this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Goods can be exchanged without currency. It's called barter and has been around longer than money.
This is essentially not true.
There's this popular notion that "There was the bucket maker and the fisherman. I'll trade you a bucket for some fish, said the bucket maker. Sounds good, said the fisherman. Then when the bucket maker finished eating his fish, he went back to the fisherman and said I'll trade you another bucket for some more fish and the fisherman said No thanks, the first one is doing just fine." and the side quest for the bucket maker to find someone who wants a bucket right now got to the point where we just need to invent some universal third good: Money.
This is a fallacy. Small communities like those humanity started out with operate on a sort of social credit. "Ah you gave me those fish last month, we'll call it even." Eventually a community gets big enough that you start using a more formal credit system, then once the community gets big enough that you don't personally know everyone in your community, you adopt a hard currency.
In practically all cases, barter is an ad hoc system used between communities with incompatible currencies and then only briefly until relations can be established, or by individuals for whom hard currency is unavailable or inconvenient at the moment.
I'm glad we could find consensus; as you confirm barter has been around longer than money (or the time it takes to build the relationship required to trust currency exchange) and it can be used where money isused too.
Yours builds on the idea, which is fine. But the point is that The Federation doesn't need money - the gold pressed latinum is where they explore currency and seems to be missed by OP.
And there’s a reason most places use currency.
It’s quite a bit more convenient than having to actually have other goods to barter with,
But what will be stored in all those boxes on the cargo decks? Something needs to hit Worf!