This is a universe with faster than light travel and near infinite resources. There's a homeless shelter in one of the major cities. I helped them out. Why the fuck is there a homeless shelter in a universe with FTL and near infinite resources?
I'm starting to think Fallout under Bethesda isn't a satire and their writers are just incapable of imagining anything beyond capitalism.
The main problem with this is that the economy makes no sense. There shouldn't be homeless camps in America from the standpoint of reasonable allocation of resources, but in Starfield a spaceship costs pocket change, so it actually just doesn't make sense, as opposed to a more grounded sci-fi capitalist version of the setting where there absolutely would be homeless, but that's because homes and ships actually cost a lot.
I assume the answer is yes because this is a bethesda game, but is the player still expected to go around looting random junk and bandit shinbones from every encounter, then sell them to some random merchant in a hub afterwards?
Yes
DeBeers diamonds should cost a fraction of what they do, but artificial scarcity was enforced.
The long fantasized prosperity that space billionaires promised to bring to Earth from asteroid mining would be gated off and hoarded the same way.