Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting

[mindstalk]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Both Whedon and the show make it clear that the Core is supposed to be strictly Imperialistic in it's goals. They support slavery, clearly not a way to make people see you as friendly and benign. Also Corperations warping science to force profitable answers (which of course either doesn't work or supresses better answers) is also a theme of the show.

No the Core Worlders clearly dispise the Fringe Worlders in much the same way the 19th century British elites dispised the Irish, or the way most Americans looked down on Native Americans through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

No, Joss has made it clear he doesn't see the Alliance as all bad guys, or even all that bad overall. He's said so outright, and the first aired pilot involved an Alliance delivery of medicine. Classic "good works".

The slavery we've seen was on the Rim, not the Core. Support it, or insufficient law enforcement to stomp it out? Debt-slavery's weaselly, anyway.

OP: interesting idea! Orderly crew and ornery passengers makes some sense. So would an exploitative crew a la _Lord of Light_ (not as badly as them.) "We make our paradise, we feel obligated to decant you, if you don't fit we'll dump you over there."

I think I recently saw work suggesting the habitable zone may be wider than thought. It's not something we can claim to have reliable knowledge on, especially given how diverse planets are. As for the 'verse, they have gravity-altering tech (don't ask out), and I think artificial zones. At that point realistic expectations about habitable worlds simply don't apply.