and then you wake up with a hangover and your ankle is chained to the holodeck bio filter that you have to keep clean until you figure out how to escape
It occurs to me that the only thing keeping Starfleet from being really effective slavers is the moral code, which seems like a really really thin barrier
Free upkeep with replicators. Medicine that is basically magic. Advanced personal weaponry that can be used to enforce compliance. They could easily maintain a supply of forced labor to do anything they didn't feel like, and you have to figure there's a timeline where a culturally degenerating Starfleet realizes it.
yeah you say that
and then you wake up with a hangover and your ankle is chained to the holodeck bio filter that you have to keep clean until you figure out how to escape
It occurs to me that the only thing keeping Starfleet from being really effective slavers is the moral code, which seems like a really really thin barrier
Free upkeep with replicators. Medicine that is basically magic. Advanced personal weaponry that can be used to enforce compliance. They could easily maintain a supply of forced labor to do anything they didn't feel like, and you have to figure there's a timeline where a culturally degenerating Starfleet realizes it.