Why Does Modern Trek Make Earth Out To Be A "Paradise"?

Gold-pressed latinum disagrees!

So does Picard and his brother owning a winery. Real estate is forever finite, so who decides who gets acres for grapes and who gets to buss tables?

For the most part the financial aspect of the Star Trek universe has been either inconsistent or ignored. And rightfully so, few fans tune in for the economic drama.

Wars are great! People die. I comment from afar! It's awesome to be a sociopath.

Yeah it is......

#1 I can find a million other more interesting things to do then busboy for an hour

#2 I can read the statistics and know Red Shirt status is like playing Russian Roulette. I'll pass.

Reality is that there is an economy and money in Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry was an idiot on that front.

#1-It's part of the apprenticeship that eventually ends with you getting to run your own restaurant and train your own minions. Optionally, you're "auditing" the skills training program for your own leisure.

#2-In a universe where all your basic life needs are taken care of, why wouldn't a bit of life risking adventure be the worthiest challenge?

Surely a war is, and will always be, worst case scenario or the last resort in the few occasions that it proves necessary?

How can it therefore be a "good" thing?

I think sending in a military force to Rwanda in 1994 to stop the Hutu extremists from murdering 937,000 people would've been a great idea even if it caused the deaths of some in the intervening force.

Executive Outcomes (the mercenary unit) had estimated that they alone could've saved 250,000 people in Rwanda if they had been given the go ahead to go in.

But how is that a good thing? It means that humanity has failed itself.

You are saying that you do not like the idea of a Star Trek universe where there is no conflict. But surely if it is a good thing to intervene in genocides and similar wrongdoings, then it would also be a good thing if humanity found it's way past such atrocities, no?

Is this thread headed for the Red Room?

It is now that fools can't ignore Dayton.

It should have started there. Dayton knew he was trolling MC the minute he started it.

Naturally he'll play innocent, but you can bet that he was just waiting for someone to flame him so he could report them.

Which is more unrealistic than transporters and faster than light travel.

No more realistic than people think they may become a lawyer, a doctor, a coach, a nurse, a mayor, an astronaut, a president, or anything else.

Individuals can change. The nature of man not so much.

If individuals change, and they can work together then they can work together as a group. And if that group can work together to cause change, then yes they can change a larger group of people. many great things have small beginnings and small changes.

Individual and group dynamics are very radically different. That has been proven time and time again throughout history.

Why is it? 400 years ago (in fact, much less than that) the lace where I work was littered with the heads of traitors on spikes. Have we not progressed since then?

Is your "nature of man" based on you by any chance?

Well, I'm pretty sure a few billion people would disagree with that. Us westerners, sure. But ask a Bangladeshi...

Anyway, Dayton. You have trolled better in the past

Progress in one part of the world. But I'm more than certain you can find parts of the world 400 years later where that and far worse is being done.

Just as today we have terrorist attacks in many parts of the world. I'm certain that 400 years from now those parts of the world might be perfectly safe but that or worse still being done elsewhere.

And you might not believe it El Chup but there are a vast, numbers of things I simply will not do because they are morally wrong. I don't go out of my way to hurt people who do not deserve it. And even those who deserve it I probably do not deal out the full measure of what they do deserve.

I can agree with that. The topic was only ever superficially about Star Trek, but more substantially about the nature of Utopian idealism, which is a political topic front to back.

Of course there's an economy. That some fans refuse to recognize that doesn't make GR the idiot.

Credits = money. Anyone who's confused because it's under a different name probably shouldn't be trusted with the remote.

How often is the economy of the Twelve Colonies discussed in BSG?

Reminds me of a panel discussion at a con called "Creating Your Own Universe." A handful of the Big Name Writers were up on the dais pontificating about star classification and planetary orbits and blah-blah-blah, until someone asked "If you were writing a detective novel, would you start with the chemical composition of the Sun?"

Silence.

I haven't read all of the novels. Maybe there's something in The Rules of Acquisition about the monetary system on Earth (though why there would be, given the size of the membership of the UFP, would be like expecting the average American to understand the economy of Goa). There's no time - or need - for that onscreen.

It's yet another area where fans can fill in the blanks themselves...and, as this thread illustrates, sometimes hilarity ensues.

Choking and slapping don't count right?

And thus Dayton successfully trolls.....

A few billion? I don't think so.

While progress hasn't been universal or equally distributed, the vast majority of people on this planet are much, much better off than even their recent ancestors were. A person born in India or China today will have more and better options open to them than their grandparents did.

It's yet another area where fans can fill in the blanks themselves...and, as this thread illustrates, sometimes hilarity ensues.

Res ipsa loquitur.

That's an interesting but very consumerist view of the situation. Just because most peoples needs can be met, that doesn't mean all their wants are.

The attitude you are bringing in seems to be that Federation citizens have magc boxes to produce any consumer good they want, so what more could they possibly aim for.

I say it's the one thing that can't be replicated, and that is human service.

Credits could exist not as an exchange medium for goods, but rather as a way of trading for service. I don't think it's intentional on the writers part, but that view fits in well with what's appeared onscreen.

Rather than recordings, there seems to be a taste for live plays and musical performances, despite the lack of real difference in the end product, cooking from base ingredients by hand is appreciated, and so on.

In our present day world there are many examples of how the history and story of creation around an item is more important than it simply being a perfect copy. People pay more for real champagne. Many wineries around the world can produce a wine that looks, tastes, and smells identical to authentic champagne, yet people will pay more for a bottle simply because it comes from the right region of France.

Kirk had to pay somebody for the antiques in his apartment.

It's not like an...antique...can be replicated and still be called an antique.

Who determines who deserves it? You in your singular mind?

Has society not evolved already beyond all the decision making resting solely in the head of an individual?

Yes to the second question.

No to the third.

so your ideal future is an absolute monarchy with you in charge, presumably wielding some notion of divine right?