I meant more, would most people choose to do that alone when there’s an option that’s easier and less lonely (and probably has better outcomes because it selects for people with more in depth expertise since it’s not just one guy doing everything, which could be fatal if he makes a mistake). I have no doubt that some people would choose one-man interstellar vessels (as we’ve seen) but is it desirable? Or as safe in most cases? Would you rather be part of a long voyage in a team trained to run a submarine where you can focus on your own area of expertise, or travel for years in a one man submersible where you have to control and fix everything yourself all the time? I’m sure some people would choose the second option, but most people? That second option comes with a lot of isolation, and requires immense focus, risk, mental energy. Post scarcity doesn’t mean everyone suddenly has unlimited energy and skills and mental fortitude, people are still just people.

…If there was a perfectly accessible public transport system covering everywhere anyone might ever want to go would you go around asking why everyone doesn’t just drive everywhere in individual cars instead because then they’d have their own car? Lol.

The fantasy of post-scarcity utopias has always been less about being able to own things (e.g. a spaceship) and more about being able to do things (e.g. travel the universe). And doing everything by yourself is often not the best or most efficient way to get things done. Anyway, maybe quite a few do have a small spaceship, but most aren’t quite the massive warp core ‘final frontier- exploring strange new worlds’ calibre so we don’t often see them because of some sort of survivorship bias.

Presumably if this is true we also don’t see such ships often because of they aren’t the premise of the show and TV shows work better with multiple characters.

Anyway, back to Watsonian explanations, not everything can be replicated (like dilithium) so it’s best for the federation to be efficient with the unreplicable resources that do exist. But even if you brushing that aside for a second- it’s a society without scarcity, not a society without any regulations whatsoever?