion dead or something in that war? If shuttle craft ownership was easy and plentiful, with do-it-yourself upgrades from the shuttlecraft replicators, the Dominion would of had 4-5 Billion shuttle craft with some motley offensive weapon attacked, ramming in mass the puny dominion fleet. For every 900 people killed, sure 4 or 5 would take to the offensive in their own shuttle craft, making the most advance lasers they could replicate. I sure wouldn't just sit around if the Federation was being steamrolled and works after world was butchered, if I and my buddies simply could fly up and harrass guerilla somewhere.

I'm left to conclude unless your a laborer, your not getting paid latinum, and the amount paid peeling potatoes will never suffice for a shuttle craft. Real industrial jobs like today near non-existant in the future, and while hologram AIs and Androids are rare, basic intellectual services via AI are plentiful. Basically the average blue and white collar worker can't get anything, other than a assurance of a room, replicator for most needs, and medical care.... and some travel passes.

Your not getting that shuttle craft, unless your stationed on DS9, and save up your Latinum. How often do they allow you to move, on earth, or to new planets? Can they say this place is over crowded, you gotta leave earth, live on a space station or another planet?

I'm really pessimistic looking at the little I can see of Federation Economics.

The cynical skepticism is strong in this one! I love it!

24th Century economics as presented by TNG/DS9 never made a lick of sense to me either.

 

[Prax]

Deep Space Nine was a Bajoran space station in Bajroan territory. Quark was not a citizen of the Federation, he did not live in the Federation and he did not work in the Federation. Bajor was not part of the Federation. You can't hold non-Federation people and locations up to Federation values. Bajor had a monetary based economy.

The Starfleet personnel that ran Deep Space Nine were simply that - they ran the station. It was not up to them to establish monetary policy.

I don't think he said otherwise. He's asking how all of the Starfleet personnel on DS9 have Gold Pressed Latinum to spend at the bar, in the holosuites, at the Daboo games, at the restaurants, at Garak's tailoring shop. Are they paid? Do they earn it some other way?

There's 900 Starfleet personnel living on DS9. Where do they get their spending money from?

 

[Jedman67]

I don't think he said otherwise. He's asking how all of the Starfleet personnel on DS9 have Gold Pressed Latinum to spend at the bar, in the holosuites, at the Daboo games, at the restaurants, at Garak's tailoring shop. Are they paid? Do they earn it some other way?

There's 900 Starfleet personnel living on DS9. Where do they get their spending money from?

They convert the currency from their federation payroll to GPL. I agree that the Federation's economy is 'different' than modern-cash economies, but the idea of "no money" is simply absurd.

 

[Shawnster]

Ahhh, I thought he was asking about Quark specifically. As in Quark's end of the economy.

My bad. Carry on.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

They get it from the Federation. Just because the Feds don't generally use money in their own society doesn't mean that aren't sitting on a fortune of various currencies for when they deal with races that DO use money. Bajor used money, so I imagine you just go and draw out what you want (up to a point) when you want it.

Jake didn't have access to this because he was a kid and also not in Starfleet.

 

[Prax]

It is a good question though. We find out through DS9 and ENT just what Gold-Pressed Platinum is. It's liquid platinum in a gold casing. It must be one of the only remaining viable forms of currency in the Trek world. It can't be replicated, and must be rare. I wouldn't be surprised if the Federation DOES keep foreign currencies to "pay" diplomats and SF personnel, etc, who are stationed in foreign territory. I'm sure the barter system is still alive and well even IN the Federation.

Quark flip flops on gold throughout the series. Ferengis do value gold in most appearances, so it must still be somewhat rare in the galaxy. And "liquid platinum" must be very rare.

Like many of these types of questions, it's best not to delve to deep or it will stop making sense, I think.

 

[dswynne1]

I have a feeling that the Federation has an economy based on "bit coin economics". People are still paid a salary, but solely on "credits", ie. the value of one's [(work + the position) x seniority] (or something like it). And I do believe that the Federation has Latinum on reserve; they simply trade/barter/sell something tangible with non-Federation members for "cash". Then, if said Starfleet personnel wants Latinum to gamble at Quark's, they simply convert their accounts for the Latinum at the local exchange or Federation ATM. The difference is that humans of the 24th century are not into the pursuit of money, but they do get a salary or stipend. IMO, of course.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Edited the thread title per: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/how-do-i-edit-posts.286559/#post-11934072

 

[Kor]

It is a good question though. We find out through DS9 and ENT just what Gold-Pressed Platinum is. It's liquid platinum in a gold casing. It must be one of the only remaining viable forms of currency in the Trek world. It can't be replicated, and must be rare. I wouldn't be surprised if the Federation DOES keep foreign currencies to "pay" diplomats and SF personnel, etc, who are stationed in foreign territory. I'm sure the barter system is still alive and well even IN the Federation.

Quark flip flops on gold throughout the series. Ferengis do value gold in most appearances, so it must still be somewhat rare in the galaxy. And "liquid platinum" must be very rare.

Like many of these types of questions, it's best not to delve to deep or it will stop making sense, I think.

Latinum, actually. I'm thinking of the DS9 episode with all the empty casings, and Quark saying, "There's nothing here but worthless gold!"

Kor

 

[Greg Cox]

It's simple enough to say they received a stipen, but I can recall Captain Picard smiling saying the economics of the future worked differently.... soldiers being paid in precious metals (is it a metal?) on front line duty isn't exactly utopian economics, that's quite Roman actually..

The whole point of DS9 was that it was a distant outpost far from the "utopian" civilization of the Federation. And, regardless of what goes on back on Earth, one assumes that Starfleet has to deal with any number of alien cultures with any number of monetary systems and economies, so they must have a budget for dealing with this.

When on Bajor (or a Bajoran station), do as the Bajorans do when it comes to paying your bills and for your personal expenses.

 

[Shawnster]

But where do the Starfleet officers get their money to cover the expenses? Does Bajor pay the Federation? Does the Federation give each Starfleet officer a stipend of latinum each month?

 

[Tenacity]

Well, I think Starfleet personnel do get paid a (monthly?) salary, they can dump their pay into a interstellar bank account somewhere, or they can get it in physical units of value.

If Starfleet were on Earth today and in Britain, they could get pounds. If in Japan, they could get Yen. Or again they could have "direct deposit" into a bank.

 

[dswynne1]

Well, I think Starfleet personnel do get paid a (monthly?) salary, they can dump their pay into a interstellar bank account somewhere, or they can get it in physical units of value.

If Starfleet were on Earth today and in Britain, they could get pounds. If in Japan, they could get Yen. Or again they could have "direct deposit" into a bank.

Well, we are at the beginning of a "cashless society"...