Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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JamesFargo said:
What DS9 needed is a monorail. Everything's better with monorails.
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They actually considered it before deciding the station would be a cardassian monstrosity.
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Good thing they didn't go with it, otherwise I think JMS might have have popped a blood vessel.
 
Mike Stoklasa said:
In the full spirit of being that guy, I am pretty sure @Elim Garak did all the heavy lifting on that one, so he gets the credit.
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To be fair to the "Sisko could go full Nazi" theory, while Garak did the heavy lifting Sisko himself kinda accepts full blame for it.

"So… I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing, a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it… "

This guy can justify some pretty shady shit when he needs to.
 
Shamash said:
The federation does have some elements of a communist society-it seems you don’t have to work for money, but at the same time there is social honor and recognition for achievement.

Whether that’s going into starfleet or medicine or tennis.

I’d say it’s more a post scarcity meritocracy. If you want to sit on your ass, you won’t starve but don’t expect any social recognition or accolades. After all getting into starfleet academy is repeatedly stated to be super hard. With challenging class work and high expectations.

Also should be noted Julian Bashir’s father seems to drift from job to job and is implied to not be very successful at anything he does. Sisko’s dad runs a successful Cajun restaurant, but not because he needs to eat but because he enjoys doing it.
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The most basic interpretation of communism is that the doctrine is about money. Money is just the value we give to our property, and that property can be our talents and skills. Say, Picard was basically the richest man of Earth when he was in service because he had many things others didn't want and that still measures position. It's true that money doesn't exist and they don't need to work for a living, I doubt Beverly would have been happy with Wesley spending his life at home doing nothing.

Things is, not every human is that happy without profit because many cultures still use money. The terrorists who kidnapped the Enterprise wanted profit, whatever that profit was.
 
I imagine Roddenberry's intent was that by TNG, humans had "evolved", reached a level of social and personal enlightenment in general, that people didn't need greedy incentives to better themselves and society, but worked for personal satisfaction and because they wanted to contribute altruistically. Yes, its unrealistic, but that was always the point, that eventually humanity could reach "unrealistic" goals like... no longer having racism or poverty.

And I feel its obvious, but I'm sure he didn't think out the details of how things would work and try to plug any possible loopholes. Transporters are basically magic too, but people just jargon to explain it away because if we could 100% explain it, we'd actually have it now - the point is that we reach a level of technology so far beyond our own that we're able to achieve near magical feats
 
Grand Wizard Wakka said:
I imagine Roddenberry's intent was that by TNG, humans had "evolved", reached a level of social and personal enlightenment in general, that people didn't need greedy incentives to better themselves and society, but worked for personal satisfaction and because they wanted to contribute altruistically. Yes, its unrealistic, but that was always the point, that eventually humanity could reach "unrealistic" goals like... no longer having racism or poverty.

And I feel its obvious, but I'm sure he didn't think out the details of how things would work and try to plug any possible loopholes. Transporters are basically magic too, but people just jargon to explain it away because if we could 100% explain it, we'd actually have it now - the point is that we reach a level of technology so far beyond our own that we're able to achieve near magical feats
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The Orville does a better job at explaining it than Star Trek does.
 
Part of the issue is Trek doesn't explain the mechanics involved-how does Joseph Sisko get the materials and resources for his restaurant? Does he have to pay taxes on his profits? Where does the food come from? Who delivers it, if it's not replicated? How does he pay his staff? Do they do it just because they like waiting tables?

I get those replicators and instant teleportation can render a lot of modern economical concerns moot-but the question of incentive remains. People don't go into Starfleet or try to become Federation scientists for profit obviously, but clearly not everyone is cut out for that sort of career. So, what do they do?

They can't all be artists and poets?
 
Shamash said:
They can't all be artists and poets?
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I guess this was touched on in "Author Author": The final scene of the many EMH Mark 1’s working in the mines and discussing Photons Be Free. The whole reason the EMH wrote the book was to inspire his fellow holograms to do more than running drillls in the mines. Is it then unethical to use them for labor?

I mean what you've got here comes down to the age-old (thousands of years old) problem in a society which is entirely reliant on keeping the worker bees out of sight.
 
Shamash said:
Part of the issue is Trek doesn't explain the mechanics involved-how does Joseph Sisko get the materials and resources for his restaurant? Does he have to pay taxes on his profits? Where does the food come from? Who delivers it, if it's not replicated? How does he pay his staff? Do they do it just because they like waiting tables?

I get those replicators and instant teleportation can render a lot of modern economical concerns moot-but the question of incentive remains. People don't go into Starfleet or try to become Federation scientists for profit obviously, but clearly not everyone is cut out for that sort of career. So, what do they do?

They can't all be artists and poets?
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while i cant claim to have seen every episode of every season, from what ive seen star trek really doesnt explain much in the way of how their economy and society actually works. but i think star trek doesnt really care because none of that is really necessary for the show. it doenst need specific details on society just that we are no longer racists and we like aliens.
 
This brings me to the point that star trek was always really ambiguous about AI. On one hand there's Data who was incredibly unique and could absolutely not be reproduced easily (and was literally "invented" by one guy in his garage, you'd think somewhere somebody would do something similar if it was that easy) on the other hand an ambiguous command to the holodeck could create a super-intelligent being on accident. Then you have things like Voyagers Holodoc. Is he an AI? Is he aware? They were really sloppy about this.

Shamash said:
They can't all be artists and poets?
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My guess is many people just do nothing. A society with that kind of technology can't feasibly supply everyone with jobs. It's already a problem for us, really and will become a bigger and bigger problem in the coming decades. I'd always imagine they have kind of a social system where you can live a perfectly capable middle class life as an unemployed but have to work for additional perks. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense, who'd want to do the shitty jobs?

I think the solution is probably just not to think too hard about it and enjoy the new alien of the week, cheesy banter between the good-looking crew and the captain talking it all out in the end with his superior morals. Why's that a bad thing we can't have anymore? If I want real and grimdark where everyone is banally human and terrible I'll read the news or look at other entertainment where it's more fitting. Star Trek simply does not need to cover this base.

Shamash said:
Patrick Stewart agreed to this travesty. He isn’t an innocent bystander.
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Grand Wizard Wakka said:
He even refused to do the show until they conceeded to HIS demands to take it further in the direction they went than they even were originally willing to go.
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I can buy it. In his interviews he always seemed pretty full of himself, even for Hollywood standards.
 
Shamash said:
Part of the issue is Trek doesn't explain the mechanics involved-how does Joseph Sisko get the materials and resources for his restaurant? Does he have to pay taxes on his profits? Where does the food come from? Who delivers it, if it's not replicated? How does he pay his staff? Do they do it just because they like waiting tables?

I get those replicators and instant teleportation can render a lot of modern economical concerns moot-but the question of incentive remains. People don't go into Starfleet or try to become Federation scientists for profit obviously, but clearly not everyone is cut out for that sort of career. So, what do they do?

They can't all be artists and poets?
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I've said it before and I'll say it again; Federation colonization is about peacefully removing the Libertarian and other hard-working people from Earth and put them in remote colonies that have to wait for an overworked patrol ship to protect them, thus leaving Earth nothing but lotus eaters. Which becomes a problem when said lotus eaters need to get into a wartime situation.

Also, plenty of people are working jobs that are kinda lame like Simon Tarsus as a medical technician or O'brien as the one plumber on the entire station. They are on a gradation of settler or Fed citizen.
 
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Also, plenty of people are working jobs that are kinda lame like Simon Tarsus as a medical technician or O'brien as the one plumber on the entire station. They are on a gradation of settler or Fed citizen.
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yeah not everybody wants to be a painter or a full time coomer. some people like O'brien prefer to work with electronics. so im guessing if you want a job it is more about your interest and your abilities. but with automation everywhere it seems that for people without much abilities their only choice would be to find a job given to them charitably, that is a job which would be automated but since they want to work it they can.
Starscreams Cape said:
`your image here`
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At least 80% of the population are NPCs unable to think for themselves. In an advanced society it's better for those who can actually think to keep them occupied. This is why most of Earth's population is probably in a holosuite most of the day. The real people mostly end up in leadership positions or Star Fleet. After the Eugenics Wars humans lost their balls and are unwilling to humanly euthanize the useless eaters.
 
ForgottenUserName said:
At least 80% of the population are NPCs unable to think for themselves. In an advanced society it's better for those who can actually think to keep them occupied. This is why most of Earth's population is probably in a holosuite most of the day. The real people mostly end up in leadership positions or Star Fleet. After the Eugenics Wars humans lost their balls and are unwilling to humanly euthanize the useless eaters.
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Star Trek's real message was that the Augments did nothing wrong.
 
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