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
I mostly agree with you except the libertarian part. Is that a misspeech or something? The Federation is pretty far from being (economically) Libertarian.
Libertarian in the OG sense, more commonly called libertarian socialism or anarchism. Didn’t realize I left the socialism bit out. I hesitate to call the federation anarchist because there’s still plenty of hierarchy but it seems to be modeled after a vaguely left-libertarian ideology of some sort
The original Liberals were actually a bunch of mill owners in 19th Century Manchester (at the time the most technologically advanced city in the world) who got together to ask challenging questions like “why should we have to pay taxes?” and “what if we basically owned our employees? And their children”.
Marx and Engels lived there for a time and witnessed the conditions the working people lived in first-hand.
Libertarians aren’t liberals
Libertarianism is explicitly based on the ideas of Manchester School Liberalism. The British Liberal Party of the 19th Century was all about free market ideology, in contrast to the (theoretically) more centrist modern party. In Victorian Britain, Liberal own you.
Broader socialism has its roots in the French revolution and liberalism too. But you don’t see anyone making a case that Marxists are liberals due to their common ideological heritage. Because it’s silly. It’s almost like divergent ideologies have to originate from somewhere and within a particular historical context. It’s unproductive and pointless to say “z came from y and y from x so z is the same as x”
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.
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.
Rule of Acquisition #345 Never let silly hooman ad blockers stand in the way of profitable opportunity.
I’d watch a modern Star Trek show focused solely on Ferengies. The opportunity to criticize capitalism are abound. Can easily get 2-3 seasons out of it.
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earning profit should not be the center of society. i feel like star trek itself is a great example as to why
