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It still gets me that the Ferengi were mostly unknown to the Federation, yet by the time of DS9 they’re almost a widely known cornerstone of economics in the Alpha Quadrant.
Rule of Acquisition #45: Expand or die.
Rule of Acquisition #75: Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.
Rule of Acquisition #9: Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
This comment endorsed by The Grand Nagus.
There’s a case to be made for dueling what is essentially a post-scarcity socialist Federation against the embodiment of capitalism-as-cult.
Conversely, the Borg are in a way aspirational-- growing and assimilating knowledge and improvements seems a bit higher of a goal, but their presentation comes off ham-fisted.
I feel like there’s a missing explanation of why “assimilating the diversity” of a civilization needs to be a total stripmine rather than taking a few (potentially willing) representatives and regularly coming back in case anything new evolved, like binge-watching a civilization every few years. The stripmining aspect seems necessary to make them recognizabily villianous-- the enemy of sacred individuality rather than just data hoarders whose homelabs turned into giant cubes.
It does feel like Latinum is very much a MacGuffin for undermining a huge amount of “we have virtually infinite free energy and can replicate anything we need” worldbuilding; they needed a way to make 24th century capitalism seem remotely plausible.
The Borg became a metaphor for colonialism, I think, with assimilation being an “improvement” for it’s victims.
