Editing Quest:Hive Queen Quest (section)

===== Society and culture =====
The Union is, on the surface, a melting pot of many cultures and histories with a wide range of political ideologies. In reality, these many different subcultures are often separated and segregated of their own accord to specific planets or regions. On the local level, it is easy to see strong divisions between the average humans of any two worlds. In theory it is this wide range of beliefs and ideologies that grants the Union its long term stability, as there is always room for debate and people to question contemporary wisdom. In practice, this often results in numerous isolated subcultures that often refuse to interact with, or are openly hostile to other views, which can be seen in the wide range of laws and regulations between the many worlds of the Union. A common commodity on one planet could be an illegal good on another, with little to no agreeable standard between worlds. This was one of several key motivators behind the signing of the Homestead act, which designated ships capable of interplanetary flight to be immune to the customs laws of individual planets, so long as such illicit goods do not exit the ship in question, or are in any way involved in any form of sale or exchange while the ship is in dock. To prevent items from being 'conveniently stolen' while in dock, illegal items must be registered with customs, however ships that do not request protection under the act hold an incredibly limited expectation of privacy under the nicknamed "nothing to hide" clause.

The results of the laws have had several unintended consequences and have, ironically, further stratified the culture of the Union along ideological, astrographical, and economic lines, with those living on the surface of worlds often living under far stricter laws then those travelling trade routes or living within space habitats, giving rise to the modern cowboy, often called Spacers that typically consist of private freight runners, mercenaries, fugitives, and anti-government separatists. The rise in dangerously unregulated space activity eventually lead to the bolstering of the Interstellar Trade Commission, granting it regulatory power over the Union's space cities, starports, and stations, however since the enforcement of these regulations rely on the Union Space Forces and the voluntary compliance of station operators space remains something of a wild west in many systems.