The prime directive is a great example of how even a good rule taken to the extreme can end up causing more harm than good.

But beyond that, it’s just an easy aid for the writers to add a point of conflict for their stories. The prime directive as a value within the federation seems secondary to me.

They wouldn’t be able to finish stealing that car before a thousand hungry lawyers ate them alive. Why do we let media companies do that?

They would probably actually have a decent shot at getting away with it, at least at first.

And to answer your question, it’s because the anger that companies generate by doing this shit ends up turning into piracy. Why would you try to punish a corp for doing this (likely wasting your time) when a cheap VPN and basic tech literacy gets you what you want?

The effort ratios are way out of wack when it comes to digital products. It’s easy to get around digital bullshitery, not so much in the real world where we are all car dependant.

Gay - Anon was constantly terrified of shooters, which means they were constantly thinking of other men

I don’t think there are enough such edge cases for it to make sense for it to be legal.

If a corp needs an employee to be that close, then they should hire local, and/or rotate staff.

At a bare minimum, I agree, no corp should profit off of housing.

That’s how a lot of co-ops works. Or maybe it’s called non-market rental. I don’t remember the exact name but it’s definitely a thing.

Either way, landlord parasites are not needed.

restricting corporations from purchases, banning Airbnb (yes, they drive prices up, and if you use them, you are contributing to it), penalizing if unit is not occupied (though enforcement of this will be hard), or banning foreign investors.

Agreed, we should be doing all of those things. Corporations should not be able to own any kind of housing at all, and multi unit buildings should be under non-profit co-ops.

And to penalize unoccupied housing, we should have a georgist taxation system.

Also a big fan of both series.

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.

The combine certainly are an advanced civilization. If you take the peripheral writings as cannon, they have at least one Dyson sphere. The tech for that might be beyond the borg, because even the borg’s biggest structures are grains of sand in comparison to the size of a dyson sphere.

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.

One day I’ll have more to do and you people will be rid of me.

And that day will be a sad one.

And for those that are able to keep to just one subscription, switching to another when they’ve finished watching whatever show it is that said service had, they aren’t safe either.

One of the next steps that these corporations are going to take is to add fees for dropping their services, with year long contracts.

They don’t want competition, so they will try to force you to stay.

I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who’s had thoughts about the borg origins.

She has been very persistent about knowing the background for everything. It bothers her to be dropped in the middle of something without the context.

So she wanted to start at the “very beginning”, which in my mind is TNG season 1. The original series is great, but I figured she’d enjoy it more after having already gotten into trek.

She is throughly enjoying the cheesy-ness of it though, which is really good.

I could see that too. Either way, it’s a fun thought experiment to question how such an entity comes into being. Because surely the starting point looked a lot different given that they’ve assimilated (and therefore been changed by) thousands of species.

I’m finally watching star trek with my girlfriend and getting her into it. Been watching along with her on TNG. So far we are about done with season 1, but I am big excited to re-watch DS9 se5, especially with her watching it for the first time by my side.

Gonna have to brave the awful ass se1 Sisko haircut though lol.

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?

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.

That actually makes me think, would it theoretically be possible to automate ship repair with transporter technology? All the time they have ships coming in with giant chunks missing.

If you are able to get a high resolution scan of the current state of the vessel, and have the plans to build it, couldn’t they set up a specialized transporter to transport the damaged bits away, and transition area that is destroyed, and then replace it with new parts as needed?

Basically do some a similar repair method from Space Engineers, just fancier with transporters.

Or alternatively, they’d be apathetically disappointed, and become excited over the extra profits.

Because enshitifying their service would earn them short term profits, which is the only thing corps/shareholders care about.

Just avoid areas with life signs. Person in the room? Delay the transporter sweep for an hour and check again. Or alternatively just don’t clear dead skin cells/hair/dust within a 2ft radius of a given life sign, and do maybe 3 sweeps a day.

Given that they have the ability to select pretty much whatever material they want with the transporters, I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard for them to do a once a day transport for all dust/debris particles directly into space, or some containment unit of their choosing. Same goes for pretty much any other cleaning task.