Precisely, so the Federation may be anarchist, even though the member races aren’t.
With what we know about how the Federation interacts with other races and planets, real world logic would indicate that the humans could be (and live) the model that the Federation is built upon.
All this is conjecture ofc, and is probably as much an exercise in understanding post-scarcity anarchism as possible Star Trek lore :p
Which is inherently anarchist :P
As it seems a common confusion in this thread, I repeat, anarchism doesn’t have to be without government or rules, several forms of anarchism are focused on not limiting individuals freedoms and/or not allowing power over eachother (while accepting government and rules not contrary to that). Both of which I believe describe how the Federation works.
That’s one form of it, but there are plenty other schools of thought that overlap quite significantly with the Federation, check out the primer on Wikipedia.
Anarchist doesn’t need to mean without government, simply that no one is above another, which is echoed in how the Federation is structured towards the other races.
I’d say they’re post-scarcity anarchist. There’s no central/communal resource dispersal as needed for socialism, nor the central/communal resource allocation/planning needed for communism.
There’s seemingly no authority outside starfleet exerting any power, nor does anyone ever claim a motivation beyond exploration or study (to do something meaningful). The lack of money and unlimited access to replicated resources pending available dilithium also points to a society without exploitative discrepancies.
The humans also never are reported to have any resource hogging, the only tensions/stratification seem to be militarily (and against external parties also diplomatically), meritocratic, and even then the bottleneck seems mostly to be to not fall behind other races.
I don’t see neither capitalism, socialism, communism, despotism, theocracy, nor fascism, but many aspects of anarchism. If you’ve read anything about The Culture, they openly speak about being anarchist, and it’s very similar to Star Trek.
I get that the topic evokes a lot of emotions, but I don’t understand why the reasons are offensive, are we not all making the beat decisions we can with what information we have?
For some there might be reasons and considerations more important than granting their offspring a life without strife (and thus make different moral judgements). I’m not trying to judge one choice over the other, I’m curious as to why the topic gets so personal and passionate even with people who otherwise are level-headed and well reasoned.
Yeah, I’ve gathered that the topic is contentious, but I don’t understand why.
Just as child free persons have their reasons, most parents probably have theirs, be it conscious, normative, or pressured. And at least to me, the discussion is about the choice and reasons, rather than any judgement.
I was hoping not to stir the pot, but to get a better understanding on why there’s such heated feelings.
A slightly left turn topic: How do you feel/think about people who are voluntarily child free?
Is this US specific?
As are collections of opinions
You help some from needing support, so that you can free up resources to help the next batch.