Robin Hanson: one of our main choices is between competition and governance

I do tend to think natural selection, or selection, will just be a continuing force for a long time. And the main alternative is governance. I actually think one of the main choices that we will have, and the future will have, is the choice between allowing competition and then replacing with governance.

https://mindsalmostmeeting.com/episodes/future-generations

When I try to do future analysis one of the biggest contrary assumptions or scenarios that I focus on is: what if we end up creating a strong world government that strongly regulates investments, reproduction and other sorts of things, and thereby prevents the evolutionary environment in which the evolutionary analysis applies. And I’m very concerned about that scenario. That is my best judgement of our biggest long term risk […] the creation of a strong civilisation-wide government that is going to be wary of competition and wary of allowing independent choices and probably wary of allowing interstellar colonisation. That is, this vast expansion into the universe could well be prevented by that.

quote robin hanson futurism evolution