…the Federation is definitely portrayed as at least a socialist state. You can tell because Voyager enthusiastically developed a barter economy the moment that they were cut off from the Alpha Quadrant, and its infinite energy (which meant infinite matter, thanks to the replicator). This, by the way, doesn’t bother me: I’ve long understood that you absolutely NEED magic spells in order to make socialism actually work.
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The Federation is not socialist. The Federation is post-economic.
Economics deals in scarcity, but when you have free energy at the level that you can replicate matter, then there is no scarcity. There is no economics. There is no poverty.
Shh. I’m needling the Commies. 😉
Post-scarcity is simply a fancy way of talking around not having enough people, a scarcity of consumers so to speak.
No, you’re assuming a real world.
Star Trek is fantasy SF. The laws of physics don’t apply, and you can have magical free stuff.
You see this message delivered in a preachy, pompous matter a lot in the first two seasons of TNG (which were mostly terrible), particularly in the horrible episode “The Neutral Zone.”
Every time you see them trying to buy things later on, the writers have to bend over backwards to fit what they were doing into that incredibly stupid concept of having no money.
But it did lead to some hilarious lampshading of the whole idea on DS9’s “In the Cards”:
Nog: It’s my money, Jake. If you want to bid at this auction, use your own money.
Jake: I’m Human, I don’t have any money.
Nog: It’s not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake: Hey – watch it! There’s nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.
Nog: What does that mean exactly?
Jake: It means… it means, we don’t need money.
Nog: Well if you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine.
Babylon V was based on a monied society. The purpose of the station was the promotion of peace thru free trade. The show included drug dealers, criminals and don’t get me started on the lurkers.
There was even an episode in which the officers tried to resist having the rent on their quarters raised.
Somewhere not too far from here there’s a universe in which Babylon V had the budget of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I’d like to have copies of their videos.