You want to make star trek more of a left utopia than a liberal one. What changes do you make to the federation? What changes do you make to the setting at large?
You want to make star trek more of a left utopia than a liberal one. What changes do you make to the federation? What changes do you make to the setting at large?
Banks solves this in The Culture with Special Circumstances, which "gently" removes the impediments a species might have to achieve post-scarcity (and who are considered absolutely scary psychopaths by the civilisation at large.) This bites them in the arse at least once, when they try to dismantle a divinely ordered caste system only to find out the gods actually exist.
Still SC is what Starfleet ought to be, despite its problems. I hate libs using SC to both sides the culture, or claiming banks wrote it to show the inherant evils of gommunism
SC is actually the far right nationalist branch of the culture, they are moderate left by US standards.
Contact in General is prime directive, as their goal is to help the planets get better, but they often don’t Culture shock them, as Culture culture could basically destroy any pre-built identity.
The culture tends to let a billion die this year, so that in a 100 years, 500 billion can join the culture.
Culture also has open borders and the AI act as benevolent dictators/ Vanguard party.
I think the fact they seemingly allow anyone to visit for indefinite periods is wild,
Also that SC tends to be made up of Immigrants is fairly interesting, like if you grew up in the Culture- maybe you end up in Contact, but you need the outsider perspective of knowing the Culture IS better and having gone through Culture Shock to be willing to manipulate wars and economies instead of simply killing the rulers of a society.
The Culture would manipulate the Federation into shifting to a more Culture view of “why settle planets? How much work really needs to be done?” But the Culture also wants to allow cultures to go their own way so long as they aren’t harming themselves and others too much, based on the Cultures standards, which because the Culture is the bastion of Liberty- they constantly debate if they are truly righteous or just Imperialism pretending to be Anarchy.
i really need to read more of those books.