That’s not something that really works with industries that are zero sum games. You can’t have a dozen competing rail companies in a given state because there is only so many paths that a rail system can take, and you need to clear out continuous stretches of land through eminent domain.
If a company provides a vital services and fails, it should be nationalized. If a company does not provide a vital service and fails, it shouldbe allowed to fail and the employees themselves bailed out.
it’s possible that they only use that weird allegory reference pattern when speaking formally to strangers or whatever
It seems like an awfully bad idea to use a communication method that doesn’t transfer what you mean if you have a better option available.
It’s also possible that their language in the original version makes more sense and is more practical and it just gets mangled by the universal translator.
I doubt that’s the case. I don’t see how a non-metaphor based language would get turned into a metaphor based one through a software bug. Some big hand waving would need to happen for that.
IMO the Tamarians probably have brains that are structurally different such that their metaphors come far more naturally.
In my head cannon, that’s more or less how the borg started. I can see it starting off as a much more basic networked community that started off legitimately respecting people’s wishes to join/not to join. But over time it grew and changed, and become so invasive to the point they snowballed into the borg we know and love today.
And if we REALLY want to speculate, their first act of violence/force may have been against some entity that sought to attack them for being new and different. And whatever war or conflict that turned into ended up shifting the values of the borg such that forced assimilation was then seen as morally acceptable. And once that’s condoned, why stop?
It may not be much in comparison to others, but that doesn’t make absolve me of my debt. Practically every other developed nation has this figured out, it’s long past time we caught up.
all we know is that they don’t use money, except when they do. The writing is sort of fuzzy on the matter, which results (regardless of the intention) in an economy that doesn’t actually seem that different to our modern day in practice
At most they use credits, which at least according to this guy, are at most a peripheral, 3rd party currency, or at least a currency the federation uses for external trade, and that’s what makes most sense to me. Why would the average person care about federation credits when they’re only used on border systems at most, and your home replicator can make you pretty much anything you’d ever want? To a person living in such a world, for all practical purposes there is no such thing as money in the federation.
There’s no money, but people still own businesses and talk about buying stuff, which allows for the economic system to fade into a sort of forgettable background space.
They never seem to talk about buying stuff unless it is out on the frontier, exchanging with foreign entities, etc. It also doesn’t seem like businesses in star trek (at least the above board, earthlike ones) aren’t anywhere near today’s businesses. To me, it seems that they are treated as family businesses, with limited “employee” count, and with each “customer” getting their service/food/item for free, within reasonable limits. It’s like going over to your family’s house for dinner. You don’t pay, you’re family and they will happily feed you (within reason). And it seems that businesses treat everyone like that.
There is no stock market, profit motive, costs of running a business. It’s all done out of the goodness of people’s hearts.
Yeah, it was more or less the same experience for me. My community college was the same quality teaching (and in some aspects it was better). Which just makes it infuriating that 4 year community college programs aren’t really an option.
It might be a similar line of though as the Goa’uld weaponry from SG-1. They aren’t meant for accuracy or range. They use weapons of terror that create an absolute massacre when they do by chance hit.
The Ferengi, and especially of that particular group were Ferengi pirates of some sort, probably wouldn’t be above such tactics.
But also it was very clearly not a well thought out episode, so I’m absolutely applying meaning where there is none.
but if they have struggle dealing against a 2000 human civilization rebellion
There is a big caveat to this though, the combine are ridiculously pragmatic, to the point where they use humans to keep humans as slaves. Why specially create enforcers when there is already units that you can augment/brainwash into working for you, who already are well suited for the environment and atmosphere?
So that’s what the combine do, they use humans to keep other humans in check. So that revolt of 2000 humans was really only a revolt against other humans. Stories like that are a dime a dozen on earth.
The Combines dosen’t even have shields, the Combine Gunship can be throw away with just three real life rocket launcher and so far we see that’s one of their stronger airship synts units the combine have.
The shields one is a stronger argument, though again I think that might fall in line with the pragmatism of the combine. If all they are facing is humans, it could be the case in the eyes of the combine that putting extra defenses on your armored units is kind of pointless.
So they may very well have that tech, or something even more superior, but they just don’t bother wasting the resources on it.
Couple that with the fact that the gunships are themselves organic/enslaved, the combine probably don’t mind that the gunships are esentially cannon fodder. They might have the mindset that they can just breed up more.
But destroying a Borg cube? That is a feat even for an advanced civilization, or many of them.
Size doesn’t automatically mean a win, but the engineering required for a dyson sphere is huge. If they have that level of engineering, I could see them taking out pretty much as many cubes as they like. Especially if their dyson sphere(s?) are in any way weapons weaponized. And knowing the combine, they probably have sought such a weapon.
personally I think being a Stalker is worst than being assimilated by the Borg
Agreed 1000%. I’d rather be a borg than a half life stalker. If I’m going to have a hellish life with no agency and only pain, I’d rather not be conscious.
At the end of the day, the true strength of the borg is not particularly well defined (at least in my opinion), and thr true strength of the combine is even worse defined. The writers on either side have left too much up to question for any real definitive answer.