While a distinction should be drawn between the Federation of Planets (which has taken over government of Earth, in addition to being the coalition between Earth and planets like Vulcan) and Starfleet. The first is pretty lax, and they hint at some sort of utopian society with ecological restoration, a 'good deeds' economy (since money is a foreign concept to 23rd century Earthlings, except when it is not), and personal freedom / self-determination; the second is a military (peacekeeping) organisation, a navy, and while there is less "rum, sodomy*, and the lash"<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Misattributed#EighthMajorBullet>than in contemporary and historical navies, people die around them somewhat regularly, they violate the Prime Directive whenever they feel enough like it, and (spoilers) permanently destroy warpspace commons with the Omega Directive. Anyway, when I was telling another friend about the fasces thing, we talked a bit about the Romans' method of economic (and semi-cultural) assimilation, and he compared it to Starfleet's *modus operandi*, and then went on to compare Starfleet and the Borg (in some ways I find the Borg less irritating).
But yes, the 'cog' image is what I was going for; while a sports team or startup might work towards a common goal, they will also have their own personal goals for which the collective goal is merely a temporary subset, and most societies are yet more loosely organised, so that (as was said earlier in another thread) multiple people with good intentions can cancel each other out. -Arlo James Barnes *Infamously, despite the frequent romantic affairs on the ships (obviating the usual military strictness), and also despite a longstanding tradition of fan-fantasies, there has not been (to my knowledge) a same-sex pairing yet in the canon.
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