It seems like Trek handwaved away or ignored a lot of the issues that weren't directly solved by replicators. Joseph Sisko had a restaurant on earth. The idea of a guy who loves to cook for people having a place where anyone can walk in off the street, order from a menu, and eat for free is easy to envision. The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space. Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up.
I'm interested in seeing Solarpunk grow so that we can see different people's ideas on how issues like this can be addressed without these fictional worlds becoming dystopian.
That part that bothered me is that everyone in the Federation appears to have more or less the same worldview. That struck me as sort of a cop out versus depicting the characters having to navigate different worldviews/religions/ideologies making up the Federation.
Most of that kind of conflict was usually framed in terms of human vs alien. Sometimes it was still within the federation (Worf trying to get someone to kill him when he was injured and likely wouldn't fully recover for example), but a lot of it was dealing with outsiders like humans having to deal with Ferengi who had very different ideology when it came to things like greed or women's rights.
For outsiders, while the show was pretty careful about expressing a respect for differing cultural views, they did seem to side one way or the other. When there was disagreement within the federation it tended to be a single person or small fraction with an unpopular opinion (like the guy who wanted to disassemble and reverse-engineer Data) creating conflict vs a sizable faction.
I sort of thought that was the whole point of the show: the humans live in a liberal utopia according to western progressives and the aliens are everyone else in the world they have to get along with.
It let the writers comment on contemporary issues with adjustable knobs for violence, sex, and laser beams, in hopes that the right cocktail could dislodge people from from their instinctive association with a political identity and let them learn something.
It seems to me the assumption of consensus with disagreement coming from small fringe factions mirrored much of the American experience during the TNG era.
To me, it seemed pretty clear that in the Federation context a restaurant or a bar is a cultural space and its value would be beyond its ability to produce meals for hungry people
> The problem comes when you start to think about how there's a very finite amount of physical space.
It's not finite in a practical sense, especially if you are a space faring civilization. Certain space is treasured and in demand, but space usage overall comes down to how well you can utilize it (how tall your buildings can be), and how you access it. And in Star Trek, they have transporter, allowing people to live everywhere and still visiting most places casually for breakfast.
Even today, humankind on earth is not going out of space. Instead, we have problems with finding places which are easier to utilize for the majority, or which are popular for cultural reasons. But the first one is no problem in Star Trek, and the second one seems to have reached a peaceful solution.
> Questions like who decided that he should have that property for his restaurant vs anyone else who wanted to do something with it just never come up.
Who decides today that someone should have a certain space? And I'm not talking about money, welfare-projects exists today too. Every society has their organization, why should this different just because they have no money by our understanding?
And why do you think it's a privilege for Sisko to open a restaurant that others have not? I would think everyone can open a restaurant if they wish, but they simply do not wish to do this if they have no monetary stress doing it. At the end, a restaurant is hard work, not everyone is willing to put up with this.
Yeah. Star Trek is very "Look at this cool society" without "This is how we got there"
I dont know if it is still canon, but the vulcans supposedly simply "fixed" earths economy and transitioned humans away from money. Its very surface level. They never go into depth about how that was done or what the downsides were.
Even in say, Arthur C Clarke's childhoods end, there were details about the how and why people resisted the overlords.
Some episodes explored steps along the journey. Eg. DS9's Past Tense where they're taken back in time to a Sanctuary District confronts poverty and homelessness.
I'm interested in seeing Solarpunk grow so that we can see different people's ideas on how issues like this can be addressed without these fictional worlds becoming dystopian.