How many people before it becomes wrong?, Star Trek Insurrection

[suarezguy]

We aren't talking bargaining here. The facts would be $1 billion. The point is that it would be something extremely valuable and reasonable that the vast majority would think is a fair trade. With a life on the line, you do what has to be done.

Your original scenario was a very generous offer and, if refused, taking the good by force. I don't think either individuals or a government would really be willing to offer so much in exchange. They don't really do whatever has to be done if it hurts themselves (even if exchange for a gain), they're more often willing to hurt someone else than bear a smaller increased cost themselves.
Even if they were willing to offer that much, if they used force on being refused I think they later would gradually offer and less and less so using force would also get less and less justified.

We know that on Earth, there is a severe energy crisis due to natural resources being depleted. That would certainly indicate a bad quality of life for Earth's people.

I think Cameron was implying and complaining that humans of the future and, implicitly, the present and near-future, were facing shortages because they had been indulgent or at least far from conservationist for a long time and the crisis for the bulk of the population would be much alleviated if the government imposed more conservation and redistribution but chose not to.

Imagine if Anij had come out and said out loud what's implicit in all this: we've got ours and the rest of you can suck it - we don't care about anybody else and we're not going to share or compromise.

I'm not sure what compromise the characters could or should have pursued, especially after the initial attempt was to secretly take them away from their planet. An obvious compromise, which Picard advocates and assumes the Baku would accept, would be for the Son'a to have and live in an other part of the planet; the Admiral says they wouldn't be willing to do so and that other species also wouldn't want to. It apparently could be a great benefit for billions but hardly any of those billions would go to the inconvenience of moving to get the great benefit.

 

[urbandefault]

The Sona were developmentally-arrested adolescents. They chose to leave, and when they suffered the consequences, chose to punish the Baku.

The Feds were tempted with a 'fountain of youth' and convinced that by helping the Sona they could harvest that fountain. It probably wouldn't have worked, but the prospect of healing and eternal youth blinded them of the fact that they were violating their own non-interference directive.

It's never right to take something from someone else without their permission, even if it benefits the masses. For an enlightened society it's a no-brainer. To come in like a thief in the night and relocate a population, no matter how small, is a dickish move.

A simple first contact conversation might have saved the lives of the Sona, and avoided the conflict altogether. If Data had been allowed to report what he found the conflict could have been avoided.

I wonder how any proponents of the Sona plan would feel if they were relocated without consent, only to find out later that their home had been taken by force. I seriously doubt that many would be ok with it.

And still, there was no guarantee that the destruction of the planet would have resulted in the planned benefit.

So if any of you pro-Sona folks are ever anywhere near my home, just walk on by.

 

[Jetboogieman]

Well... It's not unlike the rail track dilemma that every freshman doing a law degree gets asked.

On the face of it, relocating a person without their consent is morally wrong.

On the other side of the coin if relocating the one person could prolong the life of 10000000 people and cure them of untold amounts of ailments... Is it not going to suddenly become morally ambiguous?

Now imagine you're a sprawling intergalactic space nation with billions upon billions of citizens, 600 Amish people stand between you and tripling their life spans and curing them of a multitude of diseases that has eluded your best medical minds for centuries... What do you do?

 

[Ithekro]

What do you do?

Figure out how it works before potentially destroying it forever to the benefit of no one.

 

[Nyotarules]

At the risk of going off topic, is it so unethical to survive though? Avatar and Insurrection had very similar themes, so it would apply to both movies. Avatar, if anything, had an even more justifiable cause because unlike the Federation, Earth was in very bad shape and this was needed to survive. In both movies, the alien race was preventing something even though the first attempts from Earth was to go for a peaceful solution--something that was arguably unreasonably withheld by the aliens.

In Insurrection, the Baku were not even indigenous to the planet. In Avatar, the aliens were, but Earth tried the peaceful path first.

Look at it this way--let's say you were poisoned and I had the cure. You offer me $1 billion for the cure. I say no. Not because giving you the cure would hurt me, but because I have some belief that makes me decide not to help you. Wouldn't you at that point, with your life on the line, be justified to take it by force?

Change it to be more selfless and make the victim your family, or the entire human race.

You want a real life example, you have no medical insurance, you are dying of cancer or your child is, yet you know your society has the wealth to treat you for free, do you show up at the hospital and demand the medical staff treat you, show up at the medical insurance company with a gun and take the insurers hostage and demand insurance? See how far that gets you with law enforcement. Welcome to a society that operates private healthcare...

 

[Nyotarules]

I'm not sure what compromise the characters could or should have pursued, especially after the initial attempt was to secretly take them away from their planet. An obvious compromise, which Picard advocates and assumes the Baku would accept, would be for the Son'a to have and live in an other part of the planet; the Admiral says they wouldn't be willing to do so and that other species also wouldn't want to. It apparently could be a great benefit for billions but hardly any of those billions would go to the inconvenience of moving to get the great benefit.

Which dilutes their argument even more. If Federation citizen X was told move to Baku planet and guarantee your stage 4 xenopolycythemia will be cured, you will live to 240 instead of dying at 50 have a higher standard of living then what you have now and they turned round and said, 'No I would rather stay in Albuquerque' then on their head be it.
Me,m after seeing all those gorgeous, virile males would shout out sign me up, now!

 

[Tenacity]

You want a real life example, you have no medical insurance, you are dying of cancer or your child is

And you have a billion dollars to offer a hospital for treatment?

Me,m after seeing all those gorgeous, virile males would shout out sign me up, now!

Or ... give those men the two options of traveling to the factory that makes the cure, or have the cure shipped to a medical clinic near their homes, and see which option they choose.

Consider how many people in the Federation (and probably outside of it) can be in some way helped, now insist that every last one of them uproot they lives and all travel to a isolated planet.

Figure out how it works before potentially destroying it forever to the benefit of no one.

And how many people suffer various afflictions and in some cases die while you're doing that. The Admiral said "he" didn't understand the collection process, not that the Federation sciences didn't understand how the particles worked.

 

[psCargile]

The problem is the Prime Directive. You got two small populations taking up a small bit of real estate on a whole planet. Set up shop on another continent and forget the Baku.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I believe it is in fact a recommendation (or standard convention) advised by some SI committee, to use spaces for thousands separators, and either a . or a , as the decimal mark, of course provided you are consistent once you've chosen one of these.
So 123 456 would always be an integer, and both 123 456.78 and 123 456,78 would be acceptable.



Yeah, but that's something that has bothered me more in general. There seems to be some kind of "definititon" what Federation space is, and what not, and I suppose that within that space, the Federation is free to take any planet they like.

But suppose in the middle of Federation space there is an inhabited planet, stone age level. Another planet or asteroid belt in that very same solar system has an insane amount of rare resources. Is the Federation allowed to exploit that, or should it by right belong to the stone age people in whose solar system it is, for the era in which they do develop space travel, even if that period won't come for at least a few thousand years? They can't negotiate with the inhabitants, because that would be violation of the prime directive.

You know, from a moral perspective, the Federation would be doing its citizens a disservice by NOT taking this immortality planet and figuring it out. It is justifiable that 600 people be allowed to prevent trillions from being helped.

Of course, I also sided with the humans in Avatar for similar reasons. If Earth is dying, and there is something on another planet that can fix the problem, and a group of people are refusing to help, you're fighting for your life, and it makes sense to do whatever it takes to save your people.

Yeah, what is and isn't Federation space has always been kind of confusing to me. When the federation finds an unclaimed planet somewhere, they claim it, then settle it. If an adversary disputes the claim, the Fed's answer seems to be 'we found it first, we have a right to settle there'.

So it's kind of hard to see the Fed's rights to this planet--the Baku found the planet decades before the Federation even came into existence, earth was barely in space itself.

Like I said I don't really think the Federation is colonialist, but it can do some sketchy things without realizing it's doing sketchy things. Like threating to strip Data down to his bare wires just because they suspected he was holding back some information. The dude's a recognized federation citizen isn't he?

So is it believable the Federation can "accidently" do something colonial?


Another thing--The Ba'ku and the Sona are obviously aware of space travel and alien cultures. Why was Starfleet hiding from them, and why didn't they just approach them and ask about studying the radiation? They just made everything needlessly complicated.

 

[Nyotarules]

Why was Starfleet hiding from them, and why didn't they just approach them and ask about studying the radiation? They just made everything needlessly complicated

The Federation thought the land of pretty, blonde people were primitive and ignorant. Boy were they wrong!

 

[Tenacity]

The problem is the Prime Directive. You got two small populations taking up a small bit of real estate on a whole planet. Set up shop on another continent and forget the Baku.

Remember though, the Federation wasn't primarily interested in the planet, they wanted the ring of particles around it.

If an adversary disputes the claim, the Fed's answer seems to be 'we found it first, we have a right to settle there'.

With the long war with the Cardassians, it was never said that the colonists from the Federation got there first. All we know is the Federation and the Cardassians were fighting over possession of the same area of space.

The Federation thought the land of pretty, blonde people were primitive and ignorant. Boy were they wrong!

The impression I got from the movie was only Picard and his crew thought the Baku were primatives, and that misconception only lasted a few hours. The Council knew that the Baku were immigrates, because the Admiral knew. Obviously the Baku and the Sona knew.

 

[FormerLurker]

The Federation wasn't interested in the particles, they were interested in what the Son'a told them to be interested in, which was what the particles supposedly did. I say supposedly, because while the Federation had assurances from the Son'a that the particles were the maguffin, they demonstrated throughout the whole thing that they couldn't be trusted, especially Ru'afo.

So now you have a dishonest informant telling you that the only way to get the particles to the masses is to take them away from the planet they orbit. Why did Dougherty believe them in the first place? Remember, until the Enterprise got there, all Federation/Starfleet personnel were shielded against their effects.

At the same time, this dishonest informant is ultimately revealed to have a personal vendetta against the local inhabitants. This invalidates any argument about whether they're native or not. The Son'a, especially their leader Ru'afo, wants revenge for some almost forgotten wrong from decades ago, and it quickly becomes clear that taking the particles and destroying the planet is his means of getting it. This calls everything that the Son'a have been telling the Federation into question. And at that point, the Federation has it in their own best interests to stop the collection process, and go over the entire system, even the entire Briar Patch, with a fine tooth comb to find out the real truth. Meanwhile, let the Ba'ku alone until the examination is complete, and discuss the findings with the Ba'ku when it's done, as it's their home that will be affected once a decision is made.

 

[Ithekro]

The Council knew that the Baku were immigrates, because the Admiral knew. Obviously the Baku and the Sona knew.

If so than the Federation totally botched that First Contact situation by playing the sneak and plotting to abduct the entire population of the planet and then burn the surface to strip mine the orbital ring.

This is not the hallmark of a well planned Starfleet operation. This is just a stupid plan that is likely to fail even without Picard and the Enterprise showing up. The S'ona basically are going to screw the Federation and probably, if anyone benefits at all, it will be the crew on the ship that collects the materials...and after that, my bet it won't work ever again.

That is how this entire situation reads to me. So it isn't even a matter of how many people make something justified, this is just a bad plan designed to fail for the benefit of, at most, a single S'ona ship, and quite possibly just one person given how they seem to operate. Would you be willing to displace 600 people and wipe out all chances of the "Planet of Youth" from helping others for the benefit of just Ru'afo? Because that is what this plot boils down to in the end.

 

[Tallguy]

One wonders why the S'ona didn't murder the 600 Baku before they even brought in the Feds?

 

[Tenacity]

^ Right up to the end of the movie, when the Sona leader started to become desperate, the Sona seemed to be going out of their way to keep from harming the Baku in mass.

When the Sona sent the Starfleet prisoners to a poorly shielded part of their ship, they didn't do the same with the Baku prisoners.

 

[DonIago]

Because the planet was in Federation space. The Feds probably detected a Son'a ship at the border, and then the discussions began.

 

[Ithekro]

Son'a don't appear to have cloaking technology, so they can't just cross into Federation space to do what they want to the planet. Especially during the Dominion War.

The Son'a didn't seem to want to harm directly the Baku, because they really didn't seem like they wanted to kill their parents. Punish them, maybe. strip the planet for spite, maybe. Kill, no. There are somethings people of many species just don't do with just cause or being total psychopaths.

 

[DonIago]

Indeed. As I've mentioned before, while Ru'afo seems pretty happy with the idea of killing the Baku if it comes to that, Gallitin and presumably others seem less inclined to do so.

 

[Tenacity]

Son'a don't appear to have cloaking technology, so they can't just cross into Federation space to do what they want to the planet. Especially during the Dominion War.

Given the figures Picard gave for the Federation's numbers of planets, and how spread out they were, I would imagine that the majority of interstellar civilizations in the area of the Federation weren't Federation members. And most of "Federation space" was other peoples space too.

A eight thousand light year stretch of the galaxy is going to have millions of star systems, the Federation is going to have a lot of warp traffic that they have zero authority over.

 

[at Quark's]

^But that would seem like an open door for smugglers and such. I mean, they still must have some form of authority to fight that off in their domain. Or would there be different 'degrees' of Federation space? Such as volumes of space where they can truly enforce their laws, and volumes that are thought to belong to the 'Federation volume of influence' in a very general sense only?