• HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    9 months ago

    Significantly less, since commerce and the ability to trade things for a different value forms the basis for civilization. It’s easy to grow and hunt your own food, because that’s immediate and concrete. The farther away you get from that, the more abstract that thing becomes. It’s going to be harder for people to feel any sense of connection and purpose with making the rubber that goes into a seal on the International Space Station when they don’t see any direct benefit from the research done there, and they likely can’t even see the indirect benefit of that fundamental research.

    For good or ill, commerce is how civilizations universally work, and you’d have to imagine a completely different species that evolved under vastly different circumstances to have anything else.