The Ferengi, the only class of people who seems to know anything about supply and demand, are painted first as villains, then later as comic relief. Other examples of this dystopia abound. One thing that frequently disgruntled me about the Star Trek universe was the Prime Directive. While seeming very nice on the surface, Starfleet captains were constantly interpreting Directive Number One to mean that they couldn't take the course of action that seemed most obvious, logical and humane. The lines of reality and circumstance are portrayed much more distinctly than they ever are in real life.
Real life allows for half-way solutions and ambiguous rights.
Only in fiction and philosophy mid-terms are situations forced to produce a moral conflict. In a region of space called the Briar Patch there is a planet with only 600 inhabitants, the peaceful, neo-Luddite Ba'ku. While it would be possible to populate other regions of the planet, leaving the Ba'ku entirely alone, the Federation Council decides it wants the whole pie. A race of people called the Son'a have shown them how to extract the relevant elements from the planet's rings, thus making this perpetual youth available to the whole Federation. Said extraction will make the planet unlivable.