system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] What's there to stop civilians or non-Federation species from making first contact with the pre-warp planets all willy-nilly?
gpt
You gotta remember the Federation is a post scarcity socialist utopia. (Hard to tell from all the grimdark interpretations of modern Trek.) There's very little to gain as a civilian to break the Prime Directive. Other Empires will but the 3 "powers" of the Alpha quadrant (Romulans, Klingons and United Federation of Planets) tend to respect each other's spheres of influence rather then risk a diplomatic incident or increase tensions.