Was it a good thing that SNW explicitly said the Federation is socialist? (startrek.website)

submitted 6 months ago by jimhensonslostpuppet@startrek.website to c/startrek@startrek.website

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In case you don't know, they explicitly use the term socialist to describe the Federation economy in SNW. I was wondering if ppl liked or hated it? I like it personally since it's not a dodge like "new world economy"

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[-] bouh@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

You're all true until allocating scarce resources. These days economy is how to make scarce something that isn't in order to profit from it. See copyrights and patents. In our society a replicator would be the property of a company and you would need to pay it to be allowed to use it.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah that's the cynical and IMO more realistic take. I'm mostly just taking the world presented in the show at face value. It's not realistic at all.

But even then, it wouldn't be the replicators that are scarce, it would be the software. Because in theory if someone is charging you to use their replicator, you could just pay to print out the parts for your own replicator, and then replicate yourself ten more replicators. What would prevent this? Proprietary software.

[-] bouh@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Exactly. In some way the software is a lock that ensure the property of the machine stays to the company that built it.

this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024

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