> There’s a non-trivial chance that we will never come together, even on a millennial time scale

If you really believe that, then why do you think we deserve to infest the rest of the galaxy? We'd be planet killers, bringing death and mayhem wherever we god. Intelligent life would be wise to put us out of their misery before we pop our landers.

I believe our problems are solvable, because our problems all seem to boil back to the same tiny group of people fucking things up for everyone... And some of that group are the people privatizing space.

Because the scale of space means that by necessity, humanity will cease to be a monolith. There’s simply no way for a culture that’s scattered across the Sol system and eventually multiple star systems to move as a single piece.

Instead, it’ll splinter into many groups that all undergo independent cultural evolution, each going in its own direction, many of which will be unimpeded by the others. Just by sheer numbers, eventually one (probably multiple) will find a better way forward that leaves the baggage of humanity’s past behind and allows it to become incredibly prosperous.

The chances of something like that happening on Earth seem much lower. We’re too stuck within our local maxima and too beholden to self-preserving power structures for substantial change to occur.