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The Ferengi didn't work for their intended purpose in early TNG, as a take on greedy 80s Wall Street capitalists, because they were made so loathsome as to be undignified. They wear their desires on their sleeves so blatantly, they look like idiots too. I think they could've been an interesting adversary had they been a race of slick, sharp businessmen who are outwardly charming, but always have personal gain in mind with every interaction. But then I guess you'd end up with more amicable Romulans or Cardassians. edit: oops, new page. Having said that, they work fine for me in DS9 because they're allowed to be self aware of how silly they are.
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Mar 5, 2022 07:06
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davidspackage posted:The Ferengi didn't work for their intended purpose in early TNG, as a take on greedy 80s Wall Street capitalists, because they were made so loathsome as to be undignified. They wear their desires on their sleeves so blatantly, they look like idiots too. That sounds exactly like '80s Wall Street capitalists, though.
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Mar 5, 2022 08:09
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The Ferengi regulated capitalism in their society by making it the state religion, implementing a bunch of guidelines that all Ferengi have to memorize, and put a God-king in place who has to has to make sure the economy actually functions (in addition to making himself obscenely wealthy) or they throw him and his cohorts to their deaths from the top of the tallest building on the planet. Then they built the building as tall as they could. 8one6 fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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Mar 5, 2022 09:23
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I mean, yeah, but I think you can't have villains who abandon all dignity and still expect them to be menacing. Now I'm picturing every Ferengi who appears screenwide against a white background on the viewscreen acting as if they just snorted 5 rails of "*snrrrrfff* Heeeey Enterprise, what's up with you guys!!? Hey check out this bat'leth with latinum inlays I just got *whoosh whoosh*"
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Mar 5, 2022 09:25
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Mitchell Ryan (Riker's dad) has died. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/dark-shadows-lethal-weapon-actor-mitchell-ryan-dies-83265882
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Mar 5, 2022 18:09
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Having the Ferengi be so gross and nasty for non-ideological reasons kinda undermines the criticism of the ideology as well. Klingons eating squirming bloodworms alive is thematic to them being barbarous and bloodthirsty, but Ferengi eating grubs and filing down their teeth doesn't sound like a capitalism thing at all. When the Ferengi are hunched over and hopping around like goblins, it doesn't seem like a philosophical statement, and it sure doesn't help the accusations of the Ferengi being the embodiment of anti-semetic stereotypes, which are only partially about depicting jews as money-hungry and otherwise depict them as broadly repulsive.
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Mar 5, 2022 18:11
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The issue is that Star Trek's post scarcity society makes ALL economic systems obsolete. Economies are a resource management system, when everyone can live comfortably with basically no effort, the old rules don't apply. Its less sharing of resources, and more everybody has more resources than they know what to do with.
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Mar 5, 2022 18:27
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Tighclops posted:They should do a star trek where the ferengi are belligerent expansionist assholes that use their military might to force rent from less powerful/advanced cultures but they get hosed up by a natural disaster that their society is ill-suited to deal with and it's up to the federation to teach them how to wear masks so how much of a Ferengi's ears are actually genitals? I ask because the term "face diaper" might actually be slightly more relevant in the case of them wearing one if it relies on strapping round the ears.
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Mar 5, 2022 19:22
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Khanstant posted:so how much of a Ferengi's ears are actually genitals? I ask because the term "face diaper" might actually be slightly more relevant in the case of them wearing one if it relies on strapping round the ears. Thanks for making it weird, Gene
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Mar 5, 2022 19:28
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Gene: let me tell you about the balls Me: *sighs and clears the next 25 minutes in my schedule*
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Mar 5, 2022 19:47
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IShallRiseAgain posted:The issue is that Star Trek's post scarcity society makes ALL economic systems obsolete. Economies are a resource management system, when everyone can live comfortably with basically no effort, the old rules don't apply. Its less sharing of resources, and more everybody has more resources than they know what to do with. Actually I think you'll find that economies are ways for rich people to measure their high score and you can't post-scarcity the leaderboards
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Mar 5, 2022 20:05
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Tighclops posted:Thanks for making it weird, Gene I'm not sure if Roddenberry was actually the one behind the ears being an erogenous zone; it's not mentioned in the original "ferengi have huge dicks" memo.
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Mar 5, 2022 20:08
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davidspackage posted:The Ferengi didn't work for their intended purpose in early TNG, as a take on greedy 80s Wall Street capitalists, because they were made so loathsome as to be undignified. They wear their desires on their sleeves so blatantly, they look like idiots too. I think they could've been an interesting adversary had they been a race of slick, sharp businessmen who are outwardly charming, but always have personal gain in mind with every interaction. But then I guess you'd end up with more amicable Romulans or Cardassians. I'm imagining some classic DnD devils obsessed with the letter of the law or deals, not the intent. They don't need to be red aliens with horns, but they do need to be very charming and easy to empathize with right until they screw everyone over on some obtuse twisted interpretation of a bargain made.
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Mar 5, 2022 20:27
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cheetah7071 posted:Actually I think you'll find that economies are ways for rich people to measure their high score and you can't post-scarcity the leaderboards The new leaderboards are how many worlds you explore, how many (bad) operas your write etc.  I mean there is an interesting argument to be made that social capital is still very much alive in the Federation. It isn't a completely classless society, certainly not outside Earth/the human population and Starfleet is extremely hierarchical (just like the Federation as a whole) which only goes to show how hard it is to even think of a proper "utopia". By design it would be so alien to our (current) human experience that it would probably be impossible to write for.
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Mar 5, 2022 20:40
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in the absence of currency scarcity people would just make a new one to lord over others. There's an elon bezos in trek who is a billionaire of neopoints. Nobody in federation can match their power at neopets.
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Mar 5, 2022 20:44
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I thought it was cute that the "currency" in the old starfleet command video games was prestige and that's what allows you to command bigger and better ships
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Mar 5, 2022 21:18
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There should be a tipping point of prestige where you get promoted out of being able to captain a ship and are trapped in the admiralty, and you need to concoct some kind of scandal or crisis to get back into the field.IShallRiseAgain posted:The issue is that Star Trek's post scarcity society makes ALL economic systems obsolete. Economies are a resource management system, when everyone can live comfortably with basically no effort, the old rules don't apply. Its less sharing of resources, and more everybody has more resources than they know what to do with. Kinda makes most plots obsolete. Which is why a lot of the "post scarcity" concept is only vaguely referenced, and then usually only in the context of "Earth is fine, don't worry about it".
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Mar 5, 2022 21:36
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I love how Star Trek is caught in this weird as hell zone where the premise makes it inherently difficult to write stories but also the producers and writers are often hacks
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Mar 5, 2022 21:44
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SlothfulCobra posted:There should be a tipping point of prestige where you get promoted out of being able to captain a ship and are trapped in the admiralty, and you need to concoct some kind of scandal or crisis to get back into the field. Tough to thread that needle to get just enough crime. If you steal a capital ship to visit a forbidden planet and get it blown up, that's too much. You'll have to do something really good to balance it out, like travelling back in time to save all of Earth. Just as an example.
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Mar 5, 2022 22:11
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Khanstant posted:I'm imagining some classic DnD devils obsessed with the letter of the law or deals, not the intent. They don't need to be red aliens with horns, but they do need to be very charming and easy to empathize with right until they screw everyone over on some obtuse twisted interpretation of a bargain made.
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Mar 5, 2022 22:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:Kinda makes most plots obsolete. turns out there's a good reason why the TOS and TNG writer's bibles told writers to just stay the hell away from Earth
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Mar 6, 2022 00:13
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I don't buy that at all, we're really living in a post-scarcity era now but people still die of starvation because it makes more economic 'sense' to literally destroy massive quantities of food than give it to those who need it. 90s Trek's position that humanity just needs to get its tech level to a high enough level and the problems will largely resolve themselves has always been one of its greatest shortcomings imo
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Mar 6, 2022 00:36
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24th century Earth is a utopia because all the capitalists nuked each other in WW3 and the vulcans uplifted the survivors
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Mar 6, 2022 00:40
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well, I guess the show was right about the 2020s slumtowns...
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Mar 6, 2022 01:43
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No Dignity posted:I don't buy that at all, we're really living in a post-scarcity era now but people still die of starvation because it makes more economic 'sense' to literally destroy massive quantities of food than give it to those who need it. 90s Trek's position that humanity just needs to get its tech level to a high enough level and the problems will largely resolve themselves has always been one of its greatest shortcomings imo i think you're being a bit hyper-cynical with this. there's a lot of difference between a world where resources have to be grown/mined/etc and can go to waste and a world where you can just spawn all necessities and most luxuries out of thin air. yeah the rich would hoard that technology for themselves at first, but eventually that would be dealt with.
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Mar 6, 2022 02:41
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They skip over this step probably entirely because any answer would get a significant fraction of the viewership going "nuh uh, that is literally impossible and goes against the laws of man, God and economics." Now, it would be a different fraction based on what they went with, as we see here. The thing that really blew my mind was the super-Objectivist Trek fans.
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Mar 6, 2022 04:27
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Nessus posted:They skip over this step probably entirely because any answer would get a significant fraction of the viewership going "nuh uh, that is literally impossible and goes against the laws of man, God and economics." Now, it would be a different fraction based on what they went with, as we see here. personally i find it funny that the prime directive is the most ludicrously utopian part of trek and also what people think actually existing foreign policy is Tighclops posted:I love how Star Trek is caught in this weird as hell zone where the premise makes it inherently difficult to write stories but also the producers and writers are often hacks yeah like ds9 occasionally gestures at trying to deal with it, like the idea that the federation has manged to construct an ideal society but they're constantly under threat of losing it, but even they're not quite good enough to consistently pull it off
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Mar 6, 2022 04:52
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Super Deuce posted:That sounds exactly like '80s Wall Street capitalists, though. It seems like that in retrospect but it really cannot be overstated how many people thought that e.g. Gordon Gekko was the hero of Wall Street and the story was a tragedy about a great man's reach exceeding his grasp. "Greed is good" was a loving mantra for years.
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Mar 6, 2022 05:50
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There's also the colonies, which it's not clear how they really work or how much of the utopia extends to them, or even how many colonists there might be out there. There was even some extended period of time before the Federation was formed when the Federation was sending out colonizing ships that wouldn't be under the authority of Earth, and sometimes would even have been forgotten about, and a fair amount of planets where humans ended up being abducted and taken to and still have a population there. In Enterprise, there was a whole thing with Mayweather where his family ran a freight ship that went between colonies, and those have entire little communities growing up in tight quarters, which was interesting, but only managed to make it into a couple episodes. Might be neat seeing a colony having been formed out of a decommissioned freight ship after they became obsolete.
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Mar 6, 2022 05:50
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the colonies are where the libertarians and objectivists hosed off to pre-federation and that's why there are failed human worlds with rape gangs
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Mar 6, 2022 06:04
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IShallRiseAgain posted:The issue is that Star Trek's post scarcity society makes ALL economic systems obsolete. Economies are a resource management system, when everyone can live comfortably with basically no effort, the old rules don't apply. Its less sharing of resources, and more everybody has more resources than they know what to do with.
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Mar 6, 2022 06:24
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I always took the whole setup as being, not perfect, but a lot better than we have now, and with the additional note that it wasn't like "we gained material security... but sacrificed our souls" or similar gotcha dystopia poo poo. People came together, with a few lucky breaks, and made a better world. With or without faith in the heart. Kurzon posted:How does this magic post-scarcity economy work? Maybe the Federation is socialist, they tax the hell out of rich people to ensure that everyone gets an equal slice of the pie.
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Mar 6, 2022 06:34
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Kurzon posted:How does this magic post-scarcity economy work? Maybe the Federation is socialist, they tax the hell out of rich people to ensure that everyone gets an equal slice of the pie. what part of infinite resources and no money do you not get
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Mar 6, 2022 06:53
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Nessus posted:The thing that really blew my mind was the super-Objectivist Trek fans. I think that's largely due to the false ideas of being king of your own ship safely out in 'international waters', no one telling you what to do, and being a hyper-competent person surrounded by other hyper-competent people - "just like me in my dream life!" To seek out new life, and new age of consent laws,
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Mar 6, 2022 07:14
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davidspackage posted:I think that's largely due to the false ideas of being king of your own ship safely out in 'international waters', no one telling you what to do, and being a hyper-competent person surrounded by other hyper-competent people - "just like me in my dream life!"
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Mar 6, 2022 07:29
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The biggest Trek doofus I’ve ever met in real life is very Evangelical, and is a Wehraboo now from what I hear.
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Mar 6, 2022 07:46
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roomtone posted:what part of infinite resources and no money do you not get They're taxed in prestige. Picard is legally required to host a weekly podcast spotlighting underappreciated Federation citizens.
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Mar 6, 2022 07:54
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Trek's overall concept of how the economy works and/or doesn't exist at all is definitely far from fully fleshed out, but I think the overall idea is compelling. Consider, for example, the fact that people are currently trying to crack the nut of how to enforce purchasing and owning digital goods when there's basically nothing stopping people from just infinitely duplicating them for free. Whether it's DRM or NFTs, it basically feels like capitalism entering panic mode and trying to reinforce itself for no real reason other than that the whole system is built on it and is in danger of collapsing on itself. That's a microcosm of "post-scarcity" right there -- there used to be a built-in, compelling reason for these things to be priced the way they were, because of the associated costs of manufacturing and distribution and stuff, but now the only actual reason for it to cost what it used to is so the creator doesn't go bankrupt. Which begs the question, what if the creator didn't actually need that money? It's definitely an interesting question.
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Mar 6, 2022 13:39
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Kurzon posted:How does this magic post-scarcity economy work? Maybe the Federation is socialist, they tax the hell out of rich people to ensure that everyone gets an equal slice of the pie. Practically unlimited energy from a partial Dyson swarm of solar collectors, plus replicators.
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Mar 6, 2022 13:45
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Winifred Madgers posted:a partial Dyson swarm of solar collectors That was Dyson's actual concept, he never advocated even in theory entirely enveloping a star with a wholly solid construct.
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Mar 6, 2022 15:01
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