TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

But that gives them inherent value and would end up being traded internally. And then people would buy up stuff from outside the Federation and charge people in the Federation for those things in credits so that those people don't have to travel off-planet to get those desirable things.

And as I said, they gave thousands of credits to the Barzans, so credits are obviously worth something when exchanged back to the Federation too.

On top of that, in TOS, there is a scene where someone wagers with credits (conceptually, but it basically sounded like a thing). To add to that, credits were being used on Space Station K-7, a Federation space station, or Uhura would not have been able to purchase a Tribble and Cyrano Jones wouldn't have been there selling them.

I'm afraid we will have to accept that Federation economics makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

This was commonly brought up on DaystromInstitute on reddit, but while DS9 is a Bajoran station it's run and maintained by Starfleet. Quark still has to "pay" for using the staion's power, using station personnel for repairs and maintenance, and likely some form of rent. In lieu of actually paying money to fulfill those debt, the equivalent amounts are credited to the station personnel. Which they can use to order drinks or meals, reserve the holosuite, play darts or dabo, and so on.

In one episode Inparticular, Sisko was leveraging into Quark about actually charging his rent..so it kinda lines up.

The UFP doesn't have an internal currency, per se, but other planets, species, etc do. In maintaining trade and relations they still provide goods and services which, depending on the race, would be more inclined to pay for it instead of trade or barter. Maybe those funds get distributed as sort of a UBI for all citizens, or added to a slush fund for those involved in said transactions? Bob the federation civilian has 10,000 Fed Credits, which can be used to purchase a bottle of Klingon Blood wine and hand crafted Mek'Leth the next time he catches a ride on a Federation transport to Qo'noS.

Maybe even on a starship, supply runs or something like it are done which ends in compensation of some sorts. Those funds can get distributed to the crew, so next time they're in port on another planet they can purchase local goods.

I like to think the federation can synthesize latinum but keep it under wraps for fear of disrupting/inflating their trade agreements.

Edit: s/platinum/latinum

Quark is ferengi, he'll accept anything of value, for a modest fee of course oh and you'd have to factor in the premium for currency conversion + a little extra on top for the effort to go out and convert credits. Then there's also the middle man fee, the convenience fee and the using-credits-on-a-weekend fee...

For TV writing, basically. If they actually used their technology to its full potential, the federation would never get into many of the problems they get into on the show.

Think of all those episodes where there’s intruders on the Enterprise or someone has gone missing but nobody noticed. What’s the first thing they do? Ask the computer to scan for life signs on the ship.

Turns out the computer is continuously monitoring the life signs of everyone on board! So why aren’t intruders immediately trapped with forcefields and security automatically notified? Why isn’t there an instantaneous, automatic amber alert when a crew member goes missing from the ship? Why aren’t injured/sick people automatically transported to sickbay instead of dying alone in their quarters or a low-traffic corridor?

The computer can also monitor life signs down on the planet, so it could and should transport people to sickbay instantly when they get injured. Otherwise, for dangerous planets with unstable atmospheres that block scanning and transporting they should not be sending crew down at all. Send probes! They can replicate tons of them, have them fly down to collect information, and return to orbit for rendezvous.

I assume replicators have some non-trivial energy debt, too. If my memory were better, I might even remember an episode where replicators couldn't be used because they were on backup power. Like, compared to warp, it's nothing, but if the warp core or main dilithium generators are offline, replicators don't work.

I know we're in tenforward, but another good post-scarcity-except-when-not is Iain Banks' Culture. Intelligences still trade, but it's more information/skillset/favors based.

I wish they'd explored this more in Voyager, as rationing their energy reserves was always a narrative tension throughout the series. It would have been interesting to explore a crew used to post-scarcity economics have to wrangle with switching to scarcity economics and all of the problems that come with it.

Or the entire Federation gets taken over by some corrupt entity or entities. Or it's just inherently corrupt.

Unfortunately, your head canon doesn't explain why credits were part of the negotiations with the Barzans for their wormhole. I suppose you could add the detail that the Federation was actually agreeing to provide a certain amount of energy to the Barzans. That might work. It would be a weird way to put it though.