Star Trek
r/startrek: The Next Generation
Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...
Maybe a little slash fic.
New to Star Trek and wondering where to start?
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Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 05-23 | DSC 5x09 | "Lagrange Point" |
| 05-30 | DSC 5x10 | "Life, Itself" |
| 07-01 | PRO S2 | Index |
| 10-24 | LD 5x01 | TBA |
| 10-24 | LD 5x02 | TBA |
In Production
Lower Decks (2024-10-24)
Strange New Worlds (2025)
Section 31 (2025)
Starfleet Academy (TBA)
In Development
Untitled comedy series
Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.
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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.
They are as socialist as it comes.
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.