Crusade

[JacktheRabbit]

And that's a bad thing? So they don't have Wall Street? Doesn't mean there isn't some
kind of money, just that they don't have a stock market. Probably all businesses are privately
owned. We do know there are businesses. The whole 'world-is-controlled-by-capitalism'
is seen in negative light in the future? Gosh. It's seen as negative now.

Plus, I'm not saying they ain't socialist, to me, that's a good thing. I'm just saying that that
doesn't mean they're a dictatorship. Can you give me any real evidence of that? Really.

The fact is just that we don't know enough about the workings of the UFP to really say.
You are just jumping to conclusions. Maybe you're right. But you can't prove it.

Do you have any idea how long Wall Street has been around? People have been investing in businesses for centuries.

In fact the name "Wall Street" came about because lots of business transactions happened at a Coffee Shop located on the street of Wall Street which was named because it was near a large wall.

Also to put it bluntly. YES socialism and communism are bad. End of story.

 

[Eridanis]

This has been a very interesting discussion, and a level-headed one, so far. Please keep things calm and mature.

Or I'll be forced to un-derail this thread.

 

[Storm Raven]

And that's a bad thing? So they don't have Wall Street? Doesn't mean there isn't some kind of money, just that they don't have a stock market. Probably all businesses are privately
owned. We do know there are businesses. The whole 'world-is-controlled-by-capitalism' is seen in negative light in the future? Gosh. It's seen as negative now.

Actually, it is really a negative if all businesses are privately owned. That means that opportunities for investment and ownership will be limited to those individuals who have lots of disposable assets they can invest. Corporate ownership is simply a way for many people with modest assets to pool their wealth to invest in a business. If you get rid of corporate ownership and make all businesses privately owned, you are on your way to a modern version of feudalism.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

The fact is just that we don't know enough about the workings of the UFP to really say.
You are just jumping to conclusions. Maybe you're right. But you can't prove it.

FACT: Starfleet admirals can and do try civilians for breaking civilian laws. (DS9)

FACT: Starfleet can and does initiate news blackouts. (STNG)

FACT: Starfleet admirals have enough power to stage coups that only other Starfleet personel can oppose (DS9)

FACT: Starfleet controls ALL spaceborn traffic in the Federation. Or at least controls the human ones. Or do you really think when the Borg ship was sitting above Earth that not a single citizen decided to jump in their personal ship and make a run for it? (STNG)

FACT: Starfleet is the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, and just about every other Federal Agency you have ever heard of. (STNG, DS9, VOY)

FACT: When outside the Federation no one accepts Federation credits. People are reduced to using barter or actual gold standard type precious metals. That is an economic system even more primative then we used 100 years ago.

 

[Mallus]

Plus, I'm not saying they ain't socialist, to me, that's a good thing. I'm just saying that that
doesn't mean they're a dictatorship. Can you give me any real evidence of that? Really.

Sure, this is all fun-with-criticism. It may not be accurate to call the Federation a military dictatorship, but it is fun to examine it in that light. I started off joking, but there really is a case to be made for the Federation as a {relatively} benign military dictatorship.

For a show that makes a great deal of the Federation's ethics/principles {which should undergird and flow out of its politcal system and civil society}, there is little functional exploration of them in action within the Federation.

Its a bit like a show about a couples great marriage where we never actually see any of the workings of the marriage. The couple spends all of their time telling their neighbors what a great marriage they have...

To try and bring JMS's universe back into this.... in Crusade and B5 created a dynamic setting with much more interesting politics {evil human government, lots of deal making, the need for ugly compromise, shifting allegiances and hard choice to make}.

This was used to great dramatic effect. Its the stuff of good drama. Trek's setting has little of this. Whether that's good or bad can only be judged by the quality of drama that produced from the setting, and I for one find Trek's Federation lacking in that department, except for the dear, departed DS9.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

To try and bring JMS's universe back into this.... in Crusade and B5 created a dynamic setting with much more interesting politics {evil human government, lots of deal making, the need for ugly compromise, shifting allegiances and hard choice to make}.

Babylon 5 is more interesting because it has human beings we can relate to in it. They hav emotions, desires, strengths, weaknesses.

Star Trek though has evolved to a show with creatures that LOOK like humans but appear to have been crossbreed with rabbits to make them more docile. You cannot relate to them because they do not think, act, or emote like we do.

 

[Mallus]

Babylon 5 is more interesting because it has human beings we can relate to in it. They hav emotions, desires, strengths, weaknesses.

Well, I agree with you, but to be fair Trek has its share of interesting characters; I like most of the DS9 crew, and Data and the Doctor are fascinating, largely due to their struggle to define themselves. They had the need and the opportunity to grow, which was lacking, or critically under-dramatized, in their fellow crewmembers...

And that's the key; struggle. JMS created dramatic situations that defined characters; the Trek writers too often had characters wrestling with balky technology, poorly defined external threats, and barely examined Federation "principles".

 

[Mallus]

And another thing...

...it really isn't interesting to debate the economics of Star Trek. The Federation is well into the post-scarcity period. The cost of energy production and material goods is next to nil. The physical realities {unrealities?} that underlay their economy make such labelling pointless.

Besides, private owernership doesn't seem to be forbidden. Its just business largely equals hobby. And nothing prevents Federation citizens from participating in the wild-and-wooly economies out its borders. You're free to be Harcourt Fenton Mudd if you like, you just can't peddle your space hussies hooked on dangerous anti-aging drugs to its mining colonies...

Now the subversive {and unintentional} suggestion that in a society of enough plenty, democracy becomes irrelevant, and wholesale rule by an all-pervasive military government becomes tolerable, that is interesting...

And its not like you can't mine drama from a Utopia... Iain Banks does a fine job with his Culture novels...

 

[Umbran]

For a show that makes a great deal of the Federation's ethics/principles {which should undergird and flow out of its politcal system and civil society}, there is little functional exploration of them in action within the Federation.

Yes, but here's the thing - if the Federations actually is, by and large, a happy utopia, stories set within that utopia would be boring. Gripping fiction is, by and large, about dysfunctional relationships. How drawn would you be to a show that was even happier and sappier and more "everything ends up okay in the end" than the Trek shows already were?

You said it yourself in talking about JMS' work. The universe is only dramatically interesting when there are ugly things in it. If there are few ugly things within the Federation, then they must look outside the Federation itself for their drama.

In addition, this is where we see a little bit of the differing purposes of the two shows. Trek intends, for the most part, to be a morality play. B5, for the most part, intends to be a soap opera. Both can be and are valid and interesting story-forms, but the different intents call for different structures.

This is one reason why I say JMS shouldn't write Trek. JMS has proven his ability to write a soap opera, His forays into morality plays, though, are lackluster.

 

[Villano]

I don't think anyone's posted this, yet, but here's an interesting article examining the Federation as a communist state. He makes a pretty good case, too.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

When you really think about Trek, it is a creepy place. The military controls everything. There's no money. No popular entertainment.

And the Kasidy Yates situation on DS9. Refresh my memory, but didn't it go something like this:

Kasidy is a smuggler for the Maquis.

She and Sisko start a romance.

Sisko turns her in to Starfleet.

She serves time in prison (Or whatever they call it in the Federation. There's no crime there, after all ).

Kasidy returns, having seen the "error of her ways", and falls right back into Sisko's arms.

If that's what happened, does it strike anyone else as odd? Maybe she spent some time in a Starfleet "re-education camp"?

Obviously, since this is a fictional world, the inconsistencies are a result of a multitude of writers (not to mention producers and others). The original Next Gen team tried to present a utopian society. It ended up becoming a Hollywood vision of communism (i.e., the way people who live in mansions envision it).

However, at some point, reality set it. Someone realized that a world without crime, war, greed, etc., was boring. And they tried to backtrack.

Unfortunately, that resulted in the world you see now. A place where the militry tries civilians (because no writers thought to include a civilian government). Where everyone speaks self-righteously about the lack of greed and crime while such things are occurring right before our eyes.

Then you end up in a spooky, double-speaking communist authority.

And the irony is that Trek has been accussed of being politically correct. Do you know where that phrase originated? Chairman Mao created it as his description of rewriting history; shaping reality so that it meshed with his dogma. Sounds like the Federation, doesn't it?