See, this is another of those cases of which there is no evidence whatsoever. From what we've seen of Earth, there are no Secret Police, CCTVs, and people seem safe talking about Secret Things within their homes (see: Voyager, "Non Sequitur") and Starfleet evidently doesn't have any bugs in peoples' residences or else, for example, the events of STVI would be ludicrous.Starglider wrote:One can easily imagine the Federation having access to brainwashing and conditioning techniques vastly in advance of contemporary communist countries; we saw some of this in TOS : Whom Gods Destroy. Furthermore they have advanced and pervasive sensor and AI technology that would makes it easy for them to keep their entire population under close surveillence. I find the hypothesis that the Federation uses these in combination to keep their population in compliance with their ideology more likely than massive systemic corruption being carefully hidden from viewers throughout the entire run of TNG and DS9.Darth Hoth wrote:I reiterate: Do we assume that the people of the Federation are human? If so, we should logically reason that they are subject to human psychology and sociology unless otherwise demonstrated.
Frankly, aside from the out-of-universe argument that the Federation is an extremely idealistic portrayal of Human psychology, considering how people throughout the Federation believe so strongly and dogmatically in their (evidently successful) Utopian ideology, I'd say that the most likely in-universe explanation - however implausible it might be - would be that the Federation is an example of successful social engineering turning peoples' transcendant ideals towards their collectivist improvement philosophy. Certainly, the ideals of the Federation hold a certain reverential, religious aspect throughout the show. To extrapolate further, it seems likely that advances like Replicators, transporters, the vast resources of space, and the ability of Holodecks to simulate experiences would take alot of strain off of a scarcity-based society, and while I wouldn't argue the Federation is post-scarcity, they seem close enough that the task of widespread cultural re-education would be eased, and many (not all!) of the problems associated with central planning or non-monetary economic systems would disappear.
The theory of successful social engineering, though it seems contrary to a Hobbesian view of Humanity, is far easier to reconcile with on-screen evidence of the Federation than either some Orwellian government (as there's no evidence of re-education camps or disappeared nonpersons or over-riding secret police or political officers other than the totally renegade Section 31) or some corruption-infested dystopia (oh wow no one enforces the embargo against the Romulans BLACK MARKET!!1). Further, it fits with both the religious zeal of Federation officers and the apparent effectiveness of their system.
