preferred type of government?

[Sentimental Gentleman]

Equal pay for everyone just wouldnt work...

A person who has 10 years of education and 10 years of student loans needs a good paycheck just to get out of debt.

Should someone who is a trained expert get the same pay as a layman?

Thered be drive to get the easiest job possible. Youd have no more specialists. No doctors, mechanics, engineers, actors.. everyone would just do the easiesy job possible

All of these are interesting and pressing concerns, and that last point is certainly a possibility...but is it not also a possibility that human values might change so that the joy of challenge and self-enrichment and the pleasure of charity become the foundation of society, rather than the will to leisure and individual hedonism? I think the success of a society like Mercyknight describes would depend upon the cultural buy-in to the values necessary to make it run smoothly, and clearly those values are at odds with many of those that our present societies, for the most part, encourage us to internalize. But I do not think that makes the values of these present societies absolute and eternal necessities. Still, as you rightly point out, our present understanding does produce a tremendous hurdle for any realization of the Federation world that Mercyknight presents.