Can we please avoid all the editorializing in AskLemmy. I came to the comments to see an answer to this question and it’s all comments about what people think about him instead of actually answering the question.
To add some positivity to all those sad stories: For me the most dramatic life changing event was the birth of my first child. Suddenly (okay, we knew for a few months, but it still feld like “suddenly”) we weren’t just a couple, we were a family.
I have heard, although you know - not happening here as far as I know, that the birth of your first child is a wonderful event that sort of cements you into this larger web of the magic and mysteries of life. I've had two friends who recently had births, one who is doing quite well and the other who is struggling. But the both of them seem to be happier overall with their decisions. And the one who is struggling sort of has this struggle with or without the babe. So we always knew it was a possibility and the best thing that I can say is that the awareness and the love have truly helped them navigate the space they're in.
Hahaha! If I had em, two would be it. That'd be the number. Cause the first one can guide the second one, and the second one can guide the first one. But it's funny cause I've been watching Dr. Katz - and the thing is there's this guy who talks about having kids. He says the first one is life-changing. The second one, you're not sure if you can love them as much as the first and the truth is - you end up loving them almost as much and it's right there. Then the third one comes along...
Restic has been great for automating backups, and even letting me mount the encrypted storage to grab individual files. I like doing it this way since I don’t have to trust Backblaze isn’t reading my data - I know for sure that they can’t.
Performance of storage that is both remote and encrypted is about what you would expect, but I don’t need access to the data unless something bad happens.
think of the bird’s claw as a small torque wrench … similarly, when we unscrew the cap of a jar, we notice that our hands have a limited torque capacity.
Meme? A meme has a joke in it, a meme is funny in one way or another, even a shitpost has some comedic value. This on the other hand is a fucking ai image, if it at least had a good caption or even a title making fun of something. If in your opinion a meme is just an ai image, maybe instead of sharing your ‘memes’ just keep them to yourself and keep creating more hilarious images for yourself.
The federation is a post-scarcity socialist utopia. They don’t even have money. Every single human being has ensured healthcare, housing, food, and education of their choice guaranteed from birth. Rise among ranks of the few hierarchical power structures is based on merit, performance, experience and training. I can’t recall anything specific about the productive sectors that allow this to happen, but since they have access to virtually infinite amounts of energy and everything can be done by machines and matter replicators, there’s no motive for hoarding means of production or wealth, so one would assume that most productive endeavors and enterprises are collectivists by default. Same with political institutions as hoarding power doesn’t guarantee anything significant beyond what the average person already posses. They also have wide social openness, tolerance and acceptance as the most common sources of intolerance and bigotry (wealth, religion, power, prestige, etc.) have been regulated or removed. So there’s no logical point on slaving, discriminating, oppressing or exploiting any particular class of people, some classes of people might not even exists, as there’s no concept of poverty, nor race or sexual discrimination in the culture of the federation.
As a result people don’t have to work, but most probably choose to involve themselves in some sort of productive activity as a form of hobby. Members of the Starfleet for example, aren’t doing so for any particular material incentive. But do it because they think space exploration is neat, or because they seek glory and honor on the Starfleet mission, or because they really really like fusion cores.
Post-scarcity is a socialist term. It came about from futurist elaborations on Marxist materialist ideology. The reduction of labour to the minimum necessary in a society is one of the tenets of communism in order to reach post-capitalism. Certainly by technology, but also by diverting the products of labour, not for the profit and enrichment of the capitalist class, but for the provision to the needs of all society via free distribution of goods and services to all. According to Marx socialism is a necessary stage to reach communism, but communism doesn’t mean the disappearance of socialism.
Hmm, I guess there is post scarcity - everyone works and everyone has what they need, there is no scarcity of resource.
But then there’s post-scarcity - everything you need to live is created instantly by replicators so no one even needs to work unless they want to. Maybe that has a different term.
It’s the same thing. Post-scarcity doesn’t mean no scarcity. The point is, though, that people are not compelled to work under risk or threat of death, hunger, poverty, cold, homelessness or illness. If you can’t or don’t want to work, you are not doomed or socially shunned. Even if you do work, that’s no guarantee that you’ll not suffer from the occasional hardships of reality like there’s not enough chocolate this month due to a drought, or avocados went extinct or whatever, but you won’t die of starvation with millions of tons of food hoarded on a warehouse because a capitalist pig decided to rack up the price of rice.
I’m having a hard time convincing myself that the term automatically implies on universal access.
It came about from futurist elaborations on Marxist materialist ideology.
And if it did, it was just a historical accident. It could be much more promptly derived from Keynes than from Marx. Also, Keynes work leads to a working theory for how a post-scarcity economy would work, with or without universal access to it.
If some people are starving due to artificial (economically induced) scarcity of food. As in, there’s enough food and means to distribute it to feed everyone but we don’t. Then it is not post-scarcity. Post-scarcity is about universal access to resources. Not about the material accumulation of the resource in a spreadsheet. As I said, small and circumstantial scarcity can occur under post-scarcity, it doesn’t mean no-scarcity. But gross artificial scarcity is automatically a disqualification.
I’d say they’re post-scarcity anarchist. There’s no central/communal resource dispersal as needed for socialism, nor the central/communal resource allocation/planning needed for communism.
There’s seemingly no authority outside starfleet exerting any power, nor does anyone ever claim a motivation beyond exploration or study (to do something meaningful). The lack of money and unlimited access to replicated resources pending available dilithium also points to a society without exploitative discrepancies.
The humans also never are reported to have any resource hogging, the only tensions/stratification seem to be militarily (and against external parties also diplomatically), meritocratic, and even then the bottleneck seems mostly to be to not fall behind other races.
I don’t see neither capitalism, socialism, communism, despotism, theocracy, nor fascism, but many aspects of anarchism. If you’ve read anything about The Culture, they openly speak about being anarchist, and it’s very similar to Star Trek.
There most certainly is a Federation President. There is definitely government, authority, and laws, with Starfleet appearing to be the law enforcement.
I agree, this is also a perfectly valid read. Unfortunately Star Trek spends a lot of time with Starfleet and The Federation and almost not at all with Earth to understand the nuances of governance of productivity. But they are still supposed to be several billions of people, it’s hard to imagine there’s only ad-hoc organization going on to keep something as massive as Starfleet and The Federation going. Even the Vulcans had the High Command. Earth must have something akin to a government structure going on to produce a representative diplomatic corpus. The Federation is supposed to be a Republic after all, and that’s not anarchy. Perhaps a system of direct democratic municipalism, but we don’t know for sure.
Anarchist doesn’t need to mean without government, simply that no one is above another, which is echoed in how the Federation is structured towards the other races.
That’s one form of it, but there are plenty other schools of thought that overlap quite significantly with the Federation, check out the primer on Wikipedia.
It’s a federation, which means it’s a group of government who decided to get some of their rules and organzations in common. Each government in the federation can be different, although there are some implications for the federation to work: they must recognize the borders and laws of the federation, and they must participate in its function.
As it seems a common confusion in this thread, I repeat, anarchism doesn’t have to be without government or rules, several forms of anarchism are focused on not limiting individuals freedoms and/or not allowing power over eachother (while accepting government and rules not contrary to that). Both of which I believe describe how the Federation works.
I certainly don’t know much about anarchism, but different planets in the federation can and do have different kinds societies.
If we consider the vulcan in brace new world for example, their society seems very much aristocratic for example, where influence gives authority and power. I doubt the klingon are anarchists either. And in lower deck, the orions have a monarchy.
The federation is the government of the collection of planets, but each planet still has its own government and culture.
Precisely, so the Federation may be anarchist, even though the member races aren’t.
With what we know about how the Federation interacts with other races and planets, real world logic would indicate that the humans could be (and live) the model that the Federation is built upon.
All this is conjecture ofc, and is probably as much an exercise in understanding post-scarcity anarchism as possible Star Trek lore :p
Starfleet is not anarchist. There are admirals. There are federation laws and judges (1st directive, in strange new worlds, laws against eugenics). Those laws and positions of power are decided on a federal level. How do you do that in an anarchist organization?
I fail to see how a federation can not be a representative government (because different worlds have different political systems, representative democracy is the only one that can make them all on an equal footing).
What I don’t understand is how some of them are obviously better off than others, like Picard. His family owns a sweeping vineyard and a huge house, and other people are living in trailers in the desert.
My head canon for this is that the only way tptb allowed such socialism without sabotaging it was after reserving a looot of rights and property, especially on Earth, for themselves. There was probably some excuse along the lines of ‘maintaining and respecting traditions and cultures’ that let them keep the bulk of their estates, without having to let the poors (who are welcome to their own vineyards anywhere else) take it over.
Some people are happy living in trailers in the desert. Not everyone wants a big house in a lush environment… And some people just like a bit of misery.
You can look up the definition and see if it applies. I'd argue it isn't a classless society. Especially with all the military ranks and hierarchies. And socialism is kind of a broad term. I'm pretty sure you can apply it to this case without starting a debate.
Classless societies and justified hierarchy aren’t mutually exclusive, however. That’s the entire point of anarchist strains of political ideology, the only hierarchies that should exist are ones that can be justified for the good of everyone. The hierarchy of Starfleet is justified because it’s still syndicalist in nature while requiring a person to ensure the survival of everyone on board.
Is that alright with communism? Strive for a classless society except for when we like to do classes anyways? I mean starfleet is kind of military and I don't know much about that in the context of communism. But there's also the separation between the worker class in a starship and then the officers who manage them and who get depicted in most of the TV series. I'm pretty sure that doesn't align well with communism. I'm not sure how many exceptions there are in a communist utopia. But I'd like to see some strong arguments when doing away with some of the core values of an ideology. And I'm not sure if there is a better way to organize a starship than 20 century military hierarchy style.
Well the show and the universe also have to be looked at separately in that context. The show was made for an American audience, which has a strong cultural belief in “great man” theory. The American audience wouldn’t accept a show that doesn’t follow high ranking officers being the paragon of bravery. It also had to keep an arm’s length away from a specific socialist ideology to avoid being swept into the red scare.
Workplaces will still require management, even in communist and anarchist societies. It’s all about who’s doing the managing. The show doesn’t get very detailed in this aspect of their society afaik, but by all means it seems that the rank and file are valued appropriately with their knowledge and input. Believe it or not, but this aligns quite nicely with most types of American brands of socialism. The show keeps it vague for a few good reasons
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