Potentially Useful Meta III: It's only a Klingon prison if you have to eat Heart of Targ.
So I still haven't finished my post on Spock. I'm sorry for the lamitude; all kinds of nonsense has been happening at Casa Templemarker and I just haven't managed to get it done. There's all this meta stuff I have to get through, and sorting that out reminds me of this Bioethics paper I wrote last year, in the less-than-fun sort of way
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When Ben Sisko talks about being in the Academy, he mentions he blew out his entire transporter credits for the month going home in the first week. So that tells us that using the transporter has some limits that even normal citizens can be expected to follow.
Also, when Voyager gets stuck out in the Delta Quadrant, one of the first things that Janeway institutes is replicator and holodeck rations as they are energy consumptive systems. The concept of a debit system of energy to be used on replicators is probably not an unknown concept, because it wouldn't have come to her so readily.
If you can synthesize the natural resource you need, what becomes of value?
Only the things you can't reproduce, which is why the Ferengi are using latinum, of course.
That's another reason I think the mysterious Federation credit is a measure of energy. Energy must be in lots of demand, but the warp-capable galactic civilizations must have easy ways of getting energy. Thus why the Federation credit is not a real form of money - to a Ferengi it would have almost no value.
That said, I want to know more about your Class M planet theory.
You've basically covered the major points. Other evidence in favor is that plenty of people seem willing to colonize, even though we see tons of colonies basically wiped out in TOS - and even in TNG and DS9, going to a colony planet is no guarantee for safety. (A good example - the Gorn wipe out a colony on Cestus Three, yet in Sisko's era, colonists have resettled there, and been there so long that Kasidy's brother lives in a city (Pike City) that is a member of baseball league.)
Colonists getting killed or wiped out seems to happen almost week on TNG. We also see the Enterprise-D make lots of trips to help settle people or protect new settlements, etc.
When they get there, the colonists almost uniformly seem to be interested in agrarian life, rather than building a city. Which seems to me to be strong indication they couldn't get farmland wherever they are from, and the people want to farm.
Half of Sol's system has been made habitable. Mars gets terraformed, there are domed cities on Venus and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter as well as Luna, yet one of Picard's buddies is part of a scientific project to GROW a continent out of the Atlantic ocean. (I don't know if this is just because they didn't know when it was written how much the ocean currents modulate our climate, or if by the 24th century the weather modulation system that supposedly regulates Federation worlds is so advanced they don't need to worry about it. It sounds like a remarkably bad idea to me, though.)
Plus the Genesis device. Plus the scientist who visits DS9 who is working on reigniting dead stars so their planets can be usable habitation.
And all those border skirmishes with Cardassia and Romulus and the Klingons. Why would anyone bother to have a border war with another species unless they're competing for some sort of resource? We know that Klingons, at least in the 23rd century, are willing to capture planets and subjugate non-warp species to get planetary resources. Probably the Romulans do the same, if their treatment of Remans is anything to go on.
Prior to the Federation founding, Andorians and Vulcans had border clashes as well.
So. They never come out and say that this is what the Federation is all about, but it seems to me that you put the evidence together and all that exploration is to scout out new territory for new colony planets. The Federation is probably at a disadvantage due to the fact that they don't dislocate other species.
I think this also helps explain why humans are carrying children with them everywhere in the 24th century, and why there are so many hybrid kids. They have no issue with unchecked population growth. Maybe it also explains why we see so many humans in Starfleet - maybe we're just fast-breeding compared to the other Federation members.
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