06 of 30 - IV - When the Aliens Arrive

[aggienaut]

   Many many movies, books, and television series have addressed the idea of what happens if aliens arrive at Earth. Usually the aliens want to kill us all, but sometimes they just want to probe a few people and draw pictures in their fields. But what happens if the aliens are friendly and helpful?

   What if the aliens take pity on us with our populations of impoverished and hungry? Using their alien technology they generously offer to sell anyone and everything anything they need at a price they can afford. Benevolent? Yes. But a disaster for the world economy!! We'd immediately begin to run a huge trade deficit with the aliens!

   Our governments would probably become try to intervene - either with tariffs on space imports or outright embargoes (or militant force?). Even so, our economy would still be mangled as we'd lose our export market due to other countries getting things more cheaply from space. And what if the aliens, like Western Powers used military force to open up the markets of Japan and China in the 19th Century, use military force to compell us not to interfere with them providing us an economy of plenty?

   And would it even be ethical for the government to try to limit the aliens from providing us with everything? As thousands lose their jobs yet cost of living becomes negligible, would America become a welfare state?

   I think this is a really intriguing question.


Unrelated: Picture of me at the Stone Brewery (home of Arrogant Bastard Ale)

Comments

[neugotik.livejournal.com]

starbucks Klingon? heh. Nice photo of you drinking what - Belgian Beer? Yum. That or some brandy or wine,er anyhows.

I also am guilty of picking up some of the star wars stamps today: I thought I would just get one sheet but they're cool painting/drawings and nicely done - I got a few sheets - they're neat. the ships are very cool stamps.

Where's my towel? I need my towel to fall asleep now: heh.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hah my dad got some of those stamps. This time I had some coffee porter or something. It was extremely good. Last time I had a barleywine though, which was quite good as well. What I love about going there is in addition to their own products they carry a lot of really good craft brews from elsewhere as well.

[witless-nerd.livejournal.com]

Uhm is stone brewery in Mission Viejo? or where is it? I always wondered actually.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

San Marcos, just north of San Diego. Its definitly worth a visit if you're ever in the area.

[witless-nerd.livejournal.com]

Still twenty, but yes, one day

[metalphoenix.livejournal.com]

But see, the aliens would also see the human race as a vast pool of cheap labor! Obviously we'd become third-world (third-universe?) overnight, but over time as the money flows into our planet as they outsource(because why wouldn't they use our resources first if they can afford it?) we will slowly start developing and maybe someday overthrow their economy! Of course, our planet will be completely devoid of any resources to use for ourselves, so we'll just have to follow their lead and find some other planet and start the cycle all over again.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Yeah thats an interesting other alternative. In that case, the economic political power relationships on Earth would suddenly be thrown upside down, as the "advanced" technology of the Western World would account for nothing, and the population and resource rich current third-world countries would probably be handling most of the intersteller business. Suddenly Angola is a world power, etc!

[eazyt.livejournal.com]

Awesome Klingon bird of prey.

I have always thought that any race capable of interstellar travel (assuming we don't have aliens hiding underground on Mars or camping out on Europa) would be socially evolved enough to know not to interfere with lesser-developed people. Then again, there may be those out there who are malevolent, only wishing to exploit others for technology and supplies and whatnot.

So I guess ultimately we won't find until either we attain the ability ourselves for interstellar travel, OR it gets around that we have something someone out there wants.

Prime Directive

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

I dunno, why would they necessarily "know not to interfere with lesser-developed people"? That seems like an ethical axiom that really aliens from a different perspective could easily take in a completely opposite direction.

Anyway my tenet here is that, the possibility that they'll juts want to exploit our supplies has been gone over in a number of movies and such, but what if their ethical take on the "prime directive" is to be benevolent and charitable and solve world hunger on Earth. Personally, I think its just as likely they'll come to that conclusion as they'll come to either the noninterference or the exploition one.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your view of economics. If Aliens provided us with every thing we needed, there would be no need for jobs. Jobs are a cost, not a benefit. There is no such thing as a trade imbalance, in the long run. Money only has value insofar as you can and do exchange it for goods and services. A "trade imbalance" of infinite duration just means that someone is getting something for nothing. Your note about a welfare state is nonsense.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Well, certainly if everything was in infinite supply, its true that everyone would be happy, BUT to get from point A to point B our economy would have to be completely restructured. Because the first effect WOULD be a significant loss of jobs, and even if stuff is cheap, there'd still have to be an organized way to parcel things out to this new mass of the jobless. And people would still be presumably expected to pay their property taxes and such with valid Earth currency which they are expending to the aliens and not earning any more of themselves.

And so yes, in the big picture we should all be happy, but our economy would immediately go into shock first and we'd have to accept some things that much of America is loathe to think about, such as "Welfare" like government behaviour and even Communist type economic organization.

And I trade imbalance does mean one is getting something for nothing on the short term, but one is running up a huge debt. Presumably one has to worry about potential effects of that debt being asked for in the future. In the alien scenary the main effect is just that all types of Earth Currency would start becoming scarce and not being recycled back into the Earth Economy.