On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:48:36 GMT, wrote, in part:

A number are possible, military advantage being perhaps the most
persuasive. It is simply a fact that a significant space-faring
civilization would be able to do whatever it wanted with the obsolete
nations of the earth.

Your second sentence is absolutely true. But your first sentence is not
something one can deduce from it.

Yes, if we have one trillion people in the Solar System, using materials
from the asteroid belt and Oort Cloud to live, they will be, together, a
force more powerful than Earth.

But as that will take generations, the process that leads to it will not
be begun from a perspective of "military advantage", as such. The long
term survival of democracy as a way of life, perhaps, but even that is
not quite the same thing.

John Savard
http://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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