There are a couple holes in your perticular analogy May. The first one is that a colony ship of this sort has a defined mission and purpose, its to bring people from one place to the next, preserve the necessary skills for life on the new planet, and survive long enough to get there. And the important realization that comes with the thought of a defined 'job' that the entire 'world' (At least if you extrapolate the ship into a large community, the word 'global' loses its meaning and 'community' fades when you get to a large enough picture of the things around you, but world does seem to hold enough connotation for discussion) is that in a confined space like a craft of this nature there's one additional thing that hasn't been figured into the equation, space itself. You can't share space indefintately, especially in a closed environment where no additional space can be provided, you can't build a taller building in a space craft, or add a new wing of cabins to house additional people.
This lack of space means that when you set out on such a mission a decision has to be made about the crew that you're going to harbour, are you going to start with a relatively small crew and let biological reproduction inflate your crew size? Or start with a full crew and ban biological reproduction? And if you're prepared to ban something so personal, how much control are you willing to exert to get the point across. A developing child takes up a -great- deal more resources than an adult does, and is incapable of producing anything to offset this cost, but its an investment into the future health of the community, because that child will, with careful nurturing, develop into a productive member of society.
The bigger question that hasn't been asked in this scenario, is how much control are you willing to exert on the populace, are you willing to make work mandatory, make reproduction illegal if uncertified, make the rearing of children carefull supervised. And what about people who simply consume more resources by their nature, people who keep their spaces unclean or are socially abrasive, or who eat more food.
The problem becomes that once you start looking at the -real- situation of taking a pre-determined number of people from one place to the next in such a manner, is who do you take? Its not honest to assume that everyone will have a skill that will enrich the lives of others on the ship, should people have to learn such a skill before they're allowed to be part of the crew? And what about the diversity of tasks, is an engineer worth more than a bartender? Are bartenders unimportant in their entirety?
So many questions would have to be asked, and this is the problem when we try to contain so large an issue as the world, its very difficult to bottle it up into a small space and try to keep it from exploding. Its fine in the strict, millitary environment that Star Trek revolves around, where everyone is either part of the crew or they're transitory, but when everyone must have a purpose (because why would you include anyone on such a vessel who couldn't provide for themselves) things become complex, over-pressurized. We either have a system of totalitarian control in which participation is enforced for the good of the ship and the mission, or a loose system where the honor of people would either compel them to work towards the common goal... or they would -have- to be pitched out the airlock.
Because if the guy one block down from me is living the same life I am, but not working like I am, what's my motivation?
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-03-27 08:34 am (UTC)This lack of space means that when you set out on such a mission a decision has to be made about the crew that you're going to harbour, are you going to start with a relatively small crew and let biological reproduction inflate your crew size? Or start with a full crew and ban biological reproduction? And if you're prepared to ban something so personal, how much control are you willing to exert to get the point across. A developing child takes up a -great- deal more resources than an adult does, and is incapable of producing anything to offset this cost, but its an investment into the future health of the community, because that child will, with careful nurturing, develop into a productive member of society.
The bigger question that hasn't been asked in this scenario, is how much control are you willing to exert on the populace, are you willing to make work mandatory, make reproduction illegal if uncertified, make the rearing of children carefull supervised. And what about people who simply consume more resources by their nature, people who keep their spaces unclean or are socially abrasive, or who eat more food.
The problem becomes that once you start looking at the -real- situation of taking a pre-determined number of people from one place to the next in such a manner, is who do you take? Its not honest to assume that everyone will have a skill that will enrich the lives of others on the ship, should people have to learn such a skill before they're allowed to be part of the crew? And what about the diversity of tasks, is an engineer worth more than a bartender? Are bartenders unimportant in their entirety?
So many questions would have to be asked, and this is the problem when we try to contain so large an issue as the world, its very difficult to bottle it up into a small space and try to keep it from exploding. Its fine in the strict, millitary environment that Star Trek revolves around, where everyone is either part of the crew or they're transitory, but when everyone must have a purpose (because why would you include anyone on such a vessel who couldn't provide for themselves) things become complex, over-pressurized. We either have a system of totalitarian control in which participation is enforced for the good of the ship and the mission, or a loose system where the honor of people would either compel them to work towards the common goal... or they would -have- to be pitched out the airlock.
Because if the guy one block down from me is living the same life I am, but not working like I am, what's my motivation?
People are inherrently lazy.