system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] If you're living on Earth and want to replicate something hugely indulgent, like a personal yacht, how do you go about it? Is there a "replication committee" that you have to petition to justify using all that energy? Would they likely say yes, no, or just guilt trip you?
gpt
When people say "money doesn't exist" it's more of a euphemism. While Earth managed to eliminate need, and philosophically blunt want, wealth still existed and in a lot of cases was still traded.

The Federation was one of the parties bidding on the Barzan wormhole. They are prohibited from exchanging significant technology with the Barzans, so they would have had to offer something else.

And it wasn't just the Federation government that used credits.

When Dr. Crusher wanted an item at Farpoint Station she had her account on the *Enterprise-D* charged for it, and a lot of crew are seen returning from other shore leave trips with souvenirs of one sort or another. 

It's easy to assume that they are employees of the Federation, and not all Federation planets have a "moneyless" economy, so something special was given to them as payment which they were able to use when they needed to.

But that special thing had to be limited. If every Starfleet employee got everything they wanted anywhere in the galaxy, the inflation would be tremendous. There would have to be a limit imposed upon their requests, a value imposed on their contributions to others.

*Deep Space Nine* had no shortage of power, and we see people constantly exchanging goods and services. If everything was all just given freely, Quark would have gone out of business with the number of Starfleet personnel he serves. 

Even if we assume he'd be willing to participate in it, his suppliers wouldn't. And the Promenade would just be an empty series of hallways.

So we can safely assume that Starfleet employees draw a salary. Starfleet has a significant presence on Earth, so we can assume that a lot of the people on Earth are drawing a salary.

Two examples from Earth itself, when Kirk sees his old home, he mentions that he'd sold it years ago. And *something* would have to have been exchanged for the fine wine grown on Picard's family estate. They simply couldn't give that away freely, it's a finite supply and can not be replicated.

So if you decided that you wanted a large personal yacht, or some other luxury, or anything beyond the resources of the normal supply chain, then you'd either have to accumulate credits to purchase it or find some means of convincing others to trade their replicator allotments to you.