[RAR] Aliens wish to establish trade relations with Earth.

[Rossum]

It is now the future and humanity has made contact with aliens. In particular, this bunch appears to be some sort of Trade Federation composed of numerous races who wish to prevent intersteller war by establishing peaceful trade across the galaxy and conqering others economically instead of militarily.

Due to regulations on First Contact business practices (and simple logistics), it will be some time before we can get access to everything they have to sell so they ask that we prioritize what we want first.

The choices are:

1. Power Generation - These aliens have access to many methods of cheap power production including working fusion power, clean fission, some forms of zero-point energy or matter-energy conversion, and setting up a network of orbiting solar stations around the solar system.

They could easily provide the Earth with all the cheap and clean energy the human civilization could possibly use and more. They'd even be able to dispose of nuclear or chemical waste material by converting it directly to energy.

2. Food Production - These aliens aren't chemically compatible with terrestrial life, but they do have replicator tech that can mass produce protiens along with extensive knowledge of life support and cloning technology.

The aliens have some strict regulation on how they interact with other biosytems (to prevent problems with differing biologies). As such, they would tend to deal with the mechanical aspects of their technology while human experts deal with the chemistry. So while the aliens could easily modify their replicators to mass produce food protiens, they would need humans working for them to ensure the results were healthy and palatable.

Their replicators work with protiens, so they are good at making things like liquids or Spam like meats but don't expect fine detail like steaks, fresh fruit, or lobster in the shell. Not saying a talented human chef couldn't make something near-indistingushable from the real thing but the aliens make no claim towards doing that.

They also have technology that could be adapted to help in raising or cloning animals or producing automated greenhouse or hydroponics. In general, they could mass produce food protiens while raising animals and plants for more luxurious foods.

3. Medicine - Due to difference in biology and a general reluctance to interfere with the biology of other sapients (or rather, a history of seeing what kind of stuff can go wrong when alien races start performing medical procedures so soon after First Contact), the aliens would restrict themselves to providing our doctors with tools and replicated supplies to help in medicine.

The aliens themselves have vastly extended lifespans due to their medical technology which includes cybernetics, organ cloning, nanotech, and medical teleporters designed for performing surgery. They don't have brain uploading though, mostly due to the philosophical issues, though there is infrequent use of them scanning a brain to help in repair if the individual gets brain damage later.

It would take alot of human work to figure out how to adapt the more advanced techniques for human use.

4. Robots - The aliens make extensive use of robots to free themselves of unwanted or dangerous jobs, and to maintain their numerous unmanned space facilitates. They could easily make robots to fullfill the needs of human businesss and organisations.

They do make it a point to not make anything that could rebel (so they have pretty much no self-aware military robots). Their bots are as a rule son-sapient but consumer models can get very lifelike with the proper programming.

Intelligent AI is restricted and they don't plan on selling anything with the power to invent new things. The aliens do have sex-bots, but their culture requires the purchaser to pass a psychiatric exam and get a license for it (due to various social issues they cause). They don't care much how human governments regulate them if at all, they just don't like lawsuits.

Given time, they could probably make some eerily human robots but only if there is a legal demand for them.

5. Mechanical Replication - Having access to robots and advanced tools, the aliens can pretty much create anything humans can for a fraction of the cost. That and advanced recycling tech would let them clean up our landfills to convert into raw material.


All in all, the aliens are more than willing to accept human currency, provide quality services, and work within the law. However, their superior technology, size, and experience in galactic trade guarantees they can out compete anyone on Earth.

Which service could Earth use the most? What advice would you give the leaders of the Earth? What do you do?

[bilateralrope]

Clean plentiful power generation.

- The alien tech is probably designed with the assumption that the users have access to the alien power generation.
- It lets us get rid of polluting power sources. Which are a significant contributor to global warming, so the sooner we move away from them the better we will be.
- Cheap energy lets us do much more with our existing technology. The other technologies only help in limited areas.

[Broomstick]

I vote for energy generation, too. A lot of problems ranging from politics to environmental arise out of current energy issues, including over-reliance on petroleum and pollution stemming from same.

[Starglider]

Power generators make the most sense to start with, because they are the easiest to integrate and least politically and socially disruptive (particularly if you begin with large stationary units replacing existing power stations). Clean cheap power gives a big increase in economic growth coupled with a big decrease in pollution, improving global quality of life without major risks. (2) is much less useful while (3, 4, 5) are potentially much more disruptive and unpredictable.

[Formless]

Personally, I would want to get their manufacturing so that we can obtain the means of duplicating their space infrastructure. However, that probably requires their energy technology first, so priority goes to the fundamentals.

[Irbis]

Power generators make the most sense to start with, because they are the easiest to integrate and least politically and socially disruptive (particularly if you begin with large stationary units replacing existing power stations).

Least socially disruptive?

I'd grab popcorn and watch multiple regions of the world erupt in violent civil wars once the richest countries stop buying oil/coal/gas, price plummets and regimes no longer can afford bread and circuses

Then, there is nations like USA, where powerful oil/gas lobby coupled with paranoid thinking 'what if it's a trap/national security demands we're not reliant on illegal aliens!' would probably fight violently against it, while big businesses push for adoption. That would be interesting to watch, too.

[Starglider]

I'd grab popcorn and watch multiple regions of the world erupt in violent civil wars once the richest countries stop buying oil/coal/gas, price plummets and regimes no longer can afford bread and circuses

Switching away from oil would take many decades due to all the ICE car infrastructure, and the numerous industrial uses of convenient liquid hydrocarbons would remain. Gas would go a bit faster - industrial users could change fairly quickly but home/mobile heating applications would again take a couple of decades to fully change over. The only fuel that could be phased out relatively quickly is coal, and that's still constrained by the build rate of new power plants. As such any wars caused are not going to be any worse than the wars over energy resources that we already have (which are likely go get much worse in the future as fossil hydrocarbons run out).

By contrast (4, 5) cause rapid mass unemployment and have huge, immediate military applications. (3) causes an increase in lifespan that would (on its own) destroy already-teetering pension systems and social/generational contract. I'm all for new technology of course, but if you're going to focus on one in isolation, (1) should be done first. That will get some good PR, drive economic growth and improve living standards, and put you in a better position for a careful release of the other technologies later.

[Irbis]

Switching away from oil would take many decades due to all the ICE car infrastructure, and the numerous industrial uses of convenient liquid hydrocarbons would remain.

We already have car infrastructure, yes, but there are pilot programs to make nets of electric cars in big cities even today. Seeing free energy means producers of electric cars can suddenly say "look, not only it's green, but but your vallet is several hundred euro/dollars/pounds thicker each month!" as selling point. If aliens also bother to give us even primitive by their standards batteries for such cars, it's game over for gas cars in the next few years.

Also, another point. Gas is expensive because we know demand isn't going anywhere and massive money is put into futures speculation as there will be less and less of it, which drives price up. Suddenly, world wakes up knowing demand just entered free fall. Guess what it will do to price? Oh, as as the price starts to fall, regimes that increase production to compensate just add fuel to the fire making prices enter nose-dive.

And another, free energy means Europe and USA can simply start building coal to gasoline installations, simply in act of showing big middle finger to Saudi Arabia and Iran. "You guys want to fund wahhabis/build bomb? Fine, try to do it selling sand for living, oh, and we'll gladly get rid of that import imbalance, too". Russia and Venezuela aren't that popular, either. Again, massive price cuts.

Gas would go a bit faster - industrial users could change fairly quickly but home/mobile heating applications would again take a couple of decades to fully change over.

Why couple decades? It's as simple as buying electric kettle and/or induction oven. You can easily convince people to do it by showing them lower bills and pointing out lack of explosion hazards. Some upgrades of electric network and you can convert within a decade.

As such any wars caused are not going to be any worse than the wars over energy resources that we already have (which are likely go get much worse in the future as fossil hydrocarbons run out).

But the point is, a lot of oil regimes maintain public order only due to massive hand outs, and Bahrain recently failed to do even that. If these suddenly find themselves without cash, the whole region enters recession compared to which the one that caused Arab Spring was nothing. Cue explosion of violence that will make the World forget Syria, especially seeing Middle East can also throw religious and ethnical differences to the volatile mix once tanks start rolling.

[Rossum]

Looks like power generation is the obvious 1st choice. What would be a good contender for the 2nd or 3rd tech to be introduced? Is there anything that could be added to the list?

Lets assume the aliens are roughly on the level of the Mass Effect universe. Except they don't rely on ancient tech to get around and if they need any exotic material for their stuff they probably discovered it by synthesizing it.

They have FTL travel and a relativly massive interstellar computer network that uses FTL signalling. Namely, there are several spacefaring races they know of with their own "internet" and there have been numerous attempts to get everyone running on the same system with limited success.

These particular aliens have an internet roughly twenty times the size of Earths and can attempt access with about ten or so other networks which vary in size. Translation and compatability is a big problem (to say nothing of the lag) but there are a few website businesses that maintain a decent level of translation across the network. Trying to learn anything about alien technology or culture would be difficult at best (and maturity levels are what you'd expect when people are lightyears away and don't even belong to the same species). However, if you know where to look you're guaranteed to get plenty of pictures of stars, planets, and alien architecture. Information on alien mating habits are abundant but don't necessarily depict normal behavior.


Their weaponry is roughly the level of the Mass Effect races with plenty of combat robots providing force multipliers for the soldiers. Warfare can get very nasty very quickly and the aliens have no intention of giving humans military hardware until they are sure they won't be used in a 'civil war'.

They can provide some less-than-lethal weapons. Namely stun phasers (basically Star Trek phasers with a decent design), a variety of EMP weapons for disabling robots, and stuff like riot foam or clouds of dust that mess with electronics.


So, other than providing access to a huge and no doubt incredibly messy alien internet or some less-than-lethal weaponry to protect yourself in the coming social upheaval... what else is there?

[Zixinus]

Here's a question: just what in the hell do humans give to get this stuff?

Because that changes prioritization as well. It should be in order of things humanity would need to survive long-term.

Energy is the first, because it is the lifeblood of industrialized world. The problems with oil and countries that rely chiefly on exporting oil are somewhat inevitable, and would come around sooner or later. With getting more independent energy production, these civil wars would be at least somewhat self-contained. And since better energy production would also help spaceflight, this priority is one that most likely give good odds to humanity's survival.

The next thing would be mechanical replication. This would be a good start of use all that energy and also further increase humanity's ability to adopt. If pollution could be decreased or even reversed with this kind of stuff, that would aid the Earth in a way that would in turn aid us. A less polluted, mechanically more powerful humanity may have an easier time creating food.

As for between better food production and better medicine, they sort of depend on each other. The effects of both is that, unless humanity manages consciously stop this, is greater population. Better medicine means more people, and more people need food. More food also means less people dying from starvation. Better nutrition will also mean people now are more exposed to diseases and medical problems that beforehand didn't reach them because starvation killed them first.

My understanding is, that malnutrition and starvation is nowadays more due to poverty and failure of nation-states, rather than due to being unable to grow enough food. Cheap energy helps run a cheaper industry, and with better production tech, it may be possible for economic growth to occur where it previously couldn't.

Robots are a two-edged sword. I'll be honest here, and ask the obvious question: just how much will robots replace people? If the robots end up cheaper than the same labour done by humans, what will those humans do? For this reason, it may be prudent to set getting them a low priority, even then mostly focus on robots that can do something that humans or human robotics can't.

As for less-lethal weapons, they can still be used in oppression. A cloud that disrupts electronics would be gladly brought by regimes that have problem with resistance who use electronics to organize. Same with riot foam and the like: if there is an uprising, regimes can use them to quell the uprising. The only question is, who can afford it?
Because as Irbis points out, some amount of civil unrest and civil wars will happen and it doesn't sound like they can be easily avoided.

[Rossum]

Here's a question: just what in the hell do humans give to get this stuff?

Because that changes prioritization as well. It should be in order of things humanity would need to survive long-term.

The alien Trade Federation pretty much accepts human currency from this which they then use to re-invest in human businesses, politicians, charity works, or other things to gain political or economic power on Earth. That or buy samples of human spices or animals to see if chicken eggs act as some kind of alien aphrodisiac or something. Since they are more or less a post-scarcity society now, they basically use money to keep people working for them or conduct trade with other civilizations.

They consider business as a sort of path of conquest. While there are plenty of hostile civilizations who try to conquer the galaxy with weapons or self-replicating robots, these guys use money and technology to "uplift" civilizations they think would make good business partners while applying political pressure to keep them from causing trouble.

Once they establish an economic stranglehold on Earth and ensure that humans as a whole won't be a danger to them, they will start taking humans with them to explore, trade, or conquer the galaxy. Or help them raise a military if they think some alien monsters are going to be attacking. To them, money is a sort of "promise" that what they do now will be valued later, so as a species they are investing in other races to protect them in a million years or whatever.

Basically, they accept money now so that they can form a monopoly, get rich, and once humanity becomes a spacefaring empire (or not) then they'll be able to pay us to do stuff for them. It's cheaper than enslaving civilizations and less likely to tick other people off.

[Irbis]

Energy is the first, because it is the lifeblood of industrialized world. The problems with oil and countries that rely chiefly on exporting oil are somewhat inevitable, and would come around sooner or later. With getting more independent energy production, these civil wars would be at least somewhat self-contained. And since better energy production would also help spaceflight, this priority is one that most likely give good odds to humanity's survival.

Actually, material science would help space flight far more than energy. All the energy you can produce from electricity today won't beat humble space elevator.

As for conflicts being contained, let me remind you that all-out war in Middle East draws into it Israel (fourth largest nuclear power), Turkey (large military power, if only by Kurdish uprisings in Syria and Iraq), Iran (which soon will have nukes), potentially Pakistan/India with their war quickly going nuclear, too.

Then, you have South America, where war is unlikely, but whole continent could drown in instability since their big revenue generator was cut, and Africa, itself major gas/oil producer where lack of demand can set the economy back generations.

EU, USA, Japan and China might be able to spend their way into stability by starting crash program of retooling nations to new energy sources, but rest of the world is not so lucky, and once these major powers finish transition other nations can kiss whatever shambles of their economies survived oil crisis goodbye as they wouldn't be able to compete in any energy-requiring industry.

These particular aliens have an internet roughly twenty times the size of Earths and can attempt access with about ten or so other networks which vary in size.

Internet size doubles about every 5.25 years. Twenty times the size? We'll reach 150% of just twenty times the size goal by about 2038. And that assuming more and more devices and people being plugged into it won't make the growth snowball.

[madd0ct0r]

umm, I'd figure enough energy let's us just throw stuff into orbit on railguns or laser beams.

This could be a really interesting analyis on it's own. Hmmm.

Case 1. - The Aliens distribute the technology via blue prints and instructions worldwide.
Cue massive scramble to understand, build and reverse engineer their techonology. Fossil speculation crashes, petro-states begin crash programs to retool their economies but are supported by continuing fossil sales for the next decade while the new reactors are brought on line. Some unstable countries have their own 'Oil Springs', others successfully repurpose themselves as chemical manufacturing specialists, using cheap energy to turn algae into oil, mass produce sheets of diamond, aluminium ect.

Case 2 - The Aliens distribute fully built reactors to whoever asks, but they're sealed boxes. (Maybe they don't trust us with black holes yet ect)
Results depend on scarcity of supply. I'm going to guess there's a minor delay until the first shipment arrive, but after that a steady flow arrive and are distributed according to who buys them. The major countries focus on their immediate needs and then start distributing them as favours to small allies. Demand for energy roughly increases with availability, with speed of infrastructure construction being the limiting factor.

Case 3 - The Aliens, seeking to minimise disruption to their trading partners, allow the UN to distribute blueprints at it's discretion. In theory, the UN agrees to pass them to petro-states first to give them a chance to get a new economy up and running, but in reality within a few months every major secret service has acquired them, and top secret projects are set up to explore. This gradually becomes an open secret, with implementation trackable by the fossil purchases market. Eventually the poor countries are allowed to join the club, but only grudgingly.

[Simon_Jester]

As for between better food production and better medicine, they sort of depend on each other. The effects of both is that, unless humanity manages consciously stop this, is greater population. Better medicine means more people, and more people need food. More food also means less people dying from starvation. Better nutrition will also mean people now are more exposed to diseases and medical problems that beforehand didn't reach them because starvation killed them first.

It depends.

We've already reached this point in the Third World- improved medicine and more reliable food supplies lead to huge population growth, which is a big part of why there are seven billion people in the world now instead of 4-5 billion like there were in the late 1900s. In the First World we have a different problem: modern medicine keeps people alive long after routine 'old age' starts to grind down their physical and mental abilities. Thus, you see people retire from the workforce at 65 and living until 85. Which, combined with a 20-25 year period of childhood and education before they become fully productive, means that humans in the developed world spend only about half their life as a productive member of the workforce.

That puts a big strain on First World productivity. In a society where life expectancy is only 70 and the average person goes to work at 17, a retirement age of 65 means that you have about two workers per other, nonworking citizen. If life expectancy is 85 and the average person goes to work at 22, the same retirement age means there is only about one worker per other citizen

[This is NOT meant to attack or marginalize 'nonproducing' people. It's just a reality; five year old children and eighty year old great-grandparents are probably not doing much to increase the collective economic strength of their society, even if they want to]

So if we want vast increases in life expectancy resulting from more advanced medicine, we need to start with advanced geriatrics that can keep a person working and learning past their 70th, 80th, or 90th birthday. OR we need vastly increased economic productivity, so that it doesn't matter if only half the population actually does any work because that's more than enough to perform all useful jobs.

My understanding is, that malnutrition and starvation is nowadays more due to poverty and failure of nation-states, rather than due to being unable to grow enough food. Cheap energy helps run a cheaper industry, and with better production tech, it may be possible for economic growth to occur where it previously couldn't.

Cheap energy will fix the developed world's problems and probably the planetary ecology rather well. It will greatly help the developing world's problem's (i.e. China and India). It will not be very helpful for regions which are chronically undeveloped due to warlordism, political chaos, and widespread poverty and ignorance. Africa is never going to be a nice place to live until it gets a better class of governments than it's had. Better than it's had since before the colonialist scramble of the late 19th century; the colonial administrations weren't any better and were often worse in important ways.

Robots are a two-edged sword. I'll be honest here, and ask the obvious question: just how much will robots replace people? If the robots end up cheaper than the same labour done by humans, what will those humans do? For this reason, it may be prudent to set getting them a low priority, even then mostly focus on robots that can do something that humans or human robotics can't.

There are huge ways in which we could improve the productivity of individual human workers without autonomous, intelligent robotics. I think focusing on those first would be to our advantage as a species.

Because as Irbis points out, some amount of civil unrest and civil wars will happen and it doesn't sound like they can be easily avoided.

I'd rather have the 21st century be full of wars fought over improving technology that disrupts the social order, than have it be fought over declining resources and growing hatred and ignorance that disrupt the social order.

Actually, material science would help space flight far more than energy. All the energy you can produce from electricity today won't beat humble space elevator.

This is true. But there are a number of technologies we could make much more cost-effective with very cheap electricity. The most obvious one is laser propulsion.

Also, in many respects we could develop the needed space technology, if we only had the commitment and the economic surplus. Cheap energy ensures that we have that surplus and will keep having it as the 21st century rolls on (instead of risking losing it as the fossil fuel reserves collapse). And the very existence of alien civilizations is going to provide the commitment.

EU, USA, Japan and China might be able to spend their way into stability by starting crash program of retooling nations to new energy sources, but rest of the world is not so lucky, and once these major powers finish transition other nations can kiss whatever shambles of their economies survived oil crisis goodbye as they wouldn't be able to compete in any energy-requiring industry.

As Zixinus notes, that depends heavily on how the technology is distributed.

If the aliens say "we'll sign a treaty with your government where you supply us with XYZ tons of raremetalium a year for 20 years, and in exchange we give you the blueprints for a cheap fusion reactor," then yes, you're right, it's a problem.

If the aliens say "pay us five million dollars up front for a disintegration furnace that burns oxygen gas and turns out fifty megawatts of electricity," then a lot of those same nations find their own energy problems solved, and can begin to build an economy that is based on those factors.

[Rossum]

The aliens are most likely to say something like "give us X million dollars for Y fusion-reactor and we will provide maintenance and service for Z thousand dollars a year" or "Let us set up our reactor here and man it with our own unpaid robot labor and we'll sell you the electricity for X dollars a megawatt."

Or "Sure, I suppose we could sell you the blueprints for our reactor for X billion dollars. If you need any help building and maintaining it, just call us. Oh, and zero point energy generators can cause nasty spacial rifts if the safeties break down. Better to etch the Eezo plates with slight impurites and replace them when they burn out, that way they never build enough quantum static to start a meltdown."

If they need any rare metals they can either buy it with their money or mine it from asteroids.

[Simon_Jester]

You're kind of missing the point.

The real question is: relative to the resources of a third world nation, do the aliens provide this technology in forms that are unattainable, or attainable? For example, if it takes complex factories to make magic energy machines, because all the aliens give us is the blueprints, then a country like Angola is kind of screwed. If they will in fact sell these things, at costs that make it highly competitive to buy them compared to buying terrestrial mechanisms that do the same thing... different story, and the technology becomes a boon for the developing world.

Of course, none of this matters in countries where the political and demographic situation is so messed up that investing in industry and infrastructure becomes impractical.

[madd0ct0r]

There's few of those countries though.

If you're a mega-corp and you want to build a massive factory in Zimbabwe to take advantage of really cheap labour, really weak laws and taxes being replaced by much smaller bribes, you might just build a small power plant as part of the factory complex.

You know, to go along with worker barracks, security posts, a school to stash worker's kids in during the day ect.

[Broomstick]

The comments about power generation largely seem to assume all of these alien power sources are large - does that have to be the case? Sure, some of it probably is huge facilities but what if they also have small-scale units of some sort? Do they have units small enough to power a vehicle, for example? Or some sort of energy storage for power produced at large facilities? Smaller units change the equation, especially if they're relatively affordable. Villages or even individual residences might be able to have their own dedicated power generation units. That might allow greater penetration into poor regions of the world, just as improved solar technology is allowing very poor/remote people to have light at night (often an LED light that requires less power than alternatives) or recharge cell phones for better communications in the real world right now.

Size matters.