And barter. Ferengi love to barter. Gold pressed latinum is simply a highly valuable commodity.
Well, as far as the libertarian party is concerned, Star Trek was anti-libertarian.
To an astronomical degree.
You never saw Kirk or Picard intimate with a child. That is part and parcel of the history of the libertarian political party, so yeah Star Trek has been deeply anti libertarian if you look at it in that light.
>>>What one can call the economics of the Deep Space 9 series is a Ron Paul dream. It seems the only acceptable medium of exchange are bars of metal called Latinum.<<<
Actually the Latinum is a precious liquid pressed inside the worthless gold packaging. :)
DS9 was definitely much more pro capitalism than any of the other series. I also loved that in the film “First Contact” Earth was saved, not by Socialist humanitarians, but by a greedy Capitalist innovator, who used his genius to invent warp drive technology for personal profit.
My favorite Star Trek scene, from DS9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5I7uEEEYo
It was a WONDERFUL series and I've been a Trekkie from the late '60's but it WAS a fantasy. I knew that then too.
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER.
And those that didn't always had two warring factions that Kirk & Co. just HAD to get together to sing Kumbaya.
If I wasn't at work I could post a whole slew of Trek References.
Though I think other FReepers have post the exchange between Jake Sisko and Nog.
Latinum is a liquid metal I think, that is why it has to be pressed into a junk-metal called gold, gold-pressed latinum, to be useful as a currency.
Most Starfleet personnel doesn’t seem to need any though, their service gives them access to the atomic-version of a 3-d printer. It can make just about anything, except anti-matter or something.
TNG is depressingly Marxist.
It’s not the only medium of exchange, it’s just one that’s preferred because it can’t be replicated. But it’s still Star Trek world so there’s still credits, and there’s still replicators that provide for all basic needs and make it so you don’t really need any money.
The original series, though, was in line with the space program of the 60s. Private enterprise stopped somewhere in the stratosphere or mesosphere, and Roddenberry saw that as the model for the future. It was logical for him to conclude that in frontier societies, government and the military predominate over private interests and private enterprises.
Now of course, that's not entirely correct. Whether we're talking Roman Britain or British India or the Old West, traders and tradesmen followed where pioneers and soldiers went. Deep Space Nine may have been an attempt to take that part of history into account.
Saurian Brandy was banned in the Federation, and yet McCoy always seemed to have a bottle, and Kirk was always willing to drink from it.
-PJ