Yeah, I also saw how they used prison labour to do it. Sure, call it shades of colonial Australia's past, but frankly I feel as if merited to point it out. Moreover, hoarding what resources? The Federation has a tenth of the galaxy to itself. To put it into context, the asteroid belts and moons of Earth and Mars in our Solar system alone would grant 5 thousand years of current consumption. And that makes no adjustment for recycling technologies that are liable to exist given they can merely transform energy into matter of any number of desirable forms.Lil devils x said:It isn't just about " Technology= good" at all. Did you not see how lush, clean and green the earth was in numerous episodes? They chose to take care of plants, animals, soil, water.. everything rather than behave like grasshoppers and just consume everything in sight. I disagree that what they do is considered "morally wrong" in today's world, as they instead worked to find solutions to solve the problems of pollution and waste instead of just allowing it to become someone else's problem or hoarding resources even when in short supply they manage to show their humanity and share with those in need.
It is actually false that they have access to unlimited energy and resources as in a good number of episodes they had become dangerously low and were having to go to great lengths to obtain enough to survive. Replicators did not just create things out of nothing, they had to be supplied with resources to be able to create at all. If they were lacking matter, people were restricted from being able to replicate things that required those resources. More on those here:
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/126563/where-do-replicators-get-their-material
As for their energy, they were constantly looking for Dilitium:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium_(Star_Trek)In the Star Trek fictional universe, dilithium is an invented material which serves as a controlling agent in the faster-than-light warp drive. In the original series, dilithium crystals were rare and could not be replicated, making the search for them a recurring plot element. According to a periodic table shown during a Next Generation episode, it has the chemical symbol Dt and the atomic number 87, which in reality belongs to francium.[1]
I agree Kirk had a point by cheating on the test, I also understand they have the test to help better prepare their Captains for the real life situations that can actually happen as a risk of flying around in spaceships. You should know that even the " best" people in Star Fleet failed the Psyche test, including Picard. Wesley did fail the test and was told he had to take it again the following year. Although he failed the test, he had overcome his fear that he would not be capable of choosing who to save if he was in a situation that required him to do so. It was more about Wesley overcoming his fear rather than about the test itself.
Star Trek is a socialist union because no one needs to give anything and no one can be left wanting ... arguably it would be communist if only for the fact that they literally have no need for communal ownership of land.
No one has to sacrifice anything, people can just spend their life going to university and being public researchers, or technicians, or explorers, or craftspeople. They literally want for nothing and don't require to have to give something. And the only reason why any of this is is because they have technological means to supplant the necessity of labour and capital.
But that's not utopian... when we talk of utopian we talk about what people value in human life. And clearly Star Trek's values of human life are not that high. It's a disturbingly militaristic society. Arguably it's technofascism. You have Starfleet having consolidated all foreign affairs, military, exploration, and the highest echelons of civil service and scientific endeavour ... everyone wears a fucking uniform, or they do not seem to belong to the unicameral-esque upper echelon of power.
Okay, dilithium crystals, whatever ... contrived plot device for contrivance sake ... but it matters not to civilian consumption. Merely for the generation and production of hyper-advanced warships apparently. And don't pretend they are not hyper-advanced warships.
Star Trek is less utopian than My Little Pony's Equestria, and that's a roughly late 18th century technological society ruled over by a benevolent dictator. They work the land together, it is built into their literal core of society that being happy is preferable to total productivity, and despite being constantly attacked by monstrous and subversive elements within and without, they don't seem to feel the need to change their society in order to meet the nature of these threats proactively.
Why is that utopian? Because it speaks to the fact that this society has definite messages about the value of their participationand their inherent worth as a sapient creature ... not simplybecause they have fancy doo-dads.
Let me remind you ... when they were deciding the fate of an entire sapient speicies of people everyone was wearing a Starfleet uniform. All of them were effectively general staff barring merely Kirk and Spock (and crew). That seem utopian to you? If you had swapped it out with people wearing military uniforms of Earth's yesteryear ... it would seem pretty fucking fascist to me.
Sure, I know some people that would touch themselves at night thinking of a military council dictating whatever twisted idea of a
Can you feel the utopianism? Let's just think of this hypothetical situation. Break it down. Let's say you knew none of these people ... you didn't know any of them from abar of soap. How would feel of a shadow government within a supposedly free society with elected officials, and basically the only people making decisions like these were your military caste?
Not a good feeling, right?
And this isn't the only example...