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Beyond the obvious poo poo like killing millions of people all the time with transporters, there's other maybe even darker poo poo people just gloss over. Like look at the federation and earth, they always talk about how its a paradise, no one wants for anything, there's no money, people can do whatever they want, everyone can have whatever they want, but that's only true up to a point- What do all the humans in high ranking positions in the government and military of the federation have in common? They are all earth landowners. Land in an abstract sense is freely available to everyone, if they're willing to fly to another planet and live there, but there is only a finite amount of land on Earth, and everything is run by people who own land on Earth. Also there is no money. No buying land, no selling land. So the only way to get land on earth is to inherit it, the only title is the allodial blood title. Its the feudal system back, but back forever. By getting rid of money and commerce the landed gentry got rid of burghers and by abolishing riches they abolished the nouveau riche. Plus no money means no property or inheritance tax. It took them like a thousand years or whatever but they won. Take captain picard, younger son of a prominent landowning earth family. His elder brother inherited and is a gentleman farmer running a vast estate vineyard. He joined the military and quickly climbed the ranks to be captain of the flagship because of his social background. He's in "the club" and it shows. He's a nobleman and he acts like it. His first officer Riker, earth landowning family and son of a gentleman diplomat. Captain Janeway, earth landowning family background. Captain Kirk, earth landowning family background. Captain Sisko, earth landowning family background. Say you claim its unfair you can't get some land of your own on earth, what will they tell you? Tough luck, its all taken and nobody's selling. Go live on some other planet, its yours, all the land you want, free! But you know its not the same. If you're from Tau Bogan 9 you wont get to be captain of a starship or an admiral or the ambassador to vulcans, you'll get to be a space mechanic or a nurse or maybe a scientist or physician if you're real smart.
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 01:56 |
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# ? Oct 16, 2024 08:26 |
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Having started to actually get into Star Trek, I recently saw the DS9 episode where Jake and Nog slum their way through a Zelda-esque trading sequence in an attempt at a get-rich-quick scheme of the week. It seems to actually work, but one of the things that struck me was that Nog obtains a parcel of land, and he thinks it's just worthless "dirt." Being that the Ferengis are a resource and profit-driven species who presumably hailed from a single planet, wouldn't they treat land as being super valuable too?? Land is a commodity with an ascribed monetary value, you'd think the ultracapitalist alien race would think it was too. Or is it that he's a dumb kid, idgi
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 02:41 |
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It's dirt on Bajor, which to be fair, isn't exactly good dirt.
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:01 |
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the people on earth are the ones comfortable with what the state gives them. anyone who shows any signs of ambition or dissent are sent off to die in Starfleet or as colonists on the frontier.
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:26 |
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star trek is, in fact, good
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:32 |
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not any more
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:46 |
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star trek's greatest value as a setting was its attempt to depict individuals who came from a substantially more just society if you're not interested in that element of the show then i struggle to understand what non-business motivation would lead one to want to tell stories under the 'star trek' name, since star trek does not have a monopoly or trademark on teleportation, energy stun weapons, faster-than-light travel, meathead warrior bro-culture antagonists, space america analogies, or scantily-clad women who have been painted an unusual color
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:55 |
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On dirt, you can grow weed.
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 03:57 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:scantily-clad women who have been painted an unusual color Nah but it is a front runner in the field, you've got to admit.
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 04:10 |
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reignofevil posted:On dirt, you can grow weed. this.... are you sure about this?
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 05:06 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:star trek's greatest value as a setting was its attempt to depict individuals who came from a substantially more just society the people who decide what people who want to make tv shows and movies get to make think that brands are magic runes that people will respond to by giving them rents because they don't know how to do anything but receive the result of other people's work roddenberry at best half understood the ideas he was working with, but by dreaming of a better world he at least made a contribution to humanity Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Feb 18, 2020 |
# ? Feb 18, 2020 05:58 |
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well put
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 06:01 |
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section 31 did nothing wrong
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 06:10 |
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is Section 31 like Special Circumstances
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 06:15 |
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section 31 is CIA propaganda; that it is not portrayed in a positive manner is irrelevant because the point is to depict the CIA as an inevitable and indispensable necessary evil, a sort of structural part of reality more fundamental than mere physics it is everyone involved in star trek cheerfully agreeing that there are five lights Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Feb 18, 2020 |
# ? Feb 18, 2020 13:59 |
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Section 31 did Wolf 359
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# ? Feb 18, 2020 16:29 |
Section 31 is actually cool, good, and gets the job done. Unseen soft power makes me randy.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 00:17 |
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It's pretty crazy that in that one section 31 episode they just casually toss in that you can access dead people's subconsciousness via the matrix or whatever
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 03:02 |
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Star Trek peaked around 1992, there I said it. Had a decent plateau until DS9 ended but it's been downhill ever since.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 04:41 |
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Son of Sam-I-Am posted:Star Trek peaked around 1992, there I said it. Had a decent plateau until DS9 ended but it's been downhill ever since. voyager at least tried to be interesting, and sometimes succeeded. i've also ran into at least one fan opinion (janeway being a psychopath) which isn't entirely without truth but is mostly just misogyny after that there's nothing. there are no star treks after that.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 07:42 |
Hodgepodge posted:section 31 is CIA propaganda; that it is not portrayed in a positive manner is irrelevant because the point is to depict the CIA as an inevitable and indispensable necessary evil, a sort of structural part of reality more fundamental than mere physics it especially doesn't count as negative portrayal when you make them the bad guys through indisputably evil supervillainy, not any flaw in their ideology or bullshit rationalizations. gently caress Section 31.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 13:59 |
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Wanted By Weed posted:Having started to actually get into Star Trek, I recently saw the DS9 episode where Jake and Nog slum their way through a Zelda-esque trading sequence in an attempt at a get-rich-quick scheme of the week. It's not entirely without precedence for instance you had historical cultures, in parts of Western Africa for instance, often where there was some combination of nomadism or semi-nomadism (but still agricultural) where wealth was more commonly reckonened in the labor you owned or could call upon, often in the form of slaves. That's a bit of a simplification, but the concept of private ownership of land or ownership of land being equated with wealth isn't like an absolute constant in human history and rather is a specific historical development.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 15:30 |
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Land is historically far more valuable when peasants run out of options for defection. If abusing your farmers means that they gently caress off and join the local hill tribes, it's not enough to just own the land and tell the peasants they pay you or die. You have to manage the labor more explicitly, which frequently means slavery (e.g. iron age Myanmar), but just as often means complex rights/obligations setups (e.g. Sumeria).
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:04 |
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Tulip posted:Land is historically far more valuable when peasants run out of options for defection. If abusing your farmers means that they gently caress off and join the local hill tribes, it's not enough to just own the land and tell the peasants they pay you or die. You have to manage the labor more explicitly, which frequently means slavery (e.g. iron age Myanmar), but just as often means complex rights/obligations setups (e.g. Sumeria). Even with slavery, the broke relatives you forced into debt and took the families of have often tended to gather into communities, make alliances with locals, and come back for them. Fegengi somehow accumulating vast capital but not understanding the value of land is mostly an example of writers not u understanding the concepts they were working with.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:36 |
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maybe nog was an idiot child at the time
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:40 |
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Squizzle posted:maybe nog was an idiot child at the time at one point a cardassian characterizes humanity with a paraphrase of von mises' principle of action and it's unchallenged, so i wouldn't be too generous with my assumptions about the writer's grasp of economics
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 16:47 |
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Hodgepodge posted:Even with slavery, the broke relatives you forced into debt and took the families of have often tended to gather into communities, make alliances with locals, and come back for them. I mean, those iron age Myanmar kingdoms had a life expectancy of like a century on average before the mix of bailing peasants, inefficiency of slavery, and angry hill tribes became completely apocalyptic. It was a bad solution. Nog thinking little of land is a marked inconsistency given that Ferengi economic thought is usually like 100% exchange theory of value, so anything that is valuable to someone is self-evidently valuable, regardless of its utility. Hodgepodge posted:at one point a cardassian characterizes humanity with a paraphrase of von mises' principle of action and it's unchallenged, so i wouldn't be too generous with my assumptions about the writer's grasp of economics lol yeah It's pretty messed up that we basically only see the Federation through the military lens.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 17:10 |
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Rudeboy Detective posted:Section 31 is actually cool, good, and gets the job done. what's your favorite Tom Clancy book
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 17:43 |
Farmer Crack-rear end posted:what's your favorite Tom Clancy book The one written by an unpaid ghost writer. Edit: how many democratically elected space governments do you think section 31 has kicked over the instant their president is handed a ceremonial bat'leth as an symbol of friendship from the Klingons? The public will never know, especially those lulled into a false sense of comfort by their big-brother space government's utopian veneer. Rudeboy Detective fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Feb 19, 2020 |
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 20:21 |
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Hodgepodge posted:voyager at least tried to be interesting, and sometimes succeeded. i've also ran into at least one fan opinion (janeway being a psychopath) which isn't entirely without truth but is mostly just misogyny I thought Janeway was one of the most interesting captains. Yea, there were problems with the writing of her because sometimes she'd go hard on some regulation, but often she very frequently compromised. All of the rest of them, except Archer, all had this huge institution to draw on. The Federation. Almost everyone they spoke to knew the Federation and had dealings with them. They were never more than a week or two away from resupply and assistance, and even then rarely.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 23:43 |
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CainFortea posted:I thought Janeway was one of the most interesting captains. Yea, there were problems with the writing of her because sometimes she'd go hard on some regulation, but often she very frequently compromised. Yeah. And the decision about how to interpret and apply the Prime Directive is always about either the effect on the Federation as a whole and/or the impact on the contacted society. There's never a matter of personal sacrifice for those principles in the other shows.
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# ? Feb 19, 2020 23:58 |
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The problem with the Prime Directive is that no two writers have ever portrayed it the same so it never has a consistent meaning. Sometimes it's an extremely sensible policy to not give nuclear bombs to cavemen. Other times it's about already space traveling civilizations be genocided because "We can't play God".
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 09:21 |
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galagazombie posted:The problem with the Prime Directive is that no two writers have ever portrayed it the same so it never has a consistent meaning. Sometimes it's an extremely sensible policy to not give nuclear bombs to cavemen. Other times it's about already space traveling civilizations be genocided because "We can't play God". At the core it's amazing, because it seems to be fundamentally a total rejection of imperialism, and has been interpreted as a reaction to America's actions in Vietnam. Not every writer has been on board with the notion of not being an imperial power and by DS9 the entire premise had shifted to being about the Federation as an empire in conflict with competing imperial powers. History, of course, had recently ended, so there was no reason to imagine the future would be any different from the present. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Feb 20, 2020 |
# ? Feb 20, 2020 12:36 |
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Wanted By Weed posted:Having started to actually get into Star Trek, I recently saw the DS9 episode where Jake and Nog slum their way through a Zelda-esque trading sequence in an attempt at a get-rich-quick scheme of the week. Maybe it's that Nog's uncle owns an entire moon from being an arms merchant so a dingy parcel of land on Bajor, which might or might not be arable, doesn't seem like real progress Squizzle posted:maybe nog was an idiot child at the time the most likely answer
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 16:52 |
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nog my fed rear end
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 16:59 |
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Always thought it was weird that Timothy McVeigh was a big TNG fan
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 22:01 |
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JethroMcB posted:Always thought it was weird that nearly all Canadian pedophiles are big TNG fans
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# ? Feb 20, 2020 22:34 |
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Tulip posted:It's pretty messed up that we basically only see the Federation through the military lens. All emphasis is on the military because Star Trek depicts a Keynesian utopia, based directly on Keynes’ 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. Nearly everything about Star Trek’s setting is in those few pages. The Federation is basically dumping shitloads of not-money (“credits”) into the military-industrial complex to reduce/eliminate unemployment and stimulate the economy. Capitalism hasn’t gone away in Star Trek; Keynes’ belief was that, if managed correctly, the overall standard of living under capitalism would just gradually increase (through a mix of technological progress and compound interest) to the point that people would no longer want money. They’d spend their free time after the short work-week fighting boredom with hobbies like playing the clarinet or whatever. Keynes predicted this would occur by around the year 2030.
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:11 |
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To think, it's all in Avery Brooks' head
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 05:12 |
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# ? Oct 16, 2024 08:26 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:All emphasis is on the military because Star Trek depicts a Keynesian utopia, based directly on Keynes’ 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. Nearly everything about Star Trek’s setting is in those few pages. in real life it turns out that the carefully measured tapering plan to be administered by qualified professionals party suffered repeated loses to the nah this poo poo is good for you here ill attach a hose directly to your brain party
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# ? Feb 21, 2020 18:08 |