Science fiction is in it’s essence the exploration of a situation when all the confounding factors have been magicked/scienced away.

Not uncommonly it explores the requirements of the technical solution, what would the machine need to do for this to work out? And/or What happens if it doesn’t?

Take for example “Do androids dream of electric sheep” by Philip K Dick, it’s about finding androids advanced enough not to know they’re artificial and how to identify and relate to them when the only diagnostic is slow, clumsy, and suspect. It’s more an exploration of what makes a person than it’s around the marvels of The Machine™.

During the 1900s the vehicle for science to magick with had been machines, computers and AI. Remember that space travel, fission power, psychology, modern medicine were all new, hope inducing breakthroughs just this same period.

There’s also the issue that the definition of the genre came after it becoming large enough to matter. The edges between scifi, punk/cyberpunk, speculative fiction, isekai and even to fantasy are all made after the fact, meaning modern machines go into scifi, old machines go into steam-/diesel-/etc-punk. The main difference between Science, Magick, and Eldritch horror is how detailed the mechanics of the solution are described, and speak to different people.

But on the topic of the story not being centered around a machine: try the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

Or go the entirely other way with Ring World by Larry Niven. There’s plenty of machines-did-it in the fringes, but the central theme is to figure out what would be needed for a Ring World to exist, what would happen on it, and how would it be managed. It’s an exploration of physics more than anything - more “what is the machine” than “machines-did-it”.

And the Foundation series (Asimov) famously explore the premise “what if sociology works”, and the other details solved by throwing machines at them.

You also have The Culture (Iain Banks) series that center on/around post-scarcity society and explore that.

A conceivable way could be to disrupt the nuclear force of the target atoms, maybe like an anti-Pion/Gluon ray that self-propagates the reaction through the released energy.

(As we might remember, splitting the atom yields a bunch of energy, and uncontrolled such reactions go Hiroshima)

It might be controlled by sub-particle lensing, probably some kind of magnetic field, to be active at a specific distance.

For the reaction to be contained, either there’s a radially limiting component (air is not particle dense enough to propagate the reaction, or atoms not energy dense enough) or it’s a cascade triggered by the beam which stops when the beam stops (or the reaction gets too far away from it)

As I believe Pions and Gluons are their own anti-particles, I don’t know how we would go about doing this, but hey, that’s for Science!™ to solve.

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.

But price increases of cereals ( bread, pasta, grains, etc.) increased by about 7,5 % last year alone, which is more than the inflation, and more than the increase after inflation.

That’s where people might complain. They still can’t afford food, as food prices increase faster than overall inflation

I appreciate a data supported argument, and love that you actually linked sources.

One thing that I feel is missing in most of the linked analyses is that inflation has also hit unevenly, and the price of basic goods has increased significantly more than overall inflation. Which would explain why households still have less disposable income, also the mean debt burden is much higher leading to loan costs being more common.

Or brought up by a neurodivergent parent, or sibling, or have an ND partner

Ah, but you’re just saying that as a professional troll.

Now compare that to: I think you’re mistaken, intent matters, and I believe extending trust that both parties want to convey something, rather than just dismiss others, is necessary for a discussion, and also for a communal discourse. If we’re just shouting into the void, no trust is needed, but for interactions and building a sense of community, we will need both trust and norms of collaboration.

Baselessly ascribing malicious intent is moreso a way to sow distrust and kill off discussion.

And besides, unless local regulations expressly forbid it, the income statements of those companies are after any fines and after any profit reducing measures (e.g. Amazon famously use investment schemes to reduce taxation), they do make the money to cover them in the shorter interval, or even shorter.

Oh no, with Amazon only having a 3,5 % margin (after fines), it would take them all of 48 hours to make up the losses.

The point still stands: the fines are ridiculously low for these companies, and they have no incentive to change based on current fines.

Also quite useful for places short on water, or daylight, or clement weather, or low-value ecosystems, or where transportation is unfeasible due to accessibility, environmental conditions, market access.

Also quite good to alleviate food deserts, securing strategic supply chains, and supporting urbanisation for greenification, food supply, lowering transport and food security (with growing food also having positive mental and psychosocial effects).

Oh, we need both for sure, and renewables as well.

That’s assuming a lot of ifs resolve our way, and without power needs increasing. It’s more sustainable than coal/gas/oil for sure, but with current energy development needs it’s barely long term (IIRC about 60-140 years)

Also, on centuries timescale, we will need to find more fissiles in space. And according to our current understanding of the universe, they should be quite rare, especially compared to hydrogen.

Basically, figuring out fusion power would solve our needs for the first level on the Kardashev scale, and has the potential to be portable fuel for the rest of the lifespan of the universe.

Progress is always incremental, except in hindsight

Ah, but they gave him back story and motivation.

Spoiler warning: He wasn’t purely evil for evil"s sake, he just tried to rebuild society for the scions of humanity, and had already discarded the normies (can’t remember the term they used) as primitive, albeit barbaric, creatures.

The genius of Bester is that he was so self assured and uncontested, making him almost cartoonishly evil, but also that he was so essentially human. Driving home the major themes of the series: the dangers of unchecked power, the human drive to self determination, and that wielding power over others perpetuates a cycle of violence.

Yeah, Amazon has a pretty long track record of burning through employees at all levels. From the outside it looks like it’s very much to their detriment, but I guess they feel differently since they still do it.

Sorry it’s happening to you though. Hope you find a less sociopathic employer!

The whole reason that it works is because the company can’t afford to lose everyone who’s not complying.

But promotion blocking seems like a weak move. If returning to office is enough of a workplace issue to be a deal breaker, threatening people with not taking extra responsibilities or challenges seems like a losing proposition. They’re already willing to lose their job over the issue, and you’ve shown that you can’t lose them, so now you’re gonna make it shittier to remain at the company?

And even besides the perspective that promotions are a benefit, many roles are in place for the company’s sake, to stay organised, are they now gonna not fill those? Or only fill them with external applicants?

Or is the idea to only promote the compliant ones? That would make some sense, at least.