3 ms·
In Star Trek, there's still scarcity of Galaxy Class Starships, as well as great scarcity of commisions for captains of Galaxy Class Starships. Once one thing
by epistasis 3y ago
In Star Trek, there's still scarcity of Galaxy Class Starships, as well as great scarcity of commisions for captains of Galaxy Class Starships.
Once one thing becomes abundant, other things start to feel more scarce.
Where I live in California, we have an abundance of food, wealth, and materials for building homes. What is scarce is permission to actually build. Which sends housing prices through the roof, which then causes labor prices to go through the roof, which makes building itself more expensive.
The politics will always be challenging, and I think most examples in the real world point to the politics of distribution to be more challenging than the act of production.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoI would love to see a Star Trek doing more with the Maquis, just seems like such an interesting change from the regular "people on a ship" The Lower Decks is really enjoyable too, funny to see the bureaucratic elements of Star Fleet joked about.
- fbdab103 3y agoI thought Star Fleet actually wanted to limit the number of circulating Galaxy Class ships so as to not appear like they were maintaining a war fleet. They kept disassembled spares in case they needed to ramp up their forces.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoIt was made clear in Star Trek that even big picture stuff such as the entirety of Starfleet is more or less something humanity does to pass the time. > The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. > We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity. In other words, they do it because they want to, not because they need to. No doubt they've got endless replicators on Earth. There is no economy, anything you want or need is just replicated into existence. There is an abundance of goods, virtually infinite supply, thus no need to economize. In Star Trek humanity is a galaxy spanning civilization so even land isn't scarce. Incredibly, they don't even seem to have artificial scarcity in the form of copyright since numerous episodes show characters freely copying works and data from their computers. Absolutely utopic. Social standing remains scarce. Obviously some people will be captains of the Enterprise while the vast majority will not. That will probably always be true. It ultimately matters little though. A humanity that can just replicate goods into existence has absolutely evolved beyond silly things like capitalism and communism. This is a humanity that is fully liberated from toil, a humanity that is free to enjoy themselves and to pursue their dreams. In that utopic setting, we watch the exploits of the humans who just happened to choose to explore the galaxy, in the startship enterprise. They pursue their dream with inexhaustible curiosity and incorruptible integrity, precisely because they have no other concerns.
- jamiek88 3y agoSigh. That sounds wonderful.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoDS9 did many things, including making Starfleet more believable as galactic power. Instead of the "everything is awesome, everything always works, there's plenty of everything" bullshit of ST:TNG, we see a Starfleet that has plenty...for the stuff it cares about. And under the veneer, it's also got its fair share of incompetence, bureaucracy, and turf wars/pissing contests - as would be expected from a massive organization. Starfleet doesn't care about some podunk space station in a former warzone above a planet full of religious zealots...even after it sports a wormhole.