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Been thinking about the Klingon and Hirogen species recently (and I guess Ferengi to a lesser extent). How do cultures so devoted to hunting, killing, pride, and honor, have the infrastructure in place to become space-based empires? Like, it takes millions of people doing boring jobs like math and engineering to make space travel possible, but if they're all motivated by murder and glory, how do they accomplish anything on a grand scale?
The Klingons oversell their whole honorable warrior schtick, especially to outsiders. They're not a monoculture but it's far less "cool" to be a nerdy scientist in Klingon society than, say, Starfleet, but they've still got them. They're just not celebrated to the same degree. They pay for that by being a bit behind the tech curve, imo.
I think there was even an episode in Enterprise? where an old Klingon lamented that modern Klingon society went too far towards being warriors that they were starting to neglect other parts of society. Hell, Ezri Dax was right that, by the time of the Dominion War, the Klingon Empire was in need of serious reform.
And if anything, the Klingons seemed like they had a larger empire for a while, well before humans even went to warp. It could just be that they went into atrophy for long enough that allowed the Federation to fill the void by Kirk's time.
