Comment on Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist?
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 months agoResources and means of production are both things in the Federation. We see mining operations and manufacturing facilities well into the 24th century.
And with only one unfortunate exception that I can think of, matter replication is treated as a net energy loss - it isn’t free.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Well sure, it’s energy negative, but they also have basically free energy. We see in Voyager that as soon as they are cut off from that free energy, they regress to a market-based economy by like the third episode of the show. Doesn’t seem very socialist to me.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 months ago
They were “cut off” because they no longer had access to the supply lines that provided them with fuel. That’s not “free energy” at all.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Yeah that’s my point. As soon as they no longer had access to the magical impossible logistics network of virtually free energy, they immediately regressed to capitalism with a side order of martial law.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 months ago
I don’t think what they were doing in the Delta Quadrant would meet many (good) definitions of “capitalism.”
And it’s difficult to say how “martial law” could be imposed on a command structure that was already militaristic.