chris, unfortunately you can't even use the fed philosophy to limit their expansion etc, because the plots of the show (and the other cultures) prevent it
even if you ignore dumb shit like HOLOGRAM MINE SLAVES you're still not there because people complain about shortages or supplies or whatevs
it's jsut the stuff peopl are short of isn't food/water/sex
well unless it's some kind of space drug for space cancer
yeah what throws me is stuff like 'we've eliminated poverty and stuff' in the 23rd/24th century and 'we don't have money ok'
obviously food/water is bountiful, and maybe energy is also pretty cheap, but they do talk about needing to get resupplied at starbases and shit and that's just the military side of things
to be fair you don't have to have a post-scarcity society to be able to say "we've eliminated poverty". with enough surplus, you can basically say "okay everyone's guaranteed food, water, shelter, clothing, and medicine. but if you want to romp in the holodeck you gotta work/pay."
uraniun235 wrote:to be fair you don't have to have a post-scarcity society to be able to say "we've eliminated poverty". with enough surplus, you can basically say "okay everyone's guaranteed food, water, shelter, clothing, and medicine. but if you want to romp in the holodeck you gotta work/pay."
not so much with "no money", though.
the daft thing is they apparently have some form of currency because you see dr. crusher asking a merchant to bill her account in the pilot episode
uraniun235 wrote:to be fair you don't have to have a post-scarcity society to be able to say "we've eliminated poverty". with enough surplus, you can basically say "okay everyone's guaranteed food, water, shelter, clothing, and medicine. but if you want to romp in the holodeck you gotta work/pay."
not so much with "no money", though.
the daft thing is they apparently have some form of currency because you see dr. crusher asking a merchant to bill her account in the pilot episode
yeah but nobody had any idea what the hell was going on in first season anyway
roddenberry was back and forth on whether he liked something or not, rewriting shit at random, and put bluntly david gerrold allegedly deserved a co-creator credit on the show for basically writing the whole first draft or two of the show bible
if we want to go with the whole "no money" thing, most andean societies lacked currency and got by with barter on the interpersonal scale and governmental distribution on the larger scale- eg everybody got a certain amount of food, goods, and so on from storehouses
hilariously for everybody who babbles about how command economies never work, the inca had perpetual overproduction of goods, so much that the imperial court continued to use all of the emperor's belongings after he died- including his palace and his food shares
then the next emperor picked a fresh court, built his own palace, mined precious metals for all his own jewelry, et cetera
of course, that's not really reconciliable with everything, but it's an example of a moneyless and developed society
maybe in the future they have something a little like that
did anyone ever notice that when Captain the Mummy at the beginning goes to take a shuttle from the bridge to the shuttle bay, he comes down the elevator
