Skill And Opportunity

"He loved his country, but even more, Poul loved the kind of civilization of which America is merely an early example in a chain stretching far ahead of us - one that turns away from hierarchies of inherited privilege toward traits like skill, opportunity, tolerance, and hope. And relentless self-criticism!"
-David Brin, AFTERWORD to "Latecomers" IN Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014), pp. 274-276 AT p. 275.

Our civilization might be the last although hopefully not.

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization shows us opportunities and the skills-selling "Polesotechnic League" in a multi-species market economy with FTL interstellar travel. The results are:

immense wealth;
wealthy merchants overriding governments;
many embittered losers and failures;
too many dishonest and unscrupulous traders;
the arming of barbarians;
stratified societies on some planets;
alienation of Merseian aristocrats;
emerging cartels and state-cartel mergers stifling competition;
many species unable to join interstellar civilization until helped by David Falkayn's Supermetals Company;
Baburite economic imperialism;
war for the supermetals on Mirkheim;
eventual collapse and barbarian invasions leading to the Terran Empire.

I think that we can do better than that.