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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."
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!
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..
Star Trek Politics were always heavy-handed, often nonsensical, and arguably became somewhat to the detriment of the story while Roddenberry was in charge.
So... politics then?
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.
Don't forget, many early TNG episodes were originally either TOS episodes or Phase II episodes that were not produced in their intended shows and were adapted for TNG characters/setting, which mainly worked because early TNG was still in its infancy as far as developing that setting and those characters.
We see a lot more consistent politics in both later TNG and in later movies like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but the main characteristic that we see in all Star Trek is that the politics works well when the economy is approaching post-scarcity, where people don't have to worry about basic things like home, food, clothing, and transportation. Those things are either free-free or free to a mimimum standard. Education is also very important, nearly everyon from the Federation clearly has a full and thorough education, which stands out in all the more contrast to Tasha Yar's failed-colony home planet that's more like out of The Warriors, or on Bajoran colonies where people have been refugees for multiple generations.
What I take away from Star Trek is that in an economy where everyone is financially sound and is educated, people can choose to live in different ways from each other and so long as they're not victimizing each other, live-and-let-live applies. Picard's family is very traditional, but LaForge's family, both genders, all sought-out military service. Data's creator Dr. Soong was a madman and given how he seems to have galavanted around the galaxy, a bit of a huckster.
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Nope, real politics can be subtle, and while it may not be what Spock calls Logical, it has some sense to it.
But no, we don't see how the politics of Trek work, we just see random stories with the only meaning being whatever the writers wanted to put into it. It's a work of fiction, so you can't draw conclusions about how things work from there.
At most, an author can raise some interesting questions, or show some possible outcomes, or otherwise promulgate a message. But whether anything functions, they're just making it up.
But I've noticed something about the world today, in my observation, the ones who most strenuously protest that they are being denied their freedoms and choices are actually among those who wish to victimize others.
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.
Don't be sorry. Star Trek is pretty shitty. It's not very fun, it's not very sci-fi, it's not very funny, and it's not very interesting.
what the hell is wrong with you?
how can you say that "Star Trek is not very sic-fi"?
Its had an immense role in what can be defined as sci-fi or not. even if i weren't a fan of TOS and TNG and even Voyager i would be able to plainly see that Star Trek was and incredible show. yes Shatner wasn't the greatest actor but give the rest of the show credit, they wouldn't have so many spin offs if they weren't successful.
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)
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.
I don't see the problem with Shatner's Kirk. He swaggers, he's bold, he's good looking, he's smart. He found the right note for the character, and what more can anyone ask from an actor? In real life he's a bit of a bastard, but that's hardly a unique affliction in Hollywood.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I thought we exterminated them because they were in the way.
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Well the problem is obviously religion. Notice that in Star Trek, there really isn't any, except when they visit some backwards planet and there's religious nuts terrorizing people somehow. Otherwise, what rational reason is there to deny other people their own choices in how to live their lives as long as they aren't victimizing anyone? It's simple: because religionists don't like it, and don't want their choices to become popular and spread. We see that today with all the anti-gay-marriage vitriol from the Christians. They just can't stand the idea that other people are marrying who they want, so they want to shut it down and take control of it. These very same people were against interracial marriages a generation or two ago, calling it an "abomination". You'd think it'd be simple: if you don't like gay marriage, don't have one. But that's not good enough for these cuckoos, they want to make sure no one else has a marriage they disapprove of either.
At most, an author can raise some interesting questions, or show some possible outcomes, or otherwise promulgate a message. But whether anything functions, they're just making it up.
Well of course they are. It's a fictional TV show that lasts less than 50 minutes, and one of the big goals is to offer some social commentary, not to be a character study. I think it succeeds quite well in its goal.
But I've noticed something about the world today, in my observation, the ones who most strenuously protest that they are being denied their freedoms and choices are actually among those who wish to victimize others.
I feel like I'm being denied my freedom: my religion says that I should steal things whenever I feel like it, and these totally unjust anti-shoplifting laws are infringing that freedom. I'm being oppressed!!!
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.
What's your take on those not content with live-and-let-live and simply finding someone who will agree with them to help deal with their issues, but actively setting people up who disagree and harassing them into bankruptcy?
And so much was often unexplored, they had Geordi with his VISOR, but did they explore any other cybernetics? Other than maybe a few episodes with DATA, not really, and even less often with the Borg, though I admit I did not see much Voyager.
No, there was a very obvious anti-cybernetic bent to Star Trek actually: the Borg were shown as evil and inhuman, taking normal humans (or human-like people) and taking away their humanity with the cybernetic implants (many of which seemed to serve little purpose and be gratuitous). Geordi was the only person ever shown with an obvious implant, and it was only because their technology didn't have anything better for replacing his lost vision. Later on (in the movie ST8) he's shown with new eye implants which replace the VISOR, as technology has apparently improved to give him artificial eyes that look pretty close to human eyes. Picard had an artificial heart (which was show in one episode, where he gets stabbed), though that's not obvious from the outside. Basically, the philosophical stance they have is that Federation medical technology mostly only serves to restore humans to normal human function, and that's it; enhanced capabilities seem to be frowned on. So replacing a damaged heart with an artificial heart is OK, giving sight to a boy born blind is OK (and letting him see extra wavelengths seems to be permitted too), but giving people super-strength or whatever is off-limits. ST goes into this many times: with Khan, and also on Enterprise (the show) with the "Augments", and again with Dr. Bashir in DS9, the Federation opposition to genetic engineering is made quite clear: it's forbidden. Sickbay doctors are shown as figuring out how to cure all kinds of maladies (usually gained during contact with aliens), and bringing crewman back to perfect health, but any attempts at improving humans is shown as something to be avoided because there's inevitably going to be all kinds of problems. There's no mention at all of even cosmetic improvements: will Dr. Crusher give you a nose job if she's not busy? Doubtful, though the fact that all the crewmembers are highly attractive does make one wonder.
Perhaps being able to deliver their lines without stuttering and whinging to one side as their stomach clenches?
What the heck are you talking about?
There is a simple solution to all the melodrama. Have someone fire her ass.... are alwaus calling for public servants to get fired, why not a deadbeat county clerk?
Sorry, but that's utterly impossible. Her job is an elected position; she can't be fired. She has to be impeached (or jailed for contempt, which is what happened). It's like trying to "fire" the President of the US, it can't be done.
Now why the clerk position is elected, I have absolutely no idea. It makes about as much sense as judge positions being elected.
However, there's nothing preventing this bimbo from either resigning, or allowing one of her staff to sign the things. But noooo, she refuses to do any of that, because she says she has to make a stand. She's just like the people back in the 60s who refused to allow interracial marriages.
A fundamental part of the USA symbolism. You have flags and songs and all sorts of symbols, to tell you that everything is true and right and you don't need to look at the man behind the curtain. Having the dog catcher and the sheriff and common clerks elected is how you know democracy is safe, and you can relax your guard and be a happy consumer.
Just religion? I'd say there are plenty of secular ideologies that fit too. Swapping out jesus or mohammed for marx or nietzsche isn't an improvement. It's a lateral shift. The problem is radical, dogmatic thinking mixed with authoritarianism. Reality doesn't matter to these people and they want the state to enforce their irrational views and behavioral expectations on everyone else.
I remember one particular episode in the original series that was funny and politically heavy handed at the same time. "A Piece of the Action".
At the end Kirk explains why a starship will need to be dispatched to the planet each year to pick up the Federation's "cut". It woukd be plowed back into the planetary treasury and used to reform the population in spite of themselves. Even in high school I groaned. Even though I was pretty liberal at the time.
ME TOO! My religious freedoms are destroyed and censored by the American government every day. A decade ago I consumed 36 ounces of shroom and drank a vial of liquid LSD; Ahura Mazda showed Himself to me and commanded me to return the Eternal Flame of Zoroastrianism to the world. Yet my government has attacked my beliefs via their "laws" against "arson"! They even claim that by me enacting my God-commanded ritual purification rituals on unholy buildings could be considered "murder"! No matter those involved go to their eternal reward and dwell forever with Ahura Mazda, I am persecuted!
My God commands me to create fire and bring forth His Light to the world! We must defeat Angra Mainyu, who is the evil behind my arch nemesis the "fire fighter".
I think he means the bake shop with the "no poofters" rule.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
The Federation is pretty much straight-up atheist organizationally, but does not seem to incorporate this into general policy nor push that on their members. Every series has reinforced this repeatedly. There are still many religions followed by various races both inside the Federation and other governments, Many Star Fleet members have religious or spiritual beliefs, yet the general idea seems to be "we don't know what happens after death so over-all we don't care". Their version of secular humanism still endorses the general idea of "law" and "don't do bad things" without the need for a constant threat from a supernatural entity to keep people from falling into barbarism.
The biggest reason for this, IMHO, is that their society isn't all crowded up and stuck into a confined space like we are. If you feel like leaving all civilization behind and forming your own colony based on whatever philosophy you can. We on Earth are slowly loosing our "freedoms" because there is a very limited supply of everything so it all must be managed. Fishing rights, mining rights, even water rights, are all policies due to scarcity. Star Trek doesn't have this, they are (at least in the core worlds) post-scarcity so there is little reason to fight over this or much else. If you disagree, there is an almost unlimited amount of worlds you can just pick up and go to and do your own thing. This goes back to Roddenberry's original "Wild West" idea; there is once again a vast unpopulated frontier to expand into.
They also don't have to keep "undesirables" in their society. If someone has personality quirks that makes them anti-social, then those people can be moved to somewhere else so not to be disruptive. On Earth we're forced to live next to people who break the law under the belief of their religious system and there isn't much anyone can do about it. If those people had a chance to go somewhere else they would; but there is no place to go.
In Star Trek those people just go off and start a colony of their own and don't actively interfere in the day-to-day running of the Federation. I'm sure if we had FTL there would already be multiple "True Believer" colonies for people like Kim Davis to go to so she could live out her chosen lifestyle with a bunch of other people who feel the same. Not that this would really escape homosexuality, as it is triggered by mostly unknown environmental and genetic elements and is a general option amongst all sexually reproducing species that we've studied enough so far. When there is almost 1,500 animal species that exhibit various aspects of pansexualism it's very obvious this is some type of lower level function than a "conscious choice" or other religious nonsense. It might take awhile on another colony to feel the population pressure for homosexuality to be triggered...but that too is just another theory and honestly we just don't know.
Well the problem is obviously religion. Notice that in Star Trek, there really isn't any
Actually in TOS I remember there being a lot of Christian theme in it relative to any other Star Trek series. For example, one episode featured a Christian wedding (with cross and all) and another episode (where they found a planet that was like Earth only the Romans continued to exist in the 1960's) and they (Kirk et al) praised the rise of a new cult on that planet that worshiped the sun of God (aka Jesus on Earth) as a sign that the planet was maturing.
However in no other series do I recall any such allusions to Christianity.
Don't forget, many early TNG episodes were originally either TOS episodes or Phase II episodes that were not produced in their intended shows and were adapted for TNG characters/setting, which mainly worked because early TNG was still in its infancy as far as developing that setting and those characters.
IMO Star Trek didn't truly take off until TNG. Also he TNG staff (including the writers) said that the first two seasons were unwatchable. And you know? After having watched the series again in HD recently, I agree. The first season was super boring, and the second season almost as bad. It's probably not a coincidence that the third season was basically the first one that escaped Gene Roddenberry's influence (he had a hand in the second season, but only passively, and had no interaction with the staff during the third season.)
His formula probably worked better for TOS than it did for TNG because TOS was during a whole different era of television.
Tell that to the maquis..
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.
No, cows are smarter than that.
...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.
A fundamental part of the USA symbolism. You have flags and songs and all sorts of symbols, to tell you that everything is true and right and you don't need to look at the man behind the curtain.
Which country or society does not have symbols? Or songs? Flags have been around for ages, too. Sheesh. You want to paint 245 million+ adult people that live in the US as suck-ass consumers, without even pondering how many *want* to look at the "man behind the curtain" and who's guard is certainly not down. You've been watching too many Hollywood movies.
Who believes everything that a government does, being run by humans like us, is always "true and right?" Wherever you're from, I'm sure you can read your own history books and see that your ancestors likely acted in your collective best interest, but not necessarily that of your neighbors. Sorry to say, despite some fine accomplishments, the US's fuckups tend to have far-flung consequences, but I take exception when someone stereotypes such a diverse collection of people as moronic drones. Wouldn't you?
Anyway, I've never seen dog catcher on a ballot. It's an interesting idea though, which perhaps I'll bring up at a city council meeting or, better yet, create a petition on the white house's web site.
I don't know. If you can ignore laws because you believe that some group doesn't deserve the protection, then that means that robbery (the protection of people against it) can be ignored for, for example, bigoted religiotards who don't want gays having a wedding cake they make.
If you don't want to do the job of baking cakes, DON'T BECOME A BAKER. If you do, bake cakes. If someone asks you for a cake and some hot gay sex, say yes to the cake and feel absolutely free to say no to the buttock action.
If your religon is so strong that you CANNOT bake a cake that a gay person will be eating at their wedding, then please also obey that religion and refuse it for people who break the sabbath (saturday, not sunday), have divorced, masturbated, blasphemed, avoided taxes ("render unto caesar that which is due caesar"), eat shellfish, shaved a beard, seen a woman during her period (including himself if a customer is on her period), wearing cloths of two different fabrics, has a foreskin, and so on.
If you picked only gays, then how does anyone know that your problem is your religion (which we could say is protected), and not your bigotry (which is not)? If you aren't obeying all the rules of your religion, then the rules you are following are not being followed because of your religion. Those rules only happen to appear in the religion, but there is no evidence you are following them because of that religion. You'd have to follow all the other laws too.
Oh, and don't claim "New Testament!!!" because
a) No OT, no NT. No god, no creation of the world by god, no owed obeisance to god, no original sin, therefore no sin for JC to die for, therefore no need to worship him. No heaven in fact, since that was made in the OT.
b) Only Saint Paul was against gays. NOTHING in the teachings of JC was to repudiate and discriminate against them
c) JC said you should sell all your stuff and follow JC. Since you're not doing that either, you're not a christian.
d) also, if there's no god, no JC saving us, then there's no reason to hate gays anyway, since they were an issue for the OT god, and not NT JC, who has no debt owed to which we must observe his commandments for.
people up who disagree
Except that is not the case of "disagree" but of "let me hate and harass in peace" and "my imaginary friend gave me right to hatemonger".
And when one invokes "imaginary friend" rules... well, one sets oneself up for a LOT more than just bankruptcy.
Like being offered as a human sacrifice to someone else's imaginary friend.
And then we call that person who kidnaps people and cuts their hearts out as a sacrifice to the their imaginary friend not a premeditating murderer - but a MENTALLY INSANE person.
Adults with "imaginary friends" are mentally insane. Children too, probably.
So, that "people who disagree" is closer to "mentally insane people who just want to spread hatred and harassment towards people for whom their psychosis tells them that they are 'fair game'"
As for "harassing them into bankruptcy"...
Besides the fact that Melissa and Aaron's imaginary friend would dictate exactly that had they been running a bank and not a bakery - they were breaking a law. Deliberately and purposefully.
On account of "imaginary friend is our get out of jail free ticket".
Which if it were true would make 9/11 a perfectly fine way of expressing one's beliefs in imaginary creatures and rules.
But besides THAT... You are full of shit.
http://www.politico.com/story/...
They made out like gangbusters (more like just regular gangsters) from donations from people who apparently think that they, the people, should pay for products of other people's insane decisions.
From each according to their ability to give, for Melissa and Aaron according to their need to pay for their hate-license.
Because they, too share the same ideology of who to hate.
And they weren't nothing "into bankruptcy" - they chose to lock up their shop, rather than comply to "cakes - not hate" order.
http://aclu-co.org/court-cases...
The Commission's order affirmed previous determinations that Masterpieceâ(TM)s refusal to sell Mullins and Craig a wedding cake constituted discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in violation of Colorado law. The Commission also ordered Masterpiece Cakeshop to change its company policies, provide "comprehensive staff training" regarding public accommodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers.
Better donations than rejecting discrimination, no cake for those we hate!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Now why the clerk position is elected, I have absolutely no idea. It makes about as much sense as judge positions being elected.
Elections for positions like that stem from the frontier mentality dating back to the westward expansion of the US. If you're out in the boonies, just you and a handful of families, odds are eventually the settlement will require a job no one has a certification for. Someone gets into a fist-fight with someone else and you need a mediator to decide how to handle it. Unfortunately you probably didn't bring a lawyer with you, opting instead to bring a blacksmith or someone with farming experience. What do you do? You get together as a group to decide to which individual you're going to delegate the authority. You've just elected your first settlement judge. Someone probably needs to help the judge with the paperwork because in addition judicial responsibilities, your judge has to keep working the smithy or working the farm. So you delegate that paperwork job to someone else, and now you have a legal clerk.
I'm not saying this is best way to do things, but having historical context does help explain why things are they way they are sometime.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
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.
No, those people are lying too.
If the county clerk or the baker or pizza store owner believed that gays should not be served because it's against god's teachings, then they shouldn't serve
those who work on saturday
those men who have seen their women in menstruation
those who have a foreskin
those who have eaten shellfish
those who have shaved
those who have divorced
those who wear fabrics of two different sorts (polycotton anyone?)
those who have eaten pork
those who have blasphemed (even "darn" is blasphemous: it's still MEANT to say "Damn", but presumes the Creator of All is so fucking dumb he can't tell the meaning of the word from its precise spelling or pronunciation)
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"
We can right now, here on our planet, see how ignoring the prime directive and meddling with other peoples' affairs leads to more problems than it solves.
Now THAT's politics!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually I dimly remember a TNG episode explaining why all aliens look human. Spoiler: The aliens don't look human, we look like some ancient alien race that seeded it all.
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.
Blaming religion for all the woes of the world, is just naive. People can bend religion to match how they are thinking about stuff at the time. The bible has a lot of teaching to push a very liberal agenda as well.
Currently in politics the issue with abortions has split America, it is a complicated problem on many levels.
When does human life begin. (when it genetically a new person, when particular organs develop, when it can survive on its own... )
When it is considered a human life, when does its rights kick in. (Where does the cutoff for the rights of the mother and rights of the offspring come in)
Many Christian religions has gone the moral safe route. Life kicks in at time of federalization, the right to live trumps all other rights.
While it is the safe route it may not necessarily be accurate.
Now because of this stance, political parties can join with this group as a source of easy voters. And as these groups who joined in for this cause, begin absorbing the other ideals of the political party. Then they will twist the religion where it was more neutral on the topic to become more entranced, as well pushing the political party to expand on some of the other issues it has.
Now they are Christian groups who are far more liberal, some will support gay marriage, and abortions. So saying religion is the problem is over simplifying the issue. It is whenever a group of people join together and make a bunch of rules, is when the problem occurs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Fyi, desegregation and decriminalization of SSM have also both happened under a mostly Christian society. I don't think it was because an atheist cabal took over (unless you are intellectually in camp with the extreme fundamentalists, they might say that). Under what special mode of reasoning do you get to credit the Christians who accepted these rules and not the Christians who fought against them?
It used to be abolitionists who were the crazy extremists. What did they typically cite as their reason for advocating those extreme beliefs?
Otherwise, what rational reason is there to deny other people their own choices in how to live their lives as long as they aren't victimizing anyone?
Right, the only motivation anyone has for wanting society to go along with their ideas is religion. That's why we have people who want to ban you from ordering a large soda, smoking a cigarette, homeschooling your kids, using gender pronouns, etc.
There are plenty of societies which have realized religious beliefs are a problem and have restricted them. Which of those do you find more free and preferable to the one you live in right now?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Hey, just because the fruits of automation have never been shared by the many doesn't mean it won't start spontaneously happening!
If you run a business that's open to the public (as opposed to a private-membership club), then you can't discriminate--it's the law. If you don't like that, you shouldn't be in business. It's no different than refusing to serve lunch to black people, or refusing to dispense live-saving medication to black people.
You were talking about *illegal* acts. Arson isn't illegal for religious reasons, it is because it is an act that harms and kills others.
It's irrelevant: the principle is exactly the same. Religionists want their religious principles to be encoded into law, even if they do harm others. Luckily western society tends to be more secular, but the government that, say, ISIS is setting up, is not like this. Christians here in America would like to have a government like that, where unbelievers are imprisoned or executed. Christians in the middle ages were exactly like this.
I don't know about all this. Yes, it's definitely easier for people to go to a new colony in the Federation, but inhabitable worlds aren't that plentiful; they have multiple episodes about colonists getting into conflicts with others, either some beings who already inhabited the planet, or some neighboring power that had already claimed the planet as their territory. (There's the episode where Data has to convince some colonists to leave their home because the Cardassians are taking it over, due to a treaty between them and the Federation. There's also an episode where Picard's crew finds a young man who was taken by a rival power after a raid by them killed all the colonists he was with and then raised him as their own, and he doesn't want to go back to his birth family on Earth.) There's colonies which are entirely sealed in artificial habitats because the planet is inhospitable (like the one where Picard's crew finds a planet being threatened by some big asteroid's gravity, and Geordi works with a female colonist to improve the tractor beam, using technology from his VISOR, something that wouldn't happen on their world because "defective" children aren't kept there). Most of these colonies in fact seem to be renegades, not officially sanctioned by the Federation, and the Enterprise usually just stumbles over them, only finding some records about them in their archives that are decades or centuries old, with their final location and status unknown. They just go out into space somewhere and squat on a planet, and frequently it turns out it's in contested space somewhere. Some are official, but I believe I remember some talk about there being work to terraform worlds, but it's a slow process and there's only so many of them.
The problem with religion is that you don't have to have any kind of rational justification for your position, just "it's in the Bible" (with some out-of-context quote).
When you eliminate religion this way, then any position you take has to be justified with some kind of rational philosophy. Take gay marriage for example: what's the reason to not allow it? It's usually religious: "the Bible says it's sinful in this passage here". That's not a justification based on rationality. The only other reason given is "it's unnatural", but that's just plain stupid, because homosexuality has been observed in countless animals, plus we don't live naturally anyway. Driving a car is "unnatural", so should we stop that too? Typing on a computer is as well. But religious thought promotes this kind of illogical thinking.
Even the ancient Greeks were knowledgeable about debating using rational principles instead of just blindly pointing at some book, so we've taken a huge step backwards since then.
Right, the only motivation anyone has for wanting society to go along with their ideas is religion. That's why we have people who want to ban you from ordering a large soda, smoking a cigarette, homeschooling your kids, using gender pronouns, etc.
Oh please; there's rational arguments for all of those (and rational arguments against them too). Banning sodas comes from an interest in improving public health, same with smoking. Moreso with smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, which affects people who didn't choose to harm their bodies. Being against homeschooling is basically the same, the idea being the children won't get a proper education or will be indoctrinated into a crazy religion; the opposite side of course is the idea that parents should have the authority to decide what's best for their kids rather than the State, the State's schools are frequently lousy and don't live up to the promise, not all homeschoolers are wacky fundamentalists, etc. Opposition to gender pronouns comes from wanting to treat everyone equally and not have "institutional sexism"; the argument against is that they don't believe that gender pronouns have such an effect, that changing is impractical, etc.
There are plenty of societies which have realized religious beliefs are a problem and have restricted them. Which of those do you find more free and preferable to the one you live in right now?
Well, ISIS's territory hasn't restricted certain religious beliefs, and it's a hellhole. All the Muslim countries have religion built into society and government, and they suck to live in and have terrible standards of living on average. Meanwhile, western Europe has to some extent, and it has the highest standard of living in the world (especially Sweden, which is probably the least religious).
I'm not sure why you think you're disagreeing with me,
You must be new here
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's simple: if part of your job requires you to do something you find immoral, then you need to find yourself a new job. No one is entitled to any particular job.
And I thought conservatives were against make-work programs.... I guess only when they're for Christians.
What would you say to someone whose moral compass requires them to refuse service to black people? Or to refuse a cab ride to a drunk person? Or to sell pork even though your store carries it?
And then don't pay her. Pay can be withheld for failing to perform functions in the Job Description.
Maybe, but getting the local government to do that is another matter. The Judge doesn't have the unilateral power to force the county to withhold her paychecks. He does have the power to jail her for contempt of court, which she clearly is guilty of. Why shouldn't she go to jail for that? Everyone else goes to jail for it.
And even if they did withhold pay, she'd still go to the job and act illegally. The law of the land is that she must issue licenses to gay couples (as well as straight ones, who she was also refusing to serve!). Why should she be allowed to thumb her nose at the law indefinitely?
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.
That is what the producers WANTED, or else they wouldn't have gotten rid of Jeffery Hunter for Shatner, who even back then was known as a "who ordered the large HAM?" actor.
As for the politics? I always thought ST was pretty blatantly communist myself, complete with everyone talking about how "nobody wants for anything" yet those at the top got the rare non replicated things which they then showed off, see Kirk's room filled with rare antique weapons or Picard's collection of rare books. There was also plenty of talk among the lower ranks about "credits" being used in a similar vein to money and of course once things got even slightly scarce they went back to hustling and backroom dealing for what they wanted, see Voyager and rations or Nog teaching Jake how to deal to get Sisko a rare baseball card.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why? To provide an almost invisible disincentive to inadvertent consumption of soda.
Yes, that's the whole idea. If you're served a giant cup of soda, you're likely to drink the whole thing. Whereas if you are served a smaller cup, you'll probably drink all that too, but you're not as likely to bother getting a refill, so you end up drinking half as much. It's basic human psychology.
Sorry if I wasn't clear before: "banning sodas" was a misstatement, they banned large cup sizes.
We (know we) have more now than (they knew) they had 50 years ago. There's no reason to expect they won't (know they) have more in 50 years than (we know) we have now.
There are big new discoveries all the time. Someday it will start to tail off, but the current trend is that available reserves are increasing at an accelerated rate, especially relative to demand. So if you're betting on true scarcity in fossil fuel energy sources, you will be wrong for a very, very long time.
The scary thing is that there's still a low-level, boiling undercurrent of it in American and probably in Western society, that requires permanent active vigilance to keep it at-bay. Unfortunately there are lots of people that know they can profit off of pandering to it despite the damage that it can cause if it boils-over.
We can literally never stop working against it. If we stop it will come out.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
oh yeah, the nordic propaganda machine, devouring the world
you're a fucking retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
I've often wondered how it would change day-to-day life for us humans here on Earth if we had a power source (like fusion, or antimatter, or {fill in the blank} ) that was cheap and ubiquitos enough that you could just let everyone have it for free, and Federation-style replicators that could feed and clothe you for next to nothing (or for free); basically, as you say, all the basics covered, for everyone. I think that might solve a huge chunk of humanitys' problems. Don't know if you've noticed it, but it's almost too easy for people to be nice, polite, and forgiving during times of plenty for all, and as I'm wont to say, when times are hard you find out what people are really like. But unfortunately humanitys' problems go beyond just resources. Look at what's going on in the Middle East: you have groups that are killing other groups because they don't believe in the same God the exact same way that they do, and this God, apparently, takes such offense at this that He demands these heretics be slaughtered. One might say that so-called Christian religions are better than that, but historically that's not true either. So then my great fear would be that in a world where resources are no longer a problem at all for anyone, that the power-hungry and the fanatics would still beat those freely available ploughshares into swords anyway, and go kill their neighbors regardless. In the end what I think is that humans still need more time to evolve out of the need for such 'beliefs' that drive them to go kill people for those sorts of reasons; my opinion is that we, as a race, still act more like animals than we act like highly-evolved, sentient beings, and that we're at a dangerous point in our evolution, where we have the capability to extinguish ourselves many times over.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The root of the problem, in my opinion, is that Man makes God in his own image, which is something that really gets some people all riled up when I say it in their earshot. Religious types, whether they realize it or not, whether they want to admit it or not, anthropomorphize their Diety. Then, to make matters worse, other humans go and write a book (or books, as the case may be), ostensibly the Word of God, which just reinforces the whole thing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Uhura sure seemed able to recognize the Christian religion on the Roman planet. Kirk sure seemed to know his way around a funeral ceremony. Remember that most of Star Trek takes place in a context (naval vessel) where one would not expect to see much religious expression. Heck, I work in the USA and don't see much religious expression while at work.
I generally agree with the rest of your standard religious criticisms, but this is so off the mark. Or rather, what you meant to say was that it seems as though the typical federation citizen is far less overtly religious than any typical human citizen is today. Because clear as day, Trek is filled with religious references. And yes, they are almost always part of *the formula* which involves "contact with new lifeforms, and new civilizations". The whole reason *the formula* works is because there are very practical reasons why storytellers, ones plenty more critical of religion in general than you, don't want to dare directly offend any existing religion (*cough* bengazi prophet mohommed cartoon *cough*). Jesus, thinly veiled constant criticism of religion is the whole fscking point of *the trek formula*.
Flags have been around for ages, too.
Possibly not as long as you think. The UK, for example, has the second oldest flag in the world and it dates from the beginning of the 19th century (Denmark has the oldest).
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.
Luckily western society tends to be more secular, but the government that, say, ISIS is setting up, is not like this. Christians here in America would like to have a government like that, where unbelievers are imprisoned or executed. Christians in the middle ages were exactly like this.
I spend a lot of time around Christians, both conservative and liberal. I have literally never heard a single Christian articulate anything like a desire to have unbelievers imprisoned and/or executed. Nothing even close to that.
Life is short; think quickly.
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.
The liberal ones, if they're really liberal, are not typical American Christians, they're an anomaly and a tiny minority.
The conservative ones aren't totally stupid usually. They're just like the Scientologists: they don't talk about the really crazy stuff around outsiders. And most of them probably *don't* want people imprisoned or executed, yet. They want the laws changed so they're theologically based, out of their favorite Bible passages. Then, of course they're going to want people imprisoned when they start breaking these laws; who *wouldn't* want someone imprisoned who breaks laws? After that, when they've accumulated enough power, they're eventually going to want to execute people who don't follow along. Just look at how little time passed between Germany having a nice, peaceful, liberal Republic (the Weimar Republic), and going from that to the SA and SS and death camps. It doesn't take much to get people to back those kinds of actions. And America's Christians are ripe for it too: look at how they've built up such a huge a persecution complex lately. They all think they're being *persecuted* because gay people are being allowed to get married now. The Germans thought they were being persecuted too (and at least they were actually right: they were being harshly and unfairly punished for losing WWI and their economy was suffering for it), and look what it drove them to do. The exact same thing could easily happen with America's Christians, taking out their frustrations on some minorities or other groups they decide to hate.
Oh yeah, I forgot to add (why the fuck doesn't Slashdot have an edit function after all these years like Reddit?):
All those Germans who herded homosexuals, intellectuals, Gypies, and Jews into trains and took them to death camps were Christian.
That's interesting, but it's really orthogonal because you're getting into existential questions which are mostly beyond the ability of science to answer. Yes, some religions do ponder the questions of freewill vs. predetermination, but the conclusions they usually wind up with are entirely based selective reading of the Bible or other holy text. That's the whole problem with religions: they don't consider real evidence, they only consider their own holy texts as reliable evidence. It's like an echo chamber: this book is true and correct, because it says that it's true and correct, which is a tautology. There's no actual reasoning there, just a fallacious appeal to authority.
What I'm addressing is philosophies of *how we should live* and *how we should structure our societies and laws*, not questions of how we got here or whether we're living in the Matrix. Religionists want to base laws and societal codes entirely on ancient books written by primitive people, whereas secularists want to base them on rational principles backed by evidence when possible (i.e., make sure laws actually work as intended, and set up a feedback system so that they can be corrected so that they do).
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.
Gene Roddenberry was more or less a "Utopian Socialist" and he was hoping humans would "evolve past the need for money". Which is exactly as insane as it sounds. It's like hoping that humanity would "evolve past the need for numbers" or "evolve past the need for indoor plumbing".
.com and housing bubbles, where government regulations and central bank set interest rates that were too low for the economic conditions, resulting in a bubble.
Money is two things:
An intermediary for transactions. A universally exchangeable good. The purpose of course is to replace barter, which is massively inefficient.
A unit of measure used for economic calculation, which is necessary once an economy grows past a large family/tribe to properly ascertain scarcity and desirability of various goods. This is why Communist economies fail, the information the central planners need to make economic decisions does not exist under Communism, as prices can only be accurately created by free market exchange. (Of course the USSR and China copied western prices, which allowed crude calculations.) Of course even in a market economy, intervention by a non-market authority (government/central bank) will cause prices to go out of whack. We saw that in the
In ST we see the absurdities created by the lack of money. How many episodes depend in whole or part on the problems associated with barter?
I think ST VI (maybe XII, I stopped counting after II) was all about nuclear power. IIRC, at the time, it was a nod to Chernobyl and the end of the Soviet Union.
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.
True, there might not be a vast amount of habitual worlds, but my theory still holds. People are not forced to live with people they really disagree with. Also, I think the actual number of colonizable worlds / colonies might not be properly represented in the series as the Enterprise's job takes them to places were there is conflict, problems, or such usually. They do scientific exploration, but it seems to be a "side mission" depending on where their at in that episode. Ironically, our "real world" planetary searches are showing there are probably more habitual worlds than the writers of Star Trek ever envisioned.
Ironically, our "real world" planetary searches are showing there are probably more habitual worlds than the writers of Star Trek ever envisioned.
Huh? No they aren't. We've found over a thousand exoplanets so far (last I heard), but they're mostly gas giants, or way too cold or hot. We've only found a handful that look like they might possibly be Earth-like, and even these are large (like 2g gravity), and there's no telling what the environments are like. All we know is they're rocky, somewhere on the order of Earth's size, and they appear to be within the "habitable zone" of the star. That really doesn't say too much about the surface conditions of a planet; it could be as cold as Hoth or as hot as Venus (Venus is within the habitable zone, it just has a runaway greenhouse effect), it might not have any water, it might not have an atmosphere at all.
Most likely, there's at least some of them in our galaxy, considering there's a billion stars here and exoplanets of some kind seem to be common, but we just don't have any idea how common a "Class M" planet is.
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
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'm sure you're right, but having an historical explanation for how something now seen as stupid developed doesn't stop it now being seen as stupid, and doesn't mean it's incapable of change.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is why Communist economies fail, the information the central planners need to make economic decisions does not exist under Communism, as prices can only be accurately created by free market exchange.
Communism does not necessarily require heavy handed central planning as in the USSR. You can easily conceive of a system of local free market trading, but simply without capitalists being allowed to accumulate personal wealth at the expense of the community.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think the recent estimates say that habitable planets are quite plentiful. You are right that we have only found a few of them, but from the sensitivity of our search and the number we have found, we can estimate the total number, and it is very large, likely billions or tens of billions, maybe more. (https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-many-habitable-planets-are-in-our-galaxy-5bcf6db80c7f) The difference between the real world and Star Trek is that they can travel to a large fraction of the galaxy in a lifetime while there are no stars except the sun within 10000 years of earth at current spacecraft speeds.
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.
Oh, and don't claim "New Testament!!!" because
That whole "OT doesn't apply any more" crowd is so hypocritical.
If you say they shouldn't eat shellfish because it says so in Leviticus, they'll say that doesn't apply any more because it's in the OT.
If you say that you don't need to tithe, they'll pull out Leviticus and quote the verse.
If you say there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, they'll talk about Sodom and Gomorrah (in the OT).
Huh? I'm pretty sure banners were flown in the middle ages. And the US had flags before the beginning of the 19th century. No, it didn't have the exact same flag as now, but that's not the point the OP was making, it was that flags have been flown for a very long time in western society.
Idiot. Spock was the sex symbol, not Kirk. Geek women like brains not brawn.
Idiot. Spock was the sex symbol, not Kirk. Geek women like brains not brawn.
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.
You can of course conceive of anything.
The fact nobody has gotten anything like that to work in the real world should tell you something.
You can claim communism without central planning is possible. I'm calling bullshit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There's LOTS of liberal American Christians. They just don't make the same amount of noise as the right-wing religious nuts. You're falling for the availability heuristic.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you're referring to that bakery, the penalty for not serving a gay couple would have been a fairly modest fine. However, when the gay folks filed a discrimination complaint, the bakery folks started a campaign to harass the gay folks, and that's where the big court-ordered payment comes from. If the gay-haters had been content to live-and-let-live, they'd have had just a minor problem, and would not have flirted with bankruptcy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That wasn't originally the case, but one episode (I think it was the plant spore one) suggested that Spock actually had emotions, but normally suppressed them. At that point, and not before, he became a sex symbol.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Lots as in more than 5 or 50 or 500? Sure. Lots as in a majority, no way. All the stats I've seen show the mainline Protestants to be a minority and shrinking. Here's a Wikipedia article that has numbers. 70.6% of the population is Christian, but only 14.7% is mainline Protestant (which has all the liberals). By contrast, 20.8% is Catholic (not really liberal, though not always right-wing either, but can usually be counted on to vote Republican because of the abortion issue), and a hefty 25.4% of the population is evangelical, which is the right-wing religious nuts. In addition to that, some of the mainline Protestants are right-wing nuts too, namely the Southern Baptists; only certain mainline denominations are liberal (mainly Presbyterian (PCUSA only) and Lutheran (ELCA only); watch out, both those denominations have other sects that are far more conservative).
Don't take my word for it; here's a whole sub-article about it in Wikipedia. From the article: "Contrast with conservative churches -- While mainline churches have seen shrinking membership and worship attendance, both evangelical and fundamentalist Christian groups have been growing. About 40% of mainline Protestants in the 1990s were active in church affairs, compared to 46% of the conservatives."
The growing population of Hispanics isn't helping things either, it's making it worse. From the article: "The Barna Group, considers the failure of mainline Protestants to add substantial numbers of Hispanics to be portent for the future, given both the rapid increase of the Hispanic population as well as the outflow of Hispanics from Catholicism to Protestant churches in the past decade, most of whom are selecting evangelical or Pentecostal Protestant churches." You can't get any more nutty than the Pentecostals.
So no, there really aren't that many liberal American Christians. There's some, but they're getting old and dying out; go to any liberal church and see it for yourself (I've been dragged to a few): the congregants have one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel. Meanwhile, the evangelical churches are full of young people and 30-somethings with families (again, I've been dragged to a few; never again).
If you don't follow a particular religion, why would you need a rational for your justification for your position.
I have seen many very secular point of views about things where their argument is purely emotional, based off of just hatred, or because someone else had that idea, who was an inspiration to them. Their arguments are faulty, and their position isn't based off of careful thought but just a knee jerk ration.
I have found if you actually talk to the higher ups in the religions (Not the nutty protesters) they will often have a very good reason for their belief, which is far more in depth than bible thumping.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
By those figures, 20% of US Christians are in mainline Protestant churches. While some of them are conservative, many are liberal. Moreover, there are liberal Christians in conservative churches (not everybody translates what their church says into their behavior, which can be a good thing). While the ones I tend to agree with (politically, not theologically) are in the minority, I wouldn't call it tiny.
The future of US Christianity isn't real favorable, as you point out, but at least the "unaffiliated"s are growing in number also. The next few decades should be interesting.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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...