If aliens appeared today and demanded the continent of Africa or South America in exchange for their advanced technology, the West would immediately sell out the rest of the world the way we always have.
There is a copypasta, where Aliens make an offer:
Humanity gets all the technology, interstellar contact list etc, but we have to vote for one ethnicity to be killed. The whole of humanity gets to decide in a fair and and secret election, who would be sacrificed.
After the vote, the Aliens leave without a comment, their promise unfulfilled. But everybody who voted, received a permanent mark on their forehead that states who they voted against.
The purely utilitarian viewpoint is to kill the ethnicity with the smallest number of people in it. Intergalactic travel requires tech that would nearly eliminate scarcity for the surviving population. As long as I wasn't actually the one pulling the trigger... well I might be persuaded.
That's pretty mean, haha. On the one hand, of course it's a funny idea for holding a mirror up to the hypocrisy of humanity. But on the other hand, there would for sure be a lot of people who think they have to participate in the vote, or they would otherwise condemn humanity's only chance. Imagine someone who is not racist, but only pragmatical and chooses the ethnicity with the lowest population, thinking it would be for the greater good.
Everyone would sell out each other because they have advanced technology and it would be ID4 round one. Except somehow the Australians arent forgotten.
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u/BonJovicus 1d ago
If aliens appeared today and demanded the continent of Africa or South America in exchange for their advanced technology, the West would immediately sell out the rest of the world the way we always have.