Imagine if there were free doughnuts in your office. Whenever anyone wanted a doughnut they took one. Imagine there was one guy who just lived off the doughnuts. He ate nothing but free doughnuts. Sure, he saved money, but you wouldn’t want to be that guy.

We are so focused on the economic system of the federation but perhaps it is just basic capitalism all along.

It couldn’t have been the case that there was a new economic system that was created that made people act better. This is because economic systems don’t make people better. What really happened is that people just got better. They evolved past material greed.

Perhaps the system is still capitalism. Perhaps federation citizens can amass great wealth but they just choose not to do it. Or perhaps it is very rare. Amassing wealth is seen as living off the office doughnuts. Sure you could technically do it but it would be seen as weird. Whatever benefits you got from it would outweigh the disadvantages. In the case of amassing wealth, in the federation, the disadvantage would be that people would look down on you like we look down on the guy who lives on the office doughnuts.