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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Simon_Jester said:
This is also plausible to me. Having Starfleet just run a mine would make sense, though it might actually make MORE sense for Starfleet to contract the work out to some organization that specializes in "run mines" instead of "run spaceships."

Again, the ONLY specific crew and pp trickles we get from ANY planet(s) are from entire homeworld planets with estimated populations of 1-10 billion people. And even then it's implied that the overall crew/pp trickle is coming from that planet AND all the daughter colonies founded by the species which lives on that planet.

None of the colony worlds we establish in or around 2300 are going to be anywhere near that big and important any time this century, and likely not for another 2-3 centuries to come.
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True, but... people living in the core might have less pressure to join Starfleet, unlike Colonists who are probably far more adventurous on average (because they left the core for the frontier) so total population numbers might not be an indicator AND keep in mind we are grabing the member states as one, that doesn't mean all the members came from each species homeworld. We don't know the contribution breakdown, within each member state, so...
PP is another matter, though I imagine strategically important colonies might end up with more pull than others...
 
Briefvoice said:
You keep saying it would be "super-fucked" for Starfleet to be an independent economic actor in the Federation, but I don't agree. I think there's a lot of ways in which Starfleet is not just an arm of government, but is sort of an invisible "member world" of the Federation on its own. The role of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or the role the military of Pakistan has often played isn't the worse comparison, though it's probably not perfect either.
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I find it kinda funny that after asking how it could be 'fucked' you cite Pakistan and Iran as examples. Regardless of their other issues the penetration of the military into civilian spheres is noted as being quite, to use a political science term, fucked-up to the functioning of democracy and indeed the state. The other touchstone, as @Leila Hann mentioned, would be Turkey where the Deep State term emerged from.

I find it funny you mentioned Badmirals a little way back and then go "But how bad would it be really to give them their own resource base?" This is how you end up with the Vengeance :p

Night said:
Given our economic system would be basically unrecognizable to anyone in this thread already, so what?
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The primary concern is one of accountability. We have already discussed the level of power the Commander of Starfleet gets and how it's already a bit discomfiting. Giving them it's own direct resource base only adds onto those concerns. Even if the Fed is post-scarcity and we don't have 'money', they still have resources to allocate. Civilian, elected oversight over resources is one way democratic governments keep a tight leash on the bureaucracy. If the State Department and the Military suddenly got a legal stranglehold on say, uranium mines, you'd probably have a few concerns.

The details of how the economic system would work, I agree, would be totally unrecognizable. But the large-scale flow of resources, if represented by 'money' or literal tons of duranium ore still have the same problems. To put it a different way -- wouldn't it be totally fucked if the research Starfleet did at the outposts was kept entirely internal, shared only as Starfleet wished?

Briefvoice said:
I think there's a lot of ways in which Starfleet is not just an arm of government, but is sort of an invisible "member world" of the Federation on its own.
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I know you say this but the invisible member world it serves, as you kind of say, is the entirety of the United Federation of Planets. We even have our own Councilor - the President [okay maybe that's a rhetorical reach but work with me here].

Ultimately the Council gives us a lot of leeway but thinking we're in any way independent of them when they are the 'member world' we serve is kinda strange to me.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Well, Kahurangi kind of did that with her diplo pushing.
e: :V
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And we ended up with Development.

GAMBIT: FAILED
 
Iron Wolf said:
I find it kinda funny that after asking how it could be 'fucked' you cite Pakistan and Iran as examples. Regardless of their other issues the penetration of the military into civilian spheres is noted as being quite, to use a political science term, fucked-up to the functioning of democracy and indeed the state. The other touchstone, as @Leila Hann mentioned, would be Turkey where the Deep State term emerged from.
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Turkey! Yes, dammit, I meant to say Turkey and somehow typed Pakistan instead. (Pakistan is just a straight up military dictatorship most of the time.)
 
Oh dear, we're arguing speculative economics of a polity several orders of magnitude larger than has ever existed in all of history, with an economic system that is basically alien to modern theory and centrally founded on technologies that have never existed, based on early 21st century developing nations...
 
IIRC it's canon that starfleet has various research installations, so we probably do outright own the research installation.

Not sure about the mining installations.

It's possible that the income is so high because Starfleet founded mining sites aren't paying in a cut to member goverments.
 
Upon realizing that the Federation really is, at the end of the day, a military dictatorship, the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order breath a collective sigh of relief.

aeqnai said:
Oh dear, we're arguing speculative economics of a polity several orders of magnitude larger than has ever existed in all of history, with an economic system that is basically alien to modern theory and centrally founded on technologies that have never existed, based on early 21st century developing nations...
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I don't care if we're talking about a city state or a galactic empire. If the military is self-funding, then there is literally no mechanism whatsoever in place to ensure its loyalty to the state.
 
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I think the short of it to me is that the Council fundamentally trusts Starfleet, and that the Federation is based on the idea that Starfleet is trustworthy. The State of Emergency couldn't exist without that idea. Analogies to 20th and 21st century militaries don't work because the premises are fundamentally different. This loyalty to the state thing is assumed. You may not like that because that's scary in our own day and age, but that's not true for Starfleet.

Even someone like Kahurangi who wasn't necessarily the most political person wielded massive influence because she was trusted because she was Starfleet. Remember when we were asked to whisper advice in the President's ear, and then our advice was followed almost to the letter? That's why Rogers was so scary to the Council, because he represented an exceptional threat to that trust in Starfleet. He may not even have actually been a threat to the Federation, but the whole enterprise slowly crumbles apart if Starfleet isn't actually this impossibly pure-hearted force of good.

When you're putting weapons that could depopulate every world in the Federation in a day into their hands already and giving the keys not to your head of state, but to a hundred individual captains who follow orders from one individual Admiral, in the grand scheme a few colonies isn't a big deal. Starfleet seems to handle its own supply chain up to and including ordering and building new ships; we don't need the Council to approve purchase of every new Excelsior, do we?
 
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SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Even someone like Kahurangi who wasn't necessarily the most political person wielded massive influence because she was trusted because she was Starfleet. Remember when we were asked to whisper advice in the President's ear, and then our advice was followed almost to the letter? That's why Rogers was so scary to the Council, because he represented an exceptional threat to that trust in Starfleet. He may not even have actually been a threat to the Federation, but the whole enterprise slowly crumbles apart if Starfleet isn't actually this impossibly pure-hearted force of good.
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ROGERS: Look, I'm not a perfect man, but I can claim with pride that that no Starfleet officer ever tried to assassinate the President of the Federation on my watch.

DLAMINI: Isn't that rather a low bar?

ROGERS: Spoken like someone who never had to spend any time around the Federation Council.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I think the short of it to me is that the Council fundamentally trusts Starfleet, and that the Federation is based on the idea that Starfleet is trustworthy. The State of Emergency couldn't exist without that idea. Analogies to 20th and 21st century militaries don't work because the premises are fundamentally different. This loyalty to the state thing is assumed. You may not like that because that's scary in our own day and age, but that's not true for Starfleet.

Even someone like Kahurangi who wasn't necessarily the most political person wielded massive influence because she was trusted because she was Starfleet. Remember when we were asked to whisper advice in the President's ear, and then our advice was followed almost to the letter? That's why Rogers was so scary to the Council, because he represented an exceptional threat to that trust in Starfleet. He may not even have actually been a threat to the Federation, but the whole enterprise slowly crumbles apart if Starfleet isn't actually this impossibly pure-hearted force of good.

When you're putting weapons that could depopulate every world in the Federation in a day into their hands already and giving the keys not to your head of state, but to a hundred individual captains who follow orders from one individual Admiral, in the grand scheme a few colonies isn't a big deal. Starfleet seems to handle its own supply chain up to and including ordering and building new ships; we don't need the Council to approve purchase of every new Excelsior, do we?
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My question is basically "if there's nothing preventing Starfleet from going rogue, then why HASN'T someone like Rogers (or, probably, someone worse than Rogers) done so by now?"

You can't just say "the Federation is a more mature society" and use that as a justification. Because being a mature society doesn't happen by fucking magic. It happens BECAUSE you do things like keep the military on a tight leash.
 
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Leila Hann said:
My question is basically "if there's nothing preventing Starfleet from going rogue, then why HASN'T someone like Rogers done so by now?"
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There are some checks and balances. Starfleet can't stand against all the member fleets combined, for one. But mainly because this is Star Trek and we take a mostly optimistic view of human nature where even Rodgers was acting out of misplaced concern rather than personal ambition.
 
Leila Hann said:
My question is basically "if there's nothing preventing Starfleet from going rogue, then why HASN'T someone like Rogers done so by now?"
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Rogers was paranoid about the Klingons (and Romulans?), not really a megalomaniac or anything. I'd like to think that Starfleet is capable of self-policing at least to that extent.
Also, there are plenty of idealistic captains/flag officers who would probably refuse to actually carry out a coup.
 
Nervos Belli said:
There are some checks and balances. Starfleet can't stand against all the member fleets combined, for one. But mainly because this is Star Trek and we take a mostly optimistic view of human nature where even Rodgers was acting out of misplaced concern rather than personal ambition.
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I think that taking an optimistic view of human nature would mean dreaming up a society that has proper accountability.
 
I figure there's a lot of simplification going on RE ship orders, actually. Also we totally have asked them to build Excelsiors before, in the form of asking for one off infusions of resources. :V

I mean this whole time I've been talking about how it's an abstraction for a rising tides lifts all ships scenario and I don't know why it's controversial to assume that. On the other hand I could be totally contradicted by the Secret Economy spreadsheet so :V
 
Leila Hann said:
My question is basically "if there's nothing preventing Starfleet from going rogue, then why HASN'T someone like Rogers (or, probably, someone worse than Rogers) done so by now?"

You can't just say "the Federation is a more mature society" and use that as a justification. Because being a mature society doesn't happen by fucking magic. It happens BECAUSE you do things like keep the military on a tight leash.
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That happened. His name was Cartwright. He had to conspire against the bulk of his own service in order to achieve his goals, leading to the entire plot of Star Trek VI... where his conspiracy was duly unmasked and dismantled by Starfleet.

And the consensus backstory we've been building (thanks in large part to Briefvoice) is that after this point the Council used the combination of the Khitomer Accords and investigation of the Cartwright Conspiracy as a reason to massively downsize Starfleet, until what was left of the service was definitely politically reliable. Maybe not very well equipped, but very reliable.

Leila Hann said:
I think that taking an optimistic view of human nature would mean dreaming up a society that has proper accountability.
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To me, it means assuming as a baseline the rule of law, with the moment anyone becomes seriously concerned that the rule of law is going to break down being the "OH SHIT" moment. The Undiscovered Country represents an "OH SHIT" moment for the Federation, and in a sense we've been roleplaying the process by which the Federation reacted to that moment and rebuilt itself 'back to normal,' with the Rogers Admiralty being the part of that process which happened 'off screen.'

Gravitas Hunt said:
Is that still true?
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If anything it may be more true than it was at game start. We no longer have a unique advantage of entire categories of super-ship the member worlds don't have, and there are ten member world fleets. Each of them has Combat 30, 40, 50, or higher by now.
 
Leila Hann said:
I don't care if we're talking about a city state or a galactic empire. If the military is self-funding, then there is literally no mechanism whatsoever in place to ensure its loyalty to the state.
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we get most of our budget from the council, our mines are largely supplemental. As for mechanism of control, well they did remove the guy before the quest from office. also keep in mind, our scarcest resource is PP, and that is definitely something the council could strangle us on.
 
Leila Hann said:
I do, actually. Letting the military create its own mining facilities is a sure recipe for a deep state.
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That would depend on whether you prefer vertical or lateral mining shafts.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Even someone like Kahurangi who wasn't necessarily the most political person wielded massive influence because she was trusted because she was Starfleet.
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I suspect that Kahurangi's preexisting reputation for trustworthiness helped rehabilitate Starfleet; if the stuff involving Admiral Rogers actually happened on top of messes like the Cartwright Conspiracy, the Council was probably wondering if they should just put the Fleet out of its misery.
 
Steven Kodaly said:
That would depend on whether you prefer vertical or lateral mining shafts.

I suspect that Kahurangi's preexisting reputation for trustworthiness helped rehabilitate Starfleet; if the stuff involving Admiral Rogers actually happened on top of messes like the Cartwright Conspiracy, the Council was probably wondering if they should just put the Fleet out of its misery.
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As far as we can tell, the only thing Rogers clearly did wrong was take resources earmarked for Excelsior construction and repairs, and allocate them to his pet 'pocket explorer' project. There is no compelling evidence that he plotted or even remotely considered the notion of a coup or rebellion in any way.

Aside from the Ares project, Everything else was just a case of him strongly believing XYZ when the Council believed ABC. Which makes him an irritant. A gadfly, not a threat to the state. Sort of like... the Hawks' equivalent of Stesk. the guy who makes you say 'DAMMIT' a lot, but who does have a legitimate role even if it isn't always the time and place to do what he thinks is right.
 
Here's what I think about the Federation.

The Federation is deeply weird. It's a close alliance of multiple species with different cultures and histories who have agreed to put aside their individual ambitions and surrender all of their foreign policy power and some of their domestic power to an organization literally dominated by aliens. (No matter which species you are, the Federation is dominated by aliens.) That's a tough sell! Part of the reason that the Federation Diplomatic Service seems so 'useless' is that their diplomatic efforts are 90% focused on keeping Federation Members happy with each other, with relations with foreign powers as only their secondary purpose.

It's not easy holding the Federation together, and Starfleet is a key part of it. Starfleet represents something that all Federation members have a piece of. Its the most visible symbol of the Federation, and it represents the Federation as a whole to outside powers. Starfleet is something that everyone can buy into. But there's a price to that.

Keeping the Starfleet completely out of the control of any individual member means that it answers only to the Federation Council, and the Federation Council is not well suited to maintaining tight control of an organization like Starfleet. There's a constant push-pull where they want Starfleet to be independent, but not too independent, but still kind of independent.
 
Note that the only known commanders of starfleet to plan a coup had to hide it from essentially the entirety of his own service because they knew their subordinates would not go along with it.

The biggest check on the commander's ability to execute a coup is that his subordinates are more likely to kill him then support him.
 
Well, it's Starfleet and Star Trek, so they'd probably not have killed him.

Relieved him of his command and confined him to quarters to wait for a court martial? Well, most certainly that.

Unless he resisted. Then killing him is on the table if much preferred not to happen.
 
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