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Wish List for Star Trek: 2017

Because in the future there are such laws. And actually there such laws currently too. At least in Finland stores cannot give away for free stuff that is past its sell by date. It is illegal to give people food poisoning, whether you do it for profit or sport. This seems eminently sensible law to me.

But that's still food coming from a vendor. He makes a profit for his goods therefore is asked to follow rules and regulations. If you come round to my house and say "can I have your moldy bread" and I say yes, It's not my problem if you eat it and throw up. I was not selling it to you in accordance with any law. I was just letting you have it. As such, you are responsible for choosing to eat it. This is the murky water of a society that does everything for fun (rather than profit). You choosing to drink my wine is no different to you choosing to drink from my toilet.

If these laws exist in the future, the question remains... why would I agree to them? What's in it for me to agree to make wine to a set standard even though I don't sell the stuff? To allow inspectors to check the production? To allow the government to dictate terms? I thought we were all just doing things for fun? Doesn't sound like fun.

But everyone gets the same treatment! (Things like health and family size of course being considered.) Where's the unfairness? Should I challenge you to come up with a capitalist system that perfectly avoids any unfairness?

But I'm not defending capitalism as fair. It isn't fair. I'm criticising the Trek society for being unfair.

If everyone gets the same treatment, why are humans and Trill working in mines on New Sidney? Why is Cassidy Yates moving cargo for profit when she could be running a restaurant on Earth for fun?
 
If these laws exist in the future, the question remains... why would I agree to them? What's in it for me to agree to make wine to a set standard even though I don't sell the stuff? To allow inspectors to check the production? To allow the government to dictate terms? I thought we were all just doing things for fun? Doesn't sound like fun.
What's in it for you is the fact that you can walk in any random restaurant run by some random bloke for fun and not be afraid for your life.

But I'm not defending capitalism as fair. It isn't fair. I'm criticising the Trek society for being unfair.
It is as fair as reasonably possible. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you (or anyone) cannot come up with fairer way of doing things, then it is as fair as it can get.

If everyone gets the same treatment, why are humans and Trill working in mines on New Sidney? Why is Cassidy Yates moving cargo for profit when she could be running a restaurant on Earth for fun?
There is no indication that New Sydney was part of Federation (I'm actually pretty sure it wasn't, as it is said to be under influence of the Orion Syndicate.) As for Yates, I don't know, maybe she wanted danger and excitement?

Furthermore, it is certainly possible (even likely) that this system is not working as perfectly in distant colonies where the infrastructure is still being developed.
 
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As for Yates, I don't know, maybe she wanted danger and excitement?
Or she was looking to make a living and pay her financial bills and meet her payroll. I'm sure her crew fully expected to get paid their wages.
There is no indication that New Sydney was part of Federation (I'm actually pretty sure it wasn't)
The question was why do Humans perform such activities. New Sydney is a Human world (as indicate by the name of the planet and the star), if Humans have a "everything's free" economy, why are they working in the mines?

And in other places besides New Sydney too.
Different opinions should not be given equal value, because they are not of equal value.
But that would be a matter of you (or myself) expressing an value judgement, "that is someone else idea and not my own, so for that reason alone it is unworthy."
Not that I am particular interested in US politics, but isn't the Tea Party a group of religious nutjobs? At least that is the impression I got from the things I heard of them.
The Tea Party was a lose lobbying organization from a few years ago, with the aim of government fiscal responsibility at the federal level. Reduction of national debt, government programs, overall spending and ultimately taxation.

Your basic advocacy of government austerity.
Seriously, Federation credits. How do they not contradict the "no money"-rule? Well, it's because our starship is out there, in the FRONTIER: And the Frontier is NO post-scarcity place
Yet right on Earth, McCoy had "the money" to hire a starship. Scotty had the means to purchase a boat. And Kirk was able to sell private property.

Risa (per ENT) was relatively close to Earth and (per DS9) was in the Federation, while there Picard purchased a statue.
No it isn't. In ~700 hours of content, it's been mentioned in a few fleeting lines of dialog.
How can you get more 'core identity'?
The are a few references to no money, and there are references to money (in some form) being used by Humans and the Federation. The thing is the "yes money" references greatly out number the "no money."
But then episodes would become a lecture on future economics
No lecture required, a few clear passing pieces of dialog would do nicely.
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The Tea Party was a lose lobbying organization from a few years ago, with the aim of government fiscal responsibility at the federal level. Reduction of national debt, government programs, overall spending and ultimately taxation.

Your basic advocacy of government austerity.
Somehow overlooking that they are religious fundamentalist, guns for everyone, gays are evil, Muslims are evil, Washington is evil but for some reason we want in, nutjobs.
 
^
Nope.
2nd amendment already exists.
I'm gay.
Don't come up.
Washington is broke, not evil.
Takes one to know one
 
Sarah Palin.
I've never met her myself, but she seems to be a lovely person.

It has come up before the idea that the "inner" Federation would have one economic system, while the "outer" Federation would have a completely different system, this makes no sense. I could see there being a slight difference planet to planet depending on local economic policy, but not a radical disconnect like having money in one system and then a few light years away everything is free, only because the second system was closer to the center.
What would prevent (or would you) businesses from the outer area from sending huge freighters to a system just inside the cut off line and loading up for free? Then traveling a small number of light years to a money system and selling all the free stuff?
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I think an important point about labour in Trek is that strong AI is extremely rare (e.g. Data). This means that even with automation there will still be "scarcity" of labour resources for product design, engineering decision making, sophisticated services, writing and producing entertainment etc.

But here's the grip.
You don't NEED 'real/strong AI' to eliminate labour.
Labour is based either on highly specialized or repetitive tasks... both of which computers surpassed Humans at over a decade ago in real life .(which is something that Ray Kurzweill himself stated and confirmed) - but most people weren't, and still aren't aware of this.
Trek is far more advanced compared to current day, and there's nothing special about biological organisms that would make them superior to machines/computers.
Creativity for example is nothing more than an ability in extrapolating patterns from a jumble of information.
Machines already do this (in a far faster and more efficient way) and teach humans about art, science, etc. - however, the application thus far has been relatively limited.
And besides, we've seen Federation technology is capable of massive automation as well as self-repair and maintenance.
Most labour tasks would likely be done in Starfleet for training purposes, but a rigid implementation within a hierarchical structure is a bit incompatible with automation, seeing how a gamification approach would be far superior and would maintain people's skills in a variety of fields in a more engaging manner - while Starfleet ships aren't exactly all stickler for rules and regulations... I do think they need to reduce this even further and start noticing that rigid approaches seem to harm crew performance. Gamification is one of the ways one can still maintain high standards without needing to be ridiculously rigid.

Current society is somewhat phobic towards automation and many see it as a negative (without being able to visualise the incredible benefits that this could bring to everyone) because most of their ideas about it come from unrealistic films like Terminator that have very little in common with reality and portray technology and science in a negative (and unrealistic) way - more often to produce drama and 'conflict' while forgetting that Humans are the ones who usually operate the machinery and drive it, and have created a society based on artificial scarcity that promotes cyclical consumption and generates massive inequality along with negative behaviours such as greed, selfishness, etc.- and its possible a potential AI might behave like this initially, but that 'initial moment' wouldn't last very long considering the computational power needed behind an AI and the body of knowledge it would need to have.

If we were to develop a 'true AI', I don't think it would be remotely 'evil' or try to exterminate us... or at least, this possibility it relatively low.
Because it would likely have access to the whole sum of Human knowledge (which is a heck of a lot more than any Human can possibly hold at any moment - we all hold a mere fraction of information at any given time, even if we are highly skilled or specialized in an area, because new information comes out on a daily basis in massive amounts and it quite simply not possible for us to keep up as we are), and unless the AI is limited in information intentionally (which I doubt, because it needs a huge database and accurate scientific information to work properly), I don't think technology will present any danger to us... except to possibly Humans who have relatively fragile ego's and suffer from an incredible lack of exposure to relevant general education, critical thinking and problem solving that would prevent them from seeing the bigger picture - very much like Trek writers had a certain amount of understanding and a good idea, but certainly not enough to flesh it out in completion.
To their credit, I think they did as much as they could given the circumstances... today however, we can do a lot more.
 
All the past Star Trek series and movies had a clear gender imbalance. There were always much more male characters than female characters. I want that to change. At least there should be equality or even better more female characters than male characters. If they could do it for decades the other way around, nothing speaks against it in my opinion.
 
All the past Star Trek series and movies had a clear gender imbalance. There were always much more male characters than female characters. I want that to change. At least there should be equality or even better more female characters than male characters. If they could do it for decades the other way around, nothing speaks against it in my opinion.
Agreed absolutely!
 
Current society is somewhat phobic towards automation and many see it as a negative (without being able to visualise the incredible benefits that this could bring to everyone) because ...
The "phobic" (to use a term) towards automation more stems from a desire to remained employed at a vocation that could be automated, said automation would result in unemployment, which is undesirable.

So no they can't "visualize the incredible benefits" because for the individual who loses their job there is no benefit. Being force out of a manufacturing job into a service industry job isn't a benefit. When unions fight automation, it isn't because the union membership fears terminators.

They fear the loss of lifestyle.
SOme writers ... them explaining a moneyless-society leads to stupid episodes like the one with Jake, where they really weren't taking the concept seriously and mocking it
I don't think it was "mocking," the show's writers lived in Southern California in a society with money and a market economy, I think this is the reason that references to the Federation being a "yes money" society kept showing up over and over. The writers were writing "what they knew."

So Quark naturally gets his cousin out of a Starbase holding cell, by paying the cousin's fine.

=
 
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But seriously though, other than the pseudo-communist and atheistic elements of the Federation, Trek has some pretty serious production and writing issues that need to be addressed in any new series.
 
In a new Trek series, I would like it to be seen that the characters and the society are not perfect, but not to the point that it becomes dark and depressing. That's the reason I was never able to get into Stargate Universe and I loved the previous 2 series.

I would like to see alien characters whose cultures are not just defined by one thing (Klingon honor, Vulcan logic, Ferengi greed are some examples).

Maybe with CGI, you could have some truly alien, non humanoid characters.
 
I'd like to see characters who exist outside of the bridge crew. Maybe a few threads running through the show and not just pew pew bridge orientated shenanigans. Something more complex and interesting. You could even have an episode where we see events unfold from the perspective of the bridge crew and then an episode where the same events are seen from the perspective of the non-bridge crew. I dunno. Something.
 
Maybe with CGI, you could have some truly alien, non humanoid characters.

Or they could use puppets. Might be cheaper. Farscape did a great job with them in my opinion. For Thor in Stargate they used often also a puppet. It looked more convincing than the CGI version of him. And one of my favourite Star Trek aliens is the Horta and it was just a costume. It would be nice, if a Horta could be a member of the crew.
 
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