Deep rabbit hole. I started by thinking about some basic math for the federation. How much antimatter fuel does the federation use in a year? where does it get it? How does having that much power available affect the "economics of the 24th century"?Here are some back of the envelope calculations that I've come up with.
I found a link here, that basically infers that antimatter is produced as a result of fusion reactions, at an energy loss of 24% (as it's basically stored fuel, you have to spend more energy than you get out of the fuel)
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/53183/how-is-antimatter-produced
we know that the starship enterprise burns through around 1900 Kilograms of antimatter fuel/day (about 4000 pounds).
Here, we read that the staple of the federation fleet is probably the excelsior class (a similar size to the enterprise) and that depending on estimates starfleet runs around 20k-30k. I'm going to take the lower number there. I'm going to assume that about 1/2 of starfleet is either an galaxy class or excelsior class and runs similar power requirements, and that the other half, runs about half of that, as we can assume that on average they are smaller ships with lower power requirements.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/9566/roughly-how-many-starships-are-in-starfleet
So, that gives us about 10K ships that run 1900 kilos of antimatter a day, and 10K ships that run about 950 Kilos/day. That runs the federation fleet at around 28,500,000 Kilos of antimatter per day. Since we can infer that there is an energy loss of 24% from a fusion reaction to create antimatter fuel, that means that the federation needs to run about 37,500,000 kilos of hydrogen fuel through fusion reactions, per day to fuel starfleet (and we are neglecting planetside power requirements so far)
The fuel for fusion? Deuterium. Deuterium, has a natural abundance of 1/6400 in earth's oceans. Earth's oceans has a mass of 1.385 984 6 · 10²¹ kg, https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-weight-of-water-on-the-earth and the atomic weight of the hydrogen in a water molecule is 11%. From there, we can do some math, pretend that deuterium and ordinary hydrogen have the same atomic weight, (they don't, but these are back of the envelo
... keep reading on reddit ➡The Federation does not use money, this we know. Except when it does. The Federation credit is typically used by Federation citizans, outide of the Federation, as well as other forms of money like Gold Pressed Latinum. But how do individuals actually obtain this money? Are they paid for the work they do? Do starfleet officers have a salary? Of course if you never leave federation space this shouldn't be a problem, except we see characters claim to buy things when in Federation space, such as Dr. Crusher buying some cloth at Farpoint station, and Picard buying a Horga'hn on Risa.
I understand that replicators and philosophy of self-improvment has eliminated money on Earth and the Federation, but how do citizens actually accrue the money to be used outside of federation space?
Humanist Society: >HSS has raised concerns that proposed changes to the threshold relating to stirring up offences, where a person commits a crime if they encourage hatred towards someone or a group of people because of their racial or religious identity, will have a serious chilling impact on freedom of expression. Under the current proposals, a prosecutor will no longer need to prove that the accused intended to stir up hatred, but a conviction could be secured if it is perceived that the expression could have done so regardless of intent.
National Secular Society >The bill would create a range of new 'stirring up hatred' offences – including 'stirring up hatred' on the basis of religion. It's already an offence in Scotland to 'stir up hatred' on some other grounds – such as race and nationality. Now the Scottish government, which is concerned by the growth of bigoted attitudes, wants to expand it. This vague law will undermine open debate, along with citizens' confidence that they'll be treated equally under the law and they won't be prosecuted unfairly. And it won't achieve what it's set out to achieve. Ministers should take another look at it.
Law Society of Scotland >The Law Society has also expressed fears that the Bill presents a significant threat to freedom of expression, with the potential for what may be abusive or insulting to become criminalised. These terms are highly subjective, requiring judicial clarification on a case by case basis. It also believes that the Bill’s provisions for a new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’, created in the Bill, set too low a standard as an offence can be committed if it is “likely” to stir up hatred. That is not the threshold required for criminal law which depends on guilty intention.
Scottish Police Federation >“We are firmly of the view this proposed legislation would see officers policing speech and would devastate the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public. That can never be an acceptable outcome –and we should never forget that the police in Scotland police only with the consent of the people. Police officers are all too aware that there are individuals in society who believe that to feel insulted or offended is a police matter. The Bill would move even further from policing and criminalising of deeds and acts to the potential policing of what people think or feel, as well as the criminalisation of what is said in private.
I have just watched the episode of DS9 where they go back to earth and see ole pappy Sisco. But what I don't understand is why you would work so hard to run a restaurant if there is no currency or economy. Not just the Sisco restaurant as I assume the first response will be "for the love of cooking", but there must be so few service based establishments. Why would you work a gruelling job if you didn't have to? Which asks questions about the whole of society. Why do a shit job? How would society function if nobody does the shit jobs?
There's no reason to excel in anything and everything's at your finger tips. Just replicate anything you want or live out your fantasies in a holosuite. It would have been interesting if this underbelly of Federation society was presented to us.
In the Federation, we know that money is obsolete. Citizens devote their lives to improving themselves and others. People still work but do so because it brings them joy/satisfaction. Ben Sisko owns his own restaurant. The Picard family has a vineyard. No money changes hands for exchange of goods and services.
What kinds of businesses, institutions, etc. that we have in our capitalist society would still exist in the Federation. How do you think they overcome issues of scarcity around real estate?
Retail: Stores & Restaurants
Services: Designers, Painters, Architects, Pilots, Programmers, etc.
Transportation: Trading vessels, Cabs (Richard Bashir was a cab driver); Passenger ships
We know that there are trading vessels like Kassidy Yate's ship. When she traded goods, was it barter of goods between Federation and non-Federation planets?
The best way to avoid paying out a large cash settlement is to claim to be a cashless society. Even the Ferengi wouldn't stoop that low.
They seem legit to me and they have a nearby branch. I want to get in touch with anarchists near me and they seem like my best bet but I want to make sure they aren't something else.
One human, a massive former gladiator-slave who may or may not have been the product of secret illegal genetic engineering by a mysterious illegal transhuman figure, decides to take things into his own hands regardless of what the Federation says or what their “civilized”, “cultured” and “worldly” sympathizers from the cursed homeworld have to say.
Technically his own body isn’t legally a weapon
Not American, don't kill me, just wondering. I am probably missing something big here. What is the thing holding that country together other than an archaic sense of patriotism? Wouldn't the rednecks of Mississippi be happy to not have the hippies in New York deciding their federal laws for them, and vice versa?
I mean, yes, USA is probably economically stronger this way, but wouldn't everyone be a lot happier if they just make their own rules.
Thanks.
I delightfully came across this on RetroFuturism and it immediately reminded me of these few things I had bookmarked in my browser.
I am utterly fascinated by the idea of a 'walking' city, and I can't exactly explain why other than my distaste for staying in one place for too long.
But, how exactly would local government be organized around such a society? How would these local governments coordinate (or not) with subnational and national levels of government? Any ideas?
