Champagne Socialists and Communist Dictators and the Star Trek Future

Woman with Japanese Skull WW2 War Trophy

Star Trek: The Next Generation is on Netflix and has been remasted in HD (with the original TV aspect ratio, though). The main premise of the show is that human beings evolve and our civilizations evolve as we acquire knowledge. In fact the show almost completely conflates technological progress with "social" progress. Have we really progressed and become  more refined or has  our brutality just shifted around and moved into dark out of sight out of mind places? Really, WWI and WWII, were made possible by industrial technology and were the serial application of it to mass slaughter. The death toll of those two wars is off the charts in human history and the total war doctrines of the great powers in WWII was as barbaric as any Mongol Hoarde.

Could global level rational cooperation among all people ever really work? Many of the people who are always trying to sell the idea are champagne socialists who preach universal "sharing" from atop piles of money. Of course, the "promise" of forced cooperation inevitably turns to slavery and worse. Socialism seems pretty un-clever.

Humans are capable of both cooperation and competition, obviously, but in Star Trek world the need for competition seems to be obviated by the super-duper sources of energy they have. So all the people, at least of starfleet, participate in a rigid hierarchical (but presumably meritocratic) militaristic organization, which is actually a pretty weird ingredient of the fantasy world of future atlantis.

Is global cooperation a pre-requisite for advancing technologically or in other ways? Probably not. Not in the Star Trek or globalist way certainly.