Star Trek Utopia or Fire Fly Dystopia? Depends on where you live.

[Tenacity]

It'd be like the President of the US activating National Guard forces to deal with a crisis.

The US President can only activate a states national guard with the consent of that states Governor. The President has to ask.

This is what I meant by the Federation president seeming like a autocrat. From the scene as presented it did appear like he could do what he did solely by his own say so.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Well, from the scene as presented, yeah. It's just that all of the bits involving United Earth personnel were cut. So we never got the chance to see them in action.

 

[Christopher]

Even just speaking of Earth, the concept of "utopia" is subjective. And without knowing more about the freedoms and possible constraints of the people can you really call it a utopia just because some of the people have replicators?

People overlook that "Utopia" literally means "no place." Thomas More coined it as a pun on "Eutopia," "good place," as a way of pointing out that an ideal society does not exist. The whole point of the word "utopia" is that it's an impossible ideal, something that can perhaps be moved toward but never actually reached. So any story that portrays a utopia is unrealistic, as is any philosophy that purports to allow creating one. Realistically, one can make a society better, but never perfect.

Earth is a pretty dangerous place, in terms of being capable of being attacked.There's no indication that it's "post-scarcity."

Replicators + space travel = post-scarcity. You can get all the resources you need from asteroids and all the energy you need from stars, and replicators can turn any material into any desired product in an instant, with no need for human labor, and with no material waste since replicators also allow total recycling. There's no way the 24th-century Federation isn't post-scarcity.

As for free, the Federation president can place troops in the streets on his own individual authority. This sounds very much like the ability of a autocrat.

I call foul, since that was explicitly during a period when martial law has been declared. Martial law is, by definition, an emergency suspension of the normal rules, so what a president can do under martial law doesn't say anything about how the system works normally.

And there is apparently a lack of privacy within their society, Starfleet officers can certainly access anyone's personal information without any due process.

All you can say from that is that there's apparently a lack of privacy within Starfleet. You can't presume it's the same for civilians.

My understanding is that the settlers were outside both the Federation and the Cardassian Union. Both the Federation and the Union were seeking to expand into this basically unclaimed area of interstellar space, and were willing to fight for it.

No, that's not it at all. As "Journey's End" established, the final treaty that resolved the Federation-Cardassian War entailed redrawing the border, so that, as Picard said to Admiral Nechayev, "This border places several Federation colonies in Cardassian territory and some Cardassian colonies in ours." Picard's mission in "Journey's End" was to evacuate the Federation colonists, but they chose to secede from the Federation and accept being Cardassian subjects rather than leave their homes. But the Cardassians abused and harassed their new subjects, and the Maquis was formed in response to that.

This is what I meant by the Federation president seeming like a autocrat. From the scene as presented it did appear like he could do what he did solely by his own say so.

That's just dramatic shorthand. Of course it wasn't meant to portray the Federation as dystopian -- that's taking a storytelling shortcut too literally.

 

[Rahul]

We're going in circles. So here it is from Whedon's own pre-production document for Serenity:

https://firefly.fandom.com/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_the_Universe

As I said, authorial intent, and the actual result are often not the same. It would be foolish to ignore the author - Whedon's willingness to go deeper and don't paint in black and white were visible from the start, and had the series gone further would almost definitely have been even more nuanced. But it's also undeniable that the Alliance is a bit more than just a "regular" gouvernment like that of the U.S. from a different perspective - there truly is something foul in the state.

See, you're trying to fit it into the cozy paradigm "democracy = good, authoritarianism = bad."

Yes, that's the stance I'm willing to take, and I do not try to hide that.

With of course the caveat that an authoritarian state in peace-time and prosperity (like Firefly's Alliance) might sometimes be preferable to live in for an individual human than in a democracy during catastrophe or crisis (like on nuBattlestar Galactica). But - as with for everything happening - intent also matters. And as such, a democracy is a gouvernment for and by the people, wheras an authoritarian system is mostly there to protect itself.

 

[Rahul]

People overlook that "Utopia" literally means "no place." Thomas More coined it as a pun on "Eutopia," "good place," as a way of pointing out that an ideal society does not exist. The whole point of the word "utopia" is that it's an impossible ideal, something that can perhaps be moved toward but never actually reached. So any story that portrays a utopia is unrealistic, as is any philosophy that purports to allow creating one. Realistically, one can make a society better, but never perfect.




Replicators + space travel = post-scarcity. You can get all the resources you need from asteroids and all the energy you need from stars, and replicators can turn any material into any desired product in an instant, with no need for human labor, and with no material waste since replicators also allow total recycling. There's no way the 24th-century Federation isn't post-scarcity.




I call foul, since that was explicitly during a period when martial law has been declared. Martial law is, by definition, an emergency suspension of the normal rules, so what a president can do under martial law doesn't say anything about how the system works normally.




All you can say from that is that there's apparently a lack of privacy within Starfleet. You can't presume it's the same for civilians.




No, that's not it at all. As "Journey's End" established, the final treaty that resolved the Federation-Cardassian War entailed redrawing the border, so that, as Picard said to Admiral Nechayev, "This border places several Federation colonies in Cardassian territory and some Cardassian colonies in ours." Picard's mission in "Journey's End" was to evacuate the Federation colonists, but they chose to secede from the Federation and accept being Cardassian subjects rather than leave their homes. But the Cardassians abused and harassed their new subjects, and the Maquis was formed in response to that.




That's just dramatic shorthand. Of course it wasn't meant to portray the Federation as dystopian -- that's taking a storytelling shortcut too literally.

Well said, I wholeheartedly agree!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Federation president in TUC was pretty quick to throw Kirk and McCoy under a bus in order to advance a political objective.

I don't see it that way at all.

Ra-ghoratreii's hands were tied. He couldn't order Starfleet to go in and rescue Kirk and McCoy, because that would have obliterated the fragile peace which the Federation and the Klingons were desperately trying to maintain. So he was forced to let the trial - as obviously one-sided as it was - play out.

"This President is not above the law."

 

[Christopher]

As I said, authorial intent, and the actual result are often not the same. It would be foolish to ignore the author - Whedon's willingness to go deeper and don't paint in black and white were visible from the start, and had the series gone further would almost definitely have been even more nuanced.

Okay, now you're repeating what I've been saying all along -- that it would have clarified that intention given more time.

But it's also undeniable that the Alliance is a bit more than just a "regular" gouvernment like that of the U.S. from a different perspective - there truly is something foul in the state.

Dude, have you looked at the US lately? There's no shortage of foulness in our current government. But we're still theoretically a democracy. We're just one that's lost its way and been corrupted.

Yes, that's the stance I'm willing to take, and I do not try to hide that.

It's not about moral stances, okay? It's about the inadequacy of simplistic binary models to comprehend a nuanced world. Yes, in theory, democracy is good and authoritarianism bad. Duh. But theory is simpler than reality. In practice, a single government can have both democratic and authoritarian aspects at the same time, so you can't put the entire government in a single box of "good" or "bad."

 

[Rahul]

so you can't put the entire government in a single box of "good" or "bad."

I never did. I was the one that started this whole "The Firefly gouvernment is not actually a clear-cut dystopia"-thing here, remember?

 

[Christopher]

I never did. I was the one that started this whole "The Firefly gouvernment is not actually a clear-cut dystopia"-thing here, remember?

But you're still oddly resistant to accepting the idea that it was never meant to be a dystopia at all, but a mostly beneficial society that had faults and corruption, and that just looked dystopian to people who lived on the more lawless frontiers, regions that were subject to the authority of the Alliance but that the benefits of the Alliance hadn't yet reached, so they only saw the bad side of it. You seem to be arguing that the fact that it had corrupt or authoritarian aspects means that it could not have been a democracy, and that's completely unrealistic. The same society can be democratic in some aspects and authoritarian in others, or can distribute its benefits and freedoms unevenly to its people.

 

[Rahul]

But you're still oddly resistant to accepting the idea that it was never meant to be a dystopia at all, but a mostly beneficial society that had faults and corruption, and that just looked dystopian to people who lived on the more lawless frontiers, regions that were subject to the authority of the Alliance but that the benefits of the Alliance hadn't yet reached, so they only saw the bad side of it. You seem to be arguing that the fact that it had corrupt or authoritarian aspects means that it could not have been a democracy, and that's completely unrealistic. The same society can be democratic in some aspects and authoritarian in others, or can distribute its benefits and freedoms unevenly to its people.

I think you are making the mistake of equating "authoritarian" with "dystopian". Because while the Alliance is not necessary the latter, it is definitely the former, - and not in a "every side has two coins/matter of perspective"-way.

 

[Christopher]

I think you are making the mistake of equating "authoritarian" with "dystopian".

No, I'm disagreeing with your mistaken premise that the Alliance cannot be a democracy because it's authoritarian. I'm saying that many democracies have authoritarian aspects, so you can't assume the two are mutually exclusive. Whedon's comments make it explicit that the Alliance was meant to be analogous to the United States government with all its aspirations and imperfections, and that Mal was modeled on an ex-Confederate soldier who thought the wrong side had won the war.

For that matter, a democracy can be dystopian too. We're living in one right now.

 

[Rahul]

No, I'm disagreeing with your mistaken premise that the Alliance cannot be a democracy because it's authoritarian. I'm saying that many democracies have authoritarian aspects, so you can't assume the two are mutually exclusive. Whedon's comments make it explicit that the Alliance was meant to be analogous to the United States government with all its aspirations and imperfections, and that Mal was modeled on an ex-Confederate soldier who thought the wrong side had won the war.

For that matter, a democracy can be dystopian too. We're living in one right now.

I know the current situation in the US is f-ed up beyond believe - and I don't mean Trump, I mean everything from Opiod Crises to daily mass shootings, to the largest prison population of the world without rights, to elections continuesly handing the victory to the people with fewer votes, to the oppression of entire swaths of the population.

But if you think the US actually qualifies as a "dystopia" in it's current form, I got a ton of bridges to sell you.

And again - Whedon might have intended for the Alliance to be the U.S., and the browncoats for Confederate stand-ins. But this is not what ended up on screen. Just for the record - neither Mal nor the browncoats fought for "States rights to keep slaves" or stuff like that. And the analogues to the US are only are only translated in so far that certain aspects - the one Whedon focused on, the authoritarian ones - were massively magnified, so much so, that the entire thing doesn't work as a direct stand-ins for real-world entities anymore, but a broader analogy about gouvernment systems as a "machine" and different people's stances on personal freedoms. Which is a good thing for fiction. But it's not a direct translation from reality anymore.

 

[Christopher]

And again - Whedon might have intended for the Alliance to be the U.S., and the browncoats for Confederate stand-ins. But this is not what ended up on screen.

Which, for the fifty millionth time, is my point -- that the show didn't run long enough for us to see the whole picture. You're using that as a defense, but I'm saying it's the problem. Lack of adequate information is not a position to guard jealously, it's a weakness to be lamented.

 

[Rahul]

Which, for the fifty millionth time, is my point -- that the show didn't run long enough for us to see the whole picture. You're using that as a defense, but I'm saying it's the problem. Lack of adequate information is not a position to guard jealously, it's a weakness to be lamented.

Oh, the show showed us very much what type of system that was - an authoritarian one. It just didn't get the chance to delve much deeper into the weeds. We know it was more complex than "bad dictatorship". But everything that was actually shown also is utterly incompatible with "regular, free democracy just viewed from a different/under-privileged perspective".

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

The US President can only activate a states national guard with the consent of that states Governor. The President has to ask.

Actually, there is one very pertinent exception to this...

While it's true that the State National Guards require authorisation from the respective state governor, the DC National Guard is deployed on the President's authority, in fact the Mayor of DC (the closest thing to a Governer the District has) must ask POTUS's permission for the DCNG to be deployed within the District.

 

[Delta Vega]

Prefer Todd Rundgren's Utopia to be honest