I think it would be much more interesting to explore the creepier side of this supposedly egalitarian post-scarcity economy... I mean think of how wierd it is that a military organization is in charge of scientific exploration, that all the individuals on the starship are tracked at all times, etc...
Kirk always had a mixed-bag relationship with Starfleet and had to go to bat up against them in Spock's favor. Picard also foiled a number of infiltrations on Earth during the early seasons of TNG. Dr. Bashir and Chief O'Brien repeatedly tussled with agents of Section 31 on DS9. Tom Riker ended up fleeing Starfleet so he could fight with the Maquis, who were betrayed by the Federation and tortured by Cardassian overlords. Sisko himself murdered an ambassador and implicated the Dominion in a diplomatic plot to get Romulans to join the war.
There's a hell of a lot of well-intentioned extremists, even in Star Trek's utopia. Now what happens when you take away the biggest voice of reason? Sends shivers down my spine to think about what kind of darkness in the hearts of men the crew of the Possibly-Enterprise will wrestle with.
One thing that always bothered me was why people weren't basically just spending their time hanging around the food replicators and fornicating in the hologram machine. I can buy that the crew of a starship would be chosen for a strange combination of discipline and risk-aversion (not to mention Starfleet adding something to the water), but it seemed to me that there would have to be all kinds of exotic hedonism, resource intensive "art" projects and crazy philosophies on the surface of the planets.
I thought it had some interesting "Okay, so no more scarcity, now what?" plots.
Why do the holodeck doors[0] look like they have massive locking mechanisms? The holodeck is apparently one of the most advanced pieces of technology in Starfleet, a system of such vast complexity it can be create sentient life on command, and simulate the experience of entire worlds down to the atomic level. Why would such a system have what appears to be a peripheral role on the ship, serving as little more than entertainment, and why is it apparently locked up tighter than even the bridge?
It's implied that humans for the most part have evolved beyond beyond base desires like greed and hatred, but this is rarely backed up by any of the series. But what if, among Federation society, displays of "unevolved" human behavior are generally forbidden or frowned upon outside of a controlled environment like the holodeck?
Whatever happens in the holodeck, stays in the holodeck (except when it doesn't) thoroughly locked away out of sight and out of mind. It acts as a release mechanism for humanity's atavistic pleasure seeking side, but humans can't admit that it plays as central a role in their society as it must. We catch glimpses of this now and then from Barclay, or the one time Geordi's secret hologram girlfriend was discovered by the woman it was based on, but for the most part the humans maintain the pretense that that part of their psyche no longer exists.
Part of the reason for this subterfuge (that I'm concocting and that isn't canon but should be) might be that the Federation was started and run by humans, a species which is, as interstellar societies go, still practically children. Anyone spending time being tutored in civilization by the condescending (per Enterprise) Vulcans, the first alien species Humans encounter and the one that forms, if even subconsciously, their template for what "aliens" actually are, might have developed a deep species-level cultural cringe and a desire to appear more "evolved" to other species.
[0]http://api.ning.com/files/2bmZ7rAoYlF22iZQvOguNf5lHJktmIBVkr...
The tracking as such seems to be pretty passive most of the time - the computer has to be asked before telling the bridge crew where someone is (for dramatic effect), even if they've been confined to quarters, or sucked into a parallel universe. It could be that the computer is constantly monitoring the crew, or that while it has the capability to track anyone on the ship at any time (which is plausible) this is only used when necessary.
Edit: now that I think about it, the latter would make sense on a ship which would be expected to occasionally house diplomats or dignitaries, who might expect some degree of privacy. Also, we can infer from episodes like The Ultimate Computer that there is kind of a mistrust of strong AI among the Federation, which would justify the computer defaulting to privacy unless explicitly being commanded to do otherwise.
Maybe having a combadge meant the computer was only allowed to track the badge and not that person under normal circumstances.
don't we already do that on our spaceships?