"The misunderstanding is cleared up, the miners stop destroying eggs, and the Horta babies, when they're hatched, start tunneling out valuable minerals, enriching the miners."
This seems like another important aspect of this kind of colonization narrative: the win-win solution. Colonizers colonize because it is enormously profitable (at least in the short term). Ending colonization almost always means that the colonizers and those who benefit from colonization will lose money, either because of profit decreases or cost increases. But this episode seems to depict the magnanimity of the miners (full disclosure: I haven't seen the episode) as a net gain for both groups.
What if that hadn't been the outcome? What if the miners had lost all of their profits? What if the Hortas had decided not to share the minerals with the miners? Would that make the end result worse? From a human rights perspective, of course not, but from a macroeconomic perspective, yes.
It's a great episode; one of my absolute favorites. But yes, it's very unclear starfleet would have been okay with leaving the mineral wealth even if it meant genocide.
The people who wrote the 60s show weren't ready to go there— they were, at least back then, reformers rather than revolutionaries. In the minds of Roddenberry et al, Men of Sufficiently Good Will could FIX Colonialism so everybody, including the indigenous population, benefits from it! The notion that there might not be a solution fair to all, and that America — I mean, the Federation — would just have to take its ball and leave, was anathema to them.
"The misunderstanding is cleared up, the miners stop destroying eggs, and the Horta babies, when they're hatched, start tunneling out valuable minerals, enriching the miners."
This seems like another important aspect of this kind of colonization narrative: the win-win solution. Colonizers colonize because it is enormously profitable (at least in the short term). Ending colonization almost always means that the colonizers and those who benefit from colonization will lose money, either because of profit decreases or cost increases. But this episode seems to depict the magnanimity of the miners (full disclosure: I haven't seen the episode) as a net gain for both groups.
What if that hadn't been the outcome? What if the miners had lost all of their profits? What if the Hortas had decided not to share the minerals with the miners? Would that make the end result worse? From a human rights perspective, of course not, but from a macroeconomic perspective, yes.
It's a great episode; one of my absolute favorites. But yes, it's very unclear starfleet would have been okay with leaving the mineral wealth even if it meant genocide.
The people who wrote the 60s show weren't ready to go there— they were, at least back then, reformers rather than revolutionaries. In the minds of Roddenberry et al, Men of Sufficiently Good Will could FIX Colonialism so everybody, including the indigenous population, benefits from it! The notion that there might not be a solution fair to all, and that America — I mean, the Federation — would just have to take its ball and leave, was anathema to them.
Right, but...things haven’t changed that much in the series!