Don't smuggle for Hutts, and don't try to screw a princess.

To be honest, both places aren't bad if you have general freedom and are not the target of some fucking space horror/evil overlord/random conquerer. Though the Federation has some odd views of money given that they have it, if for nothing else...how the fuck do they trade with others. I think TNG just conviently brushed it under the table and tried to forget about it.

Good advice for anyone.


I think it's more like they're not capitalists, which is different from saying we've eliminated money entirely. They have some currency, I think they're called 'credits', and there is still an economy, it's just that super-rich dickery capitalism has been eliminated.

On the whole, I think Trek was trying to portray a post-scarcity society or something like it, where your material needs are taken care of (no one ever starves because replicators provide food for all, and energy is cheap and plentiful, and so on). It also rejects a consumerist cast-away society, where you have your iPod for a whole five minutes before the next one is released by Apple. I don't have a problem with any of that to be honest. It's a little picture perfect I'll grant you, and the whole concept was as you say, quietly left vague and undescribed.

I just remembered something, which I don't think has been touched upon: While yes, in both ST and SW if you serve on a warship there are several things trying to kill you, at least in SW, your family doesn't come with you.

Worst case scenario in SW if you have a relative on a warship is that said relative dies. In ST, worst case scenario is that you, your family, and your relative die. How pleasant it would be to wake up in the morning, look out the window, and see a giant fucking cube made of PVC pipe which is painted gray destroying your home. In SW, you'd be safe from this. Unless your relative joined the rebellion, in which case, excommunicate him/her ASAP, or you'd best look behind you every so often to make sure no one is trailing you.

And that reminds me, at least in SW, the local military is usually capable of putting up a fight. I can remember countless ST episodes where only the great and powerful U.S.S. Enterprise can destroy the giant snowflake/borg cube/space anomaly. But of course, the local ship(s) are completely losing and/or already smashed to bits by the time the Enterprise gets there. Although, to me this seems more prevalent in the TNG era, I would have less of a problem living in the TOS era, where most of the time Captains were Captains and diplomats were diplomats, not the other way around.

And if I remember correctly, TNG only had money so that they could trade with others, although it was more like space-gold than actual currency.

In all fairness a lot of the time the problem isn't the local forces not being up to the task but there simply NOT BEING any local forces. And given the volume of Federation leave alone Alpha Quadrant space compared to the limits of Warp drive, even if we take TNG NCC numbers at face value, Starfleet ships, leave alone powerful ones are going to be far and few between.

Yes, that too.


Yeah, that's pretty much my impression of what they were going for: a society that had automation advanced enough that most of the grunt work was handled by machines and a small fraction of the population could produce enough surplus to keep the entire population alive in comfort, combined with a change in values toward a more cooperative, less competitive society.

Personally of late I've come to increasingly respect Trek for at least trying to present a vision of a future that's genuinely different from today (however ineptly it may have been executed), as I've come to find the usual "the future will be fundamentally just like the present, but in space, with lasers" deal increasingly tiresome. Which is probably one reason I've come to find the whole "lol commie evil dictatorship Federation" meme increasingly annoying of late. Although really I think that mostly it's just that the horse has been so thoroughly beaten to death by now, at least here.

Personally I kind of wish the TNG Federation society had been thought out better and fleshed out more. It would be nice to have a big-name SF franchise that presents a genuinely alien but workable and non-dystopian future society (what Eliezer Yudkowsky calls a weirdtopia). It'd be a pretty refreshing break from all the space monarchies and space Americas.


Don't sign up for Starfleet? Don't bring your family with you if you do? Seems like a problem that would probably be pretty easy to avoid to me.

There's a difference between making an assertion, and not bothering to look into canon to check whether a hypothesis is correct.



I was conceding that the overall effect of the existance of force-sensitive people on quality of life in the SW universe relative to trek is marginal, maybe not worth discussing. But it's still a negative, rather than being a reason to live in the SW universe.

You have no concept of what an actual navy does do you?[/quote]

The only good thing it does is protect against pirates. Besides that, they bombard planets, fight rebels and smugglers, land on top of protesters, and generally act like massive douches. There's a reason they're the bad guys.

What are you, a mind reader? I've been thinking the exact same thing.

Star Wars is much more to my liking than that socialist repressive conformist pc nightmare that is Star Trek where every energy effect/dust cloud/nebula/space fart disrupts the engines/shields/weapons/transporters.

With atrocious engineering and safety standards the federation isn't really any safer. There is a good article on that here: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Ess ... ering.html. In fact I just finished watching the episode 'New Ground' mentioned in the link.



There is actually only anecdotal evidence for this in the form of no aliens seen serving the Empire. I am unsure if the novelizations have more info in that regards. It should be noted before the Empire was formed Palpatine did have aliens in his personal staff.

All this stuff about which galaxy is the safer is kind of moot. The real world can be dangerous but do you go around every day thinking about how you can die, informing every decision you make? All's people have done has proved that both galaxies do have their danger as to be expected.



I would agree that they have tried to showcase a better future. The idea of a post-scarcity civlization where energy/food/supplies are cheap and plentiful is appealing. However with no money it takes away a lot of your personal choice and freedom. People like to own things and short of the basic necessities and nick-nacks you don't have much of a choice in socialism. Look at the real world examples, Russia survived for barely 80 years with a mostly totalitarian form of communism. China isn't much better and they had to go partialy capitalist to survive. Neither had a benevolent government however.

The damning points with socialism is that it does not take into account human nature. All excess is shared so those who contribute, loose the incentive to exceed when they get no reward, usually in the form of money. People as a rule just ain't that selfless. In fact you can contribute less, and still get the same reward as someone who provides more. Not all jobs are equal but regardless of the job you do you get the same reward. So where is your incentive? (at least that was my cack handed attempt at remembering the points made in my high school history from 11 years ago)

You are right that they screwed it up, that they have glossed over things. Gene Roddenberry was a socalist and his views filtered into the Federation, they just don't work in reality. I do however like you respect their attempt to try and portray a better future.



Star Wars medicine is actually pretty impressive. Vader's spine was replaced with an artificial one and Grevious's brain along with his eyes, heart and lungs was transplanted into a droid body. Just two cannon examples.



As deadily as Star Wars ships are, the defensive technologies are just as advanced so I would agree with you.



By Picard's admission, there is no money in the Federation. How are you going to get a ship without money? Oh I agree there are ways and it is possible in Star Trek, likely however is something else.

It's a completely baseless assumption that in the Federation all jobs are rewarded equally. We know almost nothing about how their economy or really their society in general works, except that they apparently don't use money.

I was actually talking about socialism at that point but I can see how it was inferred.

The thing is, its money that balances these jobs in a capitalist world and as you said, there is no money.

They do use a type of credit system when making deals with aliens. Harry Kim (over)paid Quark for a drink with them and there are the DS9 Federation cast members who uses his holosuite and all.

star trek.
becuae of the replicators.

Star Trek. More of a fun - lot of unexplored areas to explore, and you can shoot aliens too. In Star Wars, you can only do the latter thing.

Again Thread necro, also Star Wars have Replicators too. Everything from good old food replicators to World Devastators.

Though there's a lot of adventuring one could do in SW, I prefer ST, being on Earth, have a decent career and having replicators and a holo-suite in which I'd download all SW movies and EU material and go in to have fun.

I personally see a higher risk living in SW compared to ST. Core worlds are not exactly safe as Coruscant got mauled by the YV.

If there is a system in SW that has been relatively safe from all the wars and conflict affecting the galaxy and has both replicator and holo-suite tech then I'd choose SW.

---

ASVS('97)/SDN('03)

"Peppercorn Tomatoes slathered in broken guacamole sauce. Put it in the microwave and press puree. 5 seconds in the dumpster and it is ready to be cooked in the freezer at -350 degrees for twenty minutes. Apply pressure in various hamster spots and scream like a psychotic banshee." My reply when asked what was on my mind.

By the sacred crotch of Arkvoodle!

star trek has holodecks, that's better than porn eh?

From my understanding of it, living on Earth or one of the core-terran worlds in ST:TNG is really quite paradise-like for an Ivory-Tower kinda person like me. I mean, just look at how Troi and Beverly turned out! They genuinely believe that war, poverty, hunger, etc. are all non-existent and archaic!!! And they continue to believe this despite their continued exposure to people like Tasha Yar whose childhood involved running from rape-gangs.

If I could, i'd live on earth and totally do my best to ignore all the propaganda to join Starfleet. I'd relish the fact that we "work to better ourselves" instead of worrying about pesky 'money' and then game the system at every turn for my personal satisfaction. Because you see, the idea of genuinely spending my whole life devoted to learning whatever interests me and then taking breaks/recreation by playing games with the few friends I'd make and delving into the infinite alternate-reality that holodeck technology provides. . . . Let's just say that's the closest to heaven-on-earth I'd ever hope for.

---

There is no surer aphrodisiac to a man than a woman who is interested in him.

Until you get deathly bored, that is.

I'ma throw in another vote for Trek. I'm in a holo-suite ringside at the Joe Louis versus Mike Tyson grudge match in an arena made completely out of perpetually cold bottles of beer getting a BJ from Alizée while cutting slices of pizza with a lightsaber. If that kind of thing really ever gets old I'll unplug and... I dunno... go out to become the worst supercriminal in paradise, ala Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man.

Yeah, I can see how that 'no war, no famine, no poverty' thing might get really boring.

I'd vote for Wars, because I want a little ship of my own to travel the galaxy. I'm a wanderer at heart, and being able to travel to a new world every week for the rest of my life is just too damn tempting.

Then again, DudeGuyMan's Trek idea is pretty sweet too

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

You can visit all the planets you want in a holosuite, including the planet Boobulon Prime, where all the women have six tits and the men all have dicks half the size of yours, and it rains fucking donuts.

I'll tell you what, the one thing that lends any actual credence to the idea of human civilization being "more evolved" in Trek? The fact that their society has the holodeck but still manages to be interested in anything besides keeping the holodeck running.

It's just not the same on a holodeck. Besides, with the number of times that damn thing goes bananans I would not want to trust some holographic chick with my nuts.

Besides, picking up chick in some alien bar. What soudns better?

"Wanns go for a ride to the end of the galaxy?"
"Wanna see my holodeck?"

Makes you sounds like a ST nerd.

Besides, a REAL man doesn't need a holodeck to get laid

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

I'll consider your position from atop my Pussy Throne on Planet Boobulon Prime as the Sacred Whore Maidens anoint me with champagne squirted from their six teats.

And I'll consider yours, from the cockpit of my ship as I launch a bombing run upon the building containing your holodeck.

Safety protocols won't save you from a 500 MT fusion bomb, young fool

Only now, at the end, do you understand. You have paid the price for your lack of vision, etc, etc.

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You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.