The whole “post-scarcity” idea was always silly. At every turn, and not just in DS9, there is evidence of scarcity motivating behaviour and driving plots. Dilithium crystals, land/planets, medicines, command positions, whatever. OK, poverty has been eliminated on Earth, so let’s not show boring old present-day Earth: that was a good rule for TOS. But scarcity rears its ugly head so frequently out in space that there’s no sense pretending this franchise really portrays a post-scarcity society in any meaningful sense, even if we take it to mean the entire Federation is post-scarcity within its borders.
And let’s not mention the Prime Directive. We must never interfere. Never ever. Except almost every episode. Granted, many of them amounted to “See? See how interfering messes things up?” and that’s a fine message, but there’s also a good deal of Federation Knows Best. Hmm, these childlike people are being ruled by mysterious near-omnipotent beings, which means they’re not really less advanced than us. We must interfere for their own good! (There’s no logic like good old Cold War logic.)
That’s actually one of the things I liked about Voyager. I get and respect the criticisms, but there were a few episodes where the Federation is seen from the receiving end of Prime Directive flexibility, and it isn’t pretty.
