Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

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Gul Khold
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Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

Postby Gul Khold » Mon Nov 28, 2016 9:46 pm

I have been thinking about how, in the Federation, people apparently work just because "someone has to". But without money (read, nobody pays taxes), what could prevent anyone from simply working enough to have a house and a decent replicator, then spend the rest of their lives as a couch potato?

I also wonder about how do people grow up in the Federation (specially the Human-centered worlds). I did not really find many different speculations in other forums, so I need another Cardassian perspective, so to speak.

For comparasion, read the article below:

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog ... -be-adults

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Shada Dukal
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Re: Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

Postby Shada Dukal » Thu Dec 01, 2016 3:25 pm

The question you are asking is one of the most relevant ones concerning the ST universe and the one that usually raises a lot of huffs and puffs because Trekkies do not consider it a fictional universe but a possible and desirable future.

In-universe developments are based on the suspension of disbelief and the axiomatic assumptions about a great shift in human mentality and a post-scarcity scenario. Without these assumptions, it does not make any sense. And these assumptions though held in high esteem by the fans are absolutely ungrounded considering the current state of affairs and the course of human history.

I think that the analogy you draw between the millenials’ poor practical performance and immaturity and the possible weaknesses that a Federation citizen might display is on the spot. Unfortunately, people evolve and become creative only under stress, we learn and think only when our life and/or comfort are overtaxed. Contemporary psychology differentiates between bad stress (aka distress) and good stress (aka eustress) and views the latter as a means for invigoration of our somatic and cognitive potential. So the millennials’ parents threw the baby out with the bathwater, they shielded their children from all potential hardships even those that would enable them to build up their competiveness, resilience and basic survival skills.

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/155 ... tress.html

Judging by different ST spin-offs and episodes I suppose that the Federation citizens on Earth and other human-populated core worlds and/or long-established colonies are more pampered and overprotected than the settlers on distant colonies who have to work hard in order to make their new habitat more hospitable and can’t rely on direct and swift assistance from the UFP structures. Moreover, not all Federation colonies, affiliates, and protectorates have switched to moneyless economy although they adhere to the general UFP principles. These human colonists and local species are the ones who kick against the pricks and oppose the direct transfer of Federation practices and values to their home planets. However, people like the Marquis or the settlers in “Paradise” episode (DS9) are always shown in a bad light implying that whoever strays from the Federation always suffers.

It is said that the Federation provides for the basic needs of its citizens for free. The Federation as an economic and political system is a form of welfare tyranny (don’t ask me to specify, the possible RL candidates range from communism, to socialism, to fascism, to parecon and to meritocracy) but the exact -ism is irrelevant in this case. The question is what type of mentality such a guaranteed safety net fosters and encourages. It seems to me that the welfare comes at the price of an alarming social and political disenfranchisement that no RL system of government could account for. The citizens are alienated from the government, they don’t participate in any public debates and don’t question the status quo. We saw the New Essentialists in DS9 and the holidaymakers on Risa watched them with indifference and irony as some weird exotics. I don’t know in what way the average citizen partakes in the political decision making, how or whether they have a say on administrative reforms, school programs, investments in infrastructure, defense. How is their election system organized, how exactly they control their government and military?

I guess the ordinary citizens have no means to control them but this does not bother them at all because in return they receive a life standard that makes any opposition meaningless. In a way, criticism was bred out of humans the moment their bellies got full, they did not have to toil for miserable wages, they did not have to save and work hard for education, they didn’t have to pay for medical care, and they did not have to do jobs they despise but still pay the bills. For example, Parecon distinguishes between more empowering jobs, less empowering jobs and coordinator jobs postulating that the coordinators are doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, and other professionals. The coordinators are the decision making class while the people with less empowering jobs can only endorse their proposals.

Just imagine a RL unemployed basement dweller parasitizing on his/her parents’ savings and occasional unemployment benefits. The creature watches TV, scratches his/her ass, eats chips and drinks coke all day long. We actually observe this phenomenon now, unemployment benefits in rich countries allow for it, many parents are likely to spare their children the adulthood details for as long as possible. If such an attitude is encouraged and rewarded for several generations on end, the majority of people will have a natural predisposition to be lazy and disinterested, they will be likely to be self-centered and ignorant of social and political matters.

I am not sure that the UFP educational system can offset this tendency because I haven’t seen an educational system that has not been affected negatively by too much liberalism and lowering the bar. Nowadays children are praised when they can’t spell a word correctly, the teacher says it is “creative” spelling, a wrong maths solution is celebrated as “out-of-the-box” thinking, the test results at national level are constantly rigged, the statistics is manipulated, and the functional illiteracy is swept under the carpet.

Judging by Jake’s infantile behavior and Keiko’s school where the attendance depended on the parents, I assume that the UFP school system is not very demanding and quite lax, in fact. Do you remember how organized and focused Nog was when he returned from the Starfleet Academy and what a lazy kid Jake was? They could not even share a room because they grew apart in terms of mentality and priorities. The low-quality secondary education and high-quality tertiary education widens and cements the gap between the average population and the ruling caste of policy makers. The UFP meritocracy is exactly that – an outstanding upper class comprising highly educated professionals and quite a mediocre majority. What is more, it is quite possible that the school attendance is supplanted by holosuite learning via holograms so I don’t know how motivating this could be.

The series focuses on the meritorious/coordinating elite that still works and has positions in the government, administration, the military, sciences, and arts. I think such people encourage their children to have an occupation and do something meaningful. There are people whose parents take pains to teach them vocational skills that run in the family (cooking, estate management, piloting). Still, the third-generation of replicator users who don’t have to work and have no talents, skills, or demanding parents will have the cognitive potential of a domestic dog.

What remains unclear is how exactly the Federation finds people ready to do unattractive manual work. No matter how many automatons and technological gadgets this society might have, this technology needs operators. There must be people like Rom who work in the sanitation and regulate valves, there must be people operating the industrial replicators, there must be people in charge of the sewerage systems, there must be workers in the ship building yards who guide the assembly lines, there must be people in maintenance of public places (cleaning, repairs). Mining is still dangerous in the 24th century and requires people working underground. What I can’t understand is how come a person who can’t be a poet, engineer or a Starfleet captain due to lack of qualities accepts to work without remuneration having in mind that they can refuse and just hang around. The series has never specified that and it is suggested that such a decision is voluntary but it does not sound credible at all. They mention that 675 defective EMH Mark I were used to scrub plasma conduits on waste transfer barges. They were later deployed in the dilithium mining.

I hypothesize that some of the unpleasant and dangerous menial work might be carried out by holograms, but I doubt my own hypothesis because such a solution requires too much holographic equipment installed at many places and we did not see holographic maids, janitors and waiters swarming around the real humans. In “Bar Association” episode, Quark tried to replace his staff (they were on strike) with a holo-replica of himself but dismissed the idea because power supplies interfered with the holo-projector so the hologram cut off too often and broke too many glasses.
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Gul Khold
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Re: Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

Postby Gul Khold » Fri Dec 02, 2016 1:15 am

I have to admit, you let me a bit speechless there. You basically answered all the questions I could raise based off this subject XD

That is exactly my problem with the Federation; fans think that such a thing is doable. I won't say that it is outright impossible, but it would not work the way they portray in the series. However, we did not see anyone controlling the population. Sure, they could work without money, having the benefits of housing and replicators in return. But we never saw any such mentions for that in Memory Alpha or Beta.

In a way, maybe it is why we see so many humans with more developed personalities joining the Federation's Starfleet or outright moving to other worlds.

All in all, I have to admit I will never really wrap my head around a society where people do not have the motivation nor pressure (that article on stress comes to my mind when I say that) to work and do services that will not need machines to do so. They do not even have legions of robots like in Star Wars, so even that theory that they have robotic janitors, sewage workers, etc goes out the window.

I think that if the Federation had not the so-called "plot armor", they would have quickly fallen against the other foes that do seem to know how to behave like an actual society, not as cattle.

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Shada Dukal
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Re: Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

Postby Shada Dukal » Sat Dec 03, 2016 7:35 pm

Thanks. I have seen so much wishful thinking bordering on rabid denial on that topic that I can simply foresee the possible questions, argumentation, and the potential weak spots in it.

Indeed. You are right, who controls the citizens? How exactly does the Federation balance the voluntary presumption of labor with the unpleasant fact that some labor positions suck but still someone has to fill them. This is exactly where ST franchise refuses to go the extra mile.

Spock’s proverbial quote “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” implies that individual liberties are second to the collective interests. Such logic justifies governmental interference and regulations to make the individuals contribute to the greater good.

If we assume that the Federation government on Earth and other moneyless human-populated worlds provides necessities for its citizens but imposes a labor duty in return and retains the prerogative to assign people to various type of employment, such a system resembles state capitalism with central planning. The basic welfare is achieved at the expense of community obligations that impair personal choices. You may not like working at an assembly line in a factory or raking leaves up in a park but you can’t say no because your educational level or vocational skills do not allow for anything better and the government views idleness negatively.

I guess this is why the Trekkies keep insisting that work is voluntary. They can bleat about equality, welfare, liberalism, altruism, and sacrificing individual greed at length, but when it comes to sacrificing “my rights, my freedom” for these abstract nouns, it suddenly becomes too totalitarian.

The concept of fair reciprocity as a fundamental principle in social interaction can work only if it is coupled with the fear of punishment because individuals contribute to the common welfare only if they know that not doing so is punishable. No one likes freeloaders and social parasites.

http://www.livescience.com/4029-scienti ... oader.html

Probably, a rich society based on a ratio of 50% working people and 50% parasites bettering themselves can still function, but if the parasites become more than the working people, even the post-scarcity scenario won’t do the trick.

Still, what about luxuries? Can the average loser go to Risa and get a Horga’hn or they do it with light bulbs in the holosuites? Yeah, there are four lights and all of them so hot...If he/she volunteers to scrub garbage scows will that mean that they can earn a holiday? What is the exchange rate between a Federation credit and a slip of latinum? How can an ordinary citizen obtain a bottle of real Alvanian brandy in a relatively legal way? How does Sisko’s father get the shrimps for his dishes? Do his customers pay him?
I am the Lizard King, I can do anything!
Jim Morrison

Gul Khold
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Re: Would the Federation Citizens be Immature?

Postby Gul Khold » Sun Dec 04, 2016 5:49 pm

So, basically, the conclusion to all of this - specially after the article you linked - is that the Federation's utopia work solely based on "plot magic". We never see anyone obligating free loaders to work under the threat of losing what they have.


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