The funny thing is that they set DS9 outside the Federation deliberately so that they could get around the whole post-scarcity socialist society thing. The canon was explicit enough that they said "Fuck it, we're just going to set it in some backwater part of the universe so that we don't have to deal with all the commie mumbo jumbo." I wish Gene Roddenberry were around today, I bet he'd be excited about the small but very real resurgence of actual left wing politics, and new Star Trek would reflect that more than the current stuff does.
The funny thing is that they set DS9 outside the Federation deliberately so that they could get around the whole post-scarcity socialist society thing. The canon was explicit enough that they said "Fuck it, we're just going to set it in some backwater part of the universe so that we don't have to deal with all the commie mumbo jumbo." I wish Gene Roddenberry were around today, I bet he'd be excited about the small but very real resurgence of actual left wing politics, and new Star Trek would reflect that more than the current stuff does.