aggienaut | 12 of 30 - When the Aliens Arrive (Reply)

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 anything they need at a price they can afford. Benevolent? Yes. But a disaster for the world economy!! Thousands would become unemployed! We'd immediately begin to run a huge trade deficit with the aliens!

Starbucks is secretly run by Klingons to make us dependant on them

   Our governments would probably 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, use military force to compel 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, what would happen?

   I think this is a really intriguing question.