I think the main reason Trek could be set on an Earth is the exact reason it shouldn’t be: at it’s best, it is an allegory for our world, with just enough latex to pretend that the Klingons aren’t the Russians (Rura Penthe being Siberia, Praxis being Chernobyl); that the Romulans aren’t the Chinese; that the Cardassians aren’t the Old World imperial powers retreating from their colonies, and so on.
Put it back on Earth, and it will all be too on-the-nose.
That said, I do share Stross’ annoyance with the use of tech as a magic wand, though in my case my problem is with the inconsistency. For example, in Voyager in particular, in the pilot episode they say the ship has a maximum cruising speed of warp 9.975, not only do they never ever go that fast in the show, if you look up how fast that’s supposed to be, it would get them home in 7 years without any shortcuts or shenanigans, not the 70 years they say at the end of the episode.
Plus, they have time travel and stasis and Voyager could therefore get home in zero subjective time.
And every episode involving time travel in all seasons of all series, they always use the same mechanism for going backwards and forwards in time, sometimes even using the difficulties of this as a challenge to be overcome in the plot even though the show has had the go-fast-around-a-star method on record since TOS.