Eddington's vitriolic assessment of The Federation

How are the people on typical Federation worlds/space habitats living with "no purpose"? Also, I would counter that luxury is relative; the twenty-fourth century standard of living is luxurious to us, yes, but ordinary to them. People of the future would observe our milieu - struggling to put food on the table and going bankrupt over necessary surgeries - and deem our existence "barbaric" or "brutal"...perhaps "exploitative".

 

I feel like you either believe people would put accomplishment over comfort or you don't.

 

You don't need to colonize a planet to improve or enrich yourself.

 

I asked whether you had actually done what I asked, not whether you find the idea appealing.

 

That is not a choice that needs to be made. Not now, and not in the Federation. ("Luxury" has connotations that don't necessarily always apply to Federation citizens, but I assume we're talking about comfort as opposed to ostentatious wealth.)

 

I'm mostly commenting on the fact that I think there would be no end of people who would go to the colonies in the Federation to build a new life away from the luxury and security of the Federation.

 

Some, sure. But the choice to do that is part of the freedom that comes with being a Federation citizen.

 

Am I the only one on this forum who actually like Michael Eddington?

In fact, I think he was doing the right thing. I left Starfleet to become a Freedom Fighter when his home colony was threatened and the colonists attacked by the Cardassians.

I can undertstand him in many ways.

I also think that he had some points when it came to his criticism of The Federation even if I actually like the way the Federation is functioning and it's laws, including the Prime Directive.

But I must admit that The federation actually acted shamefully when the abandoned those colonies and its inhabitants. Not to mention that the Cardassians did thank The federation by joining the Dominion and declare war against the Federation later on.

 

The federation signed a mutually agreed peace contract which included compromises.
Did they like those compromises? Not much, but that’s the nature of a compromise. You grind your teeth and make the best of it.
The moment Cardassia decided, to start a new war and break the contract, I don’t think the Federation kept abiding to the compromises anymore. But they wouldn’t and couldn’t break it first.

 

The colonies didn't have any self-determination for the Federation to interfere with. They were first a possession of the Federation, then later a possession of the Cardassian Union

How did the Cardassians break the peace? I thought that was the USS Sutherland (which Picard managed to smooth over) and later the Maquis?

When and how was that?

Probably more so: he took it very personally, so if the betrayal was by someone closer to him, he probably would have felt the resulting anger more fully.

I thought that was Eaves' personal collection. there are at least two of the Enterprise-A, plus the Eaglemoss versions.

I think she's saying that they're "racially" Federation citizens (of whatever species or skin colour), and as such are "superior" to other species such as Cardassians, Ferengi, or Klingons.

My limited understanding the real-world process is that they would be overseas possessions of the state the colonists came from until they secede from that state

The lands of north America were variously English, French and Spanish until they (at various points nd methods) became what is now the United States.

I think good real world analogies might be Guam for the US or the Falkland Islands for the UK. While largely self-governing on a day-to-day basis, they are overseas possessions of the respective countries. The US might secede possession of Guam to Australia in the peace process after a hypothetical conflict between the two; the circumstances would decide what, if any, say the population of Guam might have in the matter.

A lot of this story does remind me a European attitudes splitting up the middle-east in the wake of WWI; including Nechayez's assumption of racial superiority. I don't know how deliberate this was on the part of the writers, or whether it was mimicing prevaliing US values at the time.

dJE

 

I seem to remember it being at least hinted that the Federation took possession of Cardassian colonies in the treaty as well (I presume, the intention was to regularise the border, rather than have the confusion of Cardassian land that would otherwise be deep within Federation territory - or the reverse).

dJE

 

Yes, it's explicitly stated that both Cardassian worlds and Federation worlds were impacted by the treaty.

As to the question of whether the Maquis were Federation citizens, to me the easiest explanation is that it was people who were not colonists but were joining or supporting the Maquis while still Federation citizens, in addition to those colonists who took up the cause.

Ro Laren, for instance, would have been a Federation citizen at the time when she started assisting the Maquis.

 

Middle East is a good take on it.
After WW1 had some random British people draw random lines on a map. Never taking into account tribal lands, ethnic borders, natural borders etc. With zero input of the residents.

Alot if the violence in the M E was caused by those borders, ethnic and tribal conflict within a country that are somewhat forced to get along.

I would think that like say Jihad brides that go over would automatically loose there citizenship.

 

It should be noted that "braving the frontier" is much easier when you have matter replicators, portable fusion (or better) reactors, futuristic medicine, interstellar communication, phasers and the like.

 

is it so different from people risking weeks long trips be sea to colonize North America or Australia 200-100 years ago? There are people that decide to "quit" modern society and go live in the woods in a cabin. Maybe not your extreme example of moving to the sahara but people do still voluntarily choose to live a more "primitive" or harder lifestyle.

 

Those that did so were paid handsomely by their employees to find gold and “trade” with the local population.
In that sense it is not much different from working on a drilling platform. I doubt they would have done so to live there of the land away from civilization for no financial compensation.

 

I would be curious to find out how many of them make do without any provisions which require an industrial base (artificially generated electricity, at the minimum) to manufacture as opposed to those that live a hermetic lifestyle but with modern day luxuries to make the experience somewhat bearable. Primitive medicine sucks.

 

The writers understandably wanted to stay away from the nitty gritty of how new colonies are formed. My interpretation is that if colonists want to form a new colony and have the Federation protect it, they've got to ask permission first. Otherwise you'd get colonists going to colonize the system next to the Klingon homeworld and still demanding a dozen starships show up within the hour to defend them when the Klingons attack.

Such colonists could still be Federation citizens, but that doesn't mean they don't have to suffer any consequences if they do something against the law of some other species wherever they settled.

 

Which is of course bollocks to begin with. Of course they still exist, and if Picard thinks they don't, they should maroon him for a week to a desert planet without food or drink. Humans haven't evolved beyond that.
I suppose Picard meant to say that under any normal conditions, these are usually satisfied without having to work for them.