Star Trek and Idealism vs cynicism

[Ryujin]

This always struck me as one of those things where it got somewhat exaggerated. The Federation clearly has some kind of internal economy. The Picard family owns a vineyard and a castle in France, and in Picard Jean-Luc employs several Romulans as servants. We see private ownership of starships, both with Kassidy Yates and with Cristobal Rios. Sisko's dad runs a restaurant.

What seems more likely to me is that the Federation is... not quite a post-scarcity society, but almost (I believe the Infinity setting uses the term "iota-scarcity") – there are some things that are in limited supply, and of course you can't pop up land out of nothing, but there are systems allowing for a robust basic income. People don't need to work, but some still do, and those who do probably don't work anywhere near the 40+ hours we work today.

I would call it a Post Scarcity/Meritocracy hybrid. Basic needs are met at a level well above the norm in today's world. Land is far less of an issue because of the ease of energy and food production. Technology makes it possible to live on Baffin Island or in the middle of the Sahara Desert, with equal comfort. Transportation technologies, including public Transporters, mean that you could live in the middle of the Brazilian Rainforest and work in downtown London.

Citizens could coat through life and do nothing, and still have a good standard of living. I think that if someone wanted to become a freighter captain, showed aptitude, received the training, and presented a reasonable prospectus, they could get themselves a small transport vessel from the government. If you wanted to be an artist then you would never have to suffer the "starving artist" stereotype. You could climb to the full extent of whatever ability you possessed, without needing to worry where your next meal, or next bed was coming from. And if your abilities would benefit society, you'd get what you needed to do so. You might not necessarily "own" it, but it would be yours to use.

 

[jian]

It would have been interesting to see Twain on Deep Space Nine.

“Twin Twains? That dog won’t hunt!”

 

[bloodtide]

Well yeah, just like not every episode is a vacation episode, or a comedy episode, or a medical drama episode. They're generalist shows. The point is, there are enough such examples to indicate that the Federation - and even Starfleet itself - is not a crime-free zone, and that if you did want to dedicate a whole show to the subject, it would not lack for material.

I think Star Trek as a whole shows us a Federation with near zero crime. Even more so if your talking about places like Earth or Vulcan.

To have some sort of big flashy CSI like crime on Earth every week breaks the idea of utopia fast. This is even worse as to have even a little drama you have to drag the whole Federation down with a gritty crime world of criminals and such.

Not to that great an extent. Sure, on a starship you can ask the computer exactly where anyone is (not that there seems to be any lack of ways around that for a dedicated criminal), but that's not necessarily the case outside of militaryexploratory and humanitarian vessels, and even where it is, there aren't exactly cameras in every corridor showing exactly what everyone's doing.

As Star Trek does in fact show us......there are cameras nearly everywhere recording everything.

They are a bit vague about the 'computer location' in the Federation. Everywhere in Starfleet, sure. But maybe not everywhere? Though it does make sense to keep track of everyone.

A major theme of the Federation is exploring and settling new worlds, expanding frontiers. It's the first four words of the show's original mission statement. A Star Trek show would, if anything, be more at home there than on the more long-settled worlds of the Federation.

I'm all for a new exploration Star Trek show.....Like Star Trek: Sojourn, Star Trek: Walkabout or Star Trek: Odyssey

 

[Staffan]

I think Star Trek as a whole shows us a Federation with near zero crime. Even more so if your talking about places like Earth or Vulcan.

Also, what crimes we do see tend to be motivated by ideology, not need. There's the Maquis, of course, but also folks like Riker's former CO who had people working on cloaking tech despite treaties because he thought those treaties were stupid.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

To have some sort of big flashy CSI like crime on Earth every week breaks the idea of utopia fast. This is even worse as to have even a little drama you have to drag the whole Federation down with a gritty crime world of criminals and such.

I think you could do a crime show for Star Trek, but you'd want to lean into the Trek vibes and make it more like Knives Out! than say CSI or Criminal Minds or whatever. I.e. some fancy guy goes around solving very rare and exotic crimes (rather than grimy and grim ones used in the exploitative ways those shows do). Realistically, with people having so many options, insanely good health care (including free and probably kinda mandatory mental health for all) and there being no scarcity, about 99% (literally!) of the pressures which make people commit serious crimes would be gone. There have been a few episodes like this, like there's one I think in an early season of TNG (maybe S1?) where some people try to fit up poor old Riker for murder (possibly a murder than never even happened).

Plus with the tech they have, they'd be so good at solving anything but the most overwrought and exotic of crimes, that criminals could 100% expect to be caught, which would further lower any desire to commit serious crimes.

Teleporters and the like would mean what law enforcement there was could be on the scene in literally seconds as well, meaning again, almost no-one would get away with stuff. Plus as you say realistically Trek Earth is probably essentially a surveillance state in the most benign way possible.

I would call it a Post Scarcity/Meritocracy hybrid.

The evidence for meritocracy is pretty weak. Starfleet appears to, IN THEORY be a meritocracy, but we see staggering numbers of mediocre individuals in extremely senior positions, which really undermines that, or suggests that it's the kind of meritocracy that's more focused on getting people in who are good at specific jobs. So the mediocre individuals are probably very good day-to-day managers, they just can't handle serious stuff or crises, because the meritocracy has shuffled those people into captain-type positions and is busy preventing them from being promoted too much because otherwise it'll need to find new good captains!

As we know there are many elected positions outside of Starfleet, we know that The Federation as a whole cannot be hugely meritocratic except through the perceptions of the voters.

Post-scarcity and ultra-socialist, certainly though, with hints of meritocracy. Traditionally meritocracies and socialism have tended to go hand-in-hand though. I always remember the Looking Glass videogame Terra Nova, and how funny I found it that they had this bunch of American-vibes Libertarian "frontiersman"-types as the heroes, and explicitly meritocratic socialists (explicitly!) with Soviet-vibes as the baddies, because even at the time it felt like this was very forced, and the bad guys were only "bad guys" because you have made them wear black, have "scary" haircuts and so on.

 

[Ryujin]

The evidence for meritocracy is pretty weak. Starfleet appears to, IN THEORY be a meritocracy, but we see staggering numbers of mediocre individuals in extremely senior positions, which really undermines that, or suggests that it's the kind of meritocracy that's more focused on getting people in who are good at specific jobs. So the mediocre individuals are probably very good day-to-day managers, they just can't handle serious stuff or crises, because the meritocracy has shuffled those people into captain-type positions and is busy preventing them from being promoted too much because otherwise it'll need to find new good captains!

As we know there are many elected positions outside of Starfleet, we know that The Federation as a whole cannot be hugely meritocratic except through the perceptions of the voters.

My answer to this is they have a large bureaucracy and bureaucrats gotta bureaucrat. If you have a largely peaceful society then people who shuffle papers well will tend to rise into positions of relative power. That's not in conflict with the idea of a meritocracy. it simply creates a structure in which emergencies require specific (possibly rare) individuals who can deal with them.

EDIT - Baris was great at arranging to have grain shipped to a starving Sherman's Planet. Not so great at dealing with a Klingon on his staff or grain storage lockers full of tribbles.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you could do a crime show for Star Trek, but you'd want to lean into the Trek vibes and make it more like Knives Out! than say CSI or Criminal Minds or whatever. I.e. some fancy guy goes around solving very rare and exotic crimes (rather than grimy and grim ones used in the exploitative ways those shows do). Realistically, with people having so many options, insanely good health care (including free and probably kinda mandatory mental health for all) and there being no scarcity, about 99% (literally!) of the pressures which make people commit serious crimes would be gone. There have been a few episodes like this, like there's one I think in an early season of TNG (maybe S1?) where some people try to fit up poor old Riker for murder (possibly a murder than never even happened).

Plus with the tech they have, they'd be so good at solving anything but the most overwrought and exotic of crimes, that criminals could 100% expect to be caught, which would further lower any desire to commit serious crimes.

Teleporters and the like would mean what law enforcement there was could be on the scene in literally seconds as well, meaning again, almost no-one would get away with stuff. Plus as you say realistically Trek Earth is probably essentially a surveillance state in the most benign way possible.


The evidence for meritocracy is pretty weak. Starfleet appears to, IN THEORY be a meritocracy, but we see staggering numbers of mediocre individuals in extremely senior positions, which really undermines that, or suggests that it's the kind of meritocracy that's more focused on getting people in who are good at specific jobs. So the mediocre individuals are probably very good day-to-day managers, they just can't handle serious stuff or crises, because the meritocracy has shuffled those people into captain-type positions and is busy preventing them from being promoted too much because otherwise it'll need to find new good captains!

As we know there are many elected positions outside of Starfleet, we know that The Federation as a whole cannot be hugely meritocratic except through the perceptions of the voters.

Post-scarcity and ultra-socialist, certainly though, with hints of meritocracy. Traditionally meritocracies and socialism have tended to go hand-in-hand though. I always remember the Looking Glass videogame Terra Nova, and how funny I found it that they had this bunch of American-vibes Libertarian "frontiersman"-types as the heroes, and explicitly meritocratic socialists (explicitly!) with Soviet-vibes as the baddies, because even at the time it felt like this was very forced, and the bad guys were only "bad guys" because you have made them wear black, have "scary" haircuts and so on.

Yeah I would say Star Trek definitely has strong socialist utopian elements to it, along with meritocracy and a general defense of human freedom. And to your point about meritocracy, historical meritocracies were often very different from how modern people might use the language. Just look at the Chinese Imperial bureaucracy, which was very meritocratic form at least the Tang on, and even earlier really. That doesn't mean you didn't also have nepotism and corruption (merit was how people were supposed to advance but sponsorships could also result in advancement). And it was still a class based society.

One thing I like about star trek is it came from this era in science fiction when there was just a lot of optimism. Now much of that optimism, may have been shown to be misplaced as history unfolded. But there is something charming about it (optimism is why 2001 thought we would have HAL and be able to reach Jupiter 25 years ago).

On the CSI, I think you could have a kind of CSI team operating outside the federation, that would at least make sense for the setting, but I think the themes of a CSI show just feel too dark for a star trek series. I don't think people come to Start Trek to have their stomach turned like that (I like plenty of stomach turning media, but it just isn't my expectation with Star Trek). I think that is also why when you do have something like that crop up in star trek, like a transporter malfunction, it is so much more horrifying, because generally it is a future where things function as they are supposed to

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think you could do a crime show for Star Trek, but you'd want to lean into the Trek vibes and make it more like Knives Out

I’d watch that show.

Crime is rare, so detectives are rare (and eccentric). And when crime does happen it’s spectacularly weird.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I’d watch that show.

Crime is rare, so detectives are rare (and eccentric). And when crime does happen it’s spectacularly weird.

Yeah and you'd probably want to have the main weirdo have a cool ship because he'll so rarely have crimes that actually need investigating that he'd travel a lot. And some of the crimes would inevitably just be misunderstandings, this is Star Trek after all! I actually think that could be fun but it'd probably be like, six episode seasons or something.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just look at the Chinese Imperial bureaucracy, which was very meritocratic form at least the Tang on, and even earlier really.

I would argue - as many scholars do (not that I am a scholar, just saying) - that there was relatively little genuinely "meritocratic" about the Chinese imperial bureaucracy and the exam system, that it was far more about maintaining a specific social order and controlling who was allowed to do what than anything else.

An awful lot of exams through human history, into the present day, don't really test any objective or neutral "merit", they simply test how well you check the boxes of a certain society, which tends to mean they're hugely easier for people from certain backgrounds. And I say that as someone who tests very well, like incredibly well, in my own society.