Johnisback said:
Communist dystopia? How can it be considererd communist if money doesn't even exist? And how can it be considered a dystopia if every individual has all the food, shelter, entertainment and freedom they could ever want?
Let's see, for communism:
-Government monitors all its citizens at all times, down to 24/7 monitoring of brain activity (established in Voyager)
-Government owns all corporations and runs the economy (outside of a small farm and some restaurants, everything within Federation space is shown to be run by the government either directly or indirectly)
-Everything is distributed by the government. There are ships which can make food from combining matter and energy, yet for those of the lower classes it's easy to struggle to feed yourself for a day (Federation citizens on the fringes are often shown to be either starving or greatly impoverished when compared to the core worlds)
-No money despite trade still being a thing and currency being needed to the point that outside the Federation the rest of the Quadrant have a standardized one amongst each-other
And for the Dystopia:
-Military rule. Starfleet operates with such autonomy from the government and with such authority that when a ship enters orbit of a world on the fringe of Federation territory, it's the governor who answers to the ship's Captain, not the other way around. Said captains also act as the voice of the Federation's government on the spot when anything, and I mean ANYTHING, comes up. They almost rule the Federation directly, and almost did
3 times in 10 years with three different, independently organized coup d'etat by different members of Starfleet Command.
-Ineffective security. Starfleet, which acts as the police and guardians of the Federation, are unable to maintain security. Their security forces are shown to be so ineffective that when a criminal or hostile entity is stopped by one before it reaches its destination or accomplishes its goal it's noteworthy. It's so bad that the Federation was almost taken over by aliens which take over the brain, and that even after this near
FALL OF THE FEDERATION FROM INFILTRATION they still have so little internal security that the Founders where able to run amuck for years, often times with their infiltrating being known, without any adequate countermeasures being taken. I mean hell, one glance at Starfleet Headquarters, the head of military administration, and you can see that a person can just walk in at any time without any real resistance.
-Their ships are flying bombs. This isn't a joke, their ships are literally flying bombs. Their power source is effectively a matter/anti-matter bomb that's always on the verge of going critical, which is why they have a strong tendency to blow up at the drop of a hat, and
THEY PUT CIVILIANS AND CHILDREN ON THOSE THINGS. Speaking of which...
-They use children as human shields. From the Enterprise to the Saratoga, every ship in the fleet seems to have at least a few children on them, and that's when ignoring the fact that of the few which don't almost all the others have civilians on them who serve no real purpose to the mission and are only there due to being married to a crew member. This despite the aforementioned tendency of their ships to blow up due to literally being bombs with an engine strapped on, and the fact they often find themselves either being the ones to handle combat, dealing with humanitarian crisis' and doing things which, in general, should really not have civilians involved.
-No safety protocol. As was mentioned, THEIR SHIPS ARE LITERAL BOMBS. Which isn't a surprise when you remember that the engines used in the Next Gen era where designed not by a mechanic or an engineer, but by a physicist who got schooled on the subject by an actual engineer when the topic was brought up. Oh, and the engine room, which houses the bomb/power source, is often used to test things, including weapon firing tests which happen with said weapon hitting a target while being POINTED TOWARDS SAID BOMB/ENGINE, and without ANY safety signs or guards to prevent someone who isn't aware of what's happening to walk into a solid beam of death laser due to the fact that they thought the engine room was being used for engine related work.
-Their spy agency is not generally known to exist, and it has complete autonomy. Section 37, unlike its counterparts both in the real world and in the neighbouring nations to the Federation, is know to exist by almost no one, and can literally do whatever it wants without any oversight or need to answer to people. It's so far that they have committed genocide with only the loss of an agent to show as punishment for it (and even then it was due to said agent getting caught in a trap). It's even believed by some that a certain doctor who was a xenophobe was entered into their ranks due to creating memory manipulation technology (Polaski did disappear without any mention, never referenced after disappearing, and did so right after creating a way to alter people's memories)
-Nonconformity is not tolerated. Be it on the Enterprise, Deep Space Stations or science vessels like Voyager people are constantly ridiculed if they don't conform to every 'Federation' value of being smugly superior to everyone and wanting to explore the universe, but also never lift a finger to help those in need (something they have a whole policy around). And all this is bad enough if you're human, but...
-The Federation is systemically Sapien Centric. Earth is 1 of 12 founding members of the federation, one of hundreds by the time we enter the Next Gen era, yet despite that Starfleet, the government and business (which is effectively the government anyway) is dominated by humans, with only token alien presence to the point where there's only 1 all-Vulcan Starfleet ship out of thousands, and just at that there are but a handful of ships in the fleet not named after a person, place or mythology from Earth, and Earth housing both the government of the Federation, the headquarters of Starfleet, Mars housing the largest shipyard in the Federation, and hell we even have Sol as Sector 001.
That's just some of the reasons the Federation is a communist dystopia. On the surface it looks fine, but actually look into things, peak behind the curtain, and it's a terrifying thing to behold.
I'm a lighter side sith, don't judge me... XD
