It may have been a bad idea to have children on the Enterprise

[conuly]

Sure, it's dangerous. You're exploring unknown space and all. But you can't prove that with "Lewis and Clark didn't bring a four year old with them!" because, yeah, they did. Well, no. First they brought a pregnant woman, and then once she gave birth they brought an infant. That's not any better for your point. Likewise, the youngest "man" to sail with Columbus was eight. If you're gonna make a freaking historical analogy, do it right or don't do it at all. You can't have a serious conversation about trivial things when people are just gonna be wrong.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"You can't have a serious conversation about trivial things when people are just gonna be wrong."

Alas, so true!

As for children on the Enterprise: sure, it's somewhat dangerous, but these are children of a space-going culture, and space is intrinsically dangerous. They're also children of an apparently gender-equal society, or at least a society that aspires to be one. If men and women are living and working together, naturally many of them will be falling in love and/or having sex. Birth control is all very well, but it's not reasonable to insist that female members of Starfleet choose between having a career and having a family, or that parents leave their families behind for years on end.

It's never said in so many words, but one gets the strong impression that over-population is not a concern for humans in the Star Trek universe - that, on the contrary, the human breeding population is comparatively small, and spread pretty thin across interstellar space. Members of Starfleet are the physically and mentally elite, and they come from all the different Federation worlds. Therefore, it is highly advantageous to the human species to encourage their breeding as much as possible, to mix their diverse elite genes together across the galaxy. It's even more advantageous to Starfleet, to have the education of their elite children from the time they're born: a kid who grew up on a Federation starship has a very good chance of ending up in Starfleet Academy.

Some space-going families are going to die in space, yes. But earthbound families die too. Note that we never see the lives of the ordinary non-military citizens on Earth, let alone ordinary citizens of the poorer, more distant colonies and stations. I bet the Enterprise offers a much higher quality of life than the average civilian family leads.

I don't recall there ever being any children living on board the Enterprise when Kirk was its Captain. There may have been some there that we just never saw, or the families-on-board policy may have come into being after Kirk's time.

[conuly]

Some space-going families are going to die in space, yes. But earthbound families die too. Note that we never see the lives of the ordinary non-military citizens on Earth, let alone ordinary citizens of the poorer, more distant colonies and stations. I bet the Enterprise offers a much higher quality of life than the average civilian family leads.

Well, we do see how Sisko's dad lives, but you don't like DS9, do you? (And really, that raises more questions than it answers. Federation economy makes no sense, because nobody bothered to plot it all out in advance.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Do we? I never saw that much of DS9 - mostly I just couldn't stand the Bajorans; the rest were all right. So how does Sisko's dad live? What episode was that?

[conuly]

He runs a popular restaurant in New Orleans. He pops up a few times.

Has a nice place, but not, you know, palatial. And if Earth isn't allocating prime property by using money, I have no idea how they determine who gets the great views and who's stuck in a fifth floor walk-up with windows on the next door's wall.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well now, that is totally the pertinent question, isn't it? Are people assigned a rank in the Social Hierarchy based on their social function and importance? That would be so insanely complicated!

[conuly]

It might make even money seem preferable after a while!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

After a short while, I'm thinking.

Maybe, instead of a social hierarchy, they determine allocation of desirable resources by random lottery. The fine house on the hill becomes available; anyone who wants it puts their name on the list, and a computer rolls the dice.

What that wouldn't factor in is, suppose the guy who gets the fine house lives in squalor in it, does no maintenance, basically trashes the place? Who's accountable; who's going to have to pay for the repairs? Fine to say "Oh, we don't use money", but the materials have to come from somewhere, and somebody has to do the work.

Of course, the work may be done by robots. But even though robots can build other (better!) robots, somewhere in this process there has to be people designing, maintaining and programming the robots. How are they getting paid?

I seem to recall that original Star Trek had a unit of electronic currency called 'credits'.

[conuly]

Maybe, instead of a social hierarchy, they determine allocation of desirable resources by random lottery. The fine house on the hill becomes available; anyone who wants it puts their name on the list, and a computer rolls the dice.

And then the guy who needs a big house because he as 12 kids and needs to be close to work bitches and moans because the only lottery they won is for the tiny apartment 15 miles away and now he has to take a transporter every day and he's got a freaking phobia.

I seem to recall that original Star Trek had a unit of electronic currency called 'credits'.

The only way to make their economy work is by assuming some form of money, but Roddenberry (without putting too much thought into the implications of this) apparently put the kibbosh on that by TNG.

http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Federation_credit

How are they getting paid?

They do it out of love for their fellow man and a desire for self-improvement.