You fundamentally can’t visualize a world that’s different from our own. The best you can do is imagine Starbucks with replicators. I feel sorry for you.
I feel sorry that you can’t imagine a world deeper than the surface that’s presented.
Seriously.
Sikso’s dad runs a restaurant, you can make the argument that he enjoys hosting people and demonstrating culinary skill. Did you notice the wait staff? The guy bussing the table?
Do you think there’s enough people that enjoy spending their day collecting dirty dishes and wiping down tables to staff every restaurant?
The miners seem at the start of Picard. Not the synths. The human miners. Do you think they want to be doing hot, dangerous work just because they really love rocks?
There are tons of the Cassidy Yates’s, the Harcourt Fenton Muds and the Tom Parises, Kiva Fajos, Khan Nguyen Sings out there.
And let’s not forget the more legitimate captains moving freight. Or whatever they’re doing.
Did you consider that people like the Marquis went into the frontier of federation space and be to an aggressive empire… to establish colonies …. Because that would hopefully lead to a better life?
Every human colonist you see out there left earth (or maybe another colony,) hoping for better. Because they were that desperate.
Or look at Turkana IV- Tasha Yar’s home world-, which was a federation colony that collapsed and was, apparently abandoned to civil war and anarchy.
Naw. Star Trek’s universe- or even just the federation- ain’t utopian at all. And that’s why I love it!
It’s all well and good for starfleet’s flagship’s captain to spew the party lines. But the show’s reality is a great deal more nuanced.
For example, the federation is bureaucratic and authoritarian, chock full of political intrigue, is not shy about genocide. Or arming combatants in a proxy war. Or abandoning failed colonies. Or lying about its warships not being warships.
They lie and convince the kids that it’s all to “better themselves”, but i suggest that if Jake Sisko’sndad wasn’t Fleet he’d have known better.
Oh. And the federation lies about not having a currency- they use it all the time when interacting with aliens. (How do you think starfleet officers and enlisted can afford Quark’s? How do you think they bought a wormhole? How do you think they track economic output? And material wastage and such?)
They lie about being post scarcity, too. Earth might be. But that’s dubious since the post scarcity-ness would likely be exported to the colony worlds, and the colonies are definitely not post scarcity.
It probably wasn’t intended that way, but it’s all very beautifully insidious and nuanced. It’s way more interesting to talk about than a boring-ass utopia.
You fundamentally can’t visualize a world that’s different from our own. The best you can do is imagine Starbucks with replicators. I feel sorry for you.
I feel sorry that you can’t imagine a world deeper than the surface that’s presented.
Seriously.
Sikso’s dad runs a restaurant, you can make the argument that he enjoys hosting people and demonstrating culinary skill. Did you notice the wait staff? The guy bussing the table?
Do you think there’s enough people that enjoy spending their day collecting dirty dishes and wiping down tables to staff every restaurant?
The miners seem at the start of Picard. Not the synths. The human miners. Do you think they want to be doing hot, dangerous work just because they really love rocks?
There are tons of the Cassidy Yates’s, the Harcourt Fenton Muds and the Tom Parises, Kiva Fajos, Khan Nguyen Sings out there.
And let’s not forget the more legitimate captains moving freight. Or whatever they’re doing.
Did you consider that people like the Marquis went into the frontier of federation space and be to an aggressive empire… to establish colonies …. Because that would hopefully lead to a better life?
Every human colonist you see out there left earth (or maybe another colony,) hoping for better. Because they were that desperate.
Or look at Turkana IV- Tasha Yar’s home world-, which was a federation colony that collapsed and was, apparently abandoned to civil war and anarchy.
Naw. Star Trek’s universe- or even just the federation- ain’t utopian at all. And that’s why I love it!
It’s all well and good for starfleet’s flagship’s captain to spew the party lines. But the show’s reality is a great deal more nuanced.
For example, the federation is bureaucratic and authoritarian, chock full of political intrigue, is not shy about genocide. Or arming combatants in a proxy war. Or abandoning failed colonies. Or lying about its warships not being warships.
They lie and convince the kids that it’s all to “better themselves”, but i suggest that if Jake Sisko’sndad wasn’t Fleet he’d have known better.
Oh. And the federation lies about not having a currency- they use it all the time when interacting with aliens. (How do you think starfleet officers and enlisted can afford Quark’s? How do you think they bought a wormhole? How do you think they track economic output? And material wastage and such?)
They lie about being post scarcity, too. Earth might be. But that’s dubious since the post scarcity-ness would likely be exported to the colony worlds, and the colonies are definitely not post scarcity.
It probably wasn’t intended that way, but it’s all very beautifully insidious and nuanced. It’s way more interesting to talk about than a boring-ass utopia.