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mhornberger t1_j29z5we wrote

Reply to comment by theWunderknabe in Accepting Science Fiction by Exiled_to_Earth

I think this spreading out, the independence that would offer, would pose some interesting moral conundrums. Sure, everyone "does their own thing," But... not really. You'll have a cult habitat/asteroid where a guru is lording over his 50 glassy-eyed underage wives. Do you intervene? These young women aren't "doing their own thing," after all. You could have a world where white supremacists have reinstated race-based slavery, and they're kidnapping people from other worlds. Do you intervene?

That's not to say that you could govern a 1000-light-year-wide empire, with the limits imposed by the communication lag (speed of light), etc. Not to mention transportation, obviously. Which I guess is why most science fiction just has the convenient trope of FTL travel and communication and whatnot.

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theWunderknabe t1_j2bzms7 wrote

>Do you intervene?

Good question? Do we now? Not really when it is not in our own country. Politicians send a strongly worded letter and celebrities write some angry twitter posts, but thats pretty much it.

Only when things really escalate and threaten other countries, especially our own, we actually doing something. Uigurs get mistreated in China. This is a known fact that is against what western societies believe. Yet we don't really interfere because it doesn't actually inflict us in any way.

I don't say that is good, but that is how it is and that will likely continue, because risking war as the only way to actually force someone to change something over things of smaller magnitude such as the mistreatment of Uigurs or a strange space-harem would only get more deadly than they already are and thus get avoided as much as possible.

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drop_database_run t1_j2csxjz wrote

>Yet we don't really interfere because it doesn't actually inflict us in any way.

The cost of intervening outweighs any benefit we would receive. Now should some other factor arise requiring intervening in a nation such as China, were going to get what we pay for

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