Photograph of an unusual atmospheric occurrence observed over Sri Lanka, forwarded to the UK Ministry of Defence by RAF Fylingdales, 2004. Courtesy of Wikipedia

Something so very obvious but rarely mentioned keeps bugging me about the UFOs in particular and extraterrestrial life in general…

Are the laws of physics the only laws valid in the universe?

How about the laws of economics?

Stuff like interest rates, inflation, declining marginal returns, supply and demand mechanism, etc.?

Why do we usually assume that all that applies only to the terrestrial life?

Is it because a hundred years' worth of sci-fi stories rarely addressed this aspect of “life in other worlds”?

But let’s think about it for a second…

“Advanced Civilization” means “Advanced Economy”

If there are “advanced civilizations” out there and if the UFOs are manufactured and sent over by these advanced civilizations, that means there is an “advanced society” behind this phenomenon.

Can there be an “advanced society” without an advanced economic organization behind it? Of course not.

I’m willing to wager that IF such a civilization exists, then it had to make economic sense to build UFOs and send them over here for god knows what reason.

Two Assumptions

Even though I’m skeptical about their material reality, I’m going to assume for the sake of this piece that UFOs do exist and they are real and they come from one or more extraterrestrial locations.

A second assumption: Even though I have no idea why they are here, I will postulate that their visit had to make good economic sense for their owners, designers, manufacturers, and project managers.

I have no reason to assume that “creatures” on another “planet” would sign up for a project that would be “losing money.”

The concept of COST is as universal a constant as the speed of light.

Because raw materials, inputs, and intermediary goods are always scarce anywhere. The concept of COST is as universal a constant as the speed of light.

There is no good reason to assume that there is cost-free production, distribution, and consumption anywhere in the universe, no matter how “advanced” a civilization is.

Thus it’s safe to assume that these UFOs would have a cost as well, and a very heavy one too given the fact that it would take at least a round-trip of 9,000 years for a UFO to visit us from the nearest star Proxima Centauri if it traveled at 1 million km an hour.

In addition to heavy material cost, a UFO would have a heavy “opportunity cost” as well since the resources devoted to UFOs would not be available for other projects.

So all this raises an interesting question that I do not see discussed often:

Does it really make sense from their own economic point of view for the “aliens” to visit us on earth?

Perhaps this is a strange question that you haven’t heard asked earlier but why not?

What makes us assume that the laws of physics, chemistry, or cosmology are the only laws valid across the universe? What about the laws of economics?

For example, take the very simple economic concept that any business enterprise must make a profit to survive.

Every business enterprise has a cost and also has a profit (revenue minus cost). Unless the profit amount is more than the cost, the business will not survive.

Or, conversely, if at the very outset the enterprise owners know that there will not be a profit at the end, they may not initiate the business to start with; it’d remain on paper only as a business plan.

I believe this simple economic principle is valid in any galaxy or planet in the universe.

Where there is life, there are economic concerns…

Photograph from purported UFO sighting in Passoria, New Jersey. Courtesy of Wikipedia

Let me back up a little bit…

Where are the economist sci-fi writers?

We usually conceptualize “other planets” and “advanced civilizations” as these rather abstract institutions/entities with every techno whizbang under the sun — except a functioning economy!

Thanks to a hundred years of science fiction, we can easily imagine political structures, armies, gadgets, weird creatures, hierarchies, all kinds of internal and external conflicts in such alien worlds. But I haven’t come across too many sci-fi stories where the characters worry about the Return On Investment of a project or (let’s say) the relationship between inflation and incomes.

I have no proof that such economic concerns actually do exist in any specific planet/star/galaxy that has (carbon-based) life. But I’m confident that where there is life, there are economic concerns. How can it be otherwise since resources are scarce everywhere and project management is a big headache anywhere?

What is the ROI of a UFO?

Going back to the UFOs… if we assume that these space ships (with or without crews) are coming from another planet/star/galaxy, I’m sure they are the end result of a massive project which ate up massive resources.

I’m sure such a project to send space vehicles on an (at least) 10,000-year round-trip was not a decision arrived at lightly. I’m sure any such project is a gargantuan undertaking for the civilization that sends the UFOs over.

This is organically tied to the next question, viewed in the light of the science of economics: Why?

Why should another civilization send over UFOs at the cost of digging a hole in their “treasury”? Why should they shoot themselves in the foot economically? What would be their expectations of a “return” to justify such a colossal project?

Various Explanations of UFO visits…

I’ve read various “explanations” of UFO visits like “they are looking for cheap minerals,” or “they are checking out on the progress of the Homo Sapiens experiment that they had started eons ago,” or “they are just curious to see who we are” etc. and so on.

To me, none of such “explanations” make sense from an economic point of view. I think they are all “money losers,” so to speak. For example, how many kilograms of gold or uranium can you take back across the universe in a metal container the image of which fits into a camera lens?

Avoiding destruction of the earth by humans?

I once read that UFOs were here to avoid the destruction of the world by humans.

Given the impossibility of faster-than-light travel (which I debunked here), these aliens must be responding not to our current sorry state but what we were doing some 5,000-to-10,000 years ago (since it must have taken them that long to arrive here).

To respond to the world’s current state, they should be leaving their bases now, to arrive within the next 5,000-to-10,000 years.

I did not come across any archeological evidence that we had the technology 5,000-to-10,000 years ago to destroy the earth. No cause for alarm, as far as the “aliens” are concerned.

So, I don't think what we did in the past or doing now can explain why the UFOs might be visiting us now. Thus that also does not sound like an economically feasible reason why such a huge across-the-universe project might have been undertaken by an “advanced economy.”

In Sum: I’m still skeptical…

To sum up:

1. I assume that the laws and principles of economics are valid anywhere in the universe just like the laws of physics.
2. I cannot imagine how investing in such an astronomical (no pun intended) project would be economically feasible for any “alien civilization” in the universe.