The surprise is that an ordinary Borg drone (as opposed to a special case like Picard/Locutus) using the first person singular.
Hmm… I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a plot device or an inconsistency to not provide those details, but they’re interesting questions.
Specifically… Ben’s father had the (creole? cajun??) restaurant in New Orleans, and there were even a few scenes in the restaurant, yes?? Was anyone ever shown paying a cheque??
Or is it just a question of anyone who walks by and wants to try the food is given some?? Who sends the restauranter his supplies?? (The father/granddad is shown as an old fashioned type who would never work with replicated ingredients… only the real thing, all the way.)
I don’t know about payment, but it didn’t look like a very large restaurant. Maybe he only serves say, 20 diners per night, and it’s reservation only. He derives fulfillment by having the reputation of serving the best gumbo in town or some such.
Given the level of technology, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the back of the restaurant, he had a some high-tech fish & shrimp ponds, and “aeroponic” systems for growing all the fruits, veggies, herbs, etc. He and his family make everything by hand, which makes his restaurant highly respected & valued.
Sounds hokey, but it seems just about everyone on Earth at that point is more or less self-actualized, and if not, they’ve got tons of counselors & really great pharmaceuticals to make you self-actualized.
Sitting around eating replicated White Castles, smoking doobage & playing video games all day is probably viewed as a mental illness, and with a little treatment, you too will find fulfillment doing something worthwhile for society. Or you suddenly find yourself a “colonist” somewhere out on the fringes of Fed space.
There’s got to be a dark underbelly to the Federation. Picard is full of it if he truly thinks there isn’t.
Good point about the small restauranter just being in it for the pleasure, prestige, etcetera. Didn’t think about him growing everything in the back… on the other hand, maybe if he’s really the best gumbo in town, the local government helps out with getting him any special ingredients he can’t easily get his hands on.
I’m not entirely convinced about the forced psycho-therapy treatment for the ‘mental illness’ of laziness. :dubious: Personally, I always figured that there would be a fairly large lazy class on the ‘civilized’ planets like Earth, but the technological level was high enough, and sufficient resources were available, to support them. Maybe anyone who doesn’t get a ‘dispensation’ for doing something else worthwhile with their lives has to spend two months out of every year in public service, or something fairly lenient like that.
On the other hand, there are probably strong social conventions still in place to encourage a strong work ethic over most of earth… and some gray areas where public opinion is uncertain as to what’s a worthwhile endeavour and what isn’t. For instance, a somewhat geeky young man who spends all of his time puttering around with obsolete equipment in a duo-tronics workshop will probably be thought of as a little strange…
until he invents a subprocessor control structure that allows better simulation of outside air temperature patterns in a holodeck or something. 
In any case the Federation sounds like a boring, autocratic place to live. No wonder people head for colonies.
I think this is the answer right here. From what we’ve seen of Earth, it seems to be very sparsely populated. Every city is surrounded by vast tracts of land that appear to be totally undeveloped wilderness. No suburbs or sprawl to be seen anywhere. I suspect that the vast majority of humans live off-world, on colonies or space stations, and that the people who actually live on Earth are a small and very fortunate minority.
Also, we’ve heard hints that people who live on colonies don’t have life quite so easy as people in Starfleet (in that episode where Picard and Wesley crash on that desert planet, for example). Plus, we all know that humans seem to be greatly over-represented in Starfleet, but humans from Earth appear to be over-represented within that group. Off the top of my head, we have McCoy (southern US), Uhura (Africa), Chekov (Russia), Sulu (Japan? California? I forget), Picard (France), Sisko (Southern US), O’Brian (Ireland), and Janeway (Midwest US)
It seems to be that Earth is most definitely the center of power in the Federation.
Well, we know from Voyager that Tom Paris, after he got kicked out of Starfleet and did time in prison, spent all of his time as a layabout, shooting pool and drinking (until Janeway convinced him to come back into Starfleet). So there’s definitely a chance to be a govt-supported do-nothing.
And, we know that Rysa, the pleasure planet, is a well-tolerated (to say the least) phenomenon–here, they encourage people to do nothing but enjoy themselves (undoubtedly, some for more than just a one-week vacation).
Something’s definitely not right about that sequence, since Janeway went to the new zealand penal colony and got Tom Paris out of there to help her on one little mission. He didn’t finish doing his time in prison. Unless you’re talking about one of voyager’s several alternate timelines.
(yes, I’m quite a geek and I know it. Maybe not as geeky as some of the geek lords of the dope, true.)
“A new life awaits you in the offworld colonies. A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.”
Stranger
Or, if one is to have a true utopia, you could have the guys who catch the shrimp and grow the okra (for reasons of their own fulfillment) giving of their harvests to Grampa Sisko, out of pride in seeing their products put to such good use.
Nah, I don’t buy it, either.
That’s because you were raised in a money-centric environment. We’re talking
the future, man. You work because, uh… you know, work makes you free? No, that’s not it.
[South Park]
College Know-it-all Hippy:“We can create a place where people help each other”
Stan: “You mean a town?”
College know-it-all Hippy:“No. We can have a guy who makes bread and a guy who fixes things”
Stan: “Like a Baker and a Mechanic”
College know-it-all Hippy: “You don’t understand yet. Just wait until you go to college”
[/South Park]
I wonder if everyone moved away once it became apparent that all the bad guys immediatly make beeline for earth whenever the have a bone to pick with the federation.
At a guess, I would say to keep in mind that Earth went through a period of warfare and social collapse that probably reduced the population a great deal and first contact actually occured before recovery was complete. It could simply be that global population never returned to late 20th century levels. Plausibly, the Earth’s population could only be a few hundred million even in the 24th century.
(And apparently I slept through the Eugenics Wars somehow. Say, did we win? 
)
Along this similar line of thought, it would seem that England (or at least various members of the Commonwealth who maintained an accent reasonably close to that of England) was able to expand considerably into Eurasia some time after the Eugenics wars, hence the common occurance of Europeans with British accents (ie: Picard from France, Bashir from Russia, Chekov had a Russian accent, but he was from the Ukraine, IIRC)
That all depends. Are you a Genie or a normal human?
Bashir is British. How did you get the idea he’s Russian?
Hrm… one of my friends who watched far more DS9 than I did said he was Russian… now I’m confused… :smack:
To get technical, I’m not even sure he’s Terran as I know he spent at least some time off-world and I don’t remember his birthplace ever being given but his father had a very distinctive London accent and according to the DS9 Companion, Behr matched him and O’Brien in part because they’re both British.
Whatever the case, he definitely is not Russian.
What I wanted to know about this episode is, what happened to Picard, the visionary explorer; Picard, the lover of history and amateur archaelogist? Here we have three living, breathing human beings from Earth’s past; what’s Picard’s reaction? “Oh, don’t go reviving them–Oh, why did you revive those silly people?” And of course, “Why did these silly people” (all of whom were dying fairly young, as I recall) “go and freeze themselves?” Because, of course, in The Future no one fears death anymore, not even dying at a relatively young age. :rolleyes:
Imagine being able to interview three living, breathing people from 300 years ago. Sure, we would undoubtedly find some of their attitudes rather primitive, but what an opportunity for scholarship!
Picard’s a Starfleet captain before he’s an archaeologist. I’d bet that he was more concerned with the disappeared outposts than whatever intellectual opportunities those guys offered him. It was a very tense situation and I think he had other priorities.
Y’know, “eyes on the prize” and all that.