Nothing in "Past Tense" established the Neo-Trotskite movement to be responsible for the social and economic problems depicted in the episode.
But the episode does say that the Neo-Trotskite are not effectively dealing with the problems in France.
Yes. But that's not the point -- the point is that the Neo-Trots are not the ones who created the problems.
Rather, "Past Tense" established that France, then under the governance of a Gaullist party, was gripped by social unrest and student protests in the 2020s as part of the same pattern of economic decline and mass impoverishment that led to to the creation of the Sanctuary Districts ...
No, there was no connect made between the events in Europe and the creation of the sanctuary districts .
Just reviewed the scripts to "Past Tense" to verify my memory. You are correct in noting that no explicit connection is made. However, I would argue that the connection is implicit -- the episode makes it very clear that the American economy is in the midst of an economic downturn, resulting in a severe shortage of jobs for the people who need them. It seems improbable to me that France would simultaneously face large-scale civil unrest and student protests unless it, too, was in the economic duldrums -- and it seems improbable to me that the United States could be in severe recession without dragging down Europe with it.
While there was mention of a economic down turn in America, there was no sign of any (at all) "mass impoverishment."
The first scene in the processing center makes it clear that there's a severe shortage of jobs for the people who need them. And if the U.S. literally had so many jobless and homeless people that it began herding them into urban concentration camps, I'm not sure how that doesn't qualify as "mass impoverishment."
If anything their economy, even with a resent down turn, would seem to be in somewhat better shape than our own, or at least in San Fransisco. The character of Chris Brynner said the sanctuary district in San Fransisco held "something like 10,000 people."
San Fransisco currently has a population of over 837,000 people, with a unemployment rate of 4.9%. In addition the official 2013 San Fransisco homeless count was 7,300 people.
First off, you can't look at a work of fiction written twenty years ago, depicting a world then thirty years into the future, and expect any exact statistics to be meaningful in comparison to the real world.
Second, "something like 10,000 people" is an extremely vague number--Chris could easily be rounding by a couple of thousand in either direction, as people often do when speaking off the cuff. Yet even if we take the number literally, it is still higher than the current homeless population.
Thirdly, "Past Tense" doesn't tell us anything about the overall poverty rate, which would be the most informative statistic about the health of the 2024 economy compared to that of the real-world 2014 economy. However, the episode does talk about people being forced into Sanctuary Districts if they lose their jobs; it is unclear if this occurs even if they still have their own housing.
... and lack of government action to fight inequality which caused the Bell Riots ...
Wrong, the Bell Riots were cause by government actions, and not the lack of them. Providing for shelter and job placement were fair ideas, but the government in typical "we'll fix everything" fashion went beyond that and herded people into the shelters and locked the doors behind them until as such time as the government found jobs for them.
The scene with Chris's rich friends -- "It's the only way to keep those people off the streets"--and dialogue from earlier in the story makes it clear that the Districts were initially created to help people, but that the government began to use them instead to control them and hide them away from the elites when the problem of unemployment began to seem overwhelming. I for one don't see any scenario in which that problem continues to mount unless there is a phenomenon of mass impoverishment.
Further, the episode established that one of the key problems was the repeal of the Federal Employment Act, which Webb and his allies wanted re-instated. So obviously the episode is criticizing the government both for insufficient quantity of helpful programs,
and for terrible quality of one program created to help but perverted into a system of oppression.
a problem with capitalism
Oh please.
A situation in which mass numbers of people are rendered unemployed, impoverished, and homeless, is clearly a problem with capitalism. To call it anything else is to place loyalty to an ideology over respect for human needs.
Would they have been somehow better off with socialism?
Depends on your definition of "socialism."
According to the episode "Europe is falling apart." Europe (currently) is a socialist wonderland.
This is simply factually inaccurate. Private ownership of the means of production is still the basis for every single economy in Europe. A number of European countries have economies that are more
social democratic than America's, but none of them -- not even Sweden's -- are socialist.
Secondly, the only clue the episode gives us about the relationship between European socialists and the economic crisis is the line establishing that the Gaullists (a capitalist political movement) were in power when France was faced with unrest and student protests, and that the Neo-Trots (one form of socialists) came to power to try to deal with the situation but were ineffective. We don't know if that means the Neo-Trots just won elections for Parliament, or if they actually tried to change the structure of the French economy.
Sisko (as Bell) said it best, the people in the sanctuary district wanted "to stop having to depend on handouts."
He also wanted the re-instatement of the Federal Employment Act, so he obviously isn't anti-government intervention.
And I can't imagine he wanted the District residents thrown onto the streets outside the District walls; their situation would be little improved there. One can favor government assistance without favoring government paternalism or government oppression.
