especially when buying shares of precious metals and not acquiring the metals physically

Well, arguably the worth of gold is only equivelant to that of whatever currency you are using to purchase it

The value of gold changes depending on demand for gold, which is not fixed

Demand relative to supply, of cojrse

I dont know whether to carry on talking from the Star Trek perspective or not, I think the SciFi applications and real life are completely different of course

You guys are forgetting the role of the IMF's special drawing rights in the post-breton woods world.

SDR is backed by a suite of hard assets.

and in the event of critical monetary failure the IMF is poised to bail out any number of financial institutions.

So yeah, since the 'Nixon Shock' the connection between the USD and gold has been severed.

But it isn't as if the international financial community doesn't use gold as a hedge in the event of global economic instability.

It's a bit messed up.

One could actually argue that it isn't the USD that serves as the 'global reserve currency' any longer, but instead the SDR.

The dollar just happens to be the largest reserve percentage in the basket holding that composes the SDR.

Sci Fi isn't meant to be totally divorced from reality. Star Trek is basically "I think if it worked like this, these things would happen"

And then you get goofy shit along the way for fun

I thought we were talking monetary policy.

We were talking about money in star trek. It got a little more detailed

*I am dissapoint*.

I was challenging the notion that ST is socialist, since private property, personal possessions, wages etc exist even despite society being "post scarcity"

I was talking about Ferengi

GPL

best mcguffin

@MachoHamRandySandwich Sorry, but what you said was interesting

The difference is that with production costs basically hitting rock bottom people aren't worried about subsisting or accumulating material goods, except where scarcity is still present (excepting the Ferengi)

Picard explains it in the episode where they find the capsule with the 22nd Century frozen people as:

The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century.

The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves...and the rest of humanity.

We need the unions to lobby for a ban on 3D printing and other replicator technologies

I wish future food making was like this https://youtu.be/w2v_lpwjKUw?t=141

They say that and then reference credits and currency repeatedly elsewhere

That's the "issue"

I dont recall any mentions of currency except by the Ferengi, if there were any I would presume DS9 would clarify the most

I think Gene Roddenberry was trying to convey a world where currency is no longer a thing, and that everyone has all their needs met by replicators and other stuff, and that social evolution has led to a ppoint where people give of their services for the sake of doing what it is they love

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Federation_credit
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Money

Right, a lot of those (if not all) were after Gene Rodenberry died I believe

There's TOS ones in there

There are indeed, I somehow missed those lol

Well, it's clear to me that was what he was trying to get at, only the most thorough and forward planning creator would have everything right in the offset

Like it mentions that Roddenberry emphatically pushed a no money rule, and yet
"Later that same year, Uhura was offered a tribble for ten credits by a bartender on Deep Space Station K-7, before receiving one gratis from Cyrano Jones. (TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles")"

Yeah, I think thats probably just how his vision of what the universe would have been like changing over time

Since there are refences explicitly pointing out no currency, whereas these are in flavour text or metaphor moments