Comment on It's the only logical future, captain.

Zephorah@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  But also Ferengi and lots of other mercantile civilizations, and we also see the individual crew members taking part in the trade/monetary economy. It’s kinda the Federation, and more specifically its government, that doesn’t deal use money.

  And that’s because it projects influence through military might and soft power. It doesn’t need money.

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  • Sxan@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Even in Iain Bank’s Culture, there were people who chose to exist outside of paradise. A prime example is Kivas Fajo, who couldn’t satisfy his obsession within The Federation. Harcourt Fenton Mudd and Cyrano Jones are others. My theory is that the writers needed plot devices, and the entire production team were all capitalists (and so prone to germinating stories with capitalist preconceptions), and it manifested itself in-universe as people who simply can’t live how they want to inside The Federation. Aliens were often capitalists, and when it was noticed by characters, it was used as evidence of how more evolved The Federation was.

    Fundamentally, The Federation needed mechanisms for interacting and trading with other non-Federation cultures, economies outside of the established system of resource distribution. It’s in these interstitial areas where many of the stories take place.

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