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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!
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.
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.
Reading this post demonstrates Americans have absolutely no idea what socialism is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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)
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 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.
Or the subtlety of TNG episode where everyone on an alien planet is genderless, but some of them lean more towards one gender or another. Or the subtlety of the entire Ferrengi race, for that matter, which was almost a literal demonization of capitalism (greedy, deceptive, ugly, backstabbing, cowardly, and sexist to boot).
Star Trek writers could have used a bit of restraint in creating these ham-handed scenarios and caricatures. I liked Star Trek in spite of its ridiculous political and social preaching, not because of it.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
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.
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.
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.