The Star Trek story you describe sounded exactly like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas — indeed the “References” section of the Wikipedia article mentions the

The Star Trek story you describe sounded exactly like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas — indeed the “References” section of the Wikipedia article mentions the Star Trek episode taking inspiration from it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_...