For the record,
ProtoAvatar, you can use the quotes feature by typing in a left bracket, followed by the world quote, followed by an equal sign, followed by the name of the user you are quoting, followed by a right bracket. From there, you can enter their quote, and follow it up with a left bracket, followed by a right slash, followed by the world "quote," followed by a right bracket.
So the result would look like this, sans spaces:
"[ quote ]Quotation.[ /quote ]"
Sci said:
Remind me to never, ever apply for a job where you're my boss. You'd be brutal to work for if an assignment ended up not working out properly.
An assignment? You call the missions he failed lately 'assignments'?
Reading comprehension fail. I'm calling an instruction you would theoretically give me in this hypothetical scenario an "assignment," not Starfleet's orders.
If Picard worked for a company, he would be fired the next second after ANY failure of such magnitude.
And then the company would shortly go out of business after giving their employees impossible assignments and blaming them for the subsequent loss of revenue.
But that is the thing I'm not so clear about. What are the actual disadvantages of Federation membership? Or what do they gain by seceding?
Well, I assume there would be several. For one, I assume that as a member world Andorian local government would be subject to the policy being made in Paris. Take for example the Betazoid relief effort after the Dominion War. It's been shown that in order to divert Cardassian relief supplies to Betazed, Councillor Enaren had to sway a majority on the Federation Council to join his petition and ultimately failed in his goal (by his own choice, but still). Likewise, there would be plenty of decisions that adversely affected Andor.
Second, with Starfleet in shambles, the Andorians lack proper protection while gaining a major enemy in the Typhon Pact powers. The Typhon Pact's quarrel is with the Federation as a whole (its "imperialism" as noted in
Rough Beasts), not individual worlds. Perhaps the Andorians would feel less likely to be a target on their own.
All that's a good point. Certainly Andor was targeted for extermination by the Borg primarily because of their Federation Membership.
We also know from "Journey to Babel" that Federation Member States are subject to Federation law regarding distribution of wealth. Sarek cited the re-distribution of wealth to benefit the majority of the populace on Coridan as a reason for them to join the UFP; presumably this applies to all Federation Member States.
We've also seen that Federation Member States are sometimes forced by law to give up some resources to help other worlds. Ardana was required to give up some magic McGuffin to a world suffering a plague in "The Cloud Minders," for instance, and the Governor of Alpha Centauri was angry that the Federation government was threatening to federalize Alpha Centauri's mining industry to help rebuild devastated Federation worlds.
And I can't imagine that they don't pay taxes. Yes, yes, I know, "we've evolved beyond money," blah blah blah. Yet the canon is full of contradictory evidence there, so I don't buy it. I'm sure that Andor pays taxes to the UFP -- and as one of the older Federation Member States, I wouldn't be surprised if Andor pays more in taxes than it gets back from the Federation in financial aid, much the same way the North Eastern states pay more into the U.S. federal government than they get back.
And then there's just the basic fact that being a Federation Member State means yielding your sovereignty to a larger super-state. Basic nationalism would obviously be offended by that.
Andor slipped through, sadly. Of course, it's the events of this novel that push their new government out. I suppose after Alpha Centauri stayed, Zalda stayed, Bolarus stayed, and they and a whole bunch of other member worlds reaffirmed the Declarations as a show of support, this is the "one step back" to that "two steps forward".
