The role of currency in the new Star Trek

[Duane]

There are three references to currency in the new movie (maybe more.) Does anyone know if this was the writer's deliberate attempt to introduce currency in the new alternate reality?

References are all made during the bar scene, something like:

1. Kirk "Her drink's on me."
2. Uhura: Her drink's on her."
3. (A more obvious reference) Background voice says: "I just bought a drink!" (when Pike orders everyone out of the bar.)

My apologies if this has already been raised.

 

[Cky]

She never handed over any cash, or we never saw her do it anyway.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Starfleet officers have accounts which get credited everyday which they then use to get things they need.

 

[Johnnymuffintop]

I'd imagine, since it's a socialist utopia, the only currency is for luxuries, everyone is allows a curtain amount of all human needs, but to get more lavish stuff you would use currency.

 

[iguana_tonante]

There are three references to currency in the new movie (maybe more.) Does anyone know if this was the writer's deliberate attempt to introduce currency in the new alternate reality?

It can't be a deliberate attempt to introduce currency, since it was always there in the original timeline.

From wiki:

At the Federation space station K-7 in the original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", set in 2267, Uhura offers to buy a Tribble for 10 credits.

In the episode "Errand of Mercy", also set in 2267, Spock estimates that Starfleet has invested over 122,200 credits in his training as a Starfleet officer.

In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, in 2285, while on Earth, McCoy attempts to hire a ship to take him to the Genesis Planet, and is warned it would be expensive and cost many credits

 

[Ovation]

In TWOK, Carol Marcus requests funding for her research. It suggests money has not disappeared from the 23rd century, at any rate.

 

[theFirebottle]

The two posts above me are shining examples of how, despite the strange convictions of some, Star Trek "canon" is about as inconsistent, contradictory, and irrelevant as you might expect from a writer-shared universe.... and we wouldn't have it any other way.


I don't think we can expect to see paper currency or coin in this 'verse, considering the fact that right now our economy is working on making card payments convenient for everything.

 

[JustKate]

In TOS, Kirk makes several references to currency, too - I can remember at least once him telling somebody or other who had done something especially good that he'd "earned his pay" that day, but I think he used that and similar expressions more than once. Idioms can remain in the language long after whatever inspired them has disappeared. How many people know the literal meaning of "bellwether"?

 

[Squiggy]

References to currency are also made in TNG.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

It seems to me that there is currency in the form of credits but I believe the way people are "paid" in Starfleet is somewhat different to the way people are paid today.
Perhaps regardless of the job you do everyone gets the same number of credits (an amount of credits that allows everyone to live comfortably and still afford some luxuries on shore leave), people do their jobs simply "to better themselves" as Picard put it in First Contact.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, Kirk's stepdad was going to sell the car.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I doubt McCoy's divorce cost him imaginary assets.

 

[Arlo]

Where did the whole "we have no money" thing come from? I recall in a TNG episode, the one where they come across frozen people from the 20th century, Picard tells them they don't use money anymore. Was that it?

 

[Holodoc]

That, and his line from First Contact where he tells Lilly much the same thing.

Don't even try and figure out the economy of the 23rd/24th century, though. Jake Sisko couldn't explain it, and he lives there!

 

[Jolantru]

Go look up "Star Trek Mistakes" on Youtube. There are hundreds of contradictions on money in the other series.

I thought the whole, "there's no money in the 24th century" crap was stupid. Money is actually one of the greatest inventions of mankind. Money ensures that in order to receive the benefits of society, you also have to be a participant. It also allows us to offer our services to one area, and receive credit to purchase items in other areas of the economy. Otherwise we'd be on the barter system.

 

[Sci]

There are three references to currency in the new movie (maybe more.) Does anyone know if this was the writer's deliberate attempt to introduce currency in the new alternate reality?

References are all made during the bar scene, something like:

1. Kirk "Her drink's on me."
2. Uhura: Her drink's on her."
3. (A more obvious reference) Background voice says: "I just bought a drink!" (when Pike orders everyone out of the bar.)

My apologies if this has already been raised.

Considering that currency and money existed in TOS -- Cyrano Jones selling tribbles aboard a Federation station in "The Trouble With Tribbles;" Harry Mudd trying to make money by selling "mail-order brides" to Federation miners on distant planets, and by stealing civilian ships, in "Mudd's Women;" Spock posing as a Federation merchant selling gemstones and whatnot in "Errand of Mercy;" the founding Federation member world Tellar not wanting the planet Coridan to be admitted to the Federation because they profit off of the dilithium trade -- trade whose profits would be re-diverted to the Coridanite people -- and references to the Orions' plans to sell dilithium to both sides in a Federation civil war in "Journey to Babel;" etc, etc, etc. -- I don't think it's good to read anything into it.

Money existed during TOS, so it exists in this film.

 

[Peter the Younger]

Go look up "Star Trek Mistakes" on Youtube. There are hundreds of contradictions on money in the other series.

I thought the whole, "there's no money in the 24th century" crap was stupid. Money is actually one of the greatest inventions of mankind. Money ensures that in order to receive the benefits of society, you also have to be a participant. It also allows us to offer our services to one area, and receive credit to purchase items in other areas of the economy. Otherwise we'd be on the barter system.

Amen. The Picard's "we have evolved beyond the need for material possessions" is, frankly, a bunch of new agey pseudo-marxist nonsense. I don't know if it was part of Gene's latter day soft and fuzziness (talk like that showed up in force during the first season of TNG, I don't know if it was him or the writers), but I say good riddance.

 

[Ovation]

It was him.

 

[JustKate]

I think the writers were inconsistent because it was just too damn complicated not to be. They seemed to think that this idea that humans were beyond money is important. OK, fine - if humans really had moved beyond money, that would be important. But...

But how in the heck can you show commerce of any sort without money? They'd have to deal with the practicalities of things like, "So, how did Fed personnel buy stuff when they were somewhere besides Earth? How did they gamble? How did they buy drinks at Quark's?" And that's when they'd just slide riiiiiiiiight around the issue.

I don't think it was really sloppy writing. I think it was deliberate obfuscation. They had a rock (money or something that can be exchanged is necessary for commerce) and a hard place (but humans have evolved beyond money), and when they had to, they let the plot sit right between the two.

Which is exactly why I wouldn't be too surprised if in the next movie or the one after that, somebody makes reference to "no more money" and just a few minutes later, something else happens that requires - ::gasp:: - the exchange of money. It's one of those little weirdnesses that you just have to accept when you watch Trek.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Where did the whole "we have no money" thing come from?

Picard being a dick, that's where it came from. He spouts off lines like that when he wants to feel superior to people.