Great comment! Keep it up!

This thing reminds me of the microcars of post WWII Europe. I think it might have worked in a very particular set of circumstances, but with speeds and safety requirements being what they are now, it seems out of place and time.

I thought it was 3. I associate TNG getting good with Riker getting a beard.

Yes?

Wait, when did you ever see a reference to credits in TNG? I’m almost certain that there was no such thing. Remember when they unfroze those 20th century people in a pod and one of them was a tycoon or something and Picard was like “oh you fool, we have no money anymore”

I mean I doubt it was, but you can apply all sorts of your own interpretations to it for fun and profit! Intent is irrlevant in this case, but there’s so much vaugery as to how the Federation works that you can fit all sorts of things to it. It certainly gets soft around the edges of its territory with regards to…

Sounds like we have different interpretations of a piece of fiction! That’s what’s fun about that sort of thing. To me there is essentially a two class system: the Federation has Star Fleet and then The Rest, the civillians.

It’s not just me! Not a strictly academic article, but it illustrates what I’m getting at pretty well. Your definitiions are pretty off cause I think you’re tripping up in the communal route of communism, but Gott forbid I go in the dismiss pile!

Sure we do. Communism describes it just fine, if you don’t include all your soviet connotations and what have you and stick to theory. Communism requires a post scarcity economy to function. Dude, Star Trek was conceived and written by a person in the 20th century, it’s not a separate entity and of course ideas that…

Sounds like you’re the one making a value judgment. It being needless is just your dumb opinion, cause politicizing trek is fun and for cool kids. Trek was always political. It tackled civil rights issues, gender, economics and all that.

Yes, this is what I meant about that guy who created an elaborate fanfic about how TNG is not a post-scarcity utopia (which when it was concieved it clearly was, not talking about your DS9 gold-pressed latinum or whathaveyou) and then they had a libertarian revolution. In the first few seasons, when Roddenberry was…

Yeah, but he visited the TNG set, which was Roddenberry’s super-utopian, no-conflict vision of Trek.

Well that’s probably where the gipper got his main Trek impressions from, but I was referring to TNG in particular, which I think was Roddenberry’s plan to move beyond that and have a model utopian society where everyone was so enlightened that there was no conflict at all. That’s why the first 2 seasons are kind of…

I guess someone would have to be really stupid to argue with a brilliant mind such as yourself!

No that’s socialism. Communism requires a post-scarcity economy. Socialism exists when you still have limited resources and need to apportion the appropriate amount to whoever.

Or Data destroys their water supply.

No one will attempt to argue that except the voice inside your own head.

Well the main confilict in Star Trek was when the Federation ran into another, less enlightened civilization, such as the brutish Klingons or the autocratic Romulans. There was no conflict over resources, since the Federation had all the energy it needed, and yet there were still wars. I guess that just leaves…

I guess I’m just thinking about the time some libertarian dude got so mad at Star Trek, he wrote a fanfic about them going back to the gold standard and rejecting their communist free-for-all government. The Federation was also completely secular and a welfare state. Though on the other hand, starfleet was pretty…

Weird that Reagan liked TNG, considering it’s basically a post-scarcity communist utopia. I guess he was distracted by all the phasers and Riker’s clean-shaven face to notice.