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The Politics of Star Trek
smitty_one_each writes: Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation has written a breezy overview of the politics of the little-known show Star Trek. His thesis: "...the key to Star Trek's longevity and cultural penetration was its seriousness of purpose, originally inspired by creator Gene Roddenberry's science fiction vision. Modeled on Gulliver's Travels, the series was meant as an opportunity for social commentary, and it succeeded ingeniously, with episodes scripted by some of the era's finest science fiction writers. Yet the development of Star Trek's moral and political tone over 50 years also traces the strange decline of American liberalism since the Kennedy era." The article traces through episodes at each phase of the franchise, exploring literary allusions and lamenting that "Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
'nuff said.
Lt. Uhuru
From where I stand it didn't fail at all... It's one of the most succesful franchises ever.
But yed, it is eay too liberal.
Star Trek Politics were always heavy-handed, often nonsensical, and arguably became somewhat to the detriment of the story while Roddenberry was in charge.
Nazi episode. Roman Empire episode. MAD episode. All in TOS. Also the Native American one, and the one with the American Flag for some reason.
And in TNG, the Nicotine one.
Sorry, but the show was full of cliches and banalities.
I have always thought that the federation was a communist society. We are told that they don't need money. But the two fundamental rules of economics are:
1. We are in a universe of scarcity
2. People have ever increasing unlimited desires and wants
In the federation, we are told that everyone gets what they need, yet we constantly see scarcity everywhere. There is scarcity of engergy, transporter credits and limitations. There is an almost endless list of things people can gain credits and perks for. Then there is the huge amount of laws and regulations. Even trading and using something as money is illegal.
The federation has never been liberal, it has always been communist. It has just been hidden behind a higher level of technology.
The article traces through episodes at each phase of the franchise, exploring literary allusions and lamenting that "Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
Because at that point it stopped trying to be real science fiction. It was just another franchise to be used for monetary gain by the rights-holders. So, out with any social commentary, no deep thinking -- this is Summer! It's time for an action flick -- in SPAAAAAAAACE!
"Modeled on Gulliver's Travels, ..."
Nope. The Creators of the show were very clear on this- Kirk and the Missions were based on the Hornblower books.
But this Review, which has an ill-concealed Chip on it's shoulder, completely misses what the Federation was supposed to be: A Socialist Paradise with a Political structure based on a pure Meritocracy. Socialist in that all is provided by the Federation, with enough Private, um, "Enterprise", to make it work.
Capitalists... the greedy Miners bothering the Horta, Harvey Mudd, even the Ferengi later on were portrayed as selfish, not very bright, but nonetheless tolerated.
A Meritocracy in that political power could not be bought or inherited, but earned. Starfleet Academy was not merely training for Storm Troopers; it's where the Military, Science, Economic Development, and Political Structures of the Federation were centered.
The big flaw, and why the Federation was doomed to failure, was that "Prime Directive", which was flouted left, right and center, and not just by Kirk. The Federation _meddled_ in Planetary Societies and Politics, and this has the seeds of long-term discontent, always.
Hell, look at Iraq.
There's this undertone I'm reading in his essay: USA was right to exterminate the indians because they were not civilized. He's twisting facts just as hard as I just did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSgG5M6ANn8
Yvonne Craig, Miley Cyrus ain't worth your toe jam!
Inclusion when you parrot the left's buzzwords and phrases and condemnation and vitriolic hatred when you don't?
Grievance politics?
Social policy based more on taking from people who have resources than on providing for those who need them?
Hairshirt environmentalism that never gives a thought to what's best for people?
Foreign policy nostrums that appeal to peaceniks and partisan opportunists but protect no one?
Protection of fashionable human rights and authoritarian disregard for others?
No one wants to watch your space show about microaggressions and about redistributing a middle class worker's paycheck to pay for an upper-middle-class student's PhD classes on transgender studies.
Whatever the supposed ST politics / economics, it was a system that the Picards to keep a vast private family estate for hundreds of years. So there's no "money," but they have private property so, huh?
Roddenberry lived a lot like the Picard family IRL, so whatever his alleged socialist sympathies, he lived the free market.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
The Gene L. Coon episode The Devil in the Dark, in which a bunch of miners have come under attack by a strange stone-like creature, made an indelible impression on me, certainly more than any bit of religious scripture I've encountered. The lessons in that magnificent episode included the need to understand the other, the danger of assuming you are in the right, the dangers of an ill-educated mob, and the power of fear. I wish W and President Cheney had been forced to watch it before they were unleashed on the world.
I especially liked the subtlety of such episodes as "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", on the surface a story about two aliens who differ only in which side of their face is black and which is white, but which is actually an allegory about racism and tribal hatred.
In my opinion, what makes Trek great is the characters and how they interact to make difficult decisions. Trek politics on a bigger scale is waffly and inconsistent such that it should be viewed as supporting a story rather than being the story. The fact that Picard likes hippies more than Kirk is fine by me. They are different people.
Table-ized A.I.
Boy, Slashdot has lost some serious participation if, after 1.5 hours, a post re: Star Trek only garners 35 responses.
This should tell Dice something: stop fucking with Slashdot
How to muh dik as many alien women as possible without causing a war. :)
The problem with Star Trek regarding involvement of real world politics, is that it is often an over simplified, which results in only one real answer and people not supporting this answer are dumb or evil. I can't think of any specific cases (haven't watched ST in years), but as an example say an episode would go pro nuclear power (I don't think they ever did that though). They would then completely ignore accidents and radioactive waste and then portrayed people against it as ignorant. A number of viewers will then take that into the real world and claim people against nuclear power for being ignorant while people against nuclear power would call the pro people ignorant for not understanding the risks.
My point is different political opinions are usually due to the fact that there is no perfect opinion and everything are tradeoffs. Don't make TV try to tell viewers what the ideal is, when it's not there. Star Trek is not the only series to do this though.
Having said that, ST doesn't work like that every time a real world political issue is touched and sometimes problems shows up with no solution and the viewers are left wondering what could have been done. Add the number of episodes with no direct real world political messages and it ends up being quite a decent universe with some great stories worth watching.
Much of what people think of when they think about Star Trek's grand concepts of the Federation of Planets and many other things were ideas thought up by Gene Coon, not Roddenberry. Bob Justman also had a hand in those ideas, as did D.C. Fontana and many others tossing in various tidbits.
The book series "These are the voayges" go into extreme detail of who thought up what, which writers and directors invented things taken for canon and so on.
An awful lot of Trek lore taken for granted happened by accident or because Coon or Justman were trying to save money. There was no grand political scheme running behind the scenes. It was all about how to tell a story without having to actually show it. So they invented stuff that could be dialog.
The idea of having a "Starbase" came from the need to show planets per NBC but cheaply so it could be a redressed existing set, and then script mentions there's more than one base. Viola you've expanded the Star Trek universe without having to show it. Coon was a master of this stuff, dropping in mention of the Federation to explain away another loose end. He freaking invented it as a throwaway script change.
Fontana in turn made the characters who we know them to be and kept the thing going in the right direction. She was the bullshit detector and derailed a lot of crap that would have made the show into a joke. Roddenberry mostly sat around and screwed starlets and offered up lousy script rewrites.
The OTHER unsung hero of Star Trek is Lucille Ball, who went to bat for the show many times to keep it funded, until doing so help cost her ownership of the company. She gave her all for Star Trek, Nobody remembers it.
These Are The Voyages books are very highly recommended for anyone who wants to know what really happened and how, It is a lot like seeing how sausage or laws are made but it's important to see how hard these people worked and what they put into the show.
Sig for hire.
I always felt Star Trek politics were pretty cut and dried, as each race either directly represented a specific country or ideology Federation: Western world, especially the US, given the diversity of participants. Romulan Empire: Soviet Union, semi paranoid society, fairly closed, state security is fairly powerful and ever present (Tal Shiar = KGB). Mix of military power and secrecy to further their agenda (The plot line of supplying weapons to the Duras is straight out of the Soviet playbook of arming allies with Soviet weapons, AK-47's being the most common). Cardassian Empire: East Germany. Odo is quoted as saying "Not even the Tal Shiar can match the Obsidian Order" in the episode The Wire. Poor, even more paranoid, uses miltary expansion to acquire resources. Obsidian Order = Stasi Ferengi = Captialism/Wall St. where everything has a price. Tholians = Japanese. Exotic technology, very advanced, but xenophobic to the extreme. Borg = China. More intent on taking then innovating, seen as homogeneous mob. Suppresses dissent for the collective/society good. Dominion = Middle East. Average religious fanatic = Jem Hadar (believe in a god and is willing to die for them). Vorta = Mullahs (use the belief of the founders to enforce their will). Founders = Typical Middle East dictator/monarchy, who use religion purely as an excuse to maintain control, and don't care what so ever about their people and throw them away with little regard. Bajorans = Israel. Home occupied, people murdered, scattered to the wind. Rebuilds. Klingon Empire = Probably West Germany, due to overarching militarism, and pride. As seen in TNG, battleground for the ideologies of Romulans and the Federation, similar to the ideological battles in Germany, symbolized by the Berlin Wall. But really any place where there was combat over the ideolgies could represent here (Vietnam, Korea)
I like Star Trek as much as the next guy, and have seen all of the Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. I'm currently struggling through Voyager, I've dipped my toe into the Animated Series, and I'm going to at least give Enterprise a shot.
But I wouldn't say Star Trek has much actual philosophical depth. Messages typically boil down to things like "Racism is bad" or "Data is a person too" or "Don't lie" or "Don't pick on Barclay" or "Respect other cultures", and that's ignoring the episodes where Kirk and Spock are running from a witch that turns into a giant cat, or where Geordie accidentally stalks a girl he likes, or Troi goes man-crazy, or Sisko and Crew get trapped in a weird board game.
Sure, there's gems like The Devil in the Dark, Family, and For the Uniform, but those are few and far between.
This article hits the nail on the head. In the 60s, there was culturally an understanding that there are some things that are right and wrong, moral and immoral. Slowly, this understanding was replaced by the notion that only tolerance matters, and the only evil is intolerance. This idea is embodied in the Prime Directive. It is fitting, reflecting our culture, that the Young Kirk movies lack any kind of notion of right and wrong OR tolerance, emphasizing only drama and special effects.
What Kirk objected to was a lack of liberty. His objection to Vaal and Landru was that they imposed themselves upon the people. The same for the plant spores. For that matter, that was his objection to the Klingons. I don't think he would object all that much to a society that voluntarily forswore technology and exploration (since apparently, the people were free to leave if they wanted) even if he might not understand it or want it for himself.
Star Trek was pitched as a copy of "Wagon Train" only to other stars. Not Gulliver's travels.
And I wonder if they ever let that NBC executive out from when he got locked in the closet over cancelling what turned out to be a massive franchise.
My bets is He's still there and mummified.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Never understood with energy being near free and materials being near free, why wasn't everyone and their cousin flying around in space ships, unless of course the government squashed any thoughts about having your own star ship and only properly certified and licensed captains could fly them. Don't like it, then join Star Fleet....here see if this red shirt fits.
Did any of the Star Trek feature films convey a detailed picture of the politics of the Star Trek universe? I don't think so.
"Star Trek" is fertile ground for cultural and political commentary. It's unfortunate that Sandefur's article is not an analysis of Star Trek, but rather a thinly-veiled polemic. Sandefur's own political views constitute the bulk of the article, in which he mounts a shallow emotional appeal against progressive political values. He cherry-picks specific fictional events from Star Trek to illustrate a right-wing narrative about how American society has allegedly deteriorated. For example, seemingly unaware of the astronomical irony of his word choice, Sandefur characterizes the idea that the Federation might learn something from low-tech sustainable farming as "reactionary" and "inhuman". The banner of the Claremont Institute website reads "Recovering the American Idea". I guess this means going back to a simpler time, when no one questioned the authority of Captain Kirk, who surely rose to his position of authority by virtue of impeccable morality and strength of character.
Star Trek is extremely anthropomorphic. Most of the aliens are humanoids with spots or ears, their issues and politics are reflections of Earth issues and politics, their cultures are Earth-like cultures (often from the past).
What they mostly aren't is alien. Take the Borg. They were initially intended to be insects with a hive mind, but that was too expensive. Then they decided that the Collective was too inhumane to relate too, so they introduced Loquitus and then the Borg Queen, and of course TNG put the individuality virus into the Collective with Hugh.
Or take the Changelings/Founders on DS9. They are alien biologically, and they have a lower intolerance for disorder than humanoids, but their Dominion can be seen as reflecting religious intolerance, and powerful religious institutions who have dominated Earth societies in the past.
Even Q is rather human. Or at least he plays the role of a human trickster God, whose role ends up being to demonstrate that humanity has progressed.
To paraphrase one of Stanislaw Lem's characters, our enthusiasm to explore is a sham. We're not looking for the alien, we're looking for mirrors. And that's what Star Trek is. A mirror. It's not a show about exploring the galaxy. Not really.
Real aliens would be alien, and not a reflection of humanity in some form.
The guy's thesis might have been written well, but his whole argument fails because he doesn't actually understand the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive isn't merely a stodgy philosophy. It's implied numerous times over the series that it's a rule that was arrived at through numerous trials and error. Star Fleet adopted it, and individuals like Picard followed it, not because they believed in moral relativism, but because they knew, from studying history, that those who are later judged to have committed great acts of evil, often believed they were the righteous at the time their acts were undertaken. Picard refused to get involved in the Klingon civil war not because he didn't think it was right to judge, but because he knew that to do so would weaken the Prime Directive, which is something that would be potentially far more damaging to the Alpha Quadrant than anything the Klingon civil war could lead to. A single Federation starship captain has control over technology that can influence the lives of billions, and the Federation knows that if you let one captain get away with using that power any way he sees fit, as long as he is shown after the fact to have been right, then you eventually run the risk of having a captain who commits atrocities with his power, under the mistaken belief that he is also righteous. The only reason Kirk's violations of the Prime Directive turned out good for all involved was not because of Kirk's moral clarity, it was because of convenient writing. The author praises Kirk for violating the Prime Directive and destroying the tyrant computer in "The Apple", but ultimately Kirk just got lucky. In a more realistic story, destroying a highly complex computer system that's controlling an entire civilization has the potential for all manner of unforeseen consequences. How did Kirk know there weren't other hidden systems that would go berserk upon the primary computer's destruction? How did he know there might not be some ancient defensive system that would target the Federation is response? How did he know that the planet's populous wouldn't develop a cargo cult around his actions, that over the next thousand years would drive them to become a space-faring race bent on genocide against all those who use computers. Sure, in the context of the episode, all of those outcomes are far fetched, and ultimately Kirk is shown to have been right, but even if we accept all that, what about the other captains in Starfleet? They can't all have the perfect moral clarity of Kirk, and if you make it acceptable for any of them to start breaking the Prime Directive whenever he believes he's right, then sooner or later one of those captains becomes the next space-Hitler. The evolution of politics in Star Trek has nothing to do with the decline of American Liberalism. The evolution instead is simply due to better writers breaking away from Roddenberry's overly simplistic worldview and instead putting forward the more realistic idea that the humans in Star Trek believe that right and wrong exist, but at the same time know that humanity's track record at differentiating right from wrong is spotty at best.
Well as somebody who is very anti-communist and pro capitalist, I could see it star trek economics becoming reality without all of the problems inherent to communism. What any economic system sorts out is how you allocate resources to whom. Where communism ultimately fails is that it assumes that people will just always be willing to produce out of the goodness of their hearts for just any old need that somebody wants (which includes jobs that aren't fun and nobody wants to do them unless they're paid, such as being a garbage man or a janitor.)
In Star Trek economics however, there's two problems that are solved without even needing an economy: There are no scarce resources, and there's no need for somebody to be a producer. Why? Because you've got replicators to handle your everyday goods, holodecks to entertain you, and if you want a vacation to florida, either you can holodeck there or beam over there. And since everything is made out of deuterium, there's basically an infinite supply of everything.
We're already starting to see some of that happen. Namely, we're already starting to see "free" production in the form of robots taking over certain jobs. We're a long way off from a star trek economy because a few other things need to be solved (we don't have replicators yet, and not everything can be automatically created) but in terms of making everyday goods out of cheap materials, we're getting pretty close.
Luddites are usually fighting this tooth and nail, but if having a lot of wealth for free (keep in mind, wealth is not money, wealth is material goods) then it's definitely better to just let automation take over anyways.
Your assumption seems to be that the fruits of automation, owned by the few, will somehow be shared by the many. Perhaps they will be, and we'll live in the Star Trek utopia. But I think more dystopian outcomes (extreme wealth inequality sustained through violent repression; revolution and war) to be more likely.
I am always reminded by this XKCD when I see articles like this:
https://xkcd.com/451/
You can read just about anything into anything if you squint hard enough.
"Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
I was going to say "Of course they do. It's two films so far. About four hours of material." But then I thought about the first two or three original movies...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There are no scarce resources
There's your fail. Resources are always scarce. And Star Trek is not a 'solution', it is a non-existence of the problem. As in 'hand-waving over it'.
i never understood this braindead attitude where the only systems in the world are social darwinistic capitalism, and communism
nothing in between
when of course there are thousands of systems in between. in fact the richest and happiest countries in the world, the nordic countries, pretty well balance social safety nets and capitalism. that's actually the ideal society
but if you view everything as capitalism and communism, nothing else, your ideology and philosophy is childish and facile. you haven't given an intellectually honest thought to the subject matter you inject your uneducated opinion into. you're a propaganda victim
this not a baseless insult
you present it as binary: capitalism or communism. when it obviously isn't binary. there are thousands of shades in between, in fact, the best system most definitely is not pure capitalism. objectively, as a function of the most successful societies today, and their economic and political systems
furthermore, the economic, political, social, and cultural systems of the federation are categorically, factually, not communist. define communism. then define the federation. and they do not match, they are far apart
but because it is not pure capitalism, you have to call it communism. because those are the only two extremes you understand. you're a simpleton, an ignorant on the topic
in fact the richest and happiest countries in the world, the nordic countries, pretty well balance social safety nets and capitalism. that's actually the ideal society.
^^^ seriously. These countries have a world-class propaganda machine to continually perpetuate this image to outsiders. Try living in a major city like Stockholm for a few years and you'll realise why people who try use this in an argument are people who've never been there or lived there for any extended period. It's not all hunky dory roses. And it's not balanced. They have serious issues just like every other European nation.... but sure... they have a welfare system, doesn't mean you can exclude the entire host of issues that, some uniquely intense, are exhibited there.
TLDR: do your homework and you may not be spouting the nordicophile nonsense.
The fault of this dumbing down is the growth of marketing and their latest paradigm: the customer is always a moron. In the early days it wasn't that it was a more liberal society, but that people making TV or news or anything for the intellect knew that people were quite smart and could understand things and therefore didn't have to be talked down to or pandered at the lowest common denominator (despite "There's a sucker born every minute", this merely acknowledged that some people can be dumb if you're smart enough to find them).
Nowadays, though, marketing "knows" people are thicker than a yard of lard. They believe the manipulations of sales pitches and advertising, for chrissakes! And the homily is now "Nobody ever went wrong underestimating the intelligence of the average audience".
So making TV shows, it has to be shallow because marketing believes everyone you can get to watch must be dumb, and marketing gets the TV show a slot, because the adverts are from marketing, and that is where the revenue comes in, so if a TV show isn't pandering, it doesn't get aired because marketing says it won't generate enough revenue.
Even if the tv show producers used to be "Fuck it, lets do it anyway" and got a crappy slot, the fact it made less was "proof" for marketing that the show was bad, not that it was a crappy slot. So executives saw proof of marketing's genius. Many or most of them have been in marketing or done training that embodies marketing paradigms.
Producers who don't produce profitable content don't get jobs. Producers who do produce profitable content DO get jobs. So now you have producers who "know" that they must make dumbass programming and don't even consider "midbrow" stuff. So you have marketing given the power to greenlight a show, executives who hired marketing to tell them how to increase revenue listening to them, then producers who think like marketing getting ahead because their shows are greenlighted often, then scriptwriters who generate ideas that producers will accept become the norm.
And, eventually, you have a huge sea of talent that have no absorbed the idea as an entire worldview that everyone on the planet is as dumb as a stump and that you must always strive to pander to the stupidity, otherwise it won't work.
Hence the steady decline of anything intellectual (and entertainment IS intellectual too, unless you're acting in the play or part of the band, etc) drops from the, well 50s, really, to the 2000's "Big Brother/DealorNoDeal" lowbrow noise content.
In the 50's, sure, it was wierd. Presenters were like lecturers, and not actual presenters like you get today, where they engage you in what they are saying. But the actual content made no attempt to pander. Cartoons and slapstick comedies were lowbrow, but aimed not at the lowest common denominator, but at those who liked slapstick or cartoons. Live action series had "Brought to you by Glaxnar's Human Rinds!" but didn't think that putting the can of pepsi in the hand of the lead actor was all that was needed to make your dumb ass think of buying pepsi. The series also felt free to do social commentary or crude comedy or dark satire or high education. Even, often, in the same series. Because it wasn't assumed if you liked "I dream of Jeanie" that you would be scared or confused or put off if there was some social commentary in some episodes.
Nowadays, such content would "damage" the profitability, as far as marketing's paradigms knew it, therefore maximising profit means NEVER putting that sort of "off message" content in there.
Even the caricatured knuckledragging moron can accept or enjoy a little social commentary in their "Tits, guns and fast cars" cop show. If it were ALL social commentary, they'd not bother to watch it, but it won't make them run away to see something about how the "hero cop" leaps to a conclusion about a black guy being the bad guy and finding out that they weren't after a tragedy. As long as there's also tits, guns and fast cars and the cops arrest the bad guy, bringing justice to the mean streets, they're fine with it. And maybe a little more open to the existence of hidden bias and its downsides.
...and maybe holodecks, if you want to include more recent series?
I'm not a fan enough to know the theorized limitations of replicator technology, but the Wikipedia page makes it sound like the limitations were very few. If you own or even have access to a replicator it doesn't sound like many of your needs would be unmet by the replicator. You want a bone-in filet mignon for dinner? Push a button. A molecularly perfect rare wine? Push a button.
Those wants that wouldn't be met by the output of a replicator sound like they would be satisfied by the immersive, more-real-than-real experiences you could have in holodeck. I don't know what the limits of those are, either, but from what I remember on the show the nature of the holodeck seemed to be that you could have pretty much any experience you would want without any of the physical limitations of actual ownership or travel or even temporal limitations.
Outside of the psychology of possession of scarce goods as an end to itself, holodecks would seem to give the vast majority the experience of having them without the need to actually have them, which I think would be even better. Even wealthy people I've known who could satisfy a lot of their own personal wish lists say that the reality of ownership of many things detracts from the experience.
The idea of owning a luxury yacht is awesome, the reality is that they're machines floating in corrosive liquid and require lots of maintenance. Even if you don't do the work yourself, you still run into the nuisance of managing its maintenance and the kind of inherent limitations that come with it -- have to haul it out for weeks periodically for scraping and painting the hell, engines need overhaul, parts need replacing -- you own the thing, but can't use it because the physical world has limits like maintenance. A holodeck yacht would be like owning one without any of the minuses -- it would always be in perfect condition, it could appear anywhere you'd want to use it without the need to get it there, it would never have mechanical faults while you used it.
I would think holodecks would be pretty disruptive to the economy and probably social fabric. Why strive and work to own a Mercedes, take expensive trips, etc, when you can just have the holodeck experience. I think even VR when it becomes mass adopted will put a dent in things like travel. You could tour any museum in the world in your living room.
JJ Abrams was not hired for his cultural sensitivities. The producers selected Abrams because of the type of movies JJ Abrams directs. Either the producers were not aware of the cultural commentary Star Trek presents or wanted to ignore it. In either case it shows the current holders of the Star Trek production leash do not really have a concept of what the show embodied.
I know a Star Trek series hasn't seen a new TV episode in ten years, but come on.
Borderline? The whole federation is a communist system.
This is, though, probably the only system left once you eliminate everything that could possibly be considered scarce. The real life communist system failed for one single reason: People prefer to be lazy to working if they can get away with it. If faced with the choice of working or veggin' away, with no drawback on either, most people would prefer the latter. The more tedious, boring and mind numbing their job is, the more. Interesting, inspiring jobs that cause others to admire you are something people want to do, monetary reward or none.
Now, in an environment like Star Trek's, mind numbing, boring jobs have been fully automatized. Replicators take care of the rest. There is simply no "hard", boring job left. Such a society has two choices: Either, they do what we do, ignore the needs of those that have become redundant until they rise up and take what they want with force or are shot down trying, or they appease them with soma.
And something like the latter MUST happen in Star Trek. We don't get to see it, but what do those that would work as burger flippers in our society do in Star Trek? One thing is a given, not everyone can become a scientist and engineer. There are people, and there will be people in the future, who are simply too dumb for either.
All they can hope for is that the future still needs politicians and managers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Been re-watching Voyager and Enterprise recently. Many of the episodes have some lame sort of moral to them, usually designed from the ground up to push a moral agenda or question. Then we come to Tuvix.... where they just end the episode with Janeway taking personal control of the transporter and murdering him in cold blood. Didn't get much of a moral or political message other than maybe the most real one "Ideals are all well and good, until the people in charge decide they might be the ones to suffer loss for them".
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The politics of Star Trek? Seriously? It's a crappy 60s TV show with characters who have the depth of a kiddy puddle, politics is "us kicking some alien butt and showing them how much better these savages are if the white man federation calls the shots".
Yes, there were some shows with a "moral" pretense, from "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" to the infamous Kirk/Uhura kiss, but it was done so bluntly and crudely that it doesn't even count as comical today. Maybe it was far out and risky back in the days, but so was "The moon is blue", ok? Nobody gives a shit about that anymore today, so why is it different for a scifi show that even lied in its name to appeal to an audience?
There is no politics in Star Trek. At least none that deserve the name.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And Scotty is not even a real Scotsman.
The post-scarcity you imagine creates Borg - not human societies.
Humans have needs that don't comply to laws of economy and which can't be scaled up as they are not things to be accumulated.
Needs like emotional, family or social ties, needs for personal achievement and betterment - needs to BE more instead of to have more.
Borg eliminate the need to feel and be (rejecting/imposing rejection of uniqueness in exchange for attempted uniform "perfection") - and thus they can have " a fleet of starships so vast that they block out the stars".
Or trans-warp conduits that allow them to jump across the galaxy at will, or go time-traveling, or to invade other universes...
Q could also snap fingers and block out stars (no ships needed - omnipotence will do) - but at a cost of personal achievement and permanent boredom to the point that suicide starts looking good.
Better than trolling vastly inferior species at least.
Federation is a post-scarcity society in a sense that humanity has ENOUGH RESOURCES FOR EVERYONE'S BASIC BIOLOGICAL NEEDS, so everyone can just bugger off and go climb mountains, fuck around on holodeck if that is their fancy - or they can join Starfleet and explore the universe, or go out and colonize some planet, or run a restaurant like Sisko's dad, or make wine like Picard's brother, or...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
but note the badges and other indications of rank aboard the Enterprise. People may be equal, but some are obviously more equal.
Badges and ranks are a mark of higher RESPONSIBILITY and of required levels of ABILITY.
You seem to be confusing them with medals and jewelry used to signal ones STATUS - i.e. being "more equal than others".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Captain, mate, etc. In a closed environment like a ship, there has to be someone in charge. So it's got nothing to do with being military per se - it falls out of being a ship.
Hey, just because the fruits of automation have never been shared by the many doesn't mean it won't start spontaneously happening!
We can get at more than we used to because of engineering (or the rising cost of oil making it worth doing), but we do not have more oil on this planet than we did before we burned the last 100bn tons of it. It doesn't grow on trees.
There was no holodeck on the original star trek. Vacations were rare for the main characters. Generally the whole ship took a vacation on vacation like planets. And there were many episodes that dealt with "money" and exploitation. Planets for mining like the one with the silicon based creature that was killing the miners, the one where there was a cloud society that was supported by the workers on the ground, Harvey Mudd and the tribles, which were sold for credits, and many more. Dilithium crystals in particular were very valuable and mined if I remember right.
Life kicks in at federalization?
Now there is some cognitive dissonance for state-rights, small government, conservative christianists.
As I remember it the General Order 24 thing was to make like they could just destroy them and use it to pressure them into surrendering/releasing him.
But I'm not a big enough nerd to know them all line by line and episode number by episode number, so I could be wrong.
As I remember it, Kirk was pretty uniform in holding to the PD in regards to untouched civilizations, but being willing to shirk it when doing so would save the civilization from destruction or irrevocable harm (similiarly depicted in TNG/DS9 but often ignored in Voyager/Enterprise.)
That said, rosy colored glassed may be applying.
Your assumption seems to be that the fruits of automation, owned by the few, will somehow be shared by the many. Perhaps they will be, and we'll live in the Star Trek utopia. But I think more dystopian outcomes (extreme wealth inequality sustained through violent repression; revolution and war) to be more likely.
Well picture this: Robots that can make *anything*, including other robots that can make anything.
All it would take is for one person who owns one of these robots to instruct it to make an extra robot for himself, and have the other robot continue producing new copies of itself that he just gives away for free.
There's your fail. Resources are always scarce. And Star Trek is not a 'solution', it is a non-existence of the problem. As in 'hand-waving over it'.
In Star Trek, everybody uses deuterium to create everything (or at least, an episode of Voyager seems to indicate so.) Deuterium is likely the most abundant resource in existence. Every kind of star (including primitive pop III stars) have lots of it.
Should see if there's some sort of prize to be the billionth person to confuse socialism with communism.
People prefer having stuff and a future for their family far more. Otherwise you would have no professional class in ultra-capitalist countries like the U.S., because no one would strive to be anything more than a fry cook for Burger King.
Where communism ultimately fails is that it assumes that people will just always be willing to produce out of the goodness of their hearts for just any old need that somebody wants (which includes jobs that aren't fun and nobody wants to do them unless they're paid, such as being a garbage man or a janitor.)
Actually, idealistic communists (including the original Bolsheviks) have always assumed that those "nobody wants" jobs would be done by some fancy automation eventually. They were great believers in industrial revolution and scientific progress, and they also believed that the way they wanted to restructure their society after coming to power would result in a rapid surge in such development. It is especially evident if you read early Soviet sci-fi, such as Alexander Belyaev - they predicted a rapid pace of development that puts most Western sci-fi to shame.
This is what makes the Star Trek economy not communism.
Capitalism and communism wont exist in a post scarcity world.
Also, just because there is no need to work does not mean no-one will work. If I received a billion dollars tomorrow, sure as hell I'd quit my job but I would spend my time doing the things I wanted to. Learning to fly and building my own race car would be two of those things, not sure about the race car but being a pilot would be beneficial to society without scarcity. There would be those few who would never do anything but without scarcity, these people cost nothing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What automation do you not own today? A cnc mill and lathe cost less than a new car and are capable of producing anything produce-able.
I share greatly in the fruits of automation and no, I'm not in the top 98% other than living in the western world which I guess puts me by default in the top 90%.
Damn straight! What will we do without not having enough shit? No wait, I mean what will we not do with having enough shit? I mean, what would we not, not do if nobody didn't have enough shit as much as everyone else didn't?
No... I thought I had something there but apparently not.
PS Don't forget about your bonitis.
Ultimately this is what _WILL_ happen as the only other option is war and complete destruction of what the few are so preciously trying to keep and even the few realize with abundance in the world their own lives are easier.
But I leave out the part of how to get there, because the few will do everything they can to maintain the status-quo as that is all they understand.
When the masses can print their own weapons, create their own drones, what mechanism will the so called elite use to maintain that repression ?
Already there are issues with certain religions that have not caught up with technology and continue to maintain the so called elite's powerbase over the masses. But as we have seen in the last few recent years countries will not be able to maintain this status for many more generations, communication and education will be available to all and the local village elder will no longer have absolute say over what happens in his village.
Now you can do to the other end of the spectrum too and look at first world financial systems and the so called elites at the top of that tree. The underlying issues are the same, just the pieces of the game have different names.
In Star Trek economics however, there's two problems that are solved without even needing an economy: There are no scarce resources, and there's no need for somebody to be a producer. Why? Because you've got replicators to handle your everyday goods, holodecks to entertain you, and if you want a vacation to florida, either you can holodeck there or beam over there. And since everything is made out of deuterium, there's basically an infinite supply of everything.Star Trek
It appears that no political system can even be good, let alone Utopian, for the following reason: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - John Acton (1887)
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo's "prison experiment" verifies this quote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Therefore, our political system can not be totally free because controls must be put in place to ensure equality, as described in Adam Smith's book Wealth of Nations. All capitalist nations recognize the need for progressive taxation and economic controls. No man is totally free because with freedom comes responsibility. No political system is without some collectivism for this reason. No man is an island.
The Star trek political system was based on the principles above, but people basically had no need for money because everything is created for them for free. There may be some contradictory show plots, but the "prime directive" acknowledges the right of alien civilizations to have their own autonomy, and therefore freedom, without interference from the Federation. The Federation was socialist, but one that seems to be successful, unlike the failing capitalist/socialist/ communist systems today. The Star Trek political system may be an impossible one because of human nature.
We're already starting to see some of that happen. Namely, we're already starting to see "free" production in the form of robots taking over certain jobs. We're a long way off from a star trek economy because a few other things need to be solved (we don't have replicators yet, and not everything can be automatically created) but in terms of making everyday goods out of cheap materials, we're getting pretty close.
But why would the creators and maintainers of robots would share their robots with you, if all you would do everyday is to take vacation and eat free food? In your case, you need them but they don't need you - that's an very unreliable economical model.
Star Trek episode called the "Drumhead" explains the Prime directive.
Plot
When an explosion within the dilithium chamber of the Federation starship Enterprise's warp engine room appears to be the work of sabotage, Starfleet Command dispatches a retired rear admiral from the Legal Division of its Support Services Section, Norah Satie, to lead an investigation to uncover the cause.Satie uses the hearing to accuse Picard of numerous transgressions of the Prime Directive and other Starfleet orders. Picard recalls a quote from Satie's own father Aaron, whose judgments are required reading at the Starfleet Academy: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Satie is enraged, and he emotional fanaticism reveals that her accusations are witch hunting because she is emotionally compromised, and are based on emotions and not fact.
In conclusion, the Prime directive has been broken when merited.
In Star Trek economics however, there's two problems that are solved without even needing an economy: There are no scarce resources, and there's no need for somebody to be a producer. Why? Because you've got replicators to handle your everyday goods, holodecks to entertain you, and if you want a vacation to florida, either you can holodeck there or beam over there. And since everything is made out of deuterium, there's basically an infinite supply of everything.
Well, replicator can't produce another shoreline. So, you can't build more than X houses along the beach. Here is the scarcity. Replicator can't produce personal music teacher's lessons. Etc, etc. Things from replicator will have no value and things that can't be replicated are going to be admired and desired.
I just finished the original ST series on Netflix and it's amazing what I missed the first few times. Besides the wonderfully diverse crew and the first interracial kiss (supposedly) here are a few things I didn't notice before: In By Any Other Name, they didn't kill the black guy first. Rojan crushes crewman Harrison but reconstitutes crewman Shea. That was probably a first too. Smoke: lots of cigarette/tobacco smoke rolling in from the sidelines, very evident in whatever high def Netflix shows it in. A piece of cord held by Frank Gorshin in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield to keep him the correct distance from the rolling camera as he chases Lokai around the Enterprise. Maybe the actor who played Lokia held it too, can't remember.
"So, you can't build more than X houses along the beach."
But you _can_ go to another beach.
The population density on most planets in the ST universe is extremely low, meaming that if you don't want to encounter other people (humans, reptiliians or small furry purple beings from tau ceti alpha), then you don't have to.
> If you can't click your fingers and have a fleet of starships so vast that they block out the stars, you don't live in a post-scarcity society.
Once upon a time fire was high tech, and fire-makers and fire-bringers could trade their fire skills for other stuff. Nowadays fire-making is absurdly easy and cheap - turn a knob on a gas stove, or flick a disposable lighter, and you have fire. It's not a skill you can trade for other stuff any more, and fire is no longer a scarce commodity.
What most people mean by "post scarcity" is not that everything imaginable is absurdly easy and cheap (your flick of fingers for starships), but that the necessities of life are easy and cheap. These are things like shelter, food, clean water, etc. A society where robots and automation supply those things for people, without them having to work themselves, is in that sense post-scarcity.
Some things, like beachfront property, Manhattan penthouses, and gold, are scarce for physical reasons, and advanced tech isn't going to change those physical reasons. But those items are not necessities, either. People don't get harmed by a gold shortage the way they get harmed by a food shortage.
You seem to imagine that the replicator creates matter from nothing, in violation of the first law of thermodynamics. The high expense of the replicator is brought out in TNG. Also the general scarcity of goods. While the earth gov appears to be either highly socialist or a welfare state that guarantees against starvation and freezing to death, it certainly is forced to make decisions about the allocation of scarce resources.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
There was clearly a huge shift between Kirk's time and Picard's. The TOS economy didn't seem that much different from ours. But by TNG, people were creating their crap from thin air and money was obsolete, except for other races like the Ferrengi.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
All it would take is for one person
That's one person too many to assume.
I wager long before we have the technology to make this robot, before anybody can claim to own one of these robots, various groups not interested in sharing the robots would making moves to ensure that they and only they get to own and control the robots.
Your assumption seems to be that the fruits of automation, owned by the few, will somehow be shared by the many.
Sort of like file-stealing, eh?
I would say most written fiction (particularly of the science kind) tends to be a bit over the top, and is about as subtle as a kick in the nuts. Take Heinlein for example. He is one of the greatest science fiction writers, he also had a lot of political commentary in his stories, however much of it left me rolling my eyes... Though he did get his point across, even if he sometimes wielded a hammer to do so. As for other fiction, Ann Rynd wasn't exactly all that subtle about what politics she was writing about either...
At least with ST you could say it was at least progressive. A lot of the old writers had same baggage with them usually sexism, but other junk as well, typically due to the time in which they grew up and lived. I like a lot of old fiction, and some of the stuff that is in it off the cuff and causal make me cringe sometimes. One of H.P. Lovecraft's novels had a character that had a favorite pet cat named "Nigger Cat" that spoke at great length about, I shit you not. Presumably the cat was black. In any case the book in question was probably written sometime in the 1920's, it was a different time back then...