Matthew Yglesias tries to answer a question from Raoul Vega about why ships in the Star Trek universe don't utilize small, one person fighters in battle, like in the Star Wars universe. Vega suggests these ships would be vulnerable to such an attack due to the construction of their weapon systems, which seem more focused on large targets rather than small ones. Yglesias responds:
Clearly this is a question that calls for a made-up answer. So what I would say is that most likely in the Star Trek universe it's not technologically feasible to equip a craft smaller than a Defiant-class starship with deflector shields. You could attribute that to the physics of the deflector fields themselves, or the need for a large power supply, or what have you. Either way, the upshot is that piloting a small craft in battle would be tantamount to suicide. At the same time, it's probably also the case that it's not feasible to build warp engines powerful enough to move a craft large enough to carry Defiant-class starships. Consequently, no aircraft carriers.
Yglesias is forgetting that the Imperial TIE fighters of the Star Wars universe generally don't have deflector shields. This reflects both the Empire's approach to battle and decisions made about resources. The Empire can overwhelm the smaller number of better equipped rebel ships (which have deflector shields) precisely because they can manufacture massive amounts of poorly protected fighters and forcibly conscript enough pilots to staff them because they are, after all, an Evil Empire.
That doesn't explain why the evil empires of the Star Trek Universe, like the Klingons and the Romulans, don't also forcibly conscript pilots for one man fighters. What is more likely is that the sentient species of Star Wars, humans in particular, have a much higher birthrate, owing perhaps to artificial birthing methods like cloning, which explains why they have enough being to both staff massive starships and fleets of one-man fighters. Since the availability of food has a great deal to do with population growth, this suggests that the food replication technology so often seen on the Enterprise is not common, and may in fact point to greater inequality in the blatantly socialist Federation of Planets than Federation propaganda would have us believe.
--A. Serwer
