Communism

[Ironwolf85]

I don't know that much about Star Trek, but the way you describe the Federation it certainly sounds like an anarcho-communist utopia. I suppose it would depend on the state of private property. You can still have personal property - you know, stuff - under communism.

Mostly Federation Government is a mediator from what I've seen, and there is still private properity, the main driving force of the New World Economy is striving for self improvement and betterment of everyone in federation space.
On a planetary level the planets keep their own governments, cultures, ect, so long as they ascribe to federation ideals which are along the line of a more advanced version of human rights accords.
At the intersteller level the federation is pretty much in charge and deals with military, exploration, and research.
They have a Exec branch with a President who is elected (details aren't given in the shows) he controls forgien relations, and is the military leader, though indrectly. A Legislative branch with two representeves from each member species. They control the federal buracracy which is streamlined via technology (no filling out forms in triplicate ect)
and the Judical branch which settles interplanetary disputes and other such things (these were the guys who were sitting in chairs dedicing if the android Data from Next-gen would be concidered a living being, and federation citizan, or not. They eventually said he had rights.)

[Callie Del Noire]

I think that it would be interesting to see what 'post-scarcity' economic models where things like 'replicators' and 'limitless energy' come into play. I doubt we as 'scarcity' economic folks can accurately project how things come out. I know that it would be like a novelist in the 1600s trying to describe an iPad..

[Ironwolf85]

I think that it would be interesting to see what 'post-scarcity' economic models where things like 'replicators' and 'limitless energy' come into play. I doubt we as 'scarcity' economic folks can accurately project how things come out. I know that it would be like a novelist in the 1600s trying to describe an iPad..

there must have been a moment when some wealthy folks (not all as some people would be smart enough to "ride the wave" into the same luxurious lifestyle.) discover that their massive fortune, and how they built it, are suddenly nonexistant.
the look on some faces around the corprate board room must've been helarious.
"guys... people... they... they just don't need us anymore"

[Hemingway]

Considering how poorly we distribute the resources we do have, I somehow doubt we're ever going to get to a post-scarcity economy. I somehow think that even if we had infinite resources and energy, and the technology to put them to use so that everyone could have everything they needed, they still wouldn't get it. The people running this world have, I think, too much of an interest in maintaining the vast inequalities we see today. Just look at how cynical corporations and state leaders, including many of our own, can be.

I don't pretend to understand what motivates people like that, but the only word they seem to understand is "more". In a world where everyone's equal, that becomes difficult. But I think George Orwell had something to say about that, about power for the sake of power and so on. I think that's a far bigger challenge to an equal society, than access to resources or some assumption that it's human nature not to want to share.

[Ironwolf85]

thing is, the federation didn't get there peacefully, if you read the history the human side of things was rough adapting to things, there were even terrorist attacks in the early years of human entry
Then you also have the alien influences within the federation some of which have diffrent natures, like the vulcans.