to be fair, data was made by this eccentric lone inventor guy (who did it in some remote place and died). it wasn't really commonplace technology. one oversight is how there were no real attempts to reverse engineer him. that would've been interesting, data running experiments on himself and attempting to make copies of himself. the whole robot pinocchio storyline did get a bit stale after a few episodes.   they had different governments on different planets to explore various moral dilemmas. but the point was that it could be anything. including empire with a single emperor for the entire galaxy. it wouldn't matter that much. a huge motivator for things like wars is scarcity (especially natural resources, land). vast universe with no scarcity, not so much of a reason to go plundering and killing. what would've been interesting is if there was some civilisation that just went viking anyway, just for the sake of it. and the moral dilemma would be that the original race they descended from due to stagnating, raiding and colonising other civilisations would be a way for them to force themselves to adapt and process.
Ireland