Reminds me of that crazy scene from Picard where they get holographic popup ads on their ship.
It might just be my crazy conspiracy theory brain, but I feel like they're trying to normalize advertising in a supposedly idyllic and utopian future society to make us see them as more of a necessity than they actually are. Same thing with Raffi living in poverty and Picard having private ownership of the means of production (his vineyard) with employees. So much for that "money-free socialist utopia."
I never even thought about Picard's vineyard like that. It is odd that a society that seems largely modeled off of libertarian values would include generational estates. The concept of usufruct may have been unknown by the writers of TNG when they were fleshing our Picard's past. Or it was just a bit of our cultural bias bleeding into this "utopian" setting.
Raffis story doesn't get a pass though. It seems like they were going for gritty and edgy in a way that was straight up contradictory to the federations ethos when they came up with that bs. The whole first season of Picard was pretty backwards in its portrayal of the federation imo. Haven't watched the 2nd or 3rd season yet so idk if they unfucked any of the worst stuff
The "utopian future" for Star Trek has always been pretty vague. They almost never showed civilian life in the Federation, so we didn't see much of it. Mostly it served as an excuse for a bunch of people in a heavily-armed ship to travel around and preach their own superiority to the primitives they came across while adhering strictly to a military chain of command that's held up as the highest ideal.
People wonder why there are so many fascists in the Star Trek fandom. I always thought it was pretty obvious.
And in fact, just about anywhere we see Starfleet officers mixing with civilians, it's invariably a seedy bar of some type. The place where Dr. McCoy goes to charter a ship to Genesis with the "place you name, money I name unless bargain no" guy, all both buildings of Paradise City, the place where Picard gets stabbed by a Nosican...
I e always found the economics of Star Trek to be confusing. In some episodes, they act like they don't even understand what money is but then in others you see them buying things. The Picard family owning a vineyard and Sisko's dad owning a restaurant proves that private ownership of land and property are still things that are present in the Federation. How did He get the restaurant? Was it given to him? Did he buy it? If so, what did he buy it with?
In DS9, we see the crew buying things from Quark but where did they get their money? Does Star Fleet pay salaries? Are officers deployed to places that use money provided with some kind of stipend?
I might need to do some googling to see if I can find some discussion on Federation economics.
Pretty sure officers are provided with a stipend when they're deployed to places that use money. I remember sisko mentioning something along the lines of receiving pay but not having much use for it. That's reflected in how he handles situations where he has to pay for something, buying information from quark comes to mind. He barters as a formality/to keep quark from getting too big headed and then just kinda chucks latinum at him, like it doesn't mean much at all.
As for siskos family restaurant, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, I think Benjamin's dad was the first one to have it. In which case it doesn't really contradict the private property aspect. This goes a bit into anarchist concepts of private property so fair warning. There's this concept called usufruct, which is a progression of roman ideals of ownership. Basically "use it or lose it", where you can occupy land for any given purpose (in this case a restaurant) so long as it's being used you're welcome to occupy it. When you die or decide to close up shop, the land isn't passed to someone in your family, it goes back into the Commons for another person to use. Picards vineyard does throw a wrench into that though, because it's clearly established that his family has owned the land for generations. Which is pretty wack
Yes, all of that! If anything, Chateau Picard should be a collective of equal volunteers who just really love squashing grapes with their feet in rural France. Iain M Banks novels deal with this aspect of Utopianism much better.
Why do they need vineyards? Can't they make any wine using replicators?
Which episode is that? I can't remember seeing it.
Sorry, I don't remember which episode. I'm pretty sure it was in season 1.
It sounds to me like they we were going for more of a realistic future than a utopia. The money free utopia thing never seemed that important, I suspect it's only used in later shows for consistency with TOS. It's far more important to trek to criticize and reflect modern society, which is a lot harder to do if your characters are living in a utopia. I haven't seen Picard yet though, so I'm just extrapolating from your description.
A big part of the Trek universe is that it's supposed to represent a society that has overcome the limitations imposed upon it by greed, oppression, and hate.
It's far more important to trek to criticize and reflect modern society, which is a lot harder to do if your characters are living in a utopia.
I disagree... if anything, the opposite is true! Having "Federation utopia" makes it incredibly easy to critique modern society. Just introduce planets which have whatever element of modern society you want to comment on, and then draw a painfully obvious comparison to the perfection that is humanity in the 24th century, and boom, it's done! Heck, you could even make an entire alien race to critique an element of modern society like capitalism, not that anybody would do something that obvious :P
I feel like TOS and TNG lived on this a little too much, especially in early TNG seasons. It was what made DS9 so interesting when the writers flipped the script. Instead of spoon feeding you the critique of modern society in the form of planet-of-the week, they throw in stuff that makes you question whether the federation utopia approach is actually right, or if it's too naive.
The money free utopia thing never seemed that important
uh. i think you might have missed like, everything.
This just made me think about the early episode where they encounter a planet that was wiped out by, essentially, a used car salesman AI and the product it was selling.
Why did nobody call tech support? 🤷🏻♂️
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IIRC, the tech support's civilization was extinct.
A most excellent meme
Your FTL subscription has expired.....
There should be more ways to earn profit. Websites shouldn’t rely on advertising as the only method of recurve stream, in my opinion.
One thing that would probably work for news sites that I haven't seen would be to give subscribers access to articles a day or so earlier than non-subscribers. No article limit or anything like that, decent freedom of information, and minimal incentive to make clickbait bullshit that nobody will subscribe to.
Well the challenge with that is avoiding making the articles stale for the wider public, given that the news typically focuses on current events. An article about, say, the negotiations to avoid the impending US government shutdown would be stale by the time it gets to the general public under such a model, so then we're effectively back to the hated paywall to get the information in a useful timeframe.
I would be down with that
earning profit should not be the center of society. i feel like star trek itself is a great example as to why
Merde
Rule of Acquisition #345 Never let silly hooman ad blockers stand in the way of profitable opportunity.
I would look at the ad if they didn't insert 12 ads for a 15 minute video.
Mr. Worf, arm phasers; lock a tractor beam into the Ferengi vessel.
Million dollar idea: Install adblock for your ship's communications, track everyone who contacts you through ad analytics, profit
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Deep Space 9 has plenty of Ferengi focused episodes. I know it's not "modern" but it's the best the Ferengi have ever been.
