Gold Pressed Latinum (a look at inconvenience)

[Baffalo]

I was watching DS9: Who Mourns for Morn and I saw this particular image at the end of the episode



According to Quark, that's enough Latinum for 100 bricks or so. That tiny amount is supposed to fill 100 bricks of this:



That's quite a lot of gold for such a small amount of latinum. While the exchange rate from bars to bricks is unknown, what is known is the size of a single bar of Latinum, measured at 4.75 x 0.5 x 2.25 inches[1]. If we assume that the amount of latinum in that bar is minuscule compared with the amount we know goes into 100 bricks, we can simply assume that the weight of a bar is only that of the gold. Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3[2], or 0.697 lbs/in3. Since the volume of the bar is known to be 5.34375 in3, the total weight of a bar of latinum is 3.726 lbs each.

May not sound like much, but when you consider Quark tried to evacuate with 600 bars of Latinum[3], that means his case contained 2,235.6 lbs (over a ton) of gold. Unless Quark had an anti-grav unit, I don't think he's picking up a literal ton of gold. So if it's not that kind of gold, what is it? Well, a search of some common gold alloys yields information about other types of gold. A rich yellow gold alloy has 9 carats (9 parts out of 24, or 37.5%[4]) with the other 62.5% made up of silver and copper (31.25% each)[5]. Silver has a density of 10.49 g/cm3[6] (0.379 lbs/in3) and copper has a density of 8.94 g/cm3[7] (0.323 lbs/in3). If a bar were made of this alloy, it would weigh in at 2.569 lbs each. That's still 1,541.4 lbs in Quark's case during the evacuation.

We know that anti-grav units don't work on DS9[8] so how could Quark move that much Latinum around? Either the bars are of a super light metal plated with gold, are a very light weight gold alloy, or there's something else going on. No matter how you look at it, Latinum has to be the most inconvenient medium of trade. Having to move that much mass around must play hell with a ship's on-board ballast and inertial compensators. For small purchases it might not be that bad but for major purchases (such as one million bars of Latinum) it must be a major problem moving that much at any given time.

[dragon]

well we know they abilty to reduce the apperant effect of mass, also we know Frengies are stonger than humans but then when you look at a chimp it looks week but it's a lot stonger than a human.

And where did they say anti-grav won't work on the station?

[Cesario]

The much complained about touchscreen dumbells suggests an ability to employ apparent mass alteration on small scale objects. Why should their currency be any different?

[Nephtys]

Perhaps the Latinum in the cup is of higher purity/value than the usual form used in commerce? So that some diluted amount of that in god knows what alloy or medium would be filling those big bricks. Each individual brick has more than enough volume for the cup, as evidenced when Quark breaks the bricks to humorously be upset at his piles of worthless gold.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmmm. I know latinum-in-gold-box is the Ferengi currency, but do we know for sure that there's a single standard size? Perhaps one might have a smaller number of gold bars, with more hollow space inside, to hold the latinum in an emergency.

[Darth Tanner]

We know that anti-grav units don't work on

That womans specific medical support device didn't work, it doesn’t necessitate all anti grav tech doesn’t work.

Also as Nephtys said Quark broke one of the bars open with his bare hands at the end of the episode where he realised the bars had no latinum inside them, I seem to remember it disintegrating like styrofoam. That would imply their not actually solid gold as we understand it.

Furthermore there could be different sizes of brick to store different amounts of latinum as Jester said the big bricks shown could be comparable to a hundred actual units of latinum so when Quark says he is carrying 600 bars he could just have 6 big bars or something to that effect. If I said I had £600 in my pocket you wouldn’t assume I had 600 pound coins, but rather say 12 fifty pound notes.

It still strikes me as an inefficient means of transferring wealth but perhaps it’s unavoidable in a universe where replicators are so common. Although I seem to remember people having no trouble transporting latinum around so why it can’t be replicated I don’t know. Why they don't just have a 100% electronic financial system I don't know either.

[Crazedwraith]

That womans specific medical support device didn't work, it doesn’t necessitate all anti grav tech doesn’t work.

Indeed. In fact, we've seen anti-grav sleds been hauled around on the DS9 promenade.

[Darmalus]

Have we ever gotten an idea of how much one of those bars is worth? Like, how many to a star ship or bushel of quadrotriticale? If each of those bars was worth the same as an equal volume of $20 dollar bills, it wouldn't seem that bad of an exchange medium, if only for large purchases.

[Baffalo]

Have we ever gotten an idea of how much one of those bars is worth? Like, how many to a star ship or bushel of quadrotriticale? If each of those bars was worth the same as an equal volume of $20 dollar bills, it wouldn't seem that bad of an exchange medium, if only for large purchases.

Clothing
Cadet's uniform - 5 strips
Dress from Garak's Clothiers - 17-20 strips

Life savings
Nog - 5 bars
Quark - 600 bars
Rom - 17 bars, 3 strips and 5 slips

Wages
Morica Bilby - 5-30 bars a week
Quark's employees during the Cardassian Occupation - 1 slip per day

Profits
Janel Tigan - more than 1,000 bars a day
Quark - 5 bars a day

Holosuite programs
A Visit with the Pleasure Goddess of Rixx - 10 strips
Custom holosuite program - 1 bar

For reference, there are three sizes of Latinum: slips, strips and bars. 100 slips is 1 strip, and 20 strips are 1 bar. They don't give a conversion for bars to bricks.

[Darmalus]

After a quick eyeball of my Google results, it seems a modern officers uniform is something like $300. As that is my only reference point, I'll go with it. That would make the dress worth $1,020 to $1,200, and each bar worth about $1,200. I guess I could believe those prices.

Edit: Doh! Didn't notice that those were bricks in the picture, not bars.

[Baffalo]

After a quick eyeball of my Google results, it seems a modern officers uniform is something like $300. As that is my only reference point, I'll go with it. That would make the dress worth $1,020 to $1,200, and each bar worth about $1,200. I guess I could believe those prices.

Yes but a modern uniform has to be harvested (cotton) or sheered (wool), processed, shipped, loomed, cut, tailored, and finally customized for the individual user. For most Starfleet Officers, their measurements are stored in the computer and a new uniform can be replicated on the spot. So, no, you can't just take a modern price and assign it to a particular value. Currencies aren't measured that way. Goods and services fluctuate within a single nation's economy, and can vary wildly between different nations. Because Starfleet can replicate almost any good or product it wants, there's no way you can assign a value based on the worth of the goods contained within, so you're paying for the SERVICE itself, that of the skill required to do the work.

When Liam Bilby hired O'Brian as a tinkerer (DS9: Honor Among Thieves), he was paying O'Brian for his skills. The same is probably true for the majority of shopkeepers on Deep Space Nine. They're paid not for the worth of their goods but for their skills and ability to obtain items that a person could want. The shopkeeper is trading their personal expertise in their particular field and the investment they're placing trying to obtain the goods in question. Sure, anyone could replicate a diamond ring, but only a silversmith or goldsmith could replace the delicate prongs holding the diamond of a sentimental family ring. Only a professional tailor can repair your favorite shirt when you rip a seam. Humans and many other cultures place a great deal on sentimentality, so the shopkeeps provide a service. Quark himself must be a master of holosuites to generate custom programs for his customers, which is why he charges a bar of latinum.

So no, I contest the statement that a bar is worth $1,200. You'll have to provide more evidence than that to convince me of such.

[Darmalus]

So no, I contest the statement that a bar is worth $1,200. You'll have to provide more evidence than that to convince me of such.

OK. It's not. What is it worth?

[Baffalo]

OK. It's not. What is it worth?

... you just missed the entire damned point. There IS NO MODERN VALUE. Currencies fluctuate constantly due to inflation, economic prosperity, gross domestic product, the value of other currencies, all of it. Compared to the Ferengi Alliance, the United States' entire GDP is a mere drop in the bucket. The Ferengi control five planets but they trade with nearly every major and minor power in the Alpha Quadrant. That means that while the Ferengi may only have the output of five worlds to directly count on, the trade they generate makes their actual value impossible to directly calculate. Ferengi track the markets of every major commodity on every major market throughout the Alpha Quadrant and make deals and trade.

Plus, remember, I said they control five worlds. According to the CIA World Factbook, the ENTIRE GDP for Earth in 2010 was $63.17 trillion USD. The United States only had $14.66 trillion USD. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but that's only 23.2% of the entire planet's entire output. So the United States, on a GOOD day, could only match 4.64% of the entire Ferengi Alliance IF THEY WERE ON THE SAME LEVEL. And they're not. That's the entire crux of the matter that you're not understanding. The manufacturing capacity of a single planet could dwarf the planet Earth without breaking a sweat. The US dollar is pathetically weak compared to a slip of latinum, so the exchange rate, IF THERE WERE EVEN ONE, would be absurd.

[Baffalo]

oops double post.

[Steve]

I suppose what he's looking for is a hypothetical worth. If we have Space America, and it controls X number of planets with manufacturing capacity and conducts trade to further improve its economy so that it's, if not completely equal, at least in the same league as the Ferengi Alliance's economy, then you could possibly consider that, say, 1 slip is worth $1 or something.

Granted, as you've pointed out, even that isn't entirely meaningful since the economy of Star Trek isn't necessarily geared the same as our's due to replicators and the demand for and availability of exotic interstellar goods. As has been pointed out, craftsmen will probably find their actual skill worth more than the products they produce, which means their real money comes from crafting special items or repairing them, not mass production of goods.

[Simon_Jester]

The desire for an exchange rate comes, roughly, from wanting to know how much a given amount of latinum is worth to a given person. Americans on this board have a good idea what twenty dollars is worth. It's worth X hours of labor where X varies from "about three" to "about 0.2" depending on your skill set, if you're a normal person. Or it's worth one meal at this restaurant, or three or four at that restaurant. Or worth three paperback novels from a bookstore, or ten or more from a used bookstore. Or some single-digit percentage of the rent you pay on the place you live every month.

So if we could (hypothetically) say "one bar of latinum is to a Trekverse person as 1200$ is to a modern American," that would be helpful in getting a sense of value. Even if that means we learn that things like food and electricity are insanely cheap in Star Trek compared to their price in modern America (i.e. electricity in the Federation is too cheap to meter rather than being, in relative terms, a few pennies per kilowatt-hour).

[Baffalo]

The desire for an exchange rate comes, roughly, from wanting to know how much a given amount of latinum is worth to a given person. Americans on this board have a good idea what twenty dollars is worth. It's worth X hours of labor where X varies from "about three" to "about 0.2" depending on your skill set, if you're a normal person. Or it's worth one meal at this restaurant, or three or four at that restaurant. Or worth three paperback novels from a bookstore, or ten or more from a used bookstore. Or some single-digit percentage of the rent you pay on the place you live every month.

So if we could (hypothetically) say "one bar of latinum is to a Trekverse person as 1200$ is to a modern American," that would be helpful in getting a sense of value. Even if that means we learn that things like food and electricity are insanely cheap in Star Trek compared to their price in modern America (i.e. electricity in the Federation is too cheap to meter rather than being, in relative terms, a few pennies per kilowatt-hour).

That may be true, but how do you compare something when you can get an identical service, or possibly better service, for free? The reason I ask is because on DS9 you had Quarks, the Klingon restaurant, and a few other places to eat. You had Quark, a businessman, catering to men and women whose very notion of monetary worth is alien to them, yet he still pulls in five bars a day. Now, why would a Ferengi, a species known to be so greedy as to sell their own family out, deal with another species that doesn't get paid, doesn't have a notion for money and has no need for it? Does he have a special deal with Sisko, that Starfleet gets free drinks in exchange for rent? If so, why did Sisko once threaten Quark to start collecting all the back-rent and utilities?

It's confusing and makes an already complicated situation even more so. I can understand free unlimited power, clean and sanitary water for all, housing, all of it being provided by replicator units that can have waste material from a deconstructed building dumped in and fresh building materials churned out, but for the life of me it doesn't make any sense when it comes to dealing with foreign cultures that deal in incentive based (i.e. monetary based) economies. If I were Quark, I'd have left for a place that dealt with actual money. Bartering for supplies is primitive because it requires you to trade exactly what is needed rather than for a set price.

[Nephtys]

It makes a lot more sense if you take the usual federation space communist propaganda to be indicative of the way things are in the core worlds. Earth and so-forth. Sisko's even commented before that while Earth is a utopia, the colonies on the frontier and beyond the core Federation members don't have it so rosy.

You could even consider the Federation's 'moving beyond money' just the idea that they moved beyond arbitrary fiat value. After all, Sisko's dad on Earth runs a business of some sort, but there MUST be something he gets in exchange for serving people. Sisko mentioned he spent all a month's worth of energy credits or something just buying transporter service to go home every weekend and eat real food when he was studying at the Academy, so I'd say Federation citizens do understand money, in the form of practical goods and services (IE, replicator/transporter energy credits), but not in the form of arbitrary mediums of exchange (Latinum).

[Enigma]

Let's not forget Encounter at Farpoint where Beverly bought some fabric and asked to put it on her account (something like that). This implies that she was getting paid in some way.

[Nephtys]

After all, Sisko's dad on Earth runs a business of some sort, but there MUST be something he gets in exchange for serving people.

He might just like doing it.

No beef with the rest of your post, but even today, a lot of people do things just because they like doing it, whether there's money in it or not.

Oh, I totally get that he enjoys doing it. I actually meant there must be something that limits the number of people coming at once. Even if it's a minor something. We don't see any line to get in, but the place has a lot of people there during the scenes in which it is shown. I suppose there has to at least be some queue system in place, or reservation.

[FaxModem1]

Well, modern restaurants can message you if your table is ready, maybe people just beam in once their table is ready, so they don't have to wait outside.

[Simon_Jester]

Possibly- but that still leaves us with references to money in Star Trek.

I think the "they don't have money because They Are Communists!" thing about Star Trek is something of a brain bug- there's a confirmation bias that leads us to pay attention to cases where someone says they've moved beyond money, but ignore cases where Federation officers and civilians make references to money, trade, salaries, accounts, or other financial concepts.

[Darth Tedious]

Let's not forget Encounter at Farpoint where Beverly bought some fabric and asked to put it on her account (something like that). This implies that she was getting paid in some way.

IIRC, the UFP and Starfleet don't use wages internally, but pay staff so they may trade/purchase from other cultures/societies. It makes perfect sense, there's no reason the question of money in this case needs be an either/or.

[Baffalo]

I've been reading over everyone's comments and remembering back to the shows, so I'll use quotes to try and piece a few things together.

Tom Paris (VOY: Dark Frontier) "When the New World Economy took shape in the late 22nd century and money went the way of the dinosaur, Fort Knox was turned into a museum."

At some point in the 22nd Century, money no longer became the same thing we think of it as. That doesn't mean it no longer exists, but it doesn't serve the same function as we use it. We use money as an equivalent of exchange, meaning we work to earn money which we trade for goods and services. In the 22nd century, replicators didn't exist, so goods still had a tangible value, but access to space meant certain elements (such as nickel and iron) were much more common, so the value of materials went down.

However, that's not to say that money in some form doesn't exist. Kirk says to Picard in Generations, "This is my house, I sold it years ago." If there's no money, how could Kirk sell the house? Then there's Picard's line in First Contact, "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." These two statements might seem contradictory, but when you add Sisko's comment that he used up a month's worth of transporter credits to beam home every night, it seems to suggest that perhaps the economy is different in that humans trade their efforts for credits equivalent to their worth and status as individuals.

Suppose you took two people, one a Starfleet captain and another a worker with no particular skills. As a contributing member of society in helping protect the people of Earth, the Starfleet captain might be given additional housing credits towards a home he may want, as well as transporter credits and additional credits for various things such as gourmet food and luxury livings. As a normal worker, the other may be given basic housing credits and basic food credits good at various locations. You wouldn't treat the two equally because then there's no incentive for the Starfleet Captain to put his life on the line when he's no different than a normal everyday man.

Now, that wouldn't seem fair if the worker was never given a chance, but the education system is different as well. School is probably free to attend as long as you do well enough to justify your staying there. The education you earn then goes towards your future, whatever that may be, and then that goes towards your contributions to society. And of course, there's also justifying expenses. If it costs you credits to eat at a restaurant, then a man like Ben Sisko's father might collect these credits and spend them for things such as oysters and other prime ingredients. The people trade him the credits for their dining experience if they feel he's worth it, then those credits go towards keeping the restaurant going. There's no real material wealth, just credits going towards enhancing the experience of the restaurant itself, improving it with time.

[Crazedwraith]

Suppose you took two people, one a Starfleet captain and another a worker with no particular skills. As a contributing member of society in helping protect the people of Earth, the Starfleet captain might be given additional housing credits towards a home he may want, as well as transporter credits and additional credits for various things such as gourmet food and luxury livings. As a normal worker, the other may be given basic housing credits and basic food credits good at various locations. You wouldn't treat the two equally because then there's no incentive for the Starfleet Captain to put his life on the line when he's no different than a normal everyday man.

This is clearly not how it's supposed to work. Remember Picard's spiel in 'The Neutral Zone'? Starfleeters don't do it to get better credits than the average joe, they do it becuase of a genuine desire to explore for exploration's sake. Y'know Star Trek's driving focus as a show?