(Dialogue synopsized.)
Graydal: A large enough fleet of ships would find Kirkasant quickly.
Laure: Too expensive
Graydal: In the Commonalty, honor, adventure and charity come second to cost and profit.
Laure: Cost equals labor, skills and resources. Other people would suffer if such a large fleet were diverted to seek Kirkasant.
Graydal: Such a big and productive civilization should be able to "'...spare that much effort for a while without risking disaster...'" (p. 755)
Laure's inner response:
"She's quick on the uptake... Knowing what machine technology can do on her single impoverished world, she can well guess what it's capable of with millions of planets to draw on. But how can I make her realize that matters aren't that simple?" (ibid.)
Why are matters not that simple? Laure explains later. See No Quadrillionaire...
Graydal is right in theory. If the economies of interstellar civilizations were organized for a common purpose and if there were both a rapid (instantaneous?) communications technology and an efficient decision-making process, then it would be possible to consider a search for Kirkasant. Further, such a search would be both worthwhile and mutually beneficial - as in fact turns out to be the case. However, there is not and cannot be coordination on such a scale. In addition, the reference to individual quadrillionaires demonstrates that at least some of the human economies are still organized not for any common purpose but for continued competitive accumulation. Technology must make such accumulation redundant eventually:
2 comments:
“Rich” is a comparative term, not an absolute one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think everybody with their heads screwed on right realizes that!
Ad astra! Sean
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