Movie News & Miscellany
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GasBandit
Staff member
But they did have "food synthesizers," which cover the most important economic aspect of replicators.
Your lack of understanding has only grown with time. If there are unlimited resources, all economic models become moot because they're all based on the distribution of limited resources. So socialism becomes the default, because whatever you need is just there to be provided for you - and it doesn't hurt the group if you don't contribute a thing.
You try to malign libertarianism by renaming charity "voluntary socialism." That doesn't work because socialist redistribution is, by its very nature, manditory - not voluntary. It's as much a misnomer as calling murder "involuntary assisted suicide."
And they have no individuality at all. They literally are drones with no independent thought, completely surrendering their identity to the hivemind. So it really becomes apples to oranges, there - you might as well be looking at an insect colony.
Gas gets it. And the only reason economies like the Ferengi's can work at all is through legal frameworks that protect and prevent replicators from copying protected products. This is why you can make a brand of cola on Ferenginar and make money through sales: no one is allowed to replicate the formula that you've patented and breaking that law results in hefty fines. In order to facilitate trade, they use an unreplicatable element suspended in gold as currency because it's rarity and uselessness makes it perfect as currency... and there is still a market for "real" food and drink because replicated food and drink lacks the novelty and subtly of the real stuff. There are also some restrictions on what you can and can't replicate. For instance, you can't replicate weapons or alcohol. This is why Quark can sell bottles of alcohol to his patrons and make so much money.
Compare this to Earth. Sisko's father runs a Creole restaurant on Earth and it's implied that no one pays for anything because HE doesn't have to pay for his ingredients. Instead, he serves the community by serving the food that the fishermen catch and the locals who eat there each contribute (or don't) something to community, like clothes or acting as teachers and such. Each of these people have a replicator, they don't NEED to be doing this. But they do it because it gives their lives meaning: Sisko's father has devoted his life to the art of Creole cooking in the same way engineers and doctors do, but he's only able to do it so freely because he never has to worry about his living situation.
GasBandit
Staff member
And you have to wonder for howevermany Sisko Seniors there are contributing by doing what they love, how many holodeck junky neckbeards are there doing nothing but eating, sleeping, shitting, and fucking hologirls til they die. I know which I'd probably fall into.
Ultimately though, it doesn't matter because technological advancements have increased productivity so high that a few people can effectively provide for hundreds, if not thousands of people. Also, those anti-social losers who never find a mate are probably half the reason why Earth has such a manageable population. The other reason is off-world colonies: people who want adventure (or just don't like Federation life) can rough it for a few decades in space and get to determine their own destiny.
*raises hand*
It's somewhat implied this is responsible not only for lower population, but also for an improvement of the genetic make-up of the race. Eugenetic Wars and all that having stopped "everyone gets superbabies", the weak die off and only the Hollywood-good-looking go-getters procreate.
Yes, obviously saying that one of the main tenets of socialism is to make sure everyone benefits from resources is the same thing as saying that socialism is just being nice to other people...
But fine, you're right, it's not socialism, it's just trying to solve the same problem as socialism by using charity... truly the difference is staggering...
Depends on how they work, it's not like just having food dispensing machines = having unlimited resources.
Yeah, i wasn't actually talking about unlimited resources, but more about how silly it is to say that socialism only works when you can give everyone enough resources to live on...
Well, duh...[DOUBLEPOST=1424065638,1424065491][/DOUBLEPOST]
TIL, Star Trek is actually a dystopia where the weak die off from hedonism.
Utopia, where the weak have died off from hedonism.
So what you're saying is that a society where everyone shared everything voluntarily wouldn't be socialist?
Well then, i guess Star Trek doesn't have socialism, as no one seems to be making them share, they just seem to do it because its the right thing to do.
...
And i wasn't maligning libertarianism with that, i was just pointing out that it still wants to deal with some people not getting enough resources by redistributing resources to them from others... because that sort of thing is a necessity in any society that doesn't want to let people starve to death.
Hey, like you said, alternative ways to organize that work better...
[DOUBLEPOST=1424066878,1424066650][/DOUBLEPOST]
Ah, i see, they all already died off, so it's not a dystopia any more...Utopia, where the weak have died off from hedonism.
Indeed.
Also, you really seem to want to make the case that any form of sharing or redistributing is socialism, then...Well, then there's plenty of "socialist" traits in the US already. Suddenly, hey, you're right - Obamacare IS socialism. Of course, the Catholic Church has just become a socialist institution, as has pretty much every other church, ever.
Socialism is about state-mandated redistribution of wealth to equalize income. Charity, goodwill, wellfare, many other social constructs, aren't "socialism". What you're poining out about libertarianism, btw, is pretty much "libertarianism isn't just plain a new word for anarchy after all!". That's....well, yes, very true.
Also, you really seem to want to make the case that any form of sharing or redistributing is socialism, then...Well, then there's plenty of "socialist" traits in the US already. Suddenly, hey, you're right - Obamacare IS socialism. Of course, the Catholic Church has just become a socialist institution, as has pretty much every other church, ever.
Socialism is about state-mandated redistribution of wealth to equalize income. Charity, goodwill, wellfare, many other social constructs, aren't "socialism". What you're poining out about libertarianism, btw, is pretty much "libertarianism isn't just plain a new word for anarchy after all!". That's....well, yes, very true.
Hey man, who has time to learn how to cook when there's holographic high school hentai/dating simulator games to be played?
It's more like they share everything because there is no reason not to. DS9 also showed that the Federation was perfectly willing to do monstrous things just to keep the status que, so it's more like the Federation is constantly sliding between a utopia and a dystopia. I think Quark put it to Nogg best...
GasBandit
Staff member
More like because it's impossible not to - when resources are infinite, ownership and distribution of them are moot points. You never have to take from some to give to others, because everybody already has infinite.[DOUBLEPOST=1424096962,1424096586][/DOUBLEPOST]
See my above reply to Ash - you can't "share" what is infinite. There's no altruism in dividing infinity by an integer. It'd be as silly as someone walking up to me and saying "can I breathe some of the air in your neighborhood?" Is it socialism that I let him?
Neil Blomkamp Alien movie is HAPPENING.
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/n...-fox-with-director-neill-blomkamp-1201436551/
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/n...-fox-with-director-neill-blomkamp-1201436551/
Heh, reminds me about how you we're going on about how one doesn't have to take from others to get rich, coz wealth can still be created.
....
But really, you know that some of us would still try to control an infinite resource in order to gain an advantage... you're just assuming they wouldn't be able to.
Bottled water says hi.
Air also has the property of being everywhere, which changes things.
An unlimited resource that still requires distribution could still be denied to some easily. (patent on replicators anyone)
An I thought you where a true american... of course it is, he didn't do anything to deserve that air, the lazy bum... that's just encouraging parasitism...
In the case of Star Trek, it was a Federation-wide project to produce Replicator technology. They literally didn't have it working correctly enough for star ship use until the 24th century, or about 200 years after the series Enterprise. At that point, there wasn't any reason to hold it back: they were already pretty far into utopia and this basically just cemented it.
That said, Janeway really wasn't willing to give up the technology in the Delta Quadrant basically because someone, somewhere would abuse it.
Bottled Water exists as a commodity because the quality of water systems around the world is wildly irregular. Even in the US, there are some counties and buildings that simply do not have drinkable water, ether because of crappy plumbing, tainted ground water, alien microbes (Montezuma's Revenge) or improper maintenance of water distribution systems. However, it also exists because it's convenient. If you want water, you can ether risk the random quality of unknown water supplies or pay a buck for a decent amount of clean, purified water in a convenient container.
And replicators do have copyright/patent protection... it's just that most Federation works are free to the public. If you want something from it that isn't in it's database, you have to manually add it to the program or program it yourself... and if you had a copy, you wouldn't go to the trouble. Piracy isn't a huge concern anymore because sales work on a pan-galactic scale now. You can literally have entire planets pirate your works and make money (if your selling). Economy of scale in motion, I guess.
And yes... a replicator could replicate a replicator. They make industrial sized ones for this very reason.
GasBandit
Staff member
So communism...
Yeah, they still sell it where the tap water quality is just fine, aka here.
Why? Because people buy it.
But you did mention convenience, which is what i was going for... just because something is unlimited doesn't mean its convenient to get it / share it.
The Federation is kind of a weird government system really... it has hallmarks of both Communism AND Socialism. However, it feels more appropriate to call them socialists, especially when compared to something like the Romulan Empire (which is far more authoritative and was Roddenberry's communist analog) or The Dominion (which IS full on communism, except with religious overtures).
In the original series, yes. But Next Gen and DS9 kind of turned the Klingon Empire into Japan (honor driven culture, good allies when possible) when they began to shown more sympathetically and the Romulan Empire began to appear more as a mix of Cold War Russia and China.
This is one of the times I feel the "no outside food or drink" rule needs to be enforced.
OH MY FREAKING GLOB!
For those of you who don't feel like clicking, not only is Adventure Time getting a movie, its produced by the people behind the Lego movie, and its probs gonna be awesome, and its gonna be in theaters and FUCK YES!
You have no idea how long I've wanted to make this post.
For those of you who don't feel like clicking, not only is Adventure Time getting a movie, its produced by the people behind the Lego movie, and its probs gonna be awesome, and its gonna be in theaters and FUCK YES!
You have no idea how long I've wanted to make this post.
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I'll have to find a way to get caught up on the show before then. Thanks to slow DVD releases, we're over two seasons behind and that's a sucky feeling.
I tried to get into the show. Even managed to push myself through all of Season 1. It's just...too weird for me. Like a lot of it is being weird for weird's sake. I can sort of see why people like it, but I can't understand why it's become such a huge phenomenon among nerd culture.
I've read the creators admitted they didn't really have a plan in mind for the 1st season, so that added to the all-over-the-place weirdness. I didn't get into it until season 2 or 3 when they started to really flesh out the world and it's history. If you're still curious, you might want to give it a shot now that it's a little more focused, although there are still a lot of random episodes. I'm don't always love the weird ones, but the ones that fill out the characters back-stories have been really creative and well-written.