As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. For example, and without specifying precisely how the various modifications would work, CBO somehow concluded that the council could "eventually achieve annual savings equal to several percent of Medicare spending...[which] would amount to tens of billions of dollars per year after 2019." Such savings are welcome (and rare!), but it is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.Then adds: "That paragraph reads a bit like a very angry Data trying to hurt Spock's feelings."
Free associating on the Metro back home, it becomes clear that what the new rebooted Trek really needs is a re-do of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home but dealing with a more contemporary environmental threat than the need to save humpback whales from extinction. For example, The Enterprise could travel back in time to try to urge the Senate to pass strong climate change legislation. I’m sure Spock would have some choice words for the illogical nature of the filibuster rule. Or maybe Scottie could teach us about some dilithium-based sources of clean energy, spurring a green jobs boom.Funny. But also dissonant. Within the fictional Star Trek universe, the future's climate is doing just fine. So why would they want to go back in time to alleviate an environmental disaster that did NOT materialize? Either the dangers of global warming had been greatly exaggerated, technology had advanced to the point where it wasn't a problem, or some combination of the two. Going back in time for this is a solution in search of a problem.
Isn’t the Prime Directive’s doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of (particularly underdeveloped) alien civilizations a classically paleo-con non-interventionist position?Larison's answer:
Indeed it is, which is why most Star Trek plotlines are so annoying. If the most important principle is non-interference, why is the moral of almost every Star Trek story that this or that Federation captain is right to violate the Prime Directive in order to “do something” whenever there is a crisis? Surely the stories should drive home why non-interference is the better, wiser course, but instead they routinely show the Prime Directive to be the invention of moral and political idiots. It is hard to think of another fictional world in which its heroes so regularly disrespect the core values that they are supposed to espouse. Anyone who watched very many of the original episodes with Kirk would come away with the impression that the Prime Directive was a rule mostly observed in the breach, and most TNG episodes and movies would tell you that non-interference is either misguided or actually morally corrupt. The entire ninth movie was one big celebration of so-called humanitarian intervention. The advocates of non-intervention–the people invoking the Prime Directive most often–were portrayed in that feature as corrupt collaborators with the worst of the worst.A commenter retorts:
You’d have to be an extraordinarily doctrinaire non-interventionist to advocate anything like a Prime Directive approach to US foreign policy. Non-interference in other state’s domestic affairs is one thing. A policy of deeming other states too primitive to even be graced with the knowledge that the United States exists is a bit more extreme. Similarly, you can respect a state’s desire to protect its most important industries without going further and arguing that any economic or cultural exchange at all is too dangerous to the less-powerful culture. According to the Prime Directive it makes sense for an entire civilization, including all its people, to perish in a natural disaster, since saving anybody would halt that civilization’s natural progression towards extinction. I know paleo-conservatives aren’t known for their sentimentality, but I don’t think they’re quite that, uh, mean.I'm decidedly against intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries (e.g. toppling Saddam Hussein) but I think the commenter is right about the Prime Directive becoming morally absurd when it means not being able help a civilization avoid extinction when it's of little cost to us.
The Prime Directive is routinely disregarded on Star Trek because it’s so hard for a rational or moral person to take it seriously. A more flexible approach (like the way the crew on TNG actually makes decisions when the Prime Directive clashes violently with common sense, morality, ethics, etc.) seems more reasonable.
President Obama has drawn not-infrequent comparisons to the Spock character. Do you see any similarities there?Great, the first trekkie president? During the campaign, especially before Palin entered the stage, much was said about his lack of experience. Opponents in the Clinton and McCain camps argued that superior head knowledge couldn't make up for this. But if he's versed in interstellar diplomacy that's gotta count for something, right?
I’ve met him twice. The first time was a couple years ago, very early on when he had just announced his candidacy. He was in Los Angeles, speaking at a luncheon we were invited to. There was a very small crowd — minuscule compared to the crowd that he gathered later — at a private home in Los Angeles. And we were standing on the back patio, waiting for him. And he came through the house, saw me and immediately put his hand up in the Vulcan gesture. He said, “They told me you were here.” We had a wonderful brief conversation and I said, “It would be logical if you would become president.”
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