The Consequences of Action, Inaction, and Renegade Archaeology

 Queue John Williams' score.

As a kid, I didn't just like Indiana Jones, I LOVED Indiana Jones.  In some ways, I think it was those films that originally lured me into learning about history.  At the time, I wanted to be an archaeologist, a swashbuckling, gold statue-grabbing, whip-cracking, gun-shooting archaeologist.   When I first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark  I thought Indiana Jones was the genuine article, a true and original adventurer.  Little did I know that Indiana Jones was essentially an updated version of older films and adventure serials, right down to the leather jacket and fedora.  But more importantly, I didn't know at the time that that real archaeologists, if they work in the field at all, spend weeks or months slowly digging with little more than hand spades, meticulously documenting each square centimeter, often times working with local labor support personnel who frequently can be incompetent or untrustworthy. 

Day 12. Nothing found. Should have bought shovels instead of hair conditioner with grant funds.

 If they are lucky, a team of archaeologists might find a handful of arrowheads, maybe a sword, a partial foundation, a skeleton or two and some bits of leather or cloth.   Gold artifacts are rare and rarer still are artifacts which have known historical significance.  The daggers that killed Caesar, Alexander's sword, Captain Cook's issues of Nude Wenches Quarterly....all lost to history.     But in the world of film, Indiana managed to find historically significant objects with remarkable regularity.   From the films alone Jones discovered and/or recovered;

• Chachapoyan gold fertility idol
• The headpiece for the staff of Ra
• The lost Ark of the covenant
• Emperor Nurhachi's ashes
• 1 of 5 Sankara Stones
• Coronado's gold and jewel encrusted cross
• The tomb of Sir Richard, a knight and crusader
• The Holy Grail
• The tomb and treasure of Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador
• The Temple Spaceship Inter-Dimensional craft of the Gods Aliens Inter-Dimensional Beings

Lucky fellow, Indy.   All that luck aside, is Indiana really that good of an archaeologist?  Lets look at his accomplishments one by one;

• Chachapoyan gold fertility idol -  Jones was the first to successfully explore the temple in which the Idol was kept, but did not discover it, Forrestal did and Rene Belloq was right behind Jone's tail, with much more reliable help.
• The headpiece for the staff of Ra - Discovered by Abner Ravenwood, whom Jones apparently pissed off to such a great degree that he died and his daughter did what all heartbroken girls do; move to Nepal and open a bar. 

Try as I might, I just can't seem to chase these blues away drinking heavily here in a dingy bar in the dead of Nepalese winter, surrounded by drunk and dirty gamblers.  Go figure.

• The lost Ark of the covenant - Jones did in fact discover the Ark's burial location within the city of Tanis, but it was Rene Belloq who found the city.  With a literal army of diggers, it would have only been a matter of time before it was found.
• Emperor Nurhachi's ashes - Found (or recovered) by Jones only to be sold to a Shanghai crime boss.  Forgive my ignorance, but isn't archaeology about learning from the past and not selling relics?   

  

 Too much to drink, Doctor Jones?  Seriously, you need to stop. This is an intervention and we are here because we love you.

• 1 of 5 Sankara Stones - Jones does recover the Sankara stone he was looking for. Tough shit for the other two starving villages that had their stones stolen, but hey, one out of three aint bad. However, Jones uses brute force and deception to recover the stone and even if he didn't know the magic words which lit the stones on fire, the British army would have shot Mola Ram within seconds.  Jones could have simply let Mola Ram have the bag containing the stones, shot up the ladder and let Mola Ram either face hungry crocs or British bullets.  

Hello Seattle!  Are you ready to rock?!

• Coronado's gold and jewel encrusted cross - Not only did Jones not find this himself, it is fairly clear that Panama Hat (yes, that is the character's name) is the legitimate owner.    More on this below.
• The tomb of Sir Richard, a knight and crusader - With the help of  Dad's diary, Indy found the tomb...and destroyed it.  Technically, it was the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword who lit the fire which forced Indy to overturn the sarcophagus, but had Indiana planned ahead a little bit, he could have conducted a proper search with support and security, and thus the Brotherhood wouldn't have been an issue.
• The Holy Grail - It is clear from the events of the film, the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword already knew where the Grail was held, at least roughly speaking. But even if they know precisely where it is and the solutions to all the traps in the temple of the sun in which the Grail is kept, the living Grail Knight (and the two other, deader, Knights Richard  and Groucho ) had already found the Grail centuries before James Bond knocked up Mrs. Jones.  Indiana would never have found the Grail himself had it not been for his father's hard work as a scholar.   

Hey old man, I'm looking for the...JEE-ZUZ! What's that smell? You really need a shower, dude.

• The tomb and treasure of Francisco de Orellana, a Spanish conquistador - Found by Jones, but again, through his own incompetence, the body was destroyed and no effort was made to preserve or record the tomb.

• The Temple Spaceship Inter-Dimensional craft of the Gods Aliens Inter-Dimensional Beings - I hate even trying to remember this horrible film, so to be honest, I've forgotten who finds what. Screw it, lets just say Marion Ravenwood stumbles across it and call it good.  

  So, with Indiana's reputation as an archaeologist roundly shattered, one must ask; 'Does Indiana Jones do any good at all?'  


Well, yes.


 Strange as it may sound,  the Temple of Doom is the only movie of the series in which Indiana does any actual good.  First, let's examine his other endeavors.

In the case of Raiders,  Lets say Indy gets a bad case of Dysentery in Egypt and sooner or later the Germans, Belloq and the army of diggers find the "Well of Souls" containing the Ark. 

Well, what do you know? The Ark is in the middle building of the large temple at the center of Tanis. Who would have guessed that?   I thought it would be over by the food court.

 So they load the Ark in the cool flying wing, while poor Indy can't stop shitting. Worst case scenario, Belloq, Toht and Dietrich open the Ark up some place, get their faces melted and leaving the magical box there for the next idiots to find. BEST case scenario, Dietrich feels so confident (given the lack of any outside interference) that he takes the Ark directly to Der Fuhrer himself, who, along with his senior staff and possibly Mussolini, get their faces melted and WW2 (in Europe anyway) never happens. Congratulations Doctor Jones, your diarrhea just saved millions of lives.

Goddammit, I forgot the sunblock!

 Fast forward to the Last Crusade. Indiana realizes "Hey, my Dad was a dick. Let that old fart stay missing! I'm going to bang one of my students, maybe two, instead." While Indiana is in a (possibly illegal) tryst with one or more coeds, the Germans could  find the Diary in Jones' clothes, eventually make their way to Hatay (which turns out was a real place all along, look it up) and they find the temple and the hilarious beheadings of Hatay lackeys and fascists alike begins.   That's if they find the diary. Still Donovan is resourceful and in theory, he could pay a bunch of scholars to do the same research that Henry Senior had done, effectively creating a new diary.  For all that effort, they would still end up in the same trap-laden temple.  Assuming Donovan and crew are not all idiots, sooner or later they would get past the booby-traps and find the Grail Knight (who I'd guess is no match for a MP40, with or without the Grail's version of Powerade) and, even if they choose the grail "wisely", so what? Neither Donovan nor the Grail can go beyond the great seal on the floor. (Typical religion...always a catch.)  "That is the price of Immortality"  As the Grail Knight says.  But then again, there is still a very good chance the bad guys will choose "poorly".

Oh no, everyone's staring.  There's something in my teeth, isn't there?

 Whatever the case, the best Nazi Germany can do is open a museum in the Valley of the Crescent Moon which is in some remote corner of a country no one has heard of. And all of that assumes the Germans and Donovan could ever find Sir Richard's tomb in the library in the first place, which Indiana and Henry Senior happily, if ignorantly, did for the Reich (Both men did have pussy-blinders on, so lets be fair).   If the Knights tomb couldn't be found, no one would know where to start looking for the Grail.   So once again, had Indiana just sat on his ass, everything would have turned out more or less okay.  Yes, Henry Senior would have spent the war imprisoned in an Austrian castle, but I'll bet my left arm that the old man loves tapestries.  But instead, Indy effectively leads the Nazis to the Grail and, after many lives are lost, basically leaves an old man to be crushed by falling rubble.  Classy Jones. Real classy.

 Why don't I speak 11th century French?  Because fuck you. That's why.

 Now onto the Cold War with titans like Kruschev, Eisenhower and Beaver Cleaver.  Let's say Indiana avoids being suckered into looking for the Crystal Skull by the Soviets because he is stuck in paternity suit after paternity suit since he has impregnated so many of his former pupils. (Doctor. Jones hates three things; Snakes, Nazis and Condoms) But Boris and Natasha are clever and find the skull anyway which eventually leads them to the lost temple which turns out to be a GODDAMNED FLYING SAUCER, but so what? The reds replace the skull to where it belongs, the "inter-dimensional beings" wake up, the temple/ship/UFO activates, the bitch of Leningrad gets her eyes burned out and the whole mess gets sucked into a dimensional vortex. Dosvidaniya comrades, the end.

This is why Communism failed.

 In all three cases, Jones' actions, if anything, hastened a forgone conclusion.  Even in the minor opening sequences, Jones proves to be rather useless.   Lao Che? He still ends up with the remains of the Emperor, all he really wanted (and probably recovers the diamond too, as he either owns or controls the club in which the diamond was lost on the floor.) The Fertility Symbol? Belloq got it and presumably it is in a museum or collection in Europe.  The Cross of Coronado?  Stolen Recovered at the loss of several lives. Note that Indiana does not attempt to say that Panama Hat is not the rightful owner, in fact it is made clear that when the cross was dug up in the first place, it was done with the support of local law enforcement; more permission than Jones ever got.  Rather, Jones merely tells Panama Hat that the Cross belongs in a museum.  Which museum?   Let me guess...the one that Jones and partner-in-crime Marcus Brody work for!  Also note that how Indiana did not protest with "It belongs in a museum!" when he was conversing with Lao Che about the Emperor's Ashes.  Hell, not only does Jones employ a gun-toting goon like all the other gangsters, but he also threatens to cut a bitch when the deal goes sour.  But apparently it's only grave-robbing when someone else is doing it, right?  

Pay up jerks! Indiana stole that urn  fair and square!

The major exception is the Temple of Doom. If Indy wasn't so thirsty for that sweet sweet Shanghai Martini and thus wasn't poisoned, and gold coins were good enough for the exchange of the Emperor's ashes, then everything in Shanghai would have been peachy. (except for the moral problem Doctor Jones being essentially a tomb-raider-for-hire ) Ergo he never boards the plane, ergo he never gets to the village/Pankot Palace/Secret mines of Kali. That means the village continues to starve, the children remain as slaves, the slave driver remains unsmooshed by the rock pulverizer, the Maharajah continues to be an annoying asshole and everything goes on the way it had been for about ten more years until Nehru fucks up the Indian economy for the next three decades and Pankot Palace goes into foreclosure.   *Or* the remaining Sankara stones are found ushering in the era of Kali and Mola Ram and his Thuggees go on to destroy the Muslim, Hebrew and Christian gods. (Ha ha Mola Ram, joke's on you! Jesus lives inside us, retard!)   I do think however that Mola Ram is possibly overstating the powers of the stones.  My guess is that apart from glowing, I don't think the Sankara stones do much at all, at least not enough to protect sword-wielding Thuggees from RAF bombers. 

 CHAR...Oh wait. Hang on guys, there's a cliff.

Even so, the poor kids who don't even have union representation, would have remained slaves for much longer than they otherwise would have been, but for the quite accidental, but fortunate, arrival of Indiana Jones, Willie and Short Round.  Jones, for once in his life, does something extraordinarily good.  As an aside, what kind of self-respecting Indian palace serves bugs and chilled monkey brains, but not Naan, Roti, Curry or Kheer? Ive been to India...whatever was served at dinner was not Indian food.   It should have been the chef who was lowered into the lava.

    Oh shit. I just knew I should have served the Lamb Vindaloo instead of the eyeball soup.  Your advice has screwed me for the last time, Paula Deen!

  
Besides the freed slaves (the minor miners. HA!) and returning the stone to the village, there aren't many more tally marks on Henry Jones Junior's scorecard in the "good" column.   Yes, he did save Marion Ravenwood from Arnold "Shoot zem, shoot zem boats" Toht and company, but Jones led them there in the first place.  And as mentioned earlier, Jones does save his father, though whether or not  Henry Senior was ever in any real danger is debatable.  Everything else Jones does is pretty well befitting a scoundrel and a plunderer, which admittedly makes for three entertaining films.  

Back in the day, we archaeologists took what we wanted and shot whoever got in our way. Good times.

 

Today's rambling manifesto brought to you by...

 Hi, I'm Chris.  I'm going to murder people to clear my name. By the way, Bill Cosby?  Big fan.

Has anyone else read Chris Dorner's manifesto? It is an interesting piece demonstrating a disconnect from reality. On the one hand, Dorner highlights the corruption he claims to have witnessed while he was an LAPD officer and well as retribution he faced for exposing said abuse. Other the other hand, Dorner goes on to say that he will target LAPD officers and, if the allegations are true, he has already murdered 3 people, one of whom being the daughter of an LAPD member against whom Dorner held a grudge.   Given the LAPD's reputation, I am inclined to believe the allegations Dorner makes, but I fail to see how that justifies murder.  

But there is much more to the man and his manifesto.
 
Among other things, Dorner expresses his support for an assault weapons ban, announce his love, support and admiration for people ranging from Piers Morgan, Barack Obama, George H W Bush, George Carlin, Charlie Sheen and John Huntsman. (He loves Michelle Obama's new bangs, by the way) He lauds Ellen Degeneres and disagrees with California proposition 8, yet claims that;

 "lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target." 

  How one can tell what an officer's "sole intent" is merely by looking at them is anyone's guess. 

Dorner goes on and on, agreeing and disagreeing with various positions and people (He hates Fareed Zakaria for some reason), he accepts that "what makes America great" is that people can freely disagree vis-à-vis the Chik-Fil-A/ Gay marriage controversy...and yet he seems incapable of actually having a rational dialog about his own issues. In his opening statement he poses the question; "what would you do to clear your name?" Answer;NOT MURDER PEOPLE. 

 If he wanted to shame the department (which isn't hard, by the way) he had literally dozens, if not hundreds, of media outlets available, not to mention many law firms who love this sort of thing. If he wanted to transform the system, he could have started a public advocacy/watch dog group. For Dorner however, these were not serious options and thus he began his campaign of violence. He condemns hypocrites, yet either ignores or is unaware of his own hypocrisy.

Amazingly, he has the gall to claim that he was "never a bully". While that may or may not have been true when he was a youth, I think killing an unarmed girl and her boyfriend qualifies as being even worse than being a bully. Bringing up decades-old school yard events, favorite comedians, likes and dislikes in his manifesto shows to me that this man is profoundly disturbed. I'm no psychologist but when discussing something of (literally) grave importance and then one goes off  on completely unrelated and superfluous matters like a stolen watch in high school or the playing status of Tim Tebow, I think the person just might be crazy, particularly when they start murdering people.

And now I am in critical danger of being a rambler myself, so I will leave it there. Read the manifesto here.

Absurd Price Controls

Well, the regulators are at it again...

It seems cheap milk is just too detrimental to the State of Louisiana, so it must be crushed.

  If you want to understand how insane the reasoning behind price controls actually are, just talk it out;  The price of Milk must be kept high, otherwise people will sell cheap Milk and undercut their competition who will be forced out of the market and then the remaining Milk sellers will raise the price.  So high prices will prevent high prices by eliminating low prices.   Sounds ridiculous, right?
 

"[State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike] Strain said the regulations exist to keep the price of milk as low as possible.
Allowing a supermarket to sell milk below cost could drive competitors out of business, allowing the store to then increase the price of milk, he said."

Just ponder that for a moment...the regulation exist to keep the price as low as possible...by preventing the sale of cheap Milk.    How could this be stated with a straight face?   Truly, this defies every form of argumentative logic.  Truly, in the mind of regulator Mike Strain, War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength and Freedom is Slavery. 

Now listen to someone who actually knew what was wrong with price controls...with a special appearance by a two-faced Richard Nixon.

And here is some more on price controls with one of the most clear examples; Post-War West Germany.  Cheers to the late Ludwig Erhard for his clarity of vision to allow the West German economy to thrive.

 

Gee, Thank You Internet. (NFSW)

An innocent search for a photo of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe goes awry.

The black and white is a classy touch.

A Great Post About Israel

I wasn't planning on posting today, but I came across a great post by classical liberal economics professor  Steve Horwitz.  In it, correctly identifies a problem that frequently occurs with libertarians, which I would call an all-or-nothing position of anarchy, but professor Horwitz calls (cleverly, I might add) the dichotomy of being "Anti-State" as opposed to being "Pro Liberty".   The anarchist or, I am sorry to say, Rothbardian sees no distinction and that you cannot support the latter; liberty, without being the former; anti-state.    I personally see this as being dogmatic and frankly, nonsensical, because it tends to treat all states, all the time, with the same rancor.

As Horwitz says;

"And more important:  even if libertarians agree that “all states are bad,” that does not mean that all states are equally bad.  The US government is bad, and so was Stalinist Russia.  But you know what?  I’m pretty comfortable thinking that Stalinist Russia was a hell of a lot worse state than the US was then or now. "

Hear hear. I would even go a step further in saying that all state actions are not equally bad either.  Some actions taken by the state, however rarely, might actually be good.  Arresting murderers for example.    The same reasoning can be applied to the Israeli government; it's not good, but it is much better than the alternatives.   Yet many people don't see it that way.  As one anarchist named "Marc Abela" with whom I was arguing stated (emphasis mine);

"degrees of severity are of interest to you. They aren't to me. I try to do without. It blurs my thinking process to study whether Islam is grayer than Christianity.
Australia, Britain, Nazi Germany, Japan - all the same stuff. Barbaric statism. I live better and my reflection is cleaner when I just condemn rape and racism all together, not when I try to classify forms of racism into different groups and various flavors. A taxpayer funded post-office is the wheel on the genocidal car."

 This person claims that Australia is the same, morally speaking, as Nazi Germany.    If that isn't morally reprehensible thinking, I don't know what is.  To this person, everything, at least with regards to the state, is equally bad.  That is to say a congressman who uses his office to pay for, lets say, some new suits, is morally equal to this man.     What other way is there to describe this binary thinking other than sick? 

I suspect this person is being somewhat dishonest though and that he doesn't really see everything as being a yes or no question.  But, he presented an argument a certain way from the begining and was more focused in maintaining argumentative purity, rather than being reasonable.  You can read the entire exchange here. (I'm kev3d, in case you were wondering.)

Of course what is reasonable is to examine things on a case by case basis, to carefully weight the social, environmental, economic and most importantly, the moral costs and benefits.   As I have stated elsewhere, a good doctor understands triage; the most urgent problems require the most urgent care.  This requires a discriminating assessment, not all-or-nothing thinking.   Would you really want a hospital to treat someone with a sprained ankle with the same urgency as a person with a heart attack?  Or a common cold with the same remedy as cancer?  Of course not.  So before we claim that Israel is equally morally reprehensible as Iran, lets keep a little perspective, shall we? 

As professor Horwitz says;

"Yes, we all dislike the state, but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.  Ending the state is not the same as building the institutions that safeguard liberty.  A free society is more than just one without a state;  it is one with the rule of law, protection for private property and contract, and equal political rights for all.  Only Israel comes close to having that, and the alternative Israel-free Middle East would be a net loss for liberty."

 Happy new year everyone.

Nanny of the Year 2012

From the good folks at ReasonTV, hosted by Ted Balaker.

Star Dreck; How the Federation Fails.

Set phasers on sanctimonious!

Every once in a while I like to poke fun at popular culture.  The sphere of geekdom, of course, is a large part of popular culture and in turn, Star Trek is a large part of geekdom.   No science fiction franchise is immune from comparison to the iconic Star Trek universe consisting of 5 live action television series, 1 animated series, 11 (soon to be 12) films,  countless games, action figures, plastic hobby models,  costumes and toy props.   The fans themselves are so dedicated and prolific that they have inspired at least 2 documentaries and have continue to fill convention halls in cities across the world for decades.

Behold; the future.

By all accounts, Star Trek is just good clean fun and most of the fans simply love the fantasy and spectacle of the fictional universe.   However I have noticed in recent years that many self-proclaimed Socialists, Communists and even the nutty "Zeitgeist" movement advocates, hereafter referred to as "techno-leftists" (I don't know if that's a real term, but damn it, I'm using it anyway), point toward Star Trek and specifically, the Federation as their model civilization.  To my mind, there is no more sense in choosing a fictional universe meant for entertainment as a model society as there is in choosing the board game Monopoly as a model for real estate investment.   Nevertheless, the point has been brought up enough times to provoke a response, if only done for fun.   Warning; The following is lengthy and is littered with references and jargon that relate to the Star Trek franchise. Anyone unfamiliar with Star Trek will find the following very confusing.  Geeks read on. 

Allow me to say that for the most part, I like Star Trek.  I like the swashbuckling of the original Star Trek series, the camaraderie of the Next Generation, the politics of Deep Space 9, the sense of a long journey home of Voyager and even the clunky, analog feel of Enterprise.    Like any good fantasy, Star Trek makes it easy for viewers to see themselves in the adventures themselves, fighting (and loving) alongside their favorite characters.    In effect, the fans felt as though they were along for the ride as a silent, but present, crew members.   Indeed, I remember as a kid there was a promotion on a cereal box in which contest entrants could win a cameo appearance on Star Trek the Next Generation.  The promotion showed characters Riker and Troi on either side of a human figure cutout with the words "This could be YOU!"    How exciting!   As a kid I wanted Star Trek to be real. And why not?  A universe free from poverty, sickness, war or racism, free access to Holodecks and food replicators...sign me up! Hell, maybe Star Trek was real and the "show" was just a way to gently acquaint people, such as myself, to the real world.

 In retrospect, my belief in Star Trek was like my belief in Santa Claus; deep down I knew it wasn't real, but it was still pleasant to pretend, at least for a while.  Alas, I grew up and eventually came to realize what a terrible place the Star Trek universe is.

To be fair, many of the show's inconsistencies and contradictions are the result of different writers working at different times, and while writers typically follow a writer's "bible", they might not follow what other writers had written before them.   Also, budget and time constraints are always a factor, so the writers, actors and even production designers are forced to cut corners in order to tell a story in a practical way.   However, if one is going to use Star Trek as a model for society, at least some of these inconsistencies must be addressed.  (We can safely ignore unimportant issues like that of Data's Cat, who, throughout the series not only changes breed, but also gender.)

But before we identify what is wrong with Star Trek, let us examine what techno-leftists find so appealing.  As one self-identified Communist (to whom I will not give credit as he will likely spam me or someone I love to death, but if you really want to know, lookup "examples of communism in star trek" on youtube and find the comments most commonly flagged for spam and you will see what I am talking about)  quotes, ad nauseum, counselor Troi from Star Trek; First Contact.

"[Proof of intelligent, extraterrestrial life] unites Humanity in a way no one ever thought possible when they realize they're not alone in the universe. Poverty, disease, war -- they'll all be gone within the next fifty years." (emphasis mine)

Troi makes this prophecy to Zefram Cochrane when the crew was in the "past" of 2061.   The plot is too complex to explain here, but since Troi is from the future, she believes the statement to be true. 

Captain Picard too makes several comments that appeal to the techno-leftists.   For example, in the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone", the Enterprise recovers 3 frozen people from the late 20th century.  One of whom expresses his deep concern over his stock portfolio and is shaken to learn that not only does the Stock Market no longer exist in the 24th Century, but, as Captain Picard tells it;

"A lot has changed in the past three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy."

In First Contact, when asked how much the Enterprise cost to build Picard says;

 "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity."

The series creator, Gene Roddenberry also contributed to the sense of a moneyless, one-world government.  Writer Ronald D. Moore recalls;

"By the time I joined TNG, Gene [Roddenberry] had decreed that money most emphatically did NOT exist in the Federation, nor did 'credits' and that was that. Personally, I've always felt this was a bunch of hooey, but it was one of the rules and that's that."

A line from Voyager Episode Dark Frontier exemplifies this point. Tom Paris explains;

"When the New World Economy took shape in the late 22nd century and money went the way of the dinosaur, Fort Knox was turned into a museum."

Lastly, the idea of a post-scarcity world appeals to the techno-leftists because, after all, why toil doing boring or dangerous work if one has access to literally any good for free? 

From the Series, Films and supporting material, we can gather a small, but by no means exhaustive, list of what appeals most to techno-leftists.

• Monolithic Government with (apparently) no political parties
• High reliance on technology
• No money
• No poverty
• No war
• No racism
• No disease

Sounds awesome right?  Not so fast.  Lets examine these claims one by one.

 Monolithic Government;  True.  The United Federation of Planets is a highly centralized military dictatorship with Starfleet as it's sword.   The Federation clearly controls everything; communication, commerce (what little is left) and even food distribution.  There is no Coke, no Pepsi, no Snapple, nothing but what the Federation supplied replicators will issue with the consensus being that replicated food and drink are inferior to the genuine articles.

Politically, the Federation is a mess.   It seems mostly Starfleet officials make the lion's share of decisions but sprinkled in a few of the original cast films is the Federation President who openly negotiates with foreign powers and even claims that "This President is not above the law."

Don't like how I run things? Then please address all 

complaints to the office of go fuck yourself.

But by the time of TNG there isn't a peep out of the executive's office. The President's office does however come up again in DS9, when the Federation is at war with the Dominion.   From Memory Alpha's page on the DS9 episode Homefront;

Sisko has a number of recommendations for the President regarding the Dominion infiltration and how it can be combated. The President is not eager to turn Earth into a military outpost where everybody must submit to blood tests and phaser examinations of every room must be carried out. He quickly changes his mind however when it turns out that the attaché case Sisko was carrying is, in fact, Odo. Odo points out that Sisko and Leyton were allowed to see the President without having to undergo a blood test or having their personal property checked. If he had been a Founder, he could have killed the President or simply taken his place. The President begrudgingly agrees to allow the new security procedures saying that it has taken a lot of hard work to change Earth into the peaceful place that it now is and that he doesn't wish for this paradise to be destroyed. "We're not looking to destroy paradise," says Sisko, "we're looking to save it."

So, on a whim, the President can turn Earth into a series of checkpoints and blood tests. Sisko might call that the preservation of paradise, I would call it the gestapo.   One might argue that it is only Federation facilities that are subject to the increased security measures, but since the Federation clearly control most of the the means of travel, the planet is effectively put on lock-down.   Is there any sort of legislative or judicial oversight?  Is there even the ability to protest?   Apparently not.  If Earth has it's own government then it was overridden by the Federation President. Whatever the Federation nomenklatura say, goes.    As for the claim of "Paradise", well Micheal Eddington sets that record straight.

You tell 'em Mike.

High reliance on technology; True, but with dire consequences.  Between transporter accidents, coolant leaks in the reactor and Holodeck malfunctions, it is clear that no one knows how anything works on a Federation ship.    In the TNG episode "Evolution", microscopic robots called Nanites take over and almost destroy the Enterprise.  Why?  Because a teenager left a petri dish open.  That's right, a high schooler's science project escaped and almost destroyed the most advanced ship in the Federation.    In TNG episode "Where Silence has Lease", the USS Yamato (the Enterprise's sister ship) is destroyed by downloading  alien computer data that couldn't be processed correctly.  The same fate almost befell the Enterprise until the crew made the last ditch decision to reboot the ship.  This means that no one aboard the Yamato was smart enough to hit the off and on buttons on the ship before it was too late.   The sister ships Yamato and Enterprise  simply lack something as simple as a honeypot to quarantine and test questionable alien data.   After the crisis, the crew of the Enterprise are pleased to learn that is was not, in fact, a design flaw in Galaxy-Class starships that caused the Yamato disaster as originally suspected.  I'd say not isolating your critical systems from harm is a pretty damned serious design flaw.

Whoopsie daisy! I guess someone forgot to install the firewall.

The Holodeck too malfunctions in multiple episodes, again, threatening various crew members, but also leading to the problem of "holo-addiction" with crew members becoming obsessed with simulations.  Evidently zipping around the universe, discovering new life and civilizations is so boring that some prefer holograms to reality.    Whatever the case, it is clear nobody understands how the contraptions are made.  Riker and Data think that most of what is in the Holodeck is real; replicated plants, rocks, water etc. While Picard explains that a Holodeck simulation is merely a collection of photons and force-fields.   Yet everyone is caught off guard when the "simulated" Professor Moriarty becomes self-aware.   As for the engineering of the Federation, one only needs to look towards the unfortunate Geordi LaForge.   Why he is repeatedly put in harm's way on missions unrelated to engineering seems to me as a serious misallocation of resources, but even when he is where he is supposed to be, the poor fellow seems to attract nothing but disaster.   Is he really the best engineer in Starfleet? Or is Starfleet just that poorly engineered?

Please, for his sake and yours, don't let Geordi near 

any consoles, or turbolifts, or phasers, or rocks, or people.

No Money; Claimed but demonstrably false.  This is one of the more confused and contradictory topics in the Star Trek Universe.  Several episodes in multiple series and films make reference to "payments", "prices", "credit" to an "account" and so on. It can therefore be assumed that the Federation has some kind of monetary system, but the details are never explained because, well, it's science fiction.   It is clear however that the Ferengi not only use money, but this is one of their more distasteful qualities.  So far as the Star Trek Universe is concerned, the only good Ferengi is one that is disinterested in money, which is established to be extremely rare.  Whenever the topic of economics is brought up, it is always with a sense of smugness on the part of the Federation and anyone who pursues profit is seen as being medieval, irrationally self-absorbed and rude.  The Ferengi who exemplify Capitalists, (In the mind of Roddenberry and some of the writers) are cartoony charactures whose only concern is the pursuit of profit.   If the Federation, and for that matter, Gene Roddenberry took the time to stop looking down their noses at money and those who use it, they might discover what money is; a medium of exchange.   In other words, it is a lubricant for creating agreements and investing in new ventures.  To be against money is to be against mutually beneficial exchange.   

Ultimately Roddenberry's vision for the future, particularly in TNG onward was that people only worked because they wanted to, not because they had to.   But, what if someone likes to earn money? What if someone likes to acquire things that cannot be replicated such as original works of art or ancient artifacts.   Such people do exist in Star Trek, and not all of them are villains.  One of the most notable is Captain Jean Luc Picard who is an avid collector of archaeological relics.  So when he says that humanity is no longer "obsessed" with the accumulation of things, take it with a grain of salt.   Of course Picard, when berating a 20th century Capitalist, ignores that the "accumulation of things" is a form of self improvement.    Why should the pursuit of wealth, based on mutually beneficial trade be any different than the pursuit of physical fitness, sexual prowess or mental deftness? What's the harm?  The Federation apparently assumes the zero-sum fallacy with regards to economics.   Evidently, Adam Smith's works didn't survive to the time of Star Trek.

Where's that employee discount you promised me, you cheap bastard!

No Poverty; False.  This is an interesting claim because although Earth doesn't appear to have any problems with poverty, it is clear that many of the Federation's colonies do.  Yet even on Earth, the Capital of the Federation, Picard's own brother and nephew were killed in a fire (Generations).   Perhaps Picard's brother, Robert, eschewed technology that would suppress a fire (like water), but on the other hand, the ships of the Federation have their fire-suppression systems fail very often.  So how "rich" can the average person be if even the flagship of Starfleet can't put out a measly fire.  As for the Federation's colonies, they vary greatly in living standards.   Tasha Yar's planet, Turkana IV, was a failed colony that essentially destroyed itself with civil war and rampant drug abuse.  Nimbus III, the so-called "Planet of Galactic Peace" is a barren wasteland inhabited by the dregs of the Federation, Klingon and Romulan empires. The capital of Nimbus III is ironically called "Paradise City", given that it is populated almost entirely of criminals and the pathetically stricken.   Federation Ambassador St. John Talbot refers to the planet as the "armpit of the galaxy" and it is clear that Nimbus III is used as a place to exile those Ambassadors who have fallen out of political favor within their own government structures.   Nimbus III is a failure of central planning by no less than three galactic powers, with the Federation unable or unwilling to correct the problem. 

 

 Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the people are poor and the sand is gritty.

   Even if we accept the statement that poverty has indeed been eliminated on Earth, this is like saying poverty has been eliminated in the richest parts of Beverly Hills, given the size of the Federation relative to the size of the Earth. How dishonest must the Federation officers be to insist that poverty has been "eliminated" when they are only referring to a comparatively tiny minority of the Federation?  After all, if no one "wants" on Earth, why can't the benevolent Federation make all member planets just as pleasant? 

No War; False.  If it is meant that there is no intraplanetary war on Earth, this might be acceptable, but, like the poverty claim, this would be a dishonest statement by reason of willfully omission. War means war, either from without or from within and it is clear that Earth itself, not just the fringes of the Federation, has been a participant in many wars and at least a handful of direct attacks against Earth itself.  The Borg actually succeeded in assimilating the Earth, but  the Earth was saved by that Sci-Fi deus ex machina; time travel.  In the 200 or so years between Enterprise and Voyager, the Federation and Earth with it have been at war with the Romulans, Klingons,  Gorn,  Borg,  Dominion and others.  While the Earth itself was not necessarily touched in all of these conflicts, again, given the size of the Federation this is no more accurate than saying the United States was at peace during WWII because Washington D.C. was never directly attacked.  

Off we go to spread peace, with our peace-phasers and peace-torpedoes.

But lets face it; a Space Opera would be pretty boring without a war, so there was plenty of conflict in Star Trek.  This put the writers in a bind; no war means no viewers, but war means the Federation aint so good at the peace game.  The compromise was that the Federation could never be the aggressor, always the defender.  The last to enter war, the first to broker peace.  Sounds great!  But, as the war with the Maquis demonstrates, it is also false.  Without getting into too much detail for this already too-long post, the Maquis formed when the Federation and Cardassian empire redrew the map and several inhabited planets were ceded over to Cardassian control, but it was made clear that the Cardassians never intended to peacefully let the settlers stay on the planets in question and a campaign of harassment began, so the Maquis was created as a means to combat the Cardassian abuses.    The Federation, feigning desire to "keep the peace" branded the Maquis as terrorists and began going after them.  But herein lies the rub; the peace had already been shattered when the Cardassians began harming the lives and property of the colonists.  Whatever treaty was supposed to exist between the two powers was rendered null and void as soon as hostilities began.  The Federation wasn't interested in peace, but appeasement to a hostile force that had a proven track record of war and genocide.  There are other examples of Federation aggression, either officially sanctioned or conducted by rogue leaders, such as Admiral Cartwright and the Khitomer conspiracy, Admiral Mark Jameson and the Mordan IV civil war and forcible removal of the Ba'ku from the planet of the same name.*   So either the Federation is criminally incompetent, or just criminal.   Either way, the Federation is not peaceful. 

*Okay, so the Ba'ku are holier-than-thou assholes and the events surrounding them are morally murky at best, but it is hard to justify their removal when alternatives appeared to exist.  For a hilarious and insightful video review of Star Trek; Insurrection, go here.

No Racism; False.  For all their talk of being an enlightened, multi-ethnic, tapestry of culture, the Federation spends a lot of time in judgement of other races and cultures.  Worse than that, the Federation pigeon-holes entire civilizations for the actions of a few.   For example, commander Kira Nerys makes her feelings known about the Ferengi; 

"They're greedy, misogynistic, untrustworthy little trolls, and I wouldn't turn my back on one of them for a second."

 Kira Nerys; Starfleet Commander, Bajoran Colonel, Racist.

Really Kira?  All of them?  Nerys is not the exception; "Bones" McCoy frequently belittles Spock's racial heritage,  Kirk distrusts Klingons (in fairness, Klingons did murder his son), nearly everyone in TNG, DS9 and Voyager either dislike or distrust the Cardassians, Romulans and Ferengi.   Even Voyager's B'Elanna Torres, herself a half-Human/half-Klingon hybrid is nervous when she discovers that her one-quarter Klingon child will still likely have visible brow ridges.  In a society that is free of racism, why would such insecurity over one's racial heritage exist?    Perhaps Federation society isn't very racist and Torres is just terribly insecure, violent and borderline suicidal...but if so, why was she admitted to Starfleet?    Admission standards must not be very high. 

The self-loathing of Torres aside, an objective analysis of Star Trek reveals that, sadly, racism is alive and well in the 23rd and 24th centuries, but interestingly enough, this topic was addressed several times, even in the original series.  I give the writers credit for at least acknowledging that within the Federation, some pretty blatant racial bigotry existed, but on the other hand, most other races are depicted as monolithic cultures with very little variance among the people. The odd exception to the rule is just that; odd.

No Disease; False.   This is the easiest claim to refute by the shear number of episodes which concerned illnesses of one sort or another.   Captain Picard, in an alternate future and in at least one book, is diagnosed with "Irumodic Syndrome".   This is the guy who has access to the best doctors in the Galaxy.  If that were not enough, Picard almost dies on the operating table when his artificial heart was being replaced because of the surgeon's incompetence.  In a universe as advanced as the Star Trek universe is, I would expect 2 things; that artificial hearts last a lifetime, and that surgeons know what they are doing.  According to the show, this is asking too much.   Suffice to say, if the Captain of the flagship gets lousy care, what hope is there for the rest of the Federation?   For that matter, Admiral Mark Jameson contracts the incurable Iverson's Disease. Other diseases include Clarkes Disease, Sharat Syndrome, Darnay's Disease and Rushton Infection, to name a few.

It's the big one Elizabeth! I'm comin' to join you!

Conclusion; Living under the Federation boot would be unpleasant to say the least.  Sure, one is free to self-improve, so long as it is the self-improvement the Federation approves of.  The sacred "Prime Directive" which is held so dear turns out to be quite flexible, particularly when its violation provides a benefit to the Federation.  If there is no benefit, well, the Federation is quite happy letting other civilizations go extinct even if by no fault of their own.   True, no society lives up to the hype, but the Federation doesn't even work on paper without violating the various laws and directives that are supposed to make it so special.    Ultimately, Star Trek just an entertainment franchise and should be enjoyed in much the same way potato chips are enjoyed; pleasant junk.   It shouldn't be taken seriously and neither should anyone who believes the Federation to be an ideal society. 

Jesus, the future sucks. Let's drown our sorrows

in these tankards of Romulan ale.

Special thanks to all those geeks out there maintaining great sites like Memory Alpha, SF Debris and Wikipedia.  Live long and prosper.