deep breath
So I'm not the most star trek nerd by any measure, but I grew up watching the next generation (TNG), but also some of the original star trek series. And then deep space 9 (DS9) and enterprise. Also the one with the one which is not the enterprise and they got lost (forgot the name). But I've lost interest with the recent series.
So not a uber nerd but I've watched quite a bit.
I think starting with the MOVIES of the first series is good. But also starting with the series of TNG is ok.
As others have said, DS9, Lower Decks, TNG, Voyager, are all great choices. Strange New Worlds isn't bad either.
Now some potential dealbreakers: Lower Decks is a cartoon and heavily references other shows (but does explain most of those references), TNG is very libbed up and side-steps a lot of the moral questions Startrek is known for, Voy solves those questions with warcrimes, SNW tries to be too inoffensive and is very much directed at fans. I can't think of anything bad to say about DS9.
When the shows bring in stuff from older shows, they explain it in episode, or you'll figure out the gist of it from the framing, the writers themselves often hadn't watched every single episode of the older shows.
I think SNW and LD are the only ones where the writers actually bothered to watch everything.
I literally started due to lemmy posts. I just went in order and watched TOS and TNG. Now I'm going through DS9. I'm really glad I did, because it's amazing!
It's also voluntarism: the OS, as it is entirely maintained by willing members of the community.
Honestly, probably moreso in most cases, as while socialism is fine with getting funding from taxation voluntarism sees that as coercive by nature, advocating for voluntary donations (time/money/labor) to help out the community instead. Some stuff was developed with tax funding for sure, and some directly by the NSA like SELinux iirc, but I think it's still mainly private citizens/corpo donations and volunteers/people that get paid using those donations.