Honestly, 12,000 ambassadors would probably be pretty necessary to the Federation considering the huge number of independent planets there are, some with multiple governments.
You know, based on the shows I had always just assumed the federation planets all had one unified government, but upon thinking about it I realized that they never once say that in the shows.
They say that all the peoples of the planet must be in agreement, I believe. Can’t quite remember, my last re-watch was last year.
But there would have to be lots of planets with split governments, or at the very least pseudo-governments that are remnants of old factions.
I could see former earth superpowers trying to somehow subvert others in the decades following first contact.
Even if the Federation member planets all have unified governments, the United States doesn’t maintain ambassadors to Florida; ambassadors are for foreign relations.
Indeed. The modern United States has about 200 ambassadors or so right now; are we to believe that the Alpha and Beta Quadrant geopolitical (galactopolitical?) sphere is only about 60x the size of the planet Earth?
There might be 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way; if we assume that even just a tenth of those are inhabited by a society eligible for contact under the Prime Directive (IRL this would probably be a massive overestimation, but in Trek I think it’s generally a decent estimate as I’d guess about a tenth of episodes involve contact with a new, never-before-seen alien), and that a tenth of those are in range of regular diplomacy with the Federation such that a standing ambassadorial appointment is necessary, and wildly overestimate that half of all those in range are members of the Federation, that still means that the Federation would need 1.5 million ambassadors solely for external affairs.
I think this meme is off by three orders of magnitude.
Is the multi government part canon? As far as I know there is even an episode about why the federation doesn’t like accepting members who aren’t unified on their world (the one with Picard and crusher being mentally linked).
Granted I have not watched all nutrek yet so maybe that’s out of date (though I would hate that, what Picard said about the why makes perfect sense).
Honestly, 12,000 ambassadors would probably be pretty necessary to the Federation considering the huge number of independent planets there are, some with multiple governments.
What are you? Some sort of vulcan bringing logic into my memes?
You know, based on the shows I had always just assumed the federation planets all had one unified government, but upon thinking about it I realized that they never once say that in the shows.
They say that all the peoples of the planet must be in agreement, I believe. Can’t quite remember, my last re-watch was last year.
But there would have to be lots of planets with split governments, or at the very least pseudo-governments that are remnants of old factions.
I could see former earth superpowers trying to somehow subvert others in the decades following first contact.
Even if the Federation member planets all have unified governments, the United States doesn’t maintain ambassadors to Florida; ambassadors are for foreign relations.
My first thought was ONLY 12,000?
Indeed. The modern United States has about 200 ambassadors or so right now; are we to believe that the Alpha and Beta Quadrant geopolitical (galactopolitical?) sphere is only about 60x the size of the planet Earth?
There might be 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way; if we assume that even just a tenth of those are inhabited by a society eligible for contact under the Prime Directive (IRL this would probably be a massive overestimation, but in Trek I think it’s generally a decent estimate as I’d guess about a tenth of episodes involve contact with a new, never-before-seen alien), and that a tenth of those are in range of regular diplomacy with the Federation such that a standing ambassadorial appointment is necessary, and wildly overestimate that half of all those in range are members of the Federation, that still means that the Federation would need 1.5 million ambassadors solely for external affairs.
I think this meme is off by three orders of magnitude.
Is the multi government part canon? As far as I know there is even an episode about why the federation doesn’t like accepting members who aren’t unified on their world (the one with Picard and crusher being mentally linked).
Granted I have not watched all nutrek yet so maybe that’s out of date (though I would hate that, what Picard said about the why makes perfect sense).
This has nothing to do with accepting members. The U.S. doesn’t send ambassadors to China because they want China to become part of the U.S.
Fair enough, I misread that part