Gold Pressed Latinum is Commodified Self Betterment
I finally figured it out! When Picard says, that, in his century, "We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity," he's not being abstract. Self betterment IS a currency, but only outside the Federation did they know how to extract it for exchange.
So in Star Trek, moral improvement is just a failure of technological development! Latinum is self betterment. There it is, right there, clinking on the dabo tables!
Morn is so passive during the show because he has all the self betterment within himself. He needs no more self betterment. Never mind where he got it from, true self betterment lies within, as they say!
The DS9 people do shady things because they're spending their self betterment and not accumulating it. Quark is so vile because he put ALL his self betterment into gold pressed latinum.