That was one of the many reasons DS9 sucked. It ignored the largely cashless post-scarcity premise of the previous iterations for the sake of a cheap source of conflict (and an ugly ethnic stereotype.)
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The likelihood that the Federation’s utopia would extend to the known galaxy is small, same as the Culture is not without borders. Where there is not “post-scarcity” there is scarcity, and the conflicts it brings. The Ferengi species evolved into an interesting feature, the physical caricature was unfortunate.
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Wait, were the Ferengi supposed to represent Jewish people or something? I never put that together before. (Gringotts Goblins on the other hand…)
Thanks for your reply.
Excellent. To me, this is exactly the point. There is something to be said for pure entertainment, don’t get me wrong. However, to the extent that we’re trying to learn something, I think it’s more instructive to explore what’s possible than it is to endlessly examine how it is that we’re all fucked. Particularly in the context of science fiction.
Against that I would point out that dystopias are usually formulaic. Here’s Hilary Strang, who writes about this kind of thing:
Appearances of freedom will turn out to be signs of its very opposite, and a dominating force, usually a state, will turn out to be behind those false appearances. That state will offer bread, sometimes, and circuses (in a variety of forms) always, but what it will never do is to allow the individual to thrive in its individuality. Even apparently oppositional movements in the dystopia will turn out to be more of the same, although every once in a while one of those individuals, say, a beautiful young woman who can really shoot a bow and arrow, might make some trouble.
Boooooring! 
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Perhaps that’s only true because one version of the genre has been beaten to death. Sort of like saying all fantasy is formulaic because it resembles LoTR. Perhaps there’s only one utopia and infinite dystopias. Even on ST-OS there were dozens of different dystopias. There was the virtual nuclear war with real victims, and the people trapped in the generation ship who didn’t know it. There’s probably unlimited ways to lose your freedom.
I haven’t seen all of DS9, but would you agree with my memory that the conflict was about power struggles and relationship issues, not about desire for personal luxury items? (excluding the Ferengi characters anyway) I do disagree with “utopian” visions that make everyone a model of mental equilibrium and happiness, but I am a utopian in the sense of thinking we could someday rid ourselves of the unhappiness that comes specifically from lack of access (or fears of loss of access) to food, shelter, educational opportunities, widely-available health care, and the mental stimulation we get from goods that can be mass-produced in large numbers like books or personal computers. As Corey Robin says here:
Last year, I said, somewhat tongue in cheek, that socialism is about converting hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness.
This is what I meant. Socialism won’t eliminate the sorrows of the human condition. Loss, death, betrayal, disappointment, hurt: none of these would disappear or even be mitigated in a socialist society. As the Pirkei Avot puts it, against your will you enter this world, against your will you leave it (or something like that). That’s not going to change under socialism. But what socialism can do is to arrange things so that you can actually deal with and confront these unhappinesses of the human condition.
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A lot of what you say makes sense to me- however as a full-blown leftist I have a couple issues here.
From an aesthetic point of view I’d agree with this statement. But leftist thought post-Marx generally accepts that the collapse of capitalism is inevitable; the primary factional lines center around how to approach this fact. If a particular strain of thought is to any degree accelerationist, then yes, the numbers game is important, and that game has not looked obviously encouraging for the past 40 years or so. That said, time is the most important variable. When capitalist driven inequality reaches such a state that it no longer supports enough humans, it will either be discarded or we will most likely face extinction.
Consensus is definitely a major tool of the capitalist, but I’m not sure of the inference or influence you’re specifically drawing from that to the objects that different groups prefer.
Is parallelism compatible with hierarchy? I do not think so (not saying that this is what you implied)- but if that is the case then wouldn’t parallelism be the system itself that we all lived under? Any individual or group would be able to seek out the objects they prefer so long as they didn’t obtain them by force or coercion.
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Yes, sure, on the station. But there was real poverty and misery on Bajor. I might also point out that beyond a certain point “personal luxury items” are merely symbols of power. Our billionaire President could have retired long ago if all he wanted was trinkets. What made DS9 great was the depiction of the jousting for power among the various player characters and civilizations. But details like the friction in the Obrian’s marriage and Odo’s chronic depression was the kind of thing missing in previous Treks .
I am going out on an unpopular limb and suggesting that drama itself is boring. Most people are content to mine for meaning in the same pile of contrived conflict for thousands of years, in hopes of the rare novel combination. Needing to create conflict for motivation and meaning I think is reactionary, indicating a severe lack of understanding and imagination. Survival and research already provide an endless supply of real conflict without resort to tropes such as romance and power struggles.
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They’re often criticized for embodying Jewish stereotypes about acquisitiveness, and it didn’t necessarily help that all the major Ferengi were played by Jewish actors (Armin Shimmerman, Max Grodenchik, Aron Eisenberg, Wallace Shawn).
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after reading boing boing (and the comments section) for many many years i literally just signed up to “like” this.
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Welcome!
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To paraphrase:
Happy utopias are all alike; every unhappy dystopia is unhappy in its own way.
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Except he’s not being entirely honest about eliminating the need for possessions. Off the top of my head, the man has an antique Shakespeare book in a case in his ready room, a fine riding saddle, and a flute that holds a great deal of meaning to him.
What the Federation does seem to have eliminated, at least within Starfleet but also in human society, is the need for endless accumulation of money. That’s in part due to the replicators (which seems to operate on the basis of energy-to-matter conversion) but also seems to be the result of a significant cultural change in what people consider to be truly valuable.
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I think he’s honest about it if you define “need for possessions” as “rampant consumerism”. Everybody in the 2300s still has clothes, and personal effects with high sentimental value. What’s missing are the DRM-backed pre-pulped fruit juicers and shelves upon shelves of Funko Pop figurines that you’re supposed to buy because reasons.
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One of the very first scenes introducing a major female character in the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation centers around shopping.
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Ok, he’s not being precise. And I expect precision from Picard, dammit!
Also, I’ll bet the walls of Barclay’s quarters are lined with Funko Pop figurines.
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It always seemed strange to me that Star Trek kind of assumed technological advancement would make humans better, while also providing so many examples of other races where this wasn’t the case. Why shouldn’t future humans be more interested in glory and machismo like the Klingons; or paranoid about security like the Romulans; or sort of fascist like the Cardassians? Of course these are all fictionalised projections and caricatures of human societies.
(I guess maybe the hidden conceit was that humans are just better than these guys … see Cardassians)
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Liked for Barclay!! If I did a TNG spinoff it would feature Worff, Data and Barclay, the only characters that had any form of personal ambitions and motivations. Everyone else might as well have been automatons, of course they didn’t need possessions, they’re the real androids!
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