The Federation - evil ?

[TheDarkling]

The federation may not be realistic but it isnt evil which means the people who voted on this thread are by and large misinformed.

[Darth Yoshi]

The poll didn't ask if the Federation was evil. It just asked whether or not the Federation claims were the truth.

[TheDarkling]

The answer most people gave was.
No, they use force/indoctrination to make the system work.

Well I would consider that evil but specifically people said the Feds use brainwashing or force which almost everyone on this thread has admitted doesnt have basis in canon evidence.

[Mr Bean]

Well I would consider that evil but specifically people said the Feds use brainwashing or force which almost everyone on this thread has admitted doesnt have basis in canon evidence

Yes I'll agree with that little to no cannon evidance for it but it comes from speculation

Jene thought that people would become better and smarter from new toys(IE We get more peaceful the more tecnology we use)
The problem is most people today look at things like ST and say, hmm all my foods provided by replicators, I can get anything I want in the Holo-Deck, Wherse my reason to work harder? To Push myself, To be better than anyone else and thus enrich my group?
The answear is there is no reason

Most people say Brain-Washing simply because we so no good reason to go from twenty second and first centry greed to all of a sudden twenty fourth no greed
There is no deffing moment, No big, Hey I've got all I need why would I need any more moment
So most people concluded you don't see that because the Feds indtornate and brain-wash them into NOT wanting it. Oh and the Brain-washed will deny there is any brain-washing going on thats part of the brain-washing itself to convice the subject the brain-washing is a good thing, then to convice them there IS no brain-washing

Thus why most people say it the very fact we DONT see any evidance for or aginst Brain-washing is why it must be there

[TheDarkling]

That is circular logic of the worst kind - People dont say theres no brainwashing so therefore it must be happening? prehaps it isnt happen an dthats why its not being said.

I will also reiterate the evidence already presented against brainwahsing - we dont see it, theres no mention by the aliens, the federations vaunted morals, the fact they Picard and co put morals before duty to the state which wouldnt happen if brinwashing was ineffect.

The Voy episode where the Feds are forced to work by brainwashing - the feds decry this and say its wrong yet if they had been programmed to think it was ok or it had happened to them they wouldnt be so against it.

[Mr. B]

They probably put something in the replicated food to keep the population doclie.
Ever seen or heard of a farm in ST. Not counting the Picard winery, it's obviously just a hobby because why do it if there is no incentive to farm.

[TheDarkling]

There must be farms - the Picards only just got a relicator (or were discussing getting one) thus natural food must exist.

[Ai Phling Pu]

Damn shit, you don't realise we're talkin' about the next generation here, do you? In the TOS era this was obviously another issue since there were privately owned spacecraft, free companys and some kind of money.
Picard repeatedly said that in the Federation, there was no such thing as money anymore. He wasn't talking about cash, but money in general!
I'm gonna find the quote.


So wait... we're supposed to believe that human beings can't change their ways ethically in 200 years, but they've utterly changed their entire economic system in only 100, give or take? Would you mind explaining that?

[Darth Yoshi]

It's easier to change the economy than it is to change human nature. After all, humans weren't always greedy capitalist pig-dogs . Greedy, sure, but not capitalists. But human nature hasn't changed in the thousands of years that we've been on this forsaken planet. We've managed to suppress it, and convince ourselves that we're more civilized, but it's really just self delusion.

[Admiral Piett]

Mr Ai Phling Pu.It is simply possible that in the TOS era the feration was already evolving towards a "communist" economy and in the interval between Kirk's era and the TNG the transition was simply completed.If you think that in 80 years the Soviet Union was born,developed,decayed and died this is not so difficult.
Gene,as far as I know, had aways wanted to portray a non capitalistic economy as the future of mankind.When he produced TNG he had enough freedom to do so,which before he had not had.

[Ai Phling Pu]

That doesn't answer the original question, Piett. If human beings can't evolve enough in 150 years to no longer be greedy, why would their sociopolitical and economic systems make such a jump in only 80?

You're also still dismissing the point that nowhere in any ST material, canon or otherwise, is the nature of this government stated. You're also still ignoring the fact that Federation citizens do own personal property, make their own career choices, accumulate posessions, and generally enjoy every liberty present-day Americans enjoy.

The entire motivation for painting the Federation as some horrible commie regime is to justify Warsies' rooting for the Empire, which is clearly patterned on the Nazis of WWII. (As if a spacefaring neo-nazi organization is somehow preferable.)

[SirNitram]

Wow.

People seem to think you can't change socio-economic models in less than a century.

Do some research before you spout trite, please. Russia went from Monarchy to sorta-Communist inside of a decade.

[Mr Bean]

People seem to think you can't change socio-economic models in less than a century.

Do some research before you spout trite, please. Russia went from Monarchy to sorta-Communist inside of a decade.

Wow somone thinks that a ass-backwords third world Country(At the time by todays standerds) is the exact same thing as a Space-Faring, multi-planetary Group

Heck most people in Sibera did not even know they WHERE Communist untill a few years after the revolution

[SirNitram]

People seem to think you can't change socio-economic models in less than a century.

Do some research before you spout trite, please. Russia went from Monarchy to sorta-Communist inside of a decade.

Wow somone thinks that a ass-backwords third world Country(At the time by todays standerds) is the exact same thing as a Space-Faring, multi-planetary Group

Heck most people in Sibera did not even know they WHERE Communist untill a few years after the revolution

If it's more advanced, it should be able to adapt faster, not slower. There's not the problem of not knowing your Communist, because you can transmit information faster, send people faster. Of course, since the Federation's starships can take months to reach starbases, there's probably some planets who took a while to hear the news.

[Admiral Piett]

Communism does not mean you cannot own personal items or you cannot make your choices about your career.In the Soviet union,for example, people were allowed to own cars and one could make some choices about his career.You should ask for a better definition to a marxist but the core is that there is no private property of means of production.A peasant can still cultivate a small lot of land,but this land is not his own,it is a state concession.
Please,note and keep in mind that I am referring to the TNG era,so stop to point out TOS and TMP era examples.In anyway it is not so impossible as you believe that in that period the federation was already evloving towards a communist society,for example putting the main industries under federal control but leaving still a certain margin of action to smaller companies,margin that was eliminated in the 80 years between the two series.In europe in the sixties and the seventies many of the main industries (steel plants,coal mines etc) were state owned and the economy was partially planned,leaving however great space to private owned enterprises.If this process had been carried on the european economy would have become similar to that of the socialist states.The federation could have followed a similar path.
80 years are not that small amount of time for a modern society.Surely more than enough for this process to take place,even gradually.
While no one in star trek goes around saying "We are in a first contact situation,comrade captain" or "the ferengi are bourgeois pigs" there are tons of evidence that the federation is a working communist society.
First of all there is no money and no financial investments.It is not like that the 24th century equivalent of credit cards have replaced physical coins and banknotes.There is simply no money as we use it today,no one uses credit to buy anything and certainly not to make financial investments which are regarded as a thing of the past by Picard.This alone says a lot.
There is never, I mean NEVER, a reference to a corporation or to a large private enterprise.No private manufacturer or interstellar shipping company is ever mentioned.Think to it,they remain in the space for years and they never run into a private owned merchant vessel which,for example,needs help.No brands and no advertisings are ever shown.The same Enterprise is manifactured in an obviously state owned shipyard.If this was not enough someone has mentioned that starfleet personnel is not paid with money,I cannot confirm or deny but it seems likely.
What else?Suspectly high degree of uniformity,no mention of private owned vehicles.No one ever speaks about his repulsorlift sport car,lack of traffic. Long range communication systems controlled by the state and no private information network ever mentioned.No referenced is ever made to patents.
Communist style propaganda about having eliminated poverty and capitalism being bad etc.
Whatever name they give to their system it seems quite similar to a form of communism.
What do we have to refute this?
Picard and few others run SMALL enterprises:which can be easily explained
with the fact that they are in reality state concessions,like in the East Germany and in the Soviet Union.
Some individuals own their own small starships:onscreen evidence suggests that they are probably outlaws,tulerated until either they are caught red-handed or when they start to become a problem(ST equivalents of Ian Solo).
Starfleet personnel does shopping:a simple possibility is that when the starfleet members go on a non member planet for a shore leave they are assigned a small sum of local currency (typically latinum bars) to purchase
services that would be available for free on a member planet.This does not contradict a communist policy.
In short all evidence points towards the federation being a a working communist society.If it is good or bad it is a matter of personal tastes.
The Empire is a bad (albeit cool) government and unsurprisingly whatever argument to demonstrate the opposite is as much weak as any attempt to demonstrate the federation being capitalistic.

[Peregrin Toker]

Communism does not mean you cannot own personal items or you cannot make your choices about your career.In the Soviet union,for example, people were allowed to own cars and one could make some choices about his career.

Erm.... the USSR was socialist, not communist. I always thought that the society would go through a phase which Marx and Engells called "socialism", under which the proletariat was ruled over by a benevolent despoty, before becoming a truly stateless society, which marxists call "communism."

BTW, the economic model of communism is based around the abolition of property rights. Marx even states that openly in the Communist manifesto!

There is never, I mean NEVER, a reference to a corporation or to a large private enterprise.No private manufacturer or interstellar shipping company is ever mentioned.

Erm.... in the DS9 episode "Prodigal Daughter", we heard of a corporation - although it was established on a world which wasn't a Federation member.[/i][/quote]

[Admiral Piett]

Erm.... the USSR was socialist, not communist. I always thought that the society would go through a phase which Marx and Engells called "socialism", under which the proletariat was ruled over by a benevolent despoty, before becoming a truly stateless society, which marxists call "communism."

As far as I know at least in the 19th century both terms were used as synonimus.Frankly at the moment I do not remember if Marx was the first to give them different meanings to discriminate between the two phases.I know the two terms were used later to discriminate between socialists, who believed that communism could be reached gradually by legal means, and communists,who believed that the goal could be reached only by a revolution.

BTW, the economic model of communism is based around the abolition of property rights. Marx even states that openly in the Communist manifesto!

He is referring to the property of MEANS OF PRODUCTION like factories, agricultural instruments,mining tools and so on.Not to PERSONAL ITEMS.
He specifies this quite well in his others writings.

Erm.... in the DS9 episode "Prodigal Daughter", we heard of a corporation - although it was established on a world which wasn't a Federation member.[/i][/quote][/quote]

Exactly,no corporations in the federation.

[Admiral Piett]

Of course the federation is not exactly what Marx intended as a communist society in its definitive phase(albeit he is pretty vague about it).For example they still have a government, which instead should disappear in a true communist society.However from the elements which are available I think that they have a form of planned economy quite similar (although with many differences,for example the lack of money) to that of the socialist states of the real world and to the model which Marx foresaw for the first phase,the so called dictatorship of the proletariat (albeit it may be argued that in the real world it became quickly the dictatorship OVER the proletariat).Thus they are communists,at least in the common meaning of the term.

[Master of Ossus]

Damn shit, you don't realise we're talkin' about the next generation here, do you? In the TOS era this was obviously another issue since there were privately owned spacecraft, free companys and some kind of money.
Picard repeatedly said that in the Federation, there was no such thing as money anymore. He wasn't talking about cash, but money in general!
I'm gonna find the quote.


So wait... we're supposed to believe that human beings can't change their ways ethically in 200 years, but they've utterly changed their entire economic system in only 100, give or take? Would you mind explaining that?

Humans cannot change HUMAN NATURE in almost any length of time. People in the Ancient Roman era behaved much like they do today (even though Christianity did not even EXIST at the start of the period). They already had religious terrorists, protests, Vietnam War type situations, philosophical debates over what was good and what was bad, etc. It IS possible to change economies very quickly (Bolshevik Revolution, fall of the USSR, China, etc.), but it is impossible to change basic human beliefs. Even with economic alterations, GREAT effort must be expended. Remember that is is much easier to change how people interact with each other than it is to change people. We can put people in prisons where the rules are FAR different from the streets, but we cannot always turn them into productive human beings.

[Master of Ossus]

That doesn't answer the original question, Piett. If human beings can't evolve enough in 150 years to no longer be greedy, why would their sociopolitical and economic systems make such a jump in only 80?

As I said earlier, it takes longer to change people than it does to change their government. People hated the British in America at the end of the 1700's. America became democratic, but anti-English sentiment remained for a long while after that. It is also possible for economic changes to happen very quickly, but it takes a concerted effort for a longer period in order to change the way that people think. Nothing can make people suddenly become altruistic, short of brainwashing by immensely powerful organizations.

You're also still dismissing the point that nowhere in any ST material, canon or otherwise, is the nature of this government stated. You're also still ignoring the fact that Federation citizens do own personal property, make their own career choices, accumulate posessions, and generally enjoy every liberty present-day Americans enjoy.[/quote]

Nothing in canon ever states that the Federation IS communist, but then again, North Korea calls itself a DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC! Instead, we are left to infer that the Federation is a socialism/communism from what we DO see on screen. Judges wear SF uniforms when they preside over cases involving only civilians. People appear to have eliminated money (ref. First Contact) within the Federation itself, and TNG began by attempting to make the Ferengi (great capitalists) evil.

The entire motivation for painting the Federation as some horrible commie regime is to justify Warsies' rooting for the Empire, which is clearly patterned on the Nazis of WWII. (As if a spacefaring neo-nazi organization is somehow preferable.) [/quote]

Not true. I don't think that people should root for dictators over communisms at all! Communism is actually a very good societal idea, but it could not work for a long period of time in human beings. It is entirely possible (but somewhat unlikely) that an alien species could have developed into a true communism, in which I would think that they were extremely interesting. I was watching ENEMY AT THE GATES and thinking that it was hard to decide whether I should root for Stalin and his forces or Hitler and his. Between a communism and a democracy people would have a difficult choice to make, but there is little room for decision in a communism vs. a dictatorship, assuming that both societies provide comparable lifestyles and benefits. Communism is actually a noble cause (if it is truly as Marx envisioned), there are just problems running such a society using human beings.

[TheDarkling]

There are instances on Federation planets using cash.

Qualor 2 runs a federation junkyard (thus it is probably a federation planet) yet a person on the planet asks Riker for some cash to which he responds that he doesnt carry money.

Im not sure what to make of this prehaps its a similar arrangement to that on DS9 - non federation types can charge other non federation people but since the federation maintains the bar federation citizens get things free.

Wow I said federation alot of times back there.

[Mr Bean]

Intresting Darkling and possible

[Master of Ossus]

There are instances on Federation planets using cash.

Qualor 2 runs a federation junkyard (thus it is probably a federation planet) yet a person on the planet asks Riker for some cash to which he responds that he doesnt carry money.

Im not sure what to make of this prehaps its a similar arrangement to that on DS9 - non federation types can charge other non federation people but since the federation maintains the bar federation citizens get things free.

Wow I said federation alot of times back there.

Was that TNG? Which episode? I don't remember that, either. I'm not doing so well, today. It's possible that the Federation runs itself with some kind of a mixed economy, or one that may even be just a modified capitalism. IMHO, however, the majority of evidence indicates that the Federation is a kind of socialist/communist/democratic blend that we do not yet fully understand.

[TheDarkling]

Yes it was TNG Unification - The episode with Spock in it.

[SCVN 2812]

Evidence suggests that the Federation has adopted qualities from a variety of social systems and mixed them with philosophies and systems we, as the products of generations of capitalism, having been taught that capitalism is inherently good and any form of socialism evil, however there is a lot we do not understand about how the Federation works, too much to simply label the Federation with one of our own systems, doing so doesn't do it justice and is a mistake.

Federation society stresses cooperation and collective goals but does not force anyone to work towards them.

Starfleet builds Starfleet ships. Just because Starfleet builds it's own ships doesn't mean that civilians are not allowed to posses ships or that there is not a civilian shipbuilding industry. If a government suddenly decided to take direct control of ship or aircraft building rather than have private coporations build them for them would the yacht or private jet market suddenly become non-existant?

Is Starfleet building it's own ships absolute unrefuteable proof that the Federation is a pure communism?

Of course a greater issue is, is communism as a philosophy evil? Historical applications have been, but they were corrupt and built and sustained with the blood of thousands, millions even. The Federation is built on blood too, but it wasn't the reponsible party, it's foundation the blood of the tens of millions who died in World War III. If that level of destruction, if that level of death and the loss of decades, even a century of progess in a single conflict isn't enough to open people's eyes and make them more aware of the need for change or else risk another destructive conflict sometime in the future that might not leave any meaningful amount of survivors. A global, nuclear war and subsequent dark age is something we can only speculate on the social consequences of, who are we to say that such an event WOULDN'T cause significant, lasting and positive change?

You can talk all you want about human nature being corrupt and cruel ect. but humanity also has the potential for goodness as well. Only a small percentage of society engages in criminal acts while the rest go about their daily lives at worst and at best try to do something positive at best. Obviously only a small percentage of the population is unable to overcome their inherent evilness by simply being born human, otherwise there would be chaos on a greater scale than currently exists.