this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Futurology
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You would think some alien species would figure out a way to make sure the worst individuals aren't put in charge of production and energy generation, as opposed to how us humans apparently have evolved to do.
If you take a long term view of things you could just not do the thing that cooks the planet until you figure out a technological solution for it, instead of going head first for it because that's the most profitable thing to do this quarter.
This is probably why they had to use aliens for the hypothetical scenario.
Maybe every time sapient life manages to evolve to dominate a planet, being selfish pricks like us is the only way their species was able to survive to get to that point, so they always end up destroying themselves. Would explain the Fermi paradox.
I feel this is a very anthropocentric view of things, projecting our own failings (some of which are coded in our genes) and assuming they're some kind of universal law of nature.
It's basically assuming that somehow every intelligent species would choose capitalism as their organising principle, something we've only 'decided' on 200 years ago.
There's also the possibility that a species managed to live more in harmony with nature and just never made it off the planet. The point is that nobody seems to have been able to create an interplanetary civilization in the observable universe.
This seems like projection, they stated being selfish in order to survive, that exists without capitalism and isn’t limited to humans in any way.