N.Korea has declared that they now has a hydrogen bomb

[Inkie]

Star Trek isn't communist necessarily because everyone is smart, but because technology has progressed to the point where it costs next to nothing to produce everything society needs.

[dew]

frithiof said:

Stuff.

I'm from a post-communist country, but thanks for the lesson. I was more interested by the idea that the base of a communist society is... hippies. Or maybe the statement meant something entirely different. I can't tell!

[frithiof]

^^^^^ - Pfffft. If communism was bad, would the USA have given all those countries, and half of Germany to the USSR after WW 2? Hitler killed millions of Jews. Stalin created a utopia.

I generally don't like hippies because some of them don't shower, they smell bad, and they tend to have lots of sexually transmitted diseases. They probably also don't eat meat.

Inkie said:

Star Trek isn't communist necessarily because everyone is smart, but because technology has progressed to the point where it costs next to nothing to produce everything society needs.

I think even that is a matter of perspective. The matter for their transporters and replicators has to come from somewhere, right?

What if the Federation is actually feeding itself by stealing matter from planets, and dilithium crystals from aliens that can't fend for themselves?

Perhaps perfect communism only exists for the elite officers in Star Trek. Do we ever really see what life is like for the enlisted people?

[dew]

frithiof said:

Perhaps perfect communism only exists for the elite officers in Star Trek. Do we ever really see what life is like for the enlisted people?

Life is long and prosperous unless you wear a red uniform.

[pritch]

frithiof said:

^^^^^ - Pfffft. If communism was bad, would the USA have given all those countries, and half of Germany to the USSR after WW 2? Hitler killed millions of Jews. Stalin created a utopia.

USA didn't really give anything away. Russia had the only meaningful presence east of Germany, Britain and the US to the west. That is how Germany got literally split down the middle.

I think even that is a matter of perspective. The matter for their transporters and replicators has to come from somewhere, right?

What if the Federation is actually feeding itself by stealing matter from planets, and dilithium crystals from aliens that can't fend for themselves?

Crystals are only a reaction modifier/regulator. The energy (energy and matter being interchangeable at the quantum level in the ST universe, hence allowing replicators, transporters and holodecks etc. to exist) comes from matter (deuterium) and anti-matter being combined. So you need matter, and that does have to come from somewhere. It's surprisingly vague in-show about whether this matter is renewable or not. Dilithium is shown as being mined on several worlds... I think there's a tacit acceptance that the Federation is, amongst other things, an industrialist union.

Perhaps perfect communism only exists for the elite officers in Star Trek. Do we ever really see what life is like for the enlisted people?

This is as close as we get.

[Quast]

Doomkid said:

To be fair Star Trek assumes people get less dumbified over the next 200 years.

So the idea that a crazy drunk creating a spacecraft capable of superluminal velocities in his garage, in the ashes of a 3rd world war isn't the future?

[frithiof]

Quast said:

So the idea that a crazy drunk creating a spacecraft capable of superluminal velocities in his garage, in the ashes of a 3rd world war isn't the future?

It's more likely than the world turning into a Mad Max-style wasteland after WW 3.

[dew]

No, it's not. Humans struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland will always be more probable than a fantasy about a classless, moneyless society that breaks laws of physics at a whim.

[FireFish]

dew said:

No, it's not. Humans struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland will always be more probable than a fantasy about a classless, moneyless society that breaks laws of physics at a whim.

BAM !
Our planet is so fucked that there is a chance that the babies born in the now would be living in a Cactus growing middle-Europe by the time they reach the age of 60. Which whould mean ; water shortage, and mass panic.

People are so dumb that they just fail to realize it, because if people would actally understand it then people would ACT and CHANGE.

So fuck N.Korea as they arent important on a global scale anyways.