Watch Part 1 Here: ruclips.net/video/JJwWxT269ec/видео.htmlsi=FFPH3BQ1TP9k0eCj P.S.:- To all the people asking about housing and/or money, as I said in the video, I covered money in the previous video and housing will be covered in the next video. To all the people who keep comparing the concept of social capital to a dystopian Black Mirror "Nosedive" system that's not what I was referring to at all. Social capital isn't regulated, it's a purely social system. Social capital exists today, but in Star Trek, it simply plays a much larger role in society. Thank you for engaging with the video though. If you want to see the next video in the series early and ad free, join me on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman
10:48 HMS _Beagle_ did exploration. And Captain James Cook, was a naval officer and renound explorer. Military service does not negate exploration. Indeed, they're usually first-exporers *because* they can cope with any bad things that might crop up.
Part 2, mention previous video, no link in comment or description. So checking out the video that does deal with money, as many comments noted you seem to believe that replicators mean free energy. Which isn't a thing in universe and violates the laws of physics. You even use clips of Kirk in the videos. Who lived in a time before replicators existed. Earth at least had achieved post scarcity before replicators. So unfortunately it appears that a lot of your arguments are based on a flawed premise.
@@s_1884I probably should have gone into more detail about replicators. I'm well aware of thermodynamics and my explanation of replicators doesn't violate the laws of physics. What I mean was that replicators can create the means to achieve virtually limitless energy by building household fusion reactors and the like. As long as there's a constant supply of raw materials to break down and reuse for replicators (for example human waste) then replicators can keep making fuel. In TOS we did see something like food synthesizers aboard the Enterprise which I think have been retroactively made replicators. Another point, I think it's interesting that Trekkies are happy to accept dozens of physics violating technologies, but when it comes to replicators there's no wiggle room Also, the previous video is linked at the end and in a video card on screen.
@@RowanJColeman We simply have no idea how energy requirements are met at scale - they might be per household or per building (in the case of apartment buildings) or larger (on the city/county/region size). Probably a mix of all those depending on context
@@john-lenin Deconstruction (noun): a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression.
Absolutely. People just love to say it's impossible when it isn't. Bunch of cynics. The whole point of Star Trek is hope for a better future. That doesn't just mean flying around in space - it means a hopeful future for economy and society as well.
As a bartender I love getting customers talking about Star Trek economics and society. Just imagine being born and everything you need is automatically provided for you. The need to educate, master a craft, or learn about the universe is as easy as binging a tv show on netflix. You step onto a holodeck and you learn how to become a master at french cuisine, and making samurai swords. Then you find a program to teach you how to master Klingon sword making. But it doesn't end there, travel is pretty much free, so you can leave Earth to apprentice under an actual Klingon sword maker. As a gift, you cook chicken chasseur for the Klingon sword master. Your skills in french cooking leaves a lasting impression on the Klingon. Sharing what you learned in your life is your gift to society. Society isn't just where you live on Earth, it expands throughout the galaxy; thanks to the invention of the replicator and holodeck. Your skills give you value in the Star Trek universe, not your money. Lol, down the road, Klingons become obsessed with french chicken dishes.
" _I have a dish for you of great honor_ " -Klingon eats it- " _By Sto'vo'kor itself. This is G'rohkthar!_ " " _No actually, it's called Swedish Meatballs, but it seems every race in the universe has their own take on it._ " x3
One of the major thing that made me think that this future utopia couldn't exist was seeing Joseph Sisko's Restaurant. He had people there that washed pots or waitered, bussed tables and did all the grunt work in his kitchen/restaurant. Now, I have worked in kitchens and restaurants in my life-time and I can safely say that NO-ONE is taking on those job without some kind of compensation. If you have the choice to either be a pot-scrubber, table-busser or sit at home, living the good life, in a post-scarcity future utopia, you're choosing the latter, I can assure you. The only way I can see that working is if they were on some type of apprentice program and the end result was to become a master chef at the end of it, but that doesn't account for the waiters or table bussers. No-one sets their sights on becoming a world reknowned waiter, unless they're gonna be paid a fortune for it.
I thought about this too, I reasoned in my mind that they are compensated with fresh, actually cooked, non-replicated food. Remember Eddington's reply to Sisko that he was impressed by not eating replicated food.
There are always people who want to do those kinds of things. I know someone who enjoys doing authentic 1940's cooking. There are people who volunteer to work as historical reenactors for all sorts of seemingly dull tasks. If you have full support from societal you'll be amazed what people choose to do. And yes, I imagine the manual labour in a restaurant is relatively uncommon. Which makes Sisko's unique and desirable to visit.
It's actually not as crazy as you think. My mother in law does dishwashimg as day labor and very much doesn't need the money. She and a group of her friends do it at the same places every day and basically hang out. And waiting there are very much people that enjoy.
There are many people who do that in homeless shelters completely free as the others have said just to hang out with like minded people just to do some good.
One could also point out that a lot of therapists would say "laziness doesn't exist and is actually a sign of an unresolved mental health issue." Humans by nature like to be doing things and contributing. Maybe there would be some people who just want to stay home and do nothing, and that's fine too, but I bet there would be less than we'd think if everyone had access to counseling and sci-fi medical care.
I rather like the approach to crime taken in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. If someone commits a serious crime, their social capital disappears, and also a robot follows them around to make sure they never do it again.
That reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode "to see the invisible man" where the punishment for some crimes is complete social isolation. You're made "invisible" for a year, and people are forbidden to acknowledge your existence
I was thinking of the Culture watching this too. I really recommend anyone to read these books (or listen to the audiobooks - the ones read by Peter Kenny are excellent) because the way their society operates compared to our own is extremely eye-opening as to just how little freedom we really have. Even the example you mentioned is actually a fair bit more nuanced because The Culture doesn't really have laws or "crime" as such. Because they are truly post-scarcity in every way there isn't any need to steal anything (or anything to steal) and no reason for anyone to kill someone else. Think about pretty much any crime and there's no motive when there's nothing to acquire. (Also they have modified their genome and bodies to the extent that psychological issues that might lead to crime in our world aren't going to be a problem) Along with this, they don't really have a concept of "punishment" which when you think about it, is really an abuse in all cases, even if we can argue it is necessary in our current system where people are motivated to harm others. In the example you give, the "slap drone" is there (as a volunteer, drones being sentient members of the society) to ensure the person being monitored can't harm others again, not as a punishment. The fact they might lose their social cachet is a side-effect rather than the intention.
Another answer to "who are the police?" is that citizens themselves are given power of arrest, given certain conditions. Said citizens would have to be certified to ensure they knew the law, but given we do that for drivers in our world, and Star Trek is a universe where 10 year olds are leaning Calculus in schools, I see no reason why they need a special class of people to enforce the law.
Also, Everybody has a stun rifle like the farmer in the first episode of enterprise. Everybody becomes a texan-ish (stun first, ask questions later). 🤠
Social capital reminds me of a line in Enemy at the Gates: “Man will always be man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.” Perhaps Star Trek finds a way to that new man.
Voici la correction et la mise en page de ton texte : Communism is not about helping people; it’s about the centralization of power. They sell it to people by stimulating their envy. As the writer of 1984 said, "The left does not love the poor; they hate the rich because they envy them."
I'd actually argue that the Federation is proof that the lack of a new man, and that's a driving force to the betterment of the Federation. Take, for instance, Dr. Bashir's dad. The writers wrote him with the base idea of "what does a loser look like in the Federation?" This is a man who wants to find his calling: something to make him rich in happiness, but just cannot find it, and winds up bouncing from dead-end to dead-end. What drives people in the Federation? It's no longer a desire for wealth in terms of money, but wealth in terms of other things: reputation (to be the one to crack transwarp), ingenuity (the joy of finding coffee in that nebula), contemplation (to be a doctor at Oxford), and more for sure, but ultimately: happiness. The self-satisfaction of doing what makes you whole, and contributing to others by doing that thing **well**. We have historically used more limited ways as criteria to identify if someone is happy, like the money in their pocket, the size of their family, or the size of their house. And the story of "the man who has everything and yet nothing," i.e. the man who is wealthy yet unhappy is a tale as old as time. Star Trek shows that when you don't need these criteria, the question of "are you happy" is much simpler. Some find happiness in running a simple restaurant, others by running farming colonies which use less and less technology, and others through traditional public service like Starfleet. What makes these people wealthy isn't their nice houses on Chateau Picard or Pike Ranch, but their happiness.
@@TakedaIesyu I do find that the focus people have on questions like "but who gets to live in that big, fancy mansion suspended on a cliffside?" are missing the forest for the trees. And they have failed to ask themselves why they would want to be given such a property. And, hell, the question isn't even that difficult to answer. You want a mansion? Submit a request for a plot of land and materials to the United Earth Government's, erm... Office of Civic Management, say, along with any particular features you would require in location and design. They respond with a list of alternatives for you to choose from. Some existing structures, others land that may be allocated for a dwelling of the specified size and design. Now you have a mansion. Great. Now what? No one is impressed. In fact, most people will probably think it's a gaudy waste of energy. You don't need a mansion. You need a comfortable, safe place to live. A place that satisfies your particular needs and proclivities.
Yeah, I also keep on remembering this gut-punching scene from the film from time to time. It was said by Joseph Fiennes' character. Telling it to Jude Law's Vasily Zaitsev.
Tbh I always just assumed that in Star Trek humanity just matures to the point the whole world or Federation is such a high trust society... there is no crime. It is utopia but even in our world we get glimpses of it: eg. shops in small villages where owners just leave the shop open and unmanned and people take what they need and leave money on the counter. Now imagine the world where 99.99% of people behave this way. I think that was the Roddenberry's dream: that we as humanity will stop war just by virtue of no one wanting to start wars, not by forcing others to act nice. That's why he was always against the conflict between Federation officers, assuming that the humanity will reach the level where people don't fight each other. And yes, it changed a lot in the later series, even TNG and especially DS9 causing terrible mental gymnastics. Eg. DS9 being a trade center and Federation not using money.
I've recently moved from a town where there was crime, to a town where most people don't bother to lock their doors and yet there are no burglaries. These places actually exist. What's worth remembering is that they don't "still" exist. There are small towns with no burglaries or murders right now. There was a need for laws to handle burglary in ancient Israel, in Athens, basically everywhere. It's not a matter of different times. It's a matter of, just as you say, maturity. When people value the ability to trust their neighbors then they don't abuse their neighbors. When people value fearing their neighbors (to politically manipulate others, or to socially manipulate) then the childish emotions that separate people also devalue people in one another's eyes. Roddenberry's view was that "maturity" meant being open to seeing the value in others.
When people do not have the threat of real punishment, there can be those who see any negative to bad behavior. If I kill someone, will others just ignore me? In a TNG episode, a data broker mentioned a federation rehabilitation colony. There is a legal system and forms of limiting personal liberties. In DS9, those with mental challenges were institutionalized, and basher talked about what happened to those with genetic modifications. Basher's dad was sent to 'jail' for taking this son for genetic modification. The penal colony thing was how Australia was formed. The sentence "Transportation for life" got that person exiled from the state of England/Britain and sent to some 'other' place which for a time was Australia.
Weirdly, Star Trek future works very similar to social media and influencers in a vacuum. People find ways to express themselves to build a community and is rewarded for providing fulfilment whether it be entertainment, knowledge, or other aspect of life.
I read a SF short story once where someone landed in a future where criticism was currency. So a restaurant would serve you a meal, and as payment you would comment to the waiter or chef about the food and give detailed (positive) feedback. In the story the protagonist pissed off a waiter by just saying the food was nice, which was the equivalent of leaving an insultingly meagre tip.
I think the idea of Social Capital explains why Star Trek humans are so easy to trust. For social capital to work properly, the Federations education system would have to discourage all forms of deception the same way our current education system tacitly discourages creativity. Someone adept at deception could easily exploit social situations to retain their reputation at the expense of another, or abuse essential positions where their expertise would be vital, such as maintaining technical information on replicators, FTL communications, or anything sufficiently specialised or complex. People like Harry Mudd or other outlaws might end up informally exiled if any abuses of their power came to public light, which might explain why we don't get to see them in Star Trek. No one wants to listen or even associate with people who put themselves so far ahead of everyone else in the Federation.
Your idea manages to explain a fundamental plot point about classic Star Trek. Doesn't it feel strange that most people have to book passage on a ship to go to another world, but Harry Mudd has his own ship? In fact, lots of eccentrics out in the colonies have access to surprising resources. This would be because they deceitfully gamed the system to gain such things, but then were found out. Unable to find anyone to collaborate or to share resources on any of their endeavors following that discovery, they hopped to a colony world or joined the deep space markets. It's possible to find another culture within the Federation that suits a different personality (much like what happens in Bank's Culture novels). It's also possible to make quite a living for oneself in the interstellar market. The core Federation worlds' ways of living aren't the only ways to live, even in the 24th century. Gold-pressed latinum can be gathered by humans as well as by anyone else out there. It's just that the people we see in Starfleet, the ones we'd love to emulate, are from Earth's culture.
@@SingularityOrbit Well, in Mudd's case he seems to have operated largely outside the Federation economy from the start, usually being someone the Feds meet 'out there where we're exploring and here he is already' ...and trading with/swindling some pretty remote outposts of like miners and prospectors and all. One could easily see him having parlayed smaller schemes and scams into obtaining his own ship, wherever it came from.
@@SingularityOrbit (Also on that kind of character and his business, there's also every likelihood he had at least for much of his career an actually very-legitimate trader setup going on. If one did nothing but smuggle and scam, one's pose of legitimacy or even being allowed to land at least without tons of inspections would wear thin fast. (And as it is he always seems to be trying to stay ahead of all the people he ripped off.) Certainly in Star Wars the best way to avoid geting caught as a Reb or smuggler or doing various adventurey jobs of other kinds is to actually *have* a suitable legitimate business going on, rather than just fake passes and credentials and hope to escape . :) (And hey, if you simply don't *tell* how fast your hyperdrive is, you can get a lot done before you'e even expected anywhere. on your timetable. )
@@OllamhDrab That's all true, and good points to add besides. We can't really know how much or how little Mudd was tied to Federation activity, or to some little-acknowledged breakaway social order out there in the galaxy. His wife, Stella, was the daughter of an arms dealer who supplied weapons during the Federation-Klingon War, about a decade prior to the original series. Either the Feds were desperate for extra war materiel fast and bought from outside their borders, or things were more different than we realized between TOS and TNG.
@@SingularityOrbit If you remember that when TOS was making stories without any background 'canon' or anything, it'd been a concept of a Western-like story in space, so a lot of the characters and circumstances they find out that really parallel that, including some 'What did you do in the last war,' finding old outposts and places the 'government' folks hadn't been in some time, quirky settlements of Humans and towns needing 'straightening out,' etc. Carpetbagging scoundrels, too. :)
Maybe the fact that we simply accept that there will always be a lot of assholes and sociopaths who will ruin things for everyone else is part of the problem. But there are many societies on earth today with different cultures where people behave very differently. For example, look at how people treat public property in Japan. People take much better care of public property in Japan conpared to most other countries. They don't throw their trash on the ground and they voluntarily help clean up. Yes, Japan has their own problems, but it just goes to show how different culture and beliefs can create a very different society than people may be used to or even think is possible.
@@genmaicha.lapsang BUt you can have exreme levels of ostracism rigid hierarchy and classism *without* people caring for eahch other or their towns too, and you don't have to look too far to see that. It means among other things that things that seem impossible in daily life here or say in Russia where we or they have many of the same darn drawbacks, are a nice part of daily life elsewhere. Maybe it's not such a simple zero-sum or inextricable equation. People blame 'human nature' for a lot of things that ...actually humans don't do or have to do everywhere. There are many possibilities.
@@OllamhDrab Your premiss is not true. The "clean cities" that you see in these counties are ONLY possible in societies that have a level rigidity, conformity, ostracism, classism and intense hierarchy. People only "care about each other" becuase they are forced too do so in these cultures. It's not out of genuine concern. Sure, Dubai, Seoul, Singapore, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and even Tokyo look really clean and friendly but they only show parts of the city for social media purposes and those cultures are very difficult to live freely in. Even the most free ones like South Korea and Japan are very ridged and repressive by western standards.
@@genmaicha.lapsang I disagree. Look at Stockholm, or any given Scandanavian city, for one. That was my point. These things are not inextricable 'human nature' or based on current ideas of a 'political spectrum between authoritarianisms in scarcity' ...never mind without such scarcity and greed. Whether people or governments care for each other and places.... is a matter of priorities and abilities and if.... people care.
As a Norwegian, I have always been proud of our penal system. It is a demonstration that humans are capable of setting aside their prejudices and preconceptions to make informed decisions based on rigorous research. That research, and results of a penal system built on the lessons of that research, both tell us that treating people with respect, showing them understanding, and providing a framework to help rather than punish JUST FUCKING WORKS. It doesn't matter what anyone feels about it. It works. - The most famous thing to have happened in Halden prison was caused by careless staff neglecting to lock several doors in the maximum security wing. A bunch of prisoners left their cells and went to the mess hall kitchen, where they made a chocolate cake. They ate it and returned to their cells. Oh yes, what vicious brutes...😂
This is why i like that there's some prisons have a cat/dog program. Inmates learn how to take care of the animals and can get them taken away if they don't behave. They use their money to feed them and to buy treats. Use the books in the prison library to teach them tricks, or how to look at stool samples to make sure they're healthy. They even have the cats' litterbox in their cells that they clean. This helps reintegration as well as rehabilitation, while saving animals from overcrowded shelters/ kill shelters.
@@TheWarrrenator there’s also the ideological component. For many Americans, particularly conservatives, the carceral system is as much or more about punishing people than about any benefit to society. The conservative American takeaway from the inmates having an escape opportunity and not taking it would be “clearly your prisons aren’t punitive enough-they should be such awful places that no one wants to be there ever, and they would do anything to stay out of them or to escape them at the first opportunity. They should _want_ to escape. And then when they try to escape you should punish them even worse.” It’s your standard “beatings will escalate until morale improves” mentality, IMHO.
that would not work in a country with *real criminals* like in latin america. scandinavians are educated and non violent in general. here in latin america the criminals are capable of atrocities you would never even imagine.
There’s always going to be *some* scarcity, even in an idyllic post scarcity society. There’s only so much beachfront property, not every apartment can be the penthouse, there’s only one of original artworks, etc.
This is my issue. The concept of a post scarcity universe is just fundamentally flawed and it comes down to what is often our largest asset in today's world. Property. This whole thought exercise is moot when the most important thing we own, where we live, where we raise our children, where we call our home, is just side stepped.
As mentioned in another comment of mine, I compare this to today's Europe. Money, resources etc. are not an issue. Still, migration is. Why? Because of available space and cultural differences (which is important in Star Trek, as different cultures will handle reputation differently). You cannot solve every issue with money, thus having those replicators alone does not solve all issues. People will be unhappy because they got worse homes. Or because they lose reputation due to things out of their control. Then what? They might use their democratic power to change things (to the worse?) or start an uprising.
I think you underestimate how big the earth is (and the Federation for that matter). It's so big, everybody will find their perfect spot. (If they even try to find their perfect spot, some just want to be Wanderers) and then there will be 1000 perfect spots to spare on top of that that you skipped.
@@kevinmeville2631 Yeah, nah. I know it's all very scary and frightening for you but we could feed the entire world right now, it's just that we couldn't make a profit from doing so. Planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity are how things are done to increase demand and y'know, that's kind of the opposite of your what you're trying to sell friend. All the food and goods filling our landfills, things we produce only to dispose of since no one needs them enough to buy them all being thrown out just to keep demand marketable and so much so to the point that we pay good tax money to other countries just to take all the garbage we ship to them off our hands; that kinda appears to be a little side stepped in your perspective there Hoss.
One thing about Picard's estate and other properties said to be 'in the family' is particularly the former doesn't seem to be something the family *gained* by 'social capital' ....just no one took their land *away* in this whole process. (And of course France and whatever authorities thereafter surely value the production of French wine as heritage: they already do, that.) So as long as the Picards and their people keep doing what they do, nothing's wrong. It's presumably just not that they're doing it for a money economy anymore. Also while Earth presumably has a lot of Starfleet people around all the time to help, given all the headquarters there, I do presume it has local security and emergency people and other systems like most Federation worlds, we just hear about it when the shows' characters are involved. Small town police tend to have plenty to do even if there's no big incentives to crimes. Cows stuck in fields, bar evenings getting out of hand, all kinds of that 'community policing' that may not seem much like 'policing' in some senses at all. The on-call problem-solvers and watchmen and all. Maybe Earth's 'paradise' has Mayberry policing, too. Certainly I think the things that drive first-responder types like firefighters and medics, as well as your forestry service types and similar, would also still be there and socially-valued, even if no one locks their doors at night. A lot of times in the real world, all the money and scarcities, real and perpetuated/invented for money's sake, (Or for prejudice's) , that doesn't actually define people's sense of who they are and what they do, just makes life *harder* about it. I'm still a 'fixit lady' even if I'm not being paid to do it. I'd likely have the same inclinations (maybe after Starfleet, good chance I'd try for that right away, of course) ...at least in civillian life.
Reminds me of an episode of Dark Mirror. Who controls the standards? There's always someone asking, "Can I manipulate them for my benefit? Put me in charge."
You realize it took a catastrophic period of near global genocide, and several hundred years of starvation, death, disease and rebuilding, to get there, right.
@@ObiGommGaming if history has shown anything, it’s that we’re not terribly adept at learning from our past mistakes. This also tends to beg the next question, in the grand scheme of things at a universal scale, given how we are as creatures, is humanity really deserving of anything but the ultimate end.
@@c1ph3rpunk Close. It took the existing social hierarchy being wiped out, and then the arrival of a unifying force to get there. The genocides and hundred years of four horseman themed Mad Max nonsense only achieved the removal from power of those in power preventing the societal reforms necessary to achieve that social system. We could get to that society in a few years if we just abolished capitalism, the prison industrial complex, fascism, authoritarianism, and we all let the "radical leftists" do the social reforms they've been demanding for the last several decades.
Now imagine it wasn't a squatter but the President of the Federation basically saying, "Chateau Picard belongs to me now." Would there not be some way to legally challenge that?
The President isn't above the rights enshrined in the Federation charter so they could be challenged on that front. But also in a system of social capital the President would be throwing away votes if they did something like that.
That President of the Federation had to build up social capital through years, perhaps decades, of good work in the Federation bureaucracy to gain that position. A person like that who decided to go full authoritarian would suffer two consequences. First, they'd be put on medical leave while doctors worked to understand how their personality changed so severely. Was there Romulan brainwashing? An alien virus? Strange energies? Second, if no excuse was found for the radical behavior shift, then that President would lose social capital with alarming speed. A Federation president who decided to declare ownership of a citizen's home would be worse off than Richard Nixon post-Watergate. At least people still returned Nixon's calls.
@@RowanJColeman I see a guy like Trump and wonder about assholes like that. There seem to be no end to the lies and distortions and it never impacts his social capital and his followers seem to endlessly shield him from accountability.
@@GeahkBurchill Presumably the Federation has education systems that render its citizens informed enough and capable enough of reasoning not to enshrine a clown fascist. Federation policy probably also has something like the pre-Reagan Fairness Doctrine which prevents the existence of a large scale media enterprise like Fox where a billionaire can broadcast fascist lies 24 hours a day into the minds of the populace. And the Federation definitely doesn't have anything as inherently anti-democratic as a billionaire to begin with. So we kind of have to be failing as a society from a lot of different vectors to enable the absurdity of the present situation
A credit system, you better yourself by exercising and doing little odd jobs, but you no longer need to spend money on shelter, food, healthcare and clothing
The thing is: no one sat down to work out how the Federation economy worked, and then had the writers show it to us. The writers simply told us how great the Federation is in every way, and we are now trying to rationalise a system based on what we are told. There is no reason to assume that one and only one possible system will match what we are told. In all probably no possible system will do that, because the Federation is presented as being better than every other system in every way: there are no downsides. Things don't work like that. To be best in the world at something, you have to be less than best in the world at something else. A writer can always assume a problem away, but that does not make the assumption realistic.
For the emergency response personel it reminded me of the voluntary firemen system we have in Czech Republic and I imagine a lot of other countries too. They typically inherit older vehicles from professional fire brigades, they don't have the same level of training (but they are trained) and equipment and they don't hold shifts sitting at the station. Instead when the alarms sounds (and they typically get text message about half a minute before that) they drop what they are doing and run/cycle/drive to the the station, suit up, jump into the truck and get going. Since most villages have them these volunteers are often first to arrive to the emergency. A friend who is one told me their average time to depart the station from the first alarm is under 4 minutes so if their route is by 5km or more shorter than the proffesionals they will get there first. Even today in our money based society people both able and willing to be a voluntary fireman gain in social status. In the future moneyless economy I imagine something like that would be at least the same level of boost to social status or more. And since material is no problem there is no reason to have lesser equipment available. Any difference between these emergency responders and some who do it as their main life goal would be in amount of training and experience. I think there would be no lack of personel to help with any kind of accident or disaster no matter how big or small. If the "professionals" are occupied with one elswhere when your emergency happens you would have trained and equiped volunteers transporting to your location maybe 30 seconds later than the main guys could if they were not occupied.
I feel that Starfleet is like the 18 century Royal Navy. It is a military, but its traditions are nowhere near those of the army. It also has a lot to do with exploration, scientific discovery and research. The Navy was also a much more prestigious assignment than the army
That's no accident. Roddenberry was influenced by adventure stories like The Adventures of Horatio Hornblower (first published when he was 16). Not to mention he spent some time in the pacific during WW2 so he would have been influenced by naval traditions during that time as well.
@@hellacoorinna9995 yeah I know he was army air core, but he probably would have interacted with Navy guys - the islands he flew out of weren’t very big.
I just watched Edge of Tomorrow again and thought about you doing a retrospective on Tom Cruise's contribution to sci-fi. 'Oblivion', Edge Of Tomorrow, the film's you've already done like Minority Report & War Of the World's....Tom Cruise sci-fi movies have their own identity and think they'd make a good subject for your critical eye.
(SPOILERS ahead) Wasn't Cruise's Vanilla Sky from 2001 also a sort of science-fiction? You only found out about it in the middle of the film with that 'WTF' plot twist that went so far that it even partially altered the whole film's genre/classification. Till that point in the story, the film appeared to be a regular romantic drama. And then it all got turned on its head...... I've watched the film twice, if I remember correctly, but the last time was more than 20 years ago and memories tend to fade away.
@@subraxas That can be included. I really didnt watch it all the way thru. Tom's sci-fi movies generally have a sense of urgency to them with him running from disaster or running to it.
I'll confess that I love love Star Trek. I love the idea and the positivity behind it. However, I'm also someone who was born and grew up in the USSR. A place where certain ideas were also in place that are not too dissimilar to what Start Trek uses. That is the idea of most people being good and simply wanting to be self-sufficient and working towards on overall benefit of the society. Well, I think most people are aware how that turned out. One of the biggest failings of USSR was not taking human nature into nearly as much consideration, or perhaps thinking that human nature was something else than what it really is. Certain things and outcomes were simply inevitable due to it, the main one being the breakup of the country. Star Trek is great an all but it's idealistic and naive in certain ways, especially regarding people. Though, it is a nice exercise in "what if" scenarios.
But, were people from the distant past very different from us, wouldn´t it mean our species can change? Maybe it just requires a lot of human perceived time and tecnological discoveries? And Ideas are tecnological discoveries.
Eh... with all the autocracratic, oppressive, and inegalitarian elements built into the very system of the USSR, I'm not sure "belief in the goodness of people" is where I'd lay the blame for its failure.
A fatal flaw in any organization, whether it is a government, a corporation, or whatever, is too much centralized power. It is why the U.S. has separate branches of government, as checks and balances against each other, and antitrust laws to break up monopolies. Nothing is perfect if people are involved. Power corrupts and attracts the corrupted.
My best friend and I go around and 'round about this topic. I can't stand that we could already be working towards and building this future now (there's no reason Basic Universal Income can't be a thing) but he staunchly opposes it because he thinks the technology comes first.
A reputation-based society? Don't we have that now with social media? In such an economy, your wealth isn't based upon what you do, but upon people's *perception* of what you do. Your "optics" so to speak. No room for gaming *that* system...
The idea of reform and rehabilitation is something that needs to be talked about much more in the US. We aren't helping ourselves by simply locking people up.
Not helping yourselves, but some people do benefit from it: - The system of private prisons. - Whoever benefits from very cheap or even free labour (slavery IS legal in USA, if you're a convict). - The people who promise to the electorate that they will be "tough on crime": politicians, judges, sheriffs. It's not in *their* interest to reform criminals.
There are a great many conversations that need to be had about the state of things in the US. Infrastructure, law enforcement, health care, education, etc. Conversations that cannot be had so long as the people at the top of the pyramid who gain from the way things are now actively prohibit and attack anyone who wants to even suggest things are broken. This is why they hate and fear Trump and his supporters so much. He represents an end to the gravy train they've been riding for a century. Until their stranglehold is broken, things are only going to get worse. And before you dismiss me as a "MAGA Moron" or something, I'll remind you that the Republicans are just as complicit in this affrontery as the Democrats are, just not as many of them.
@@joeboxter3635 That wasn't rehabilitation, that was outright mind control and is one of the examples used by the people who talk about how the Federation is low key a tyrannical dystopia where you get reprogrammed if you don't toe the company line.
Just wanted to add that I know there are those who might see the Star Trek future earth as soft, spoiled and unmotivated seeing as so much is easily provided for, if that's the case there's always the colonies you can just leave earth and sign up to be part of a colony even one that wants to break off from the federation to establish a new society on another world built from the ground up with your own hands.
Smaller governments definitely exist with in the federation i think at least in the early era with The Andorian Imperial Guard still existing, United Earth existing, and Vulcan High Command
The Social Currency aspect is so intriguing. Everyone in Starfleet is pretty outgoing, but what if that's just because that's the type of person who gets to have that social status? If you sit at the back of the class and keep your friend group small as a kid does that lead into your adult social standing, your job, your house? For every Starfleet cadet how many NEETs are there behind them?
The biggest change for this to work is the change to the human condition. All the practicalities are completely second to the psychology of the concept. Transporters and replicators are not the unbelievable part in this scenario. What would have to happen to human psychology is what needs explaining. This social currency inequality changes nothing by itself. Why would it? It's just another form of wealth inequality. Some people will be wealthy and some people will be poor. Some people will go far and some people will struggle. Some people win the genetic lottery and some won't. Some people win the lottery of being born into (social) wealth and some won't. And humans will have human reactions to this.
Having “currency” of reputation can also have an enormous down side. Many will see reputation as a scarce resource and reduce it to a zero sum game. Those that are seen as having a better reputation, thus “richer”, would be attacked by those less accomplished. This is because it is easier to bring others down than do the work in building yourself up. Also, those at the top of the reputation hierarchy would impede the rise of those that may outshine them. This is law #1 of the 48 laws of power, and to a lesser extent #5. Ultimately it would end up in a patron/client system like existed in Rome. It would also encourage tribalism, not “make everyone a local” There will also be plenty of people that would be more than happy to do nothing all day.
I think Rowan is mostly off base here. Star Trek still has legal private property ownership. Like, they stated at first Data was legally owned by Star Fleet in the trial episode, and the Sisko family certainly owns their restaurant. And while humans rarely have a use for money, Star Fleet still pays a salary (which allows them to pay for drinks at Quark's bar, for instance). Unlike Communism, property is owned by individuals in Star Trek, but technology removing scarcity just means people are rarely interested in thinking about money. If a squatter came to Picard's vineyard, he'd certainly pursue legal means for removal. And if Picard wanted to sell his Orchard, he definitely could, it's just not something that's particularly motivating for him or anyone else b/c land is so cheap and abundant and all other goods are free.
Reputation as currency doesn't work when moving to another planet or even just another part of the same world is commonplace, or are we saying that when you look at someone's digital profile or w/e it shows a list of all of their supposed transgressions?
A wholesale meritocratic society, your value in society determined by your achievements.... it sounds like a horrific world! A world of tiger moms pushing their kids to perform, a mass of underclass citizens who aren't particularly talented, a ruling class of Elon Musks who get to decide what "success" and "meaningful achievements" are.
Really nice to see you accepting Star Trek's economic premise and then genuinely trying to explain it. Reading the comments here it's enlivening to see all the ways people use their imaginations to explain how specific things might work. Star Trek is the original Hope Punk and our ability to imagine better things is what will make our world a better place. There are lots of examples of societies that operate (d) very differently from our current capitalist paradigm. We've done it differently before, we no doubt will do it differently in the future.
They made it clear that you're not materialistically rewarded for accomplishments, so that would also go for homes. Instead, you work to feel a sense of accomplishment, just like why a painter paints a picture. Picard wanted to become a captain of a starship, because it gave him the accomplishment he wanted, and his brother grew wine because that's what he enjoyed doing. They've gone beyond "working" for financial or materialistic reward. It's succeeding at doing something you enjoy that's the reward. There's a saying that if you can find a job that you enjoy you'll never have to work again, and Star Trek is the ultimate example of that.
"Why is he attacking that other elephant?" "Well, like humans, some animals are just, jerks. Please stop that, Mr. Simpson." Post-scarcity societies sure do need ways for individuals to live meaningful existences. Social capital makes a lot of sense, BUT then there's that episode of The Orville with a planet with pure 100% social democracy, which was also rough for that planet, though that was not so much about resources availability and material power. Nice video!
Interesting point about that scene in The Orville. In season 1, there was a line of dialog stating that only the replicator/matter synthesizer made the post-scarcity world of Earth possible. This is simplistic, but okay. However it could be taken to suggest a form of "technological realism" - that human progress is only possible via technology. People cannot progress ethically, socially, etc, without machines to basically make it possible for them to get there. This pitfall of the ethos was pointed out to Seth McFarlane between seasons! This is why when Kelly is talking to a character in season 3, she explicitly clarifies that all of this amazing post-scarcity technology didn't make a better world. People got together and decided they had to make a better world, and it was their cooperation that allowed them to use technology beneficially rather than harmfully. It may seem like a small distinction to some but there is an essential nuance there. The belief that technology must be used to "make" people behave themselves, and enable them to mutually support one another, is quite a trap. It encourages worship of technological gurus and self-styled prophets, who typically only seek to use technology to amplify their ability to control and exploit others.
I find it interesting that you’d have more references to non-Trek franchises than you do to modern Trek. Could it be the future they’ve built in nuTrek isn’t really that appealing? I do agree with your original premise, the conversion of energy to matter is the fundamental pinning under the Trek universe. It’s what opens up all other possibilities, it is the great equalizer. The one part that has always eluded me was how they power it, mainly on shore (off starships). Are there massive warp style reactors on planet? How is that power delivered globally? The problem I see before energy conversion is the massive power needed to enable it, that needs solving first. Is this conversion energy inefficient? Electricity is, the conversion of electrons to another form, motion typically, emits heat as waste. How about delivery? How can that be efficient?
i think the idea of post scarcity gets miss interpreted. it means we have plentiful supplies yes we have fusion + energy to matter but there are still X seats in the restaurant, in the opera hall, only one house can be built in that spot by the lake, people will still be needed to do police work medical caretaking etc you will still have a station and value it just wont be about how much money you can generate but the utility or value you bring. everyone gets a clean safe place to live and healthy food to eat but we still cant all live in chateau Piccard. i like to hope it would be much like our original tribal societies and economies.
Ok, I had to go look up the difference between Private and Personal Property. Private Property are things that are owned by a person that is used to gain or generate wealth such as a plot of land or a vehicle. Whereas Personal Property does not have the economic component. I'm not sure I particularly agree with this definition. Using Chateau Picard as an example, it is Jean-Luc's Private Property because he uses it to produce and distribute his family's wine vintage, if he shut the vineyard and winery down and just used it for his own enjoyment in his dotage, then it would become Personal Property. It's a bit sketchy, but it boils down to all Personal Property is Private Property, but not all Private Property is Personal Property and there are laws that affect one but not the other. Like I said, it's confusing as hell unless you are a lawyer.
"all Personal Property is Private Property" How did you arrive at that conclusion after saying "Personal Property does not have the economic component"? Your toothbrush is personal property, it is not private property since it will not have an economic component that will ever generate money for you, same with the toilet paper you used and flushed down the toilet. So you see, not all personal property is private property.
even if you're a lawyer it's confusing, because it's not a workable definition. only socialist countries have ever used that economic distinction to define the difference. they also split up production between production goods and and consumption good, which is every bit as incoherent and arbitrary. In western law, personal property basically just means it's something you can move. we don't even have good rules on whether personal property can have investment value: if someone tries to insure personal property, it can legally become private property. Otherwise it doesn't really matter, which is why the concept is almost never used outside of the insurance world.
This is exactly why the TOS writers’ bible was intentionally vague about the social system. The writers were told not to worry about Earth because “you are not going there.”
Interesting how star fleet deals with first contact. Any new civilisation would have there own culture and political systems in place. Would the Federation insist on their compliance to the new order? Not every King or Emperor would be willing to be made redundant.
If another society was ruled by a monarchy they'd be disqualified from joining the Federation, but the Federation wouldn't impose on them. There's the Prime Directive after all.
@@RowanJColeman The interesting thing about Cassidy Yates is that she's technically doing the same thing as Harry Mudd, but without the immorality and manipulation. She owns her own ship, which implies that she has, or had, social capital, yet she spent it to own a ship and go outside of Earth to trade. She's one of the "eccentric" humans who don't live entirely within Federation culture. However, she winds up with Benjamin Sisko, Starfleet officer and (struggling) exemplar of the Federation way. That shows the complexity of the issue at an individual human level. It's possible to be fully human, to be able to meet a Starfleet officer halfway, and yet to seek out things that Earth has left behind as no longer useful. Sisko and Yates are a perfect example of the kind of nuance that Star Trek is rarely able to express about its fictional future. Yet, in their relationship, the writers found a way.
The major flaw with this idea of "replicators will solve all the world's problems" is that they don't work when the power goes out. The energy still needs to come from somewhere and that is the part that every single person seems to ignore because it undermines the socialist "post-scarcity" fantasy they think replicators represent. Star Trek even addresses this concept by making "dilithium" (among other materials needed to be scarce for narrative reasons) as objects incapable of being replicated, so even in Star Trek, there's a base substance under the economy that still needs some poor slob to go dig it out of the rock for you. There's no such thing as post-scarcity, just outsourcing the dangerous dirty work to people you don't care about. In reality, that's the slave factories in China or Bangladesh, and in Star Trek, its Klingon prison colonies or Cardassian slave mines.
If you haven’t seen it The Orville (as well as Trekonomics) makes the case that the replicator isn’t what makes Trek feel/function as a post-scarcity society, but an active choice by the people to embrace it because with very few exceptions, they are post-scarcity. Although power can go out, it is reliable even without dilithium.
Stars are giant fusion reactors that don't go out, at least not for billions of years. I'm sure the Federation in all its technical expertise has some pretty efficient solar panel designs. Hey, they could even manufacture them with replicators!
I think one thing that isn't really discussed in Star Trek is that Earth is likely *very* depopulated by the time of TOS and TNG. About 30% of the world's population was killed in World War III, and the 22nd century was the start of a massive wave of colonization and outmigration. Considering partnerships with the Vulcans repaired massive ecological damage to the planet, Earth probably looks very pristine and idyllic.
I think one of the challenges of looking at policing in Star Trek is that we've had a bias towards looking at those in Starfleet and not Federation civilian life. One thing that was missed here was the reference to the naval service Paris wanted to join that was separate from Starfleet, although IIRC it was also a Federation organization and not Earth-centric.
As an I.T. person I would be made instantly obsolete if dropped in the Star Trek Universe. My skills and knowledge is based on our contemporary tech and I would have to do several years of school just to catch up. Bar attendant roles I think would be a more timeless and applicable job.
I always wished there was a Star Trek series that focused exclusively on the society. No starfleet, no trekking, just showing the nuts and bolts of everyday living, even just focusing on Earth. Was there a proposed series following TNG and its two spin offs that was broadly pitched as CSI or Law & Order in Star Trek? It could have been interesting, but it also could have been half baked nonsense.
I think your spot on about there being some kind of planetary emergency services and that being “local government.” Why? Because each time in the various Star Trek shows that the main characters visit a Federation planet, the planetary government that our characters work with seem to need Starfleet’s assistance with either an emergency matter (security, healthcare, etc) or Starfleet assistance with some scientific project. One of the requirements for Federation membership is a united planetary government and whenever our characters visit Federation worlds this is what we see them doing. We only get the characters doing other things and dealing with planetary governments on other matters on planets that aren’t part of the Federation. So I think you’re correct as to what role “local government” plays. Also think you are correct about social capital. That makes a lot of sense if you think about various conversations characters have, especially with those not in Starfleet, in various episodes…especially when they’re talking through some ethical dilemma. These conversations differ from those between the Starfleet characters and nonStarfleet characters on nonFederation planets. The nonStarfleet nonFederation planet characters will sometimes say things that indicate they don’t quite understand why the Starfleet and nonStarfleet Federation characters seem so committed to doing the “right” thing or acting in the “right” way. Love this series and glad you’re continue to do it. Also agree that calling it “space communism” isn’t really a fitting label to describe the society. It’s something wholly different than anything that’s existed due in large part of its replicator technology that everyone has.
The reason we struggle to understand how things work in the Federation is because we're conditioned to think the system we live in is normal. Just like our ancestors were conditioned to believe slavery was normal. And their ancestors believing feudalism was normal. Etc etc. When you examine Capitalism from an outside perspective - its really weird, full of contradictions, unspoken rules, blatant lies and deceptions, with huge amounts of corruption. And yet to most people on Earth today - its normal. To some people its not only normal - its somehow the natural state of how things should be! A few people even believe Capitalism is how things always have been! We can't really grasp how society that's been post-scarcity for two centuries works. Go back six generations in Trek and society is mostly unchanged on a fundamental level. You can't do that with modern understandings. Think to how different the Boomer generation and the Alpha generation are while both experiencing the same current world. A society that survives in peace and prosperity for centuries is going to be conditioned to discourage crime - there's no desperation, no material greed, better access to medication and social support. And if you're just a jerk - well, no-one has to work with you. And if you take it too far then the few 'police' that exist can deal with you through the properly funded and staffed legal system.
Also - there IS an economy in Star Trek. There IS trade. The economy is just a planned one, and trade is either personal exchanges or its with an outside group that does use money. Which would make it, by definition, Communist. Not the Communism we'd be familiar with - but it fits the bill. And its very, very much a collectivist society. Just one that values individuals.
When alien races who still use currency like latinum interact with the Federation. They use Federation credits as a tool for trade. Either as a measure of the value of the transaction or as a physical exchange. I remember episodes of Deep Space 9 where Quark claimed to Sisco that a race don’t deal in Federation credits, only latinum.
A social credit system would never work because it would put an elite group of people in charge of deciding what is valuable to society. Even within Starfleet there are tiers of people with various degrees of value. As long as resources are limited there will be a need for an economic system. If everyone can't have their own Galaxy class starship and Chateau Picard can't supply the entire Federation with wine there will need to be some form of ecomonics and currancy.
It's called a Resource-based Economy. The term was coined by futurist Jacques Fresco who does some years ago at his compound in Venus Florida. The Venus Project, as its known, is still there and is run by Fresco's life partner Rachel Meadows
I don't think there will be such an asshole in Star Trek. Because why would there be? Something would have to have gone wrong in their childhood, or later life to become like this. And things just don't go that wrong in an utopia. And even if there would be. They would immediately be surrounded by 100 councilors, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists and be a fascinating research project to find out what happened and why they became like this.
I see a lot of comments about how a Star Trek future can never happen because of human nature. Star Trek is definitely an idyllic interpretation. However, I think the humanity in Star Trek is a different humanity altogether compared to now, or the past. The two things I think need consideration when thinking of the humanity in Star Trek are: 1) This is a nuclear post-apocalyptic society, PLUS 2) Sentient aliens exist Humanity in Star Trek has not had it well. Eugenics took off in the 60s, leading to genetically "perfect" humans to take over the world, treating the rest of the population as sub-human slaves, leading to the Eugenics Wars in the 90s, killing around 35 million people (per Memory Alpha), which is almost as high as the death toll of WWII. This then lead to World War III in the early-to-mid 21st century, where over 600 million people were killed, major cities destroyed by nuclear weapons, national governments in pieces, and infrastructure crumbling. To put 600 million deaths into perspective, you could remove every single human being from North America (Canada, USA, Mexico) and that still wouldn't be 600 million people. You could remove every single human being from all European Union countries, and you'd still be short by over 100 million. Humanity had taken itself to the breaking point. Eugenics left such a scar on humanity that it's essentially completely banned in the Federation. While this is still an ideal interpretation, I could see a humanity in this state wanting to find ways to better itself to prevent another century of death and destruction on a global scale that it had just endured. If there's any trope involving aliens in sci-f, it's that humanity casts asides its differences and unites. The "them" category in "Us versus them" just became much larger. . If humanity can unite like this, we have no idea how that could fundamentally change our society and worldview. Combine this with the fact that humanity had just endured over 100+ years of global conflict that had destroyed a large amount of the population and planet, it could bring about a fundamental change in how we perceive each other and act. The two-part episode "Terra Firma" in Enterprise even explores the idea of xenophobia in this future, and how it's shifted from skin color, language, religion, region, etc., it's now human or not human. The TL;DR of my long rant is that humanity in Star Trek has been absolutely traumatized and brutalized by its own demons. Sure, humanity in Star Trek may be an "ascended," idealized version of humanity, but they went through hell to get there and learn their lessons.
The problem with your thesis is that humanity has been through hell many times before this period at our own doing for literally 10000's of years. If Genghis Khan boiling people alive, the Aztecs eatting people, National socialism, Islamism, communism, ect are not going to teach humanity lessons that stick with our collective psyche than NOTING WILL. I love Star Trek and grew up watching it in the 90s but even I am forced to confront the many many problems with Gene Rodenberry's ideas.
Totally loved the video mate! One of the main reasons I love Star Trek is it's passion for a better tomorrow for all of humanity. And the many philosophical questions that the show has grappled with over the decades show, to me, how Western culture continues to grapple with the ideas of society and humanity. An interesting aspect of the social currency and government displayed in Star Trek is that I find parallels with many aspects of indigenous cultures. People around the world have lived for thousands of years without government, money, real estate, or a police force. And they did have science, art, religion, a justice system and social capital. It's something to do with that wonderful fusion of individualism and socialism together. If anyone is interested in the topics in the video, I highly recommend reading about indigenous philosophy from around the world. It's not as 'backward' as the we often think it is. The book "Sand Talk' by Tyson Yunkaporta is a great place to start.
Fantastic video. Another aspect of the _Star Trek_ future is that it's a post-WWIII society. Technology aside, it's of interest how that trauma reshaped human values in the generations after between a global nuclear holocaust & First Contact.
I started to write a comment about how well the social capital model works with the character of Barkley but realized I was incapable of shortening my thoughts into an appropriate length for a RUclips comment.
My headcanon is similar, though I don't feel that the Federation is really all that communist, but is definitely on the socialist side of things. I definitely agree that most people have a replicator in their homes that attends to their basic needs and a computer with access to the broader Federation-wide network, so they can look up just about anything, talk to anyone, read any books, listen to any music and watch any videos. But you do have to control access to items that are more scarce, even though most of the things people might want to use or do are scarce due to being limited in use as opposed to limited in terms of resources. Like only one person or group can be beamed somewhere from a transporter pad, eight people can't use a holodeck at the same time for eight different programs. If your replicator at home is too small to make something you need to go to a communal one and queue up to use it - we see Data and Worf do this in Data's Day. We also know that a lot of people put a premium on hand-crafted items like food. And we know that the Federation has a currency of sorts -- the Credit. It'd make sense for the Credit to be tied to energy usage, probably the energy it takes to replicate a small cube of aluminium or something simple like that. More complex things use more energy and cost more credits. So my assumption is that everyone gets a home with a replicator and a computer and a stipend of credits they can use for bigger things like a meal out, beaming to somewhere else on the same world, booking a trip to a different world or whatever, just for living in the Federation. And if you want more credits, you contribute to society. This can mean getting a job, but it could just as easily be writing holonovels and putting them out in the world, making ice cream and giving it to neighbourhood kids, whatever. I lean towards thinking that there are municipal authorities or similar local governments, which may well be a variation on the communist idea of worker's councils. And those would be responsible for maintaining and managing the land in an area for the communal good. If you wanted to start a "business" in a neighbourhood, you'd go to the people and ask if they wanted that facility and they'd vote on it. We also know that some things can't be replicated, probably most notably Dilithium but quite frequenly medicines and other volatile items that are vital to this week's episode. So the Federation will have some level of external trade and an exchange rate between Credits and other trading currencies like gold-pressed latinum and maintain stores of these currencies to use in trade. Though with a large population, most of whom probably spend a lot of their time in the pursuit of leisure I'd assume one of the biggest imports for the Federation is entertainment.
Well thought out and well presented. You gave me several new views of Roddenberry's vision that I'd not considered! Thank you VERY MUCH!! I look forward to MORE from you as a subscriber!!!
Really thought-provoking analysis!! I can't help thinking that for people to become like future star trek people, there has to be several generations that have to be born and grow into a world without such needs as exist in present-day.
Nah, war is like their side hustle not their main gig. At least I hope not, if the Navy stopped to check out some unusual tidal phenomenon every time we send them to the Strait of Hormuz I seriously wonder about their commitment to their charter. Have you happened to have read the Army's military charter though, pure badass, looks down at the Navy's from a great height and the Navy's got the Marines yo.
Why is it that humanity makes up 99.9% of starfleet? Do the andorians and vulcans just not make ships anymore? What does everyone else do? The federation stumbles over its pacifism into horrifically deadly conflicts seemingly every few decades, but no one else bothers to show up. I think the star trek we see in enterprise presents a much more nuanced and interesting view of starfleet and the politics of the major powers.
The in universe explanation is that we only see the primarily human ships, but there are ones that are mostly maned by other species. The idea is that since life support conditions would be different having mostly one species on any given ship is easier. Obviously the real answer is silicon prosthetics are expensive and putting them on extras takes time.
@@Bubblesthewitch the only species that I can think of that needs a different environment than us is the tholians and they arent even in the federation. The federation isn’t so much an alliance as it is a cultural homogenizer.
Amateur social scientists! 🙄 “A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711)
The Earth government by the time the Federation was founded was called United Earth, I always kind of assumed under the Federation that it still was, just as a local planetary government which had given up its sovereignty under the Federation. We can assume the nature of United Earth as a government and it's constituent institutions have evolved a lot in the centuries under the Federation but i think it's reasonable to imagine that there is at least on paper a continuity of legacy institutions handling emergency services and law enforcement and so forth.
Picard's house is personal property. Private property refers to privatized firms which produce goods or services operated by a dictatorial "owner" who exploits the labor value of workers for personal profit, while they are denied any democratic form of self-determination as to the policy, practices, management structure, or compensation structure of the firm. Presumably, firms in the Federation are publicly and/or worker-owned.
@RowanJColeman 2:41 Derp. I have a bad feeling about how the rest of this video is going to go. You might want to re-visit what Marx meant when he talked about private property. Personal property are goods that have a use value, like Picard using Chateau Picard to live at, grow grapes and ferment wine. Private property are goods that have an exchange value like if their Earth was still like today and a realtor on behalf of the owner would sell you Chateau Picard in exchange for some fat stacks of dolla dolla bills; that's Chateau Picard as private property, a commodity. In a capitalism everything is a commodity produced for it's exchange value while produced secondarily for it's use value (if any, a la 'Bored Ape.') It's weird I know, but it's the context that fosters the meanings, out of context and in the modern parlance makes it super confusing and easily misunderstood (as well as easily warped by the disingenuous to intentionally confuse so yeah, not your fault my guy.) Recall that the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence just means to own property as well. Marx wrote this stuff at the tail end of enlightenment during Kant's age of idealism which branched out into a whole bunch of utilitarianism and ontologism and existentialism and positivism and social darwinism and pragmatism and transcendentalism and marxisms. Dictionaries were this new fangled fad at the time and not even as old as Trump or Biden yet. If you've read any Kant then you what I'm talking 'bout and know the weird structures everything was written in back then before all them -isms invented things like common terminology. Yeah. normally I'd watch the whole viddie before posting but I foresee quite a few butthurt commie trek fans starting an avalanche of this exact same comment or variations thereof and I wanted to be...oh what's the meme...the one with the numbers about posting early? 😆 Lolz.
I went back to rewatch part 1, which I really liked. He makes the private/personal distinction there and says the vineyard and the restaurant are both personal property because they actually work there... Which isn't completely inline with Marx and many socialists.
@@everearnest9935 Ah, thank you immensely my guy. I love RJC's viddies and after I went full on uptight and had to pause it and post I just didn't want to see what lead from what appeared to me as a foundational error in the whole shebang. When I have the time I'll watch the 2 back to back for the full context. Although I now wonder when I pull it up if I'll have some butthurt comment about that one from way back whenever it dropped that he'll have addressed on this one, lolz. 🤦♂
I've never seen anything that makes me think Roddenberry had all the details worked out. My impression is he was working from a concept rather than a blueprint. And while Roddenberry's Star Trek universe sounds like a wonderful place to live, I'm not sure humans are capable of it. Just look at what's been done to the franchise in recent years. And like what STD and Pisscard did to Star Trek, I think any utopia would be quickly washed away by a flood of pretentious apes.
I think one solution to dealing with an arsehole intruder in Star Trek, is to carry a phaser in the home. Also, I would argue that Star Trek's economy could be classified as a gift economy, as everyone survives on account of working and giving away items as if they were gifts. If we look at how the peoples of the Trobian Islands in the south pacific thrive, they work on horticultural farms and give the food away to their neighbors, and on their great migration, they exchange necklaces as gifts for rice. Others I can think of include the Zomians, Khalahari bush folk, and the Baffin Island Inuits.
Watch Part 1 Here: ruclips.net/video/JJwWxT269ec/видео.htmlsi=FFPH3BQ1TP9k0eCj
P.S.:- To all the people asking about housing and/or money, as I said in the video, I covered money in the previous video and housing will be covered in the next video. To all the people who keep comparing the concept of social capital to a dystopian Black Mirror "Nosedive" system that's not what I was referring to at all. Social capital isn't regulated, it's a purely social system. Social capital exists today, but in Star Trek, it simply plays a much larger role in society.
Thank you for engaging with the video though. If you want to see the next video in the series early and ad free, join me on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman
10:48
HMS _Beagle_ did exploration. And Captain James Cook, was a naval officer and renound explorer.
Military service does not negate exploration. Indeed, they're usually first-exporers *because* they can cope with any bad things that might crop up.
Part 2, mention previous video, no link in comment or description.
So checking out the video that does deal with money, as many comments noted you seem to believe that replicators mean free energy. Which isn't a thing in universe and violates the laws of physics. You even use clips of Kirk in the videos. Who lived in a time before replicators existed. Earth at least had achieved post scarcity before replicators. So unfortunately it appears that a lot of your arguments are based on a flawed premise.
@@s_1884I probably should have gone into more detail about replicators. I'm well aware of thermodynamics and my explanation of replicators doesn't violate the laws of physics. What I mean was that replicators can create the means to achieve virtually limitless energy by building household fusion reactors and the like. As long as there's a constant supply of raw materials to break down and reuse for replicators (for example human waste) then replicators can keep making fuel.
In TOS we did see something like food synthesizers aboard the Enterprise which I think have been retroactively made replicators.
Another point, I think it's interesting that Trekkies are happy to accept dozens of physics violating technologies, but when it comes to replicators there's no wiggle room
Also, the previous video is linked at the end and in a video card on screen.
@@RowanJColeman We simply have no idea how energy requirements are met at scale - they might be per household or per building (in the case of apartment buildings) or larger (on the city/county/region size). Probably a mix of all those depending on context
@@vinapocalypse If we can't be certain, why not assume the best?
It is so refreshing seeing someone actually think about how this future could Logical work in stead of Deconstructing it ❤
You have no clue what deconstructing means.
@@john-lenin Deconstruction (noun): a method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression.
Absolutely. People just love to say it's impossible when it isn't. Bunch of cynics. The whole point of Star Trek is hope for a better future. That doesn't just mean flying around in space - it means a hopeful future for economy and society as well.
As a bartender I love getting customers talking about Star Trek economics and society. Just imagine being born and everything you need is automatically provided for you. The need to educate, master a craft, or learn about the universe is as easy as binging a tv show on netflix. You step onto a holodeck and you learn how to become a master at french cuisine, and making samurai swords. Then you find a program to teach you how to master Klingon sword making. But it doesn't end there, travel is pretty much free, so you can leave Earth to apprentice under an actual Klingon sword maker. As a gift, you cook chicken chasseur for the Klingon sword master. Your skills in french cooking leaves a lasting impression on the Klingon. Sharing what you learned in your life is your gift to society. Society isn't just where you live on Earth, it expands throughout the galaxy; thanks to the invention of the replicator and holodeck. Your skills give you value in the Star Trek universe, not your money. Lol, down the road, Klingons become obsessed with french chicken dishes.
"The Poulet Cordon Bleu, is truly a meal fit for a warrior!"
I wonder, Did Picard learn his sword fighting with a Klingon Sword master lol.
" _I have a dish for you of great honor_ "
-Klingon eats it- " _By Sto'vo'kor itself. This is G'rohkthar!_ "
" _No actually, it's called Swedish Meatballs, but it seems every race in the universe has their own take on it._ "
x3
One of the major thing that made me think that this future utopia couldn't exist was seeing Joseph Sisko's Restaurant. He had people there that washed pots or waitered, bussed tables and did all the grunt work in his kitchen/restaurant. Now, I have worked in kitchens and restaurants in my life-time and I can safely say that NO-ONE is taking on those job without some kind of compensation. If you have the choice to either be a pot-scrubber, table-busser or sit at home, living the good life, in a post-scarcity future utopia, you're choosing the latter, I can assure you. The only way I can see that working is if they were on some type of apprentice program and the end result was to become a master chef at the end of it, but that doesn't account for the waiters or table bussers. No-one sets their sights on becoming a world reknowned waiter, unless they're gonna be paid a fortune for it.
I thought about this too, I reasoned in my mind that they are compensated with fresh, actually cooked, non-replicated food. Remember Eddington's reply to Sisko that he was impressed by not eating replicated food.
Perhaps the bussers and dishwashers in the restaurant are serving community service for criminal behaviour?
There are always people who want to do those kinds of things. I know someone who enjoys doing authentic 1940's cooking. There are people who volunteer to work as historical reenactors for all sorts of seemingly dull tasks.
If you have full support from societal you'll be amazed what people choose to do.
And yes, I imagine the manual labour in a restaurant is relatively uncommon. Which makes Sisko's unique and desirable to visit.
It's actually not as crazy as you think. My mother in law does dishwashimg as day labor and very much doesn't need the money. She and a group of her friends do it at the same places every day and basically hang out.
And waiting there are very much people that enjoy.
There are many people who do that in homeless shelters completely free as the others have said just to hang out with like minded people just to do some good.
One could also point out that a lot of therapists would say "laziness doesn't exist and is actually a sign of an unresolved mental health issue." Humans by nature like to be doing things and contributing. Maybe there would be some people who just want to stay home and do nothing, and that's fine too, but I bet there would be less than we'd think if everyone had access to counseling and sci-fi medical care.
I rather like the approach to crime taken in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. If someone commits a serious crime, their social capital disappears, and also a robot follows them around to make sure they never do it again.
That reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode "to see the invisible man" where the punishment for some crimes is complete social isolation. You're made "invisible" for a year, and people are forbidden to acknowledge your existence
I remember somebody telling me about that I thought they were lying are them books a easy Read
I was thinking of the Culture watching this too.
I really recommend anyone to read these books (or listen to the audiobooks - the ones read by Peter Kenny are excellent) because the way their society operates compared to our own is extremely eye-opening as to just how little freedom we really have.
Even the example you mentioned is actually a fair bit more nuanced because The Culture doesn't really have laws or "crime" as such. Because they are truly post-scarcity in every way there isn't any need to steal anything (or anything to steal) and no reason for anyone to kill someone else. Think about pretty much any crime and there's no motive when there's nothing to acquire. (Also they have modified their genome and bodies to the extent that psychological issues that might lead to crime in our world aren't going to be a problem)
Along with this, they don't really have a concept of "punishment" which when you think about it, is really an abuse in all cases, even if we can argue it is necessary in our current system where people are motivated to harm others. In the example you give, the "slap drone" is there (as a volunteer, drones being sentient members of the society) to ensure the person being monitored can't harm others again, not as a punishment. The fact they might lose their social cachet is a side-effect rather than the intention.
@@boriszakharin3189 black mirror did that too, where people's brain implants would censor out a punished person.
Another answer to "who are the police?" is that citizens themselves are given power of arrest, given certain conditions. Said citizens would have to be certified to ensure they knew the law, but given we do that for drivers in our world, and Star Trek is a universe where 10 year olds are leaning Calculus in schools, I see no reason why they need a special class of people to enforce the law.
People forget all the other functions peace officers perform, I do assume they'd still be around, even if people aren't very crimey.
Even today, the us has Citizens arrest.
Also, Everybody has a stun rifle like the farmer in the first episode of enterprise. Everybody becomes a texan-ish (stun first, ask questions later). 🤠
We've seen police in the 09 film and in Lower Decks. I don't understand this point or the way the video is making on this. There is police.
@@Kaede-Sasaki Well, I think it was a plasma rifle. Seems Starfleet was just getting phase pistols with stun introduced.
Social capital reminds me of a line in Enemy at the Gates: “Man will always be man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.”
Perhaps Star Trek finds a way to that new man.
Voici la correction et la mise en page de ton texte :
Communism is not about helping people; it’s about the centralization of power. They sell it to people by stimulating their envy. As the writer of 1984 said, "The left does not love the poor; they hate the rich because they envy them."
I'd actually argue that the Federation is proof that the lack of a new man, and that's a driving force to the betterment of the Federation. Take, for instance, Dr. Bashir's dad. The writers wrote him with the base idea of "what does a loser look like in the Federation?" This is a man who wants to find his calling: something to make him rich in happiness, but just cannot find it, and winds up bouncing from dead-end to dead-end.
What drives people in the Federation? It's no longer a desire for wealth in terms of money, but wealth in terms of other things: reputation (to be the one to crack transwarp), ingenuity (the joy of finding coffee in that nebula), contemplation (to be a doctor at Oxford), and more for sure, but ultimately: happiness. The self-satisfaction of doing what makes you whole, and contributing to others by doing that thing **well**.
We have historically used more limited ways as criteria to identify if someone is happy, like the money in their pocket, the size of their family, or the size of their house. And the story of "the man who has everything and yet nothing," i.e. the man who is wealthy yet unhappy is a tale as old as time. Star Trek shows that when you don't need these criteria, the question of "are you happy" is much simpler. Some find happiness in running a simple restaurant, others by running farming colonies which use less and less technology, and others through traditional public service like Starfleet. What makes these people wealthy isn't their nice houses on Chateau Picard or Pike Ranch, but their happiness.
@@TakedaIesyu I do find that the focus people have on questions like "but who gets to live in that big, fancy mansion suspended on a cliffside?" are missing the forest for the trees.
And they have failed to ask themselves why they would want to be given such a property.
And, hell, the question isn't even that difficult to answer.
You want a mansion? Submit a request for a plot of land and materials to the United Earth Government's, erm... Office of Civic Management, say, along with any particular features you would require in location and design.
They respond with a list of alternatives for you to choose from. Some existing structures, others land that may be allocated for a dwelling of the specified size and design.
Now you have a mansion. Great. Now what? No one is impressed. In fact, most people will probably think it's a gaudy waste of energy.
You don't need a mansion. You need a comfortable, safe place to live. A place that satisfies your particular needs and proclivities.
Haha, I think you took the wrong message from this quote.
Yeah, I also keep on remembering this gut-punching scene from the film from time to time. It was said by Joseph Fiennes' character. Telling it to Jude Law's Vasily Zaitsev.
I thought I remembered Dax saying something in DS9 about talking to a local government on Earth for housing.
I recall a local magistrate, administrator, and/or mayor being mentioned on earth in tng
Tbh I always just assumed that in Star Trek humanity just matures to the point the whole world or Federation is such a high trust society... there is no crime. It is utopia but even in our world we get glimpses of it: eg. shops in small villages where owners just leave the shop open and unmanned and people take what they need and leave money on the counter. Now imagine the world where 99.99% of people behave this way.
I think that was the Roddenberry's dream: that we as humanity will stop war just by virtue of no one wanting to start wars, not by forcing others to act nice. That's why he was always against the conflict between Federation officers, assuming that the humanity will reach the level where people don't fight each other. And yes, it changed a lot in the later series, even TNG and especially DS9 causing terrible mental gymnastics. Eg. DS9 being a trade center and Federation not using money.
I've recently moved from a town where there was crime, to a town where most people don't bother to lock their doors and yet there are no burglaries. These places actually exist.
What's worth remembering is that they don't "still" exist. There are small towns with no burglaries or murders right now. There was a need for laws to handle burglary in ancient Israel, in Athens, basically everywhere. It's not a matter of different times. It's a matter of, just as you say, maturity. When people value the ability to trust their neighbors then they don't abuse their neighbors. When people value fearing their neighbors (to politically manipulate others, or to socially manipulate) then the childish emotions that separate people also devalue people in one another's eyes. Roddenberry's view was that "maturity" meant being open to seeing the value in others.
When people do not have the threat of real punishment, there can be those who see any negative to bad behavior. If I kill someone, will others just ignore me?
In a TNG episode, a data broker mentioned a federation rehabilitation colony. There is a legal system and forms of limiting personal liberties. In DS9, those with mental challenges were institutionalized, and basher talked about what happened to those with genetic modifications. Basher's dad was sent to 'jail' for taking this son for genetic modification.
The penal colony thing was how Australia was formed. The sentence "Transportation for life" got that person exiled from the state of England/Britain and sent to some 'other' place which for a time was Australia.
Weirdly, Star Trek future works very similar to social media and influencers in a vacuum. People find ways to express themselves to build a community and is rewarded for providing fulfilment whether it be entertainment, knowledge, or other aspect of life.
I read a SF short story once where someone landed in a future where criticism was currency. So a restaurant would serve you a meal, and as payment you would comment to the waiter or chef about the food and give detailed (positive) feedback. In the story the protagonist pissed off a waiter by just saying the food was nice, which was the equivalent of leaving an insultingly meagre tip.
I think the idea of Social Capital explains why Star Trek humans are so easy to trust. For social capital to work properly, the Federations education system would have to discourage all forms of deception the same way our current education system tacitly discourages creativity. Someone adept at deception could easily exploit social situations to retain their reputation at the expense of another, or abuse essential positions where their expertise would be vital, such as maintaining technical information on replicators, FTL communications, or anything sufficiently specialised or complex. People like Harry Mudd or other outlaws might end up informally exiled if any abuses of their power came to public light, which might explain why we don't get to see them in Star Trek. No one wants to listen or even associate with people who put themselves so far ahead of everyone else in the Federation.
Your idea manages to explain a fundamental plot point about classic Star Trek. Doesn't it feel strange that most people have to book passage on a ship to go to another world, but Harry Mudd has his own ship? In fact, lots of eccentrics out in the colonies have access to surprising resources. This would be because they deceitfully gamed the system to gain such things, but then were found out. Unable to find anyone to collaborate or to share resources on any of their endeavors following that discovery, they hopped to a colony world or joined the deep space markets. It's possible to find another culture within the Federation that suits a different personality (much like what happens in Bank's Culture novels). It's also possible to make quite a living for oneself in the interstellar market. The core Federation worlds' ways of living aren't the only ways to live, even in the 24th century. Gold-pressed latinum can be gathered by humans as well as by anyone else out there. It's just that the people we see in Starfleet, the ones we'd love to emulate, are from Earth's culture.
@@SingularityOrbit Well, in Mudd's case he seems to have operated largely outside the Federation economy from the start, usually being someone the Feds meet 'out there where we're exploring and here he is already' ...and trading with/swindling some pretty remote outposts of like miners and prospectors and all. One could easily see him having parlayed smaller schemes and scams into obtaining his own ship, wherever it came from.
@@SingularityOrbit (Also on that kind of character and his business, there's also every likelihood he had at least for much of his career an actually very-legitimate trader setup going on. If one did nothing but smuggle and scam, one's pose of legitimacy or even being allowed to land at least without tons of inspections would wear thin fast. (And as it is he always seems to be trying to stay ahead of all the people he ripped off.)
Certainly in Star Wars the best way to avoid geting caught as a Reb or smuggler or doing various adventurey jobs of other kinds is to actually *have* a suitable legitimate business going on, rather than just fake passes and credentials and hope to escape . :)
(And hey, if you simply don't *tell* how fast your hyperdrive is, you can get a lot done before you'e even expected anywhere. on your timetable. )
@@OllamhDrab That's all true, and good points to add besides. We can't really know how much or how little Mudd was tied to Federation activity, or to some little-acknowledged breakaway social order out there in the galaxy. His wife, Stella, was the daughter of an arms dealer who supplied weapons during the Federation-Klingon War, about a decade prior to the original series. Either the Feds were desperate for extra war materiel fast and bought from outside their borders, or things were more different than we realized between TOS and TNG.
@@SingularityOrbit If you remember that when TOS was making stories without any background 'canon' or anything, it'd been a concept of a Western-like story in space, so a lot of the characters and circumstances they find out that really parallel that, including some 'What did you do in the last war,' finding old outposts and places the 'government' folks hadn't been in some time, quirky settlements of Humans and towns needing 'straightening out,' etc.
Carpetbagging scoundrels, too. :)
Maybe the fact that we simply accept that there will always be a lot of assholes and sociopaths who will ruin things for everyone else is part of the problem.
But there are many societies on earth today with different cultures where people behave very differently. For example, look at how people treat public property in Japan. People take much better care of public property in Japan conpared to most other countries. They don't throw their trash on the ground and they voluntarily help clean up. Yes, Japan has their own problems, but it just goes to show how different culture and beliefs can create a very different society than people may be used to or even think is possible.
Yeah, the fantastic country of Yakuza, Hentai, Bukkake, illegal whaling, and excruciating working hours. 🙂
Sure, if you don't mind extreme levels of ostracism, rigid hierarchy and classism.
@@genmaicha.lapsang BUt you can have exreme levels of ostracism rigid hierarchy and classism *without* people caring for eahch other or their towns too, and you don't have to look too far to see that. It means among other things that things that seem impossible in daily life here or say in Russia where we or they have many of the same darn drawbacks, are a nice part of daily life elsewhere. Maybe it's not such a simple zero-sum or inextricable equation.
People blame 'human nature' for a lot of things that ...actually humans don't do or have to do everywhere. There are many possibilities.
@@OllamhDrab Your premiss is not true. The "clean cities" that you see in these counties are ONLY possible in societies that have a level rigidity, conformity, ostracism, classism and intense hierarchy. People only "care about each other" becuase they are forced too do so in these cultures. It's not out of genuine concern.
Sure, Dubai, Seoul, Singapore, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and even Tokyo look really clean and friendly but they only show parts of the city for social media purposes and those cultures are very difficult to live freely in. Even the most free ones like South Korea and Japan are very ridged and repressive by western standards.
@@genmaicha.lapsang I disagree. Look at Stockholm, or any given Scandanavian city, for one. That was my point. These things are not inextricable 'human nature' or based on current ideas of a 'political spectrum between authoritarianisms in scarcity' ...never mind without such scarcity and greed. Whether people or governments care for each other and places.... is a matter of priorities and abilities and if.... people care.
As a Norwegian, I have always been proud of our penal system.
It is a demonstration that humans are capable of setting aside their prejudices and preconceptions to make informed decisions based on rigorous research.
That research, and results of a penal system built on the lessons of that research, both tell us that treating people with respect, showing them understanding, and providing a framework to help rather than punish JUST FUCKING WORKS.
It doesn't matter what anyone feels about it. It works.
-
The most famous thing to have happened in Halden prison was caused by careless staff neglecting to lock several doors in the maximum security wing.
A bunch of prisoners left their cells and went to the mess hall kitchen, where they made a chocolate cake.
They ate it and returned to their cells.
Oh yes, what vicious brutes...😂
This is why i like that there's some prisons have a cat/dog program. Inmates learn how to take care of the animals and can get them taken away if they don't behave. They use their money to feed them and to buy treats. Use the books in the prison library to teach them tricks, or how to look at stool samples to make sure they're healthy. They even have the cats' litterbox in their cells that they clean. This helps reintegration as well as rehabilitation, while saving animals from overcrowded shelters/ kill shelters.
Here in the USA, incarceration is a business which puts an incentive to criminalize people.
@@TheWarrrenator there’s also the ideological component. For many Americans, particularly conservatives, the carceral system is as much or more about punishing people than about any benefit to society. The conservative American takeaway from the inmates having an escape opportunity and not taking it would be “clearly your prisons aren’t punitive enough-they should be such awful places that no one wants to be there ever, and they would do anything to stay out of them or to escape them at the first opportunity. They should _want_ to escape. And then when they try to escape you should punish them even worse.”
It’s your standard “beatings will escalate until morale improves” mentality, IMHO.
that would not work in a country with *real criminals* like in latin america. scandinavians are educated and non violent in general. here in latin america the criminals are capable of atrocities you would never even imagine.
"ALERT: CODE 308: MUNCHIES ALER!" 😂🍄🥞🍔🍨
There’s always going to be *some* scarcity, even in an idyllic post scarcity society. There’s only so much beachfront property, not every apartment can be the penthouse, there’s only one of original artworks, etc.
Wait, food does just grow on trees.
This is my issue. The concept of a post scarcity universe is just fundamentally flawed and it comes down to what is often our largest asset in today's world. Property. This whole thought exercise is moot when the most important thing we own, where we live, where we raise our children, where we call our home, is just side stepped.
As mentioned in another comment of mine, I compare this to today's Europe. Money, resources etc. are not an issue. Still, migration is. Why? Because of available space and cultural differences (which is important in Star Trek, as different cultures will handle reputation differently). You cannot solve every issue with money, thus having those replicators alone does not solve all issues. People will be unhappy because they got worse homes. Or because they lose reputation due to things out of their control. Then what? They might use their democratic power to change things (to the worse?) or start an uprising.
I think you underestimate how big the earth is (and the Federation for that matter). It's so big, everybody will find their perfect spot. (If they even try to find their perfect spot, some just want to be Wanderers) and then there will be 1000 perfect spots to spare on top of that that you skipped.
@@kevinmeville2631 Yeah, nah. I know it's all very scary and frightening for you but we could feed the entire world right now, it's just that we couldn't make a profit from doing so. Planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity are how things are done to increase demand and y'know, that's kind of the opposite of your what you're trying to sell friend. All the food and goods filling our landfills, things we produce only to dispose of since no one needs them enough to buy them all being thrown out just to keep demand marketable and so much so to the point that we pay good tax money to other countries just to take all the garbage we ship to them off our hands; that kinda appears to be a little side stepped in your perspective there Hoss.
We know there are laws. Genetic engineering gets you thrown in jail, for example.
One thing about Picard's estate and other properties said to be 'in the family' is particularly the former doesn't seem to be something the family *gained* by 'social capital' ....just no one took their land *away* in this whole process. (And of course France and whatever authorities thereafter surely value the production of French wine as heritage: they already do, that.) So as long as the Picards and their people keep doing what they do, nothing's wrong. It's presumably just not that they're doing it for a money economy anymore.
Also while Earth presumably has a lot of Starfleet people around all the time to help, given all the headquarters there, I do presume it has local security and emergency people and other systems like most Federation worlds, we just hear about it when the shows' characters are involved. Small town police tend to have plenty to do even if there's no big incentives to crimes. Cows stuck in fields, bar evenings getting out of hand, all kinds of that 'community policing' that may not seem much like 'policing' in some senses at all. The on-call problem-solvers and watchmen and all. Maybe Earth's 'paradise' has Mayberry policing, too. Certainly I think the things that drive first-responder types like firefighters and medics, as well as your forestry service types and similar, would also still be there and socially-valued, even if no one locks their doors at night.
A lot of times in the real world, all the money and scarcities, real and perpetuated/invented for money's sake, (Or for prejudice's) , that doesn't actually define people's sense of who they are and what they do, just makes life *harder* about it.
I'm still a 'fixit lady' even if I'm not being paid to do it. I'd likely have the same inclinations (maybe after Starfleet, good chance I'd try for that right away, of course) ...at least in civillian life.
Reminds me of an episode of Dark Mirror. Who controls the standards? There's always someone asking, "Can I manipulate them for my benefit? Put me in charge."
No police force in Star trek? What the f was Odo in DS9????
Well he worked for the Bajoran Government not the Federation and he’s honestly more of a mall cop than a full cop in function a lot of the time.
DS9 is a Bajoran station.
I wish our society worked this way
You realize it took a catastrophic period of near global genocide, and several hundred years of starvation, death, disease and rebuilding, to get there, right.
@@c1ph3rpunk sadly so yes, if only we could learn from our own past and skip those times
@@ObiGommGaming if history has shown anything, it’s that we’re not terribly adept at learning from our past mistakes. This also tends to beg the next question, in the grand scheme of things at a universal scale, given how we are as creatures, is humanity really deserving of anything but the ultimate end.
@@c1ph3rpunk Close. It took the existing social hierarchy being wiped out, and then the arrival of a unifying force to get there. The genocides and hundred years of four horseman themed Mad Max nonsense only achieved the removal from power of those in power preventing the societal reforms necessary to achieve that social system.
We could get to that society in a few years if we just abolished capitalism, the prison industrial complex, fascism, authoritarianism, and we all let the "radical leftists" do the social reforms they've been demanding for the last several decades.
@@c1ph3rpunk Sounds like someone needs to read the book mentioned in the video, Rutger Bregman's "HumanKind"
Now imagine it wasn't a squatter but the President of the Federation basically saying, "Chateau Picard belongs to me now." Would there not be some way to legally challenge that?
The President isn't above the rights enshrined in the Federation charter so they could be challenged on that front. But also in a system of social capital the President would be throwing away votes if they did something like that.
That President of the Federation had to build up social capital through years, perhaps decades, of good work in the Federation bureaucracy to gain that position. A person like that who decided to go full authoritarian would suffer two consequences. First, they'd be put on medical leave while doctors worked to understand how their personality changed so severely. Was there Romulan brainwashing? An alien virus? Strange energies? Second, if no excuse was found for the radical behavior shift, then that President would lose social capital with alarming speed. A Federation president who decided to declare ownership of a citizen's home would be worse off than Richard Nixon post-Watergate. At least people still returned Nixon's calls.
Nope
@@RowanJColeman I see a guy like Trump and wonder about assholes like that. There seem to be no end to the lies and distortions and it never impacts his social capital and his followers seem to endlessly shield him from accountability.
@@GeahkBurchill Presumably the Federation has education systems that render its citizens informed enough and capable enough of reasoning not to enshrine a clown fascist. Federation policy probably also has something like the pre-Reagan Fairness Doctrine which prevents the existence of a large scale media enterprise like Fox where a billionaire can broadcast fascist lies 24 hours a day into the minds of the populace. And the Federation definitely doesn't have anything as inherently anti-democratic as a billionaire to begin with. So we kind of have to be failing as a society from a lot of different vectors to enable the absurdity of the present situation
A credit system, you better yourself by exercising and doing little odd jobs, but you no longer need to spend money on shelter, food, healthcare and clothing
The thing is: no one sat down to work out how the Federation economy worked, and then had the writers show it to us. The writers simply told us how great the Federation is in every way, and we are now trying to rationalise a system based on what we are told. There is no reason to assume that one and only one possible system will match what we are told. In all probably no possible system will do that, because the Federation is presented as being better than every other system in every way: there are no downsides. Things don't work like that. To be best in the world at something, you have to be less than best in the world at something else.
A writer can always assume a problem away, but that does not make the assumption realistic.
For the emergency response personel it reminded me of the voluntary firemen system we have in Czech Republic and I imagine a lot of other countries too. They typically inherit older vehicles from professional fire brigades, they don't have the same level of training (but they are trained) and equipment and they don't hold shifts sitting at the station. Instead when the alarms sounds (and they typically get text message about half a minute before that) they drop what they are doing and run/cycle/drive to the the station, suit up, jump into the truck and get going. Since most villages have them these volunteers are often first to arrive to the emergency. A friend who is one told me their average time to depart the station from the first alarm is under 4 minutes so if their route is by 5km or more shorter than the proffesionals they will get there first.
Even today in our money based society people both able and willing to be a voluntary fireman gain in social status. In the future moneyless economy I imagine something like that would be at least the same level of boost to social status or more. And since material is no problem there is no reason to have lesser equipment available. Any difference between these emergency responders and some who do it as their main life goal would be in amount of training and experience. I think there would be no lack of personel to help with any kind of accident or disaster no matter how big or small. If the "professionals" are occupied with one elswhere when your emergency happens you would have trained and equiped volunteers transporting to your location maybe 30 seconds later than the main guys could if they were not occupied.
I feel that Starfleet is like the 18 century Royal Navy. It is a military, but its traditions are nowhere near those of the army. It also has a lot to do with exploration, scientific discovery and research. The Navy was also a much more prestigious assignment than the army
That's no accident. Roddenberry was influenced by adventure stories like The Adventures of Horatio Hornblower (first published when he was 16). Not to mention he spent some time in the pacific during WW2 so he would have been influenced by naval traditions during that time as well.
@@methos-ey9nf
Roddenberry was Army Air Corps, though.
@@hellacoorinna9995 yeah I know he was army air core, but he probably would have interacted with Navy guys - the islands he flew out of weren’t very big.
@@methos-ey9nf
True.
I just watched Edge of Tomorrow again and thought about you doing a retrospective on Tom Cruise's contribution to sci-fi. 'Oblivion', Edge Of Tomorrow, the film's you've already done like Minority Report & War Of the World's....Tom Cruise sci-fi movies have their own identity and think they'd make a good subject for your critical eye.
(SPOILERS ahead) Wasn't Cruise's Vanilla Sky from 2001 also a sort of science-fiction? You only found out about it in the middle of the film with that 'WTF' plot twist that went so far that it even partially altered the whole film's genre/classification. Till that point in the story, the film appeared to be a regular romantic drama. And then it all got turned on its head......
I've watched the film twice, if I remember correctly, but the last time was more than 20 years ago and memories tend to fade away.
@@subraxas That can be included. I really didnt watch it all the way thru. Tom's sci-fi movies generally have a sense of urgency to them with him running from disaster or running to it.
So Star Trek is that episode of Dark Mirror where money is your 5 star social media rating.
I'll confess that I love love Star Trek. I love the idea and the positivity behind it. However, I'm also someone who was born and grew up in the USSR. A place where certain ideas were also in place that are not too dissimilar to what Start Trek uses. That is the idea of most people being good and simply wanting to be self-sufficient and working towards on overall benefit of the society. Well, I think most people are aware how that turned out. One of the biggest failings of USSR was not taking human nature into nearly as much consideration, or perhaps thinking that human nature was something else than what it really is. Certain things and outcomes were simply inevitable due to it, the main one being the breakup of the country.
Star Trek is great an all but it's idealistic and naive in certain ways, especially regarding people. Though, it is a nice exercise in "what if" scenarios.
But, were people from the distant past very different from us, wouldn´t it mean our species can change? Maybe it just requires a lot of human perceived time and tecnological discoveries? And Ideas are tecnological discoveries.
Humanity in Star Trek is basically a best case scenario. Is it likely we will achieve it? No. But it’s a goal to strive toward. A better tomorrow.
@@Gunnar001 I agree with you. It is the best case scenario, which is what USSR was "supposed" to achieve, a utopia.
Eh... with all the autocracratic, oppressive, and inegalitarian elements built into the very system of the USSR, I'm not sure "belief in the goodness of people" is where I'd lay the blame for its failure.
A fatal flaw in any organization, whether it is a government, a corporation, or whatever, is too much centralized power. It is why the U.S. has separate branches of government, as checks and balances against each other, and antitrust laws to break up monopolies. Nothing is perfect if people are involved. Power corrupts and attracts the corrupted.
My best friend and I go around and 'round about this topic. I can't stand that we could already be working towards and building this future now (there's no reason Basic Universal Income can't be a thing) but he staunchly opposes it because he thinks the technology comes first.
You friend is correct in his assumption. Technology is the only fundamental vehicle on top of which society can change.
@@SimpMcSimpy
We, the Mankind, should finally complete and implement a viable fusion reactor(s).
Jake "it means we dont need money"
Nog " then you certainly don't need mine" 🤣🤣🤣
That episode shows perfectly why the whole idea of no money wouldn't work.
A reputation-based society?
Don't we have that now with social media?
In such an economy, your wealth isn't based upon what you do, but upon people's *perception* of what you do. Your "optics" so to speak.
No room for gaming *that* system...
The idea of reform and rehabilitation is something that needs to be talked about much more in the US. We aren't helping ourselves by simply locking people up.
Not helping yourselves, but some people do benefit from it:
- The system of private prisons.
- Whoever benefits from very cheap or even free labour (slavery IS legal in USA, if you're a convict).
- The people who promise to the electorate that they will be "tough on crime": politicians, judges, sheriffs.
It's not in *their* interest to reform criminals.
We do that
It doesn’t work
Of course we do t have mind control machines yet
There are a great many conversations that need to be had about the state of things in the US. Infrastructure, law enforcement, health care, education, etc. Conversations that cannot be had so long as the people at the top of the pyramid who gain from the way things are now actively prohibit and attack anyone who wants to even suggest things are broken. This is why they hate and fear Trump and his supporters so much. He represents an end to the gravy train they've been riding for a century. Until their stranglehold is broken, things are only going to get worse. And before you dismiss me as a "MAGA Moron" or something, I'll remind you that the Republicans are just as complicit in this affrontery as the Democrats are, just not as many of them.
In dagger of the mind, in the ST universe, they were still struggling with rehabilitation.
@@joeboxter3635 That wasn't rehabilitation, that was outright mind control and is one of the examples used by the people who talk about how the Federation is low key a tyrannical dystopia where you get reprogrammed if you don't toe the company line.
Just wanted to add that I know there are those who might see the Star Trek future earth as soft, spoiled and unmotivated seeing as so much is easily provided for, if that's the case there's always the colonies you can just leave earth and sign up to be part of a colony even one that wants to break off from the federation to establish a new society on another world built from the ground up with your own hands.
Excellent analysis, especially given the somewhat vague nature of the source material!
I'm looking forward to the next one!
Smaller governments definitely exist with in the federation i think at least in the early era with The Andorian Imperial Guard still existing, United Earth existing, and Vulcan High Command
If a government covering the entire Earth fits your definition of "small" then sure.
In the 30th century, local govt is the galactic govt. The supercluster complex is the whole federal govt.
The Social Currency aspect is so intriguing. Everyone in Starfleet is pretty outgoing, but what if that's just because that's the type of person who gets to have that social status? If you sit at the back of the class and keep your friend group small as a kid does that lead into your adult social standing, your job, your house? For every Starfleet cadet how many NEETs are there behind them?
The biggest change for this to work is the change to the human condition. All the practicalities are completely second to the psychology of the concept. Transporters and replicators are not the unbelievable part in this scenario. What would have to happen to human psychology is what needs explaining. This social currency inequality changes nothing by itself. Why would it? It's just another form of wealth inequality. Some people will be wealthy and some people will be poor. Some people will go far and some people will struggle. Some people win the genetic lottery and some won't. Some people win the lottery of being born into (social) wealth and some won't. And humans will have human reactions to this.
Having “currency” of reputation can also have an enormous down side. Many will see reputation as a scarce resource and reduce it to a zero sum game. Those that are seen as having a better reputation, thus “richer”, would be attacked by those less accomplished. This is because it is easier to bring others down than do the work in building yourself up. Also, those at the top of the reputation hierarchy would impede the rise of those that may outshine them. This is law #1 of the 48 laws of power, and to a lesser extent #5.
Ultimately it would end up in a patron/client system like existed in Rome. It would also encourage tribalism, not “make everyone a local”
There will also be plenty of people that would be more than happy to do nothing all day.
I think Rowan is mostly off base here. Star Trek still has legal private property ownership. Like, they stated at first Data was legally owned by Star Fleet in the trial episode, and the Sisko family certainly owns their restaurant. And while humans rarely have a use for money, Star Fleet still pays a salary (which allows them to pay for drinks at Quark's bar, for instance). Unlike Communism, property is owned by individuals in Star Trek, but technology removing scarcity just means people are rarely interested in thinking about money.
If a squatter came to Picard's vineyard, he'd certainly pursue legal means for removal. And if Picard wanted to sell his Orchard, he definitely could, it's just not something that's particularly motivating for him or anyone else b/c land is so cheap and abundant and all other goods are free.
Reputation as currency doesn't work when moving to another planet or even just another part of the same world is commonplace, or are we saying that when you look at someone's digital profile or w/e it shows a list of all of their supposed transgressions?
currency of any kind leads to destruction long term. same as trade and barter. even credit if you think that is something else.
A wholesale meritocratic society, your value in society determined by your achievements.... it sounds like a horrific world! A world of tiger moms pushing their kids to perform, a mass of underclass citizens who aren't particularly talented, a ruling class of Elon Musks who get to decide what "success" and "meaningful achievements" are.
Even the father of Meritocracy himself, Confucius warned against relying solely on merit as a means to determine who was in power.
Really nice to see you accepting Star Trek's economic premise and then genuinely trying to explain it. Reading the comments here it's enlivening to see all the ways people use their imaginations to explain how specific things might work. Star Trek is the original Hope Punk and our ability to imagine better things is what will make our world a better place.
There are lots of examples of societies that operate (d) very differently from our current capitalist paradigm. We've done it differently before, we no doubt will do it differently in the future.
Everybody has a stun rifle like the farmer in the first episode of enterprise. Everybody becomes a texan-ish (stun first, ask questions later). 🤠
Thank you, Rowan! 🙂 ❤
They made it clear that you're not materialistically rewarded for accomplishments, so that would also go for homes. Instead, you work to feel a sense of accomplishment, just like why a painter paints a picture. Picard wanted to become a captain of a starship, because it gave him the accomplishment he wanted, and his brother grew wine because that's what he enjoyed doing. They've gone beyond "working" for financial or materialistic reward. It's succeeding at doing something you enjoy that's the reward. There's a saying that if you can find a job that you enjoy you'll never have to work again, and Star Trek is the ultimate example of that.
"Why is he attacking that other elephant?"
"Well, like humans, some animals are just, jerks. Please stop that, Mr. Simpson."
Post-scarcity societies sure do need ways for individuals to live meaningful existences. Social capital makes a lot of sense, BUT then there's that episode of The Orville with a planet with pure 100% social democracy, which was also rough for that planet, though that was not so much about resources availability and material power.
Nice video!
Interesting point about that scene in The Orville. In season 1, there was a line of dialog stating that only the replicator/matter synthesizer made the post-scarcity world of Earth possible. This is simplistic, but okay. However it could be taken to suggest a form of "technological realism" - that human progress is only possible via technology. People cannot progress ethically, socially, etc, without machines to basically make it possible for them to get there.
This pitfall of the ethos was pointed out to Seth McFarlane between seasons! This is why when Kelly is talking to a character in season 3, she explicitly clarifies that all of this amazing post-scarcity technology didn't make a better world. People got together and decided they had to make a better world, and it was their cooperation that allowed them to use technology beneficially rather than harmfully.
It may seem like a small distinction to some but there is an essential nuance there. The belief that technology must be used to "make" people behave themselves, and enable them to mutually support one another, is quite a trap. It encourages worship of technological gurus and self-styled prophets, who typically only seek to use technology to amplify their ability to control and exploit others.
Panopti-KHAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!
I see what you did there, you had to assume I was looking and this time I was.
I find it interesting that you’d have more references to non-Trek franchises than you do to modern Trek. Could it be the future they’ve built in nuTrek isn’t really that appealing?
I do agree with your original premise, the conversion of energy to matter is the fundamental pinning under the Trek universe. It’s what opens up all other possibilities, it is the great equalizer. The one part that has always eluded me was how they power it, mainly on shore (off starships). Are there massive warp style reactors on planet? How is that power delivered globally? The problem I see before energy conversion is the massive power needed to enable it, that needs solving first. Is this conversion energy inefficient? Electricity is, the conversion of electrons to another form, motion typically, emits heat as waste. How about delivery? How can that be efficient?
i think the idea of post scarcity gets miss interpreted. it means we have plentiful supplies yes we have fusion + energy to matter but there are still X seats in the restaurant, in the opera hall, only one house can be built in that spot by the lake, people will still be needed to do police work medical caretaking etc you will still have a station and value it just wont be about how much money you can generate but the utility or value you bring. everyone gets a clean safe place to live and healthy food to eat but we still cant all live in chateau Piccard. i like to hope it would be much like our original tribal societies and economies.
Ok, I had to go look up the difference between Private and Personal Property. Private Property are things that are owned by a person that is used to gain or generate wealth such as a plot of land or a vehicle. Whereas Personal Property does not have the economic component.
I'm not sure I particularly agree with this definition. Using Chateau Picard as an example, it is Jean-Luc's Private Property because he uses it to produce and distribute his family's wine vintage, if he shut the vineyard and winery down and just used it for his own enjoyment in his dotage, then it would become Personal Property.
It's a bit sketchy, but it boils down to all Personal Property is Private Property, but not all Private Property is Personal Property and there are laws that affect one but not the other. Like I said, it's confusing as hell unless you are a lawyer.
"all Personal Property is Private Property" How did you arrive at that conclusion after saying "Personal Property does not have the economic component"?
Your toothbrush is personal property, it is not private property since it will not have an economic component that will ever generate money for you, same with the toilet paper you used and flushed down the toilet. So you see, not all personal property is private property.
even if you're a lawyer it's confusing, because it's not a workable definition. only socialist countries have ever used that economic distinction to define the difference. they also split up production between production goods and and consumption good, which is every bit as incoherent and arbitrary.
In western law, personal property basically just means it's something you can move. we don't even have good rules on whether personal property can have investment value: if someone tries to insure personal property, it can legally become private property. Otherwise it doesn't really matter, which is why the concept is almost never used outside of the insurance world.
This is exactly why the TOS writers’ bible was intentionally vague about the social system. The writers were told not to worry about Earth because “you are not going there.”
8:42 - This is highly debatable, IMO.
Interesting how star fleet deals with first contact. Any new civilisation would have there own culture and political systems in place. Would the Federation insist on their compliance to the new order? Not every King or Emperor would be willing to be made redundant.
If another society was ruled by a monarchy they'd be disqualified from joining the Federation, but the Federation wouldn't impose on them. There's the Prime Directive after all.
You say there isn't any trade, but we see plenty of trade and freighter captains. Cassidy Yates for example
We can assume she mostly trades with people outside the Federation.
@@RowanJColeman The interesting thing about Cassidy Yates is that she's technically doing the same thing as Harry Mudd, but without the immorality and manipulation. She owns her own ship, which implies that she has, or had, social capital, yet she spent it to own a ship and go outside of Earth to trade. She's one of the "eccentric" humans who don't live entirely within Federation culture. However, she winds up with Benjamin Sisko, Starfleet officer and (struggling) exemplar of the Federation way. That shows the complexity of the issue at an individual human level. It's possible to be fully human, to be able to meet a Starfleet officer halfway, and yet to seek out things that Earth has left behind as no longer useful. Sisko and Yates are a perfect example of the kind of nuance that Star Trek is rarely able to express about its fictional future. Yet, in their relationship, the writers found a way.
The major flaw with this idea of "replicators will solve all the world's problems" is that they don't work when the power goes out. The energy still needs to come from somewhere and that is the part that every single person seems to ignore because it undermines the socialist "post-scarcity" fantasy they think replicators represent. Star Trek even addresses this concept by making "dilithium" (among other materials needed to be scarce for narrative reasons) as objects incapable of being replicated, so even in Star Trek, there's a base substance under the economy that still needs some poor slob to go dig it out of the rock for you. There's no such thing as post-scarcity, just outsourcing the dangerous dirty work to people you don't care about. In reality, that's the slave factories in China or Bangladesh, and in Star Trek, its Klingon prison colonies or Cardassian slave mines.
If you haven’t seen it The Orville (as well as Trekonomics) makes the case that the replicator isn’t what makes Trek feel/function as a post-scarcity society, but an active choice by the people to embrace it because with very few exceptions, they are post-scarcity. Although power can go out, it is reliable even without dilithium.
Stars are giant fusion reactors that don't go out, at least not for billions of years. I'm sure the Federation in all its technical expertise has some pretty efficient solar panel designs. Hey, they could even manufacture them with replicators!
I think one thing that isn't really discussed in Star Trek is that Earth is likely *very* depopulated by the time of TOS and TNG. About 30% of the world's population was killed in World War III, and the 22nd century was the start of a massive wave of colonization and outmigration. Considering partnerships with the Vulcans repaired massive ecological damage to the planet, Earth probably looks very pristine and idyllic.
I think one of the challenges of looking at policing in Star Trek is that we've had a bias towards looking at those in Starfleet and not Federation civilian life. One thing that was missed here was the reference to the naval service Paris wanted to join that was separate from Starfleet, although IIRC it was also a Federation organization and not Earth-centric.
As an I.T. person I would be made instantly obsolete if dropped in the Star Trek Universe.
My skills and knowledge is based on our contemporary tech and I would have to do several years of school just to catch up. Bar attendant roles I think would be a more timeless and applicable job.
"POVERTY DOES NOT CAUSE CRIME, CRIME CAUSES POVERTY"
One's stupidity can also be a cause behind poverty. 🙂
So weird. Who's that from?
I always wished there was a Star Trek series that focused exclusively on the society. No starfleet, no trekking, just showing the nuts and bolts of everyday living, even just focusing on Earth. Was there a proposed series following TNG and its two spin offs that was broadly pitched as CSI or Law & Order in Star Trek? It could have been interesting, but it also could have been half baked nonsense.
"Working to better oneself" just means pursuing one's own interests.
No, it doesn't.
Thanks for another amazing video 😁
"Your reputation is your capital" , in other words "public shaming keeps people in line" ...like back in the 1400s . Nice
I think your spot on about there being some kind of planetary emergency services and that being “local government.” Why? Because each time in the various Star Trek shows that the main characters visit a Federation planet, the planetary government that our characters work with seem to need Starfleet’s assistance with either an emergency matter (security, healthcare, etc) or Starfleet assistance with some scientific project. One of the requirements for Federation membership is a united planetary government and whenever our characters visit Federation worlds this is what we see them doing. We only get the characters doing other things and dealing with planetary governments on other matters on planets that aren’t part of the Federation. So I think you’re correct as to what role “local government” plays. Also think you are correct about social capital. That makes a lot of sense if you think about various conversations characters have, especially with those not in Starfleet, in various episodes…especially when they’re talking through some ethical dilemma. These conversations differ from those between the Starfleet characters and nonStarfleet characters on nonFederation planets. The nonStarfleet nonFederation planet characters will sometimes say things that indicate they don’t quite understand why the Starfleet and nonStarfleet Federation characters seem so committed to doing the “right” thing or acting in the “right” way.
Love this series and glad you’re continue to do it.
Also agree that calling it “space communism” isn’t really a fitting label to describe the society. It’s something wholly different than anything that’s existed due in large part of its replicator technology that everyone has.
The reason we struggle to understand how things work in the Federation is because we're conditioned to think the system we live in is normal. Just like our ancestors were conditioned to believe slavery was normal. And their ancestors believing feudalism was normal. Etc etc.
When you examine Capitalism from an outside perspective - its really weird, full of contradictions, unspoken rules, blatant lies and deceptions, with huge amounts of corruption. And yet to most people on Earth today - its normal. To some people its not only normal - its somehow the natural state of how things should be! A few people even believe Capitalism is how things always have been!
We can't really grasp how society that's been post-scarcity for two centuries works. Go back six generations in Trek and society is mostly unchanged on a fundamental level. You can't do that with modern understandings. Think to how different the Boomer generation and the Alpha generation are while both experiencing the same current world. A society that survives in peace and prosperity for centuries is going to be conditioned to discourage crime - there's no desperation, no material greed, better access to medication and social support. And if you're just a jerk - well, no-one has to work with you. And if you take it too far then the few 'police' that exist can deal with you through the properly funded and staffed legal system.
Also - there IS an economy in Star Trek. There IS trade. The economy is just a planned one, and trade is either personal exchanges or its with an outside group that does use money. Which would make it, by definition, Communist. Not the Communism we'd be familiar with - but it fits the bill.
And its very, very much a collectivist society. Just one that values individuals.
When alien races who still use currency like latinum interact with the Federation. They use Federation credits as a tool for trade. Either as a measure of the value of the transaction or as a physical exchange. I remember episodes of Deep Space 9 where Quark claimed to Sisco that a race don’t deal in Federation credits, only latinum.
'Love, Life and Anarchy' did a great in-depth video on this.
A social credit system would never work because it would put an elite group of people in charge of deciding what is valuable to society. Even within Starfleet there are tiers of people with various degrees of value. As long as resources are limited there will be a need for an economic system. If everyone can't have their own Galaxy class starship and Chateau Picard can't supply the entire Federation with wine there will need to be some form of ecomonics and currancy.
It's called a Resource-based Economy. The term was coined by futurist Jacques Fresco who does some years ago at his compound in Venus Florida. The Venus Project, as its known, is still there and is run by Fresco's life partner Rachel Meadows
I don't think there will be such an asshole in Star Trek. Because why would there be? Something would have to have gone wrong in their childhood, or later life to become like this. And things just don't go that wrong in an utopia.
And even if there would be. They would immediately be surrounded by 100 councilors, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists and be a fascinating research project to find out what happened and why they became like this.
I see a lot of comments about how a Star Trek future can never happen because of human nature. Star Trek is definitely an idyllic interpretation. However, I think the humanity in Star Trek is a different humanity altogether compared to now, or the past. The two things I think need consideration when thinking of the humanity in Star Trek are:
1) This is a nuclear post-apocalyptic society, PLUS
2) Sentient aliens exist
Humanity in Star Trek has not had it well. Eugenics took off in the 60s, leading to genetically "perfect" humans to take over the world, treating the rest of the population as sub-human slaves, leading to the Eugenics Wars in the 90s, killing around 35 million people (per Memory Alpha), which is almost as high as the death toll of WWII. This then lead to World War III in the early-to-mid 21st century, where over 600 million people were killed, major cities destroyed by nuclear weapons, national governments in pieces, and infrastructure crumbling. To put 600 million deaths into perspective, you could remove every single human being from North America (Canada, USA, Mexico) and that still wouldn't be 600 million people. You could remove every single human being from all European Union countries, and you'd still be short by over 100 million. Humanity had taken itself to the breaking point. Eugenics left such a scar on humanity that it's essentially completely banned in the Federation. While this is still an ideal interpretation, I could see a humanity in this state wanting to find ways to better itself to prevent another century of death and destruction on a global scale that it had just endured.
If there's any trope involving aliens in sci-f, it's that humanity casts asides its differences and unites. The "them" category in "Us versus them" just became much larger. . If humanity can unite like this, we have no idea how that could fundamentally change our society and worldview. Combine this with the fact that humanity had just endured over 100+ years of global conflict that had destroyed a large amount of the population and planet, it could bring about a fundamental change in how we perceive each other and act. The two-part episode "Terra Firma" in Enterprise even explores the idea of xenophobia in this future, and how it's shifted from skin color, language, religion, region, etc., it's now human or not human.
The TL;DR of my long rant is that humanity in Star Trek has been absolutely traumatized and brutalized by its own demons. Sure, humanity in Star Trek may be an "ascended," idealized version of humanity, but they went through hell to get there and learn their lessons.
The problem with your thesis is that humanity has been through hell many times before this period at our own doing for literally 10000's of years. If Genghis Khan boiling people alive, the Aztecs eatting people, National socialism, Islamism, communism, ect are not going to teach humanity lessons that stick with our collective psyche than NOTING WILL.
I love Star Trek and grew up watching it in the 90s but even I am forced to confront the many many problems with Gene Rodenberry's ideas.
Totally loved the video mate! One of the main reasons I love Star Trek is it's passion for a better tomorrow for all of humanity. And the many philosophical questions that the show has grappled with over the decades show, to me, how Western culture continues to grapple with the ideas of society and humanity. An interesting aspect of the social currency and government displayed in Star Trek is that I find parallels with many aspects of indigenous cultures. People around the world have lived for thousands of years without government, money, real estate, or a police force. And they did have science, art, religion, a justice system and social capital. It's something to do with that wonderful fusion of individualism and socialism together. If anyone is interested in the topics in the video, I highly recommend reading about indigenous philosophy from around the world. It's not as 'backward' as the we often think it is. The book "Sand Talk' by Tyson Yunkaporta is a great place to start.
Um No, Every culture on the planet has government. What do think a "chief" is? He's a government official.
Fantastic video. Another aspect of the _Star Trek_ future is that it's a post-WWIII society. Technology aside, it's of interest how that trauma reshaped human values in the generations after between a global nuclear holocaust & First Contact.
Transporters make everyone neighbors. I like that. ❤️
A link to part 1 in the description or pinned comment would have been nice.
Done.
I started to write a comment about how well the social capital model works with the character of Barkley but realized I was incapable of shortening my thoughts into an appropriate length for a RUclips comment.
A Star Trek/Thunderbirds crossover is fan fiction I can get behind
My headcanon is similar, though I don't feel that the Federation is really all that communist, but is definitely on the socialist side of things. I definitely agree that most people have a replicator in their homes that attends to their basic needs and a computer with access to the broader Federation-wide network, so they can look up just about anything, talk to anyone, read any books, listen to any music and watch any videos. But you do have to control access to items that are more scarce, even though most of the things people might want to use or do are scarce due to being limited in use as opposed to limited in terms of resources. Like only one person or group can be beamed somewhere from a transporter pad, eight people can't use a holodeck at the same time for eight different programs. If your replicator at home is too small to make something you need to go to a communal one and queue up to use it - we see Data and Worf do this in Data's Day. We also know that a lot of people put a premium on hand-crafted items like food. And we know that the Federation has a currency of sorts -- the Credit. It'd make sense for the Credit to be tied to energy usage, probably the energy it takes to replicate a small cube of aluminium or something simple like that. More complex things use more energy and cost more credits.
So my assumption is that everyone gets a home with a replicator and a computer and a stipend of credits they can use for bigger things like a meal out, beaming to somewhere else on the same world, booking a trip to a different world or whatever, just for living in the Federation. And if you want more credits, you contribute to society. This can mean getting a job, but it could just as easily be writing holonovels and putting them out in the world, making ice cream and giving it to neighbourhood kids, whatever.
I lean towards thinking that there are municipal authorities or similar local governments, which may well be a variation on the communist idea of worker's councils. And those would be responsible for maintaining and managing the land in an area for the communal good. If you wanted to start a "business" in a neighbourhood, you'd go to the people and ask if they wanted that facility and they'd vote on it.
We also know that some things can't be replicated, probably most notably Dilithium but quite frequenly medicines and other volatile items that are vital to this week's episode. So the Federation will have some level of external trade and an exchange rate between Credits and other trading currencies like gold-pressed latinum and maintain stores of these currencies to use in trade. Though with a large population, most of whom probably spend a lot of their time in the pursuit of leisure I'd assume one of the biggest imports for the Federation is entertainment.
Well thought out and well presented. You gave me several new views of Roddenberry's vision that I'd not considered! Thank you VERY MUCH!! I look forward to MORE from you as a subscriber!!!
Can you go into detail how credits work? And how we could achieve this future?
Really thought-provoking analysis!! I can't help thinking that for people to become like future star trek people, there has to be several generations that have to be born and grow into a world without such needs as exist in present-day.
How about the future depicted in Star Trek is: A post-scarcity, techno-utopia run along anarcho-socialist lines.
I think the Orville explain this really well
Fantastic video, great ideas and analysis
Starfleet isn't an army but it is a Navy
More like the Coast Guard
Nah, war is like their side hustle not their main gig. At least I hope not, if the Navy stopped to check out some unusual tidal phenomenon every time we send them to the Strait of Hormuz I seriously wonder about their commitment to their charter. Have you happened to have read the Army's military charter though, pure badass, looks down at the Navy's from a great height and the Navy's got the Marines yo.
@@Noms_Chompsky more like the Royal Navy than the US Navy
Why is it that humanity makes up 99.9% of starfleet? Do the andorians and vulcans just not make ships anymore? What does everyone else do? The federation stumbles over its pacifism into horrifically deadly conflicts seemingly every few decades, but no one else bothers to show up. I think the star trek we see in enterprise presents a much more nuanced and interesting view of starfleet and the politics of the major powers.
The in universe explanation is that we only see the primarily human ships, but there are ones that are mostly maned by other species. The idea is that since life support conditions would be different having mostly one species on any given ship is easier. Obviously the real answer is silicon prosthetics are expensive and putting them on extras takes time.
@@Bubblesthewitch the only species that I can think of that needs a different environment than us is the tholians and they arent even in the federation. The federation isn’t so much an alliance as it is a cultural homogenizer.
I did an article like this about Pokémon’s economy. Nobody read it. lol
Perhaps everyone gets a predetermined sub-dermal career chip at birth as in Futurama.
"Woohoo! I'm a delivery boy!!"
What do we do about the asshole? The robot cop handles the asshole. It's the one thing in the JJverse I can agree with.
Amateur social scientists! 🙄
“A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711)
_five hundred cigarettes_
12:08 In the TOS episode Dagger of the Mind, they go into detail about the penal system of the Federation.
The Earth government by the time the Federation was founded was called United Earth, I always kind of assumed under the Federation that it still was, just as a local planetary government which had given up its sovereignty under the Federation. We can assume the nature of United Earth as a government and it's constituent institutions have evolved a lot in the centuries under the Federation but i think it's reasonable to imagine that there is at least on paper a continuity of legacy institutions handling emergency services and law enforcement and so forth.
Picard's house is personal property. Private property refers to privatized firms which produce goods or services operated by a dictatorial "owner" who exploits the labor value of workers for personal profit, while they are denied any democratic form of self-determination as to the policy, practices, management structure, or compensation structure of the firm. Presumably, firms in the Federation are publicly and/or worker-owned.
I said exactly this in Part 1 of this series.
@RowanJColeman 2:41 Derp. I have a bad feeling about how the rest of this video is going to go. You might want to re-visit what Marx meant when he talked about private property. Personal property are goods that have a use value, like Picard using Chateau Picard to live at, grow grapes and ferment wine. Private property are goods that have an exchange value like if their Earth was still like today and a realtor on behalf of the owner would sell you Chateau Picard in exchange for some fat stacks of dolla dolla bills; that's Chateau Picard as private property, a commodity. In a capitalism everything is a commodity produced for it's exchange value while produced secondarily for it's use value (if any, a la 'Bored Ape.') It's weird I know, but it's the context that fosters the meanings, out of context and in the modern parlance makes it super confusing and easily misunderstood (as well as easily warped by the disingenuous to intentionally confuse so yeah, not your fault my guy.) Recall that the pursuit of happiness from the Declaration of Independence just means to own property as well. Marx wrote this stuff at the tail end of enlightenment during Kant's age of idealism which branched out into a whole bunch of utilitarianism and ontologism and existentialism and positivism and social darwinism and pragmatism and transcendentalism and marxisms. Dictionaries were this new fangled fad at the time and not even as old as Trump or Biden yet. If you've read any Kant then you what I'm talking 'bout and know the weird structures everything was written in back then before all them -isms invented things like common terminology. Yeah. normally I'd watch the whole viddie before posting but I foresee quite a few butthurt commie trek fans starting an avalanche of this exact same comment or variations thereof and I wanted to be...oh what's the meme...the one with the numbers about posting early? 😆 Lolz.
I went back to rewatch part 1, which I really liked. He makes the private/personal distinction there and says the vineyard and the restaurant are both personal property because they actually work there... Which isn't completely inline with Marx and many socialists.
@@everearnest9935 Ah, thank you immensely my guy. I love RJC's viddies and after I went full on uptight and had to pause it and post I just didn't want to see what lead from what appeared to me as a foundational error in the whole shebang. When I have the time I'll watch the 2 back to back for the full context. Although I now wonder when I pull it up if I'll have some butthurt comment about that one from way back whenever it dropped that he'll have addressed on this one, lolz. 🤦♂
I've never seen anything that makes me think Roddenberry had all the details worked out. My impression is he was working from a concept rather than a blueprint. And while Roddenberry's Star Trek universe sounds like a wonderful place to live, I'm not sure humans are capable of it. Just look at what's been done to the franchise in recent years. And like what STD and Pisscard did to Star Trek, I think any utopia would be quickly washed away by a flood of pretentious apes.
I think one solution to dealing with an arsehole intruder in Star Trek, is to carry a phaser in the home. Also, I would argue that Star Trek's economy could be classified as a gift economy, as everyone survives on account of working and giving away items as if they were gifts. If we look at how the peoples of the Trobian Islands in the south pacific thrive, they work on horticultural farms and give the food away to their neighbors, and on their great migration, they exchange necklaces as gifts for rice. Others I can think of include the Zomians, Khalahari bush folk, and the Baffin Island Inuits.
Love this! Thank you for the fun and interesting take!