Because the blankets will be laced with the alien equivalent of small pox, and the beads and trinkets will destroy ouy economy.
I have a box of jeans that are too small for me in my storage unit. Just because I can’t get 'em over my fat ass at the moment doesn’t mean that you can just come and take them. They’re mine.
In other words, just because we don’t have the technology to get to the dilithium crystals right now doesn’t mean that we won’t ever have that technology. They do have value to us, even if we can’t convert them into cash right now.
The questions of who should be paid for something that belongs to “earth” is interesting, but has no bearing on the question. If the aliens were willing to pay, I’m sure we’d find a way to accept the money.
But Earth has no planetary government. Who gets the payment? Why should the United States or Britain or Brazil or Germany or Saudi Arabia get any of it (just to name a few), since none of them are anywhere near the Marianas Trench.
If the payment goes to China, Japan, the Phillippines, and Papua New Guinea (the nation-states nearest the trench), and is at all appreciable, won’t that be destabalizing to the geopolitical situation? Especially if the payment is in technology? Can’t you imagine Russia saying “Say what? Japan’s getting FTL tech? Oh, hell no. Fuck that shit. Let’s get to invading.”
And why should the nations get any of it anyway? None of them did anything to create the dilithium.
No nation has rights, perhaps, but no human would agree that Earth or its minerals are anything other than human property.We had the potential to profit as a species from something that was clearly within our zone of interests. We may not ever need nor want dilithium, but there would certainly have been something that we would have traded the rights for that Dilithium Inc. could have afforded. And it’s perfectly possible that at some point the human species could have wanted that dilithium when our own technology had advanced enough. At that point in time, having lost ready access to it may put our development back hundreds of years.
And regardless of whether or not anyone or anything was hurt, having aliens coming in and helping themselves to anything they think we don’t want is scary and can cause psychological harm to people who are worried that this is the sort of precedent which will lead the newly discovered alien species to feel free to come in and snatch our children, use us as a source of food, or as laboratory rats. Why should we trust the word of an alien species who comes in and takes stuff without attempting to start ambassadorial dialog nor show any good-faith offering to the locals irregardless of technical claims of ownership? If you are that enlightened a species, your handling of this situation doesn’t demonstrate it, which subsequently means that we have no faith that you are indeed an enlightened species meaning us peace and good will.
This is unfortunately true, and what has got us in a great deal of ecological trouble.
Does your answer change if the the Galactic Diet’s answer, posted above, was the simple truth? That is, what if using dlithiium–even distinguishing it from quartz or whatever–requires unobtainium, and their scans indicate that there’s not a smidgeon of the latter anywhere in the solar system; and, thus, we were simply never going to know what we had, much less be able to put it to use?
We are all children of the same universe, just that we are in a more primitive state, we, as infant children of the universe, and still dependent on the cradle of humanity called earth, cry out to our brothers and sisters across the stars that some are taking what we have been given as needed for our evolution and growth, we also cry out to the Lord God Almighty, maker of the universe.
If no reply or still denied then cry out on all frequencies that we are able to, including prayer.
I would claim that we, as a human species, have suffered from a lack of educational, situational, social, economic, technological, and biological opportunities to enable us to mine this material. If things were different we coulda done it too. I’d also throw in “its a human thing, you Greys just don’t understand, and BTW quite oppressing us with your superior abilities”. Then I’d unlease the fury of our most rabid feminists and Jesse Jackson upon them.
- They may be wrong about that. With their technology it is infeasible, but with our future technology it potentially could be feasible. It’s also possible by that time that we’d have made trade relations with a species who was willing to trade unobtanium to us. And as said, even if it was entirely useless to us, it would still be useful as something to trade to other species.
- That was only one of several arguments made. The other arguments still stand.
I’d argue that mining the earth, which has no representation in the Federation is a trespass of which they have no right under international law to do. I’d then have the UN assign jurisdiction to an appropriate US district court for a civil trespass suit and take the default of the DI and the space govt and start letting interest accrue. Then get cracking on what we can learn so that we can start catching up technologically. Keep renewing the judgment and in a few thousand years enforce the judgment with compounded interest.
And I’d make sure the lawyers who did all this were able to add their fees to the judgment.
They’ll all be dead before they can collect. 'Specially since you just declared war on the Feds. If THEIR CIVILIANS have impenetrable force shields & warp drive, their MILITARY has surely got photon torpedos too. Not that they need them, as they’re in orbit and can just drop rocks.
We could threaten to launch all our nukes at them anyway. Since we would almost all certainly die in the resulting nuclear holocaust, it would look pretty bad on DI that they wouldn’t simply give the primitive screwheads something to shut them up thus resulting in the complete genocide of a fledgling species.
I’m with kanicbird on this one. There’s no particular argument that would work, and all we can do is hope and pray and beg for some unobtanium to kick start our journey to the stars.
#1 - Present them with a Bill for the ore, because it is arguably our property.
#2 - The Magic of Compound Interest.
#3 - Ok, we know this technology works, so this means that any physics we have that says it doesn’t work is obviously in error. Time to start investigating theories that allow this technology.
Then finally, a long long while from now;
#4 - Hi. We’re from the Earth. Here’s your bill. Pay up.
As long as no Vogon constructor fleets are involved I’d probably just roll with it. And make sure I have a towel handy.
If they just crossed a galaxy to get here, I’m doubting they’re going to be overly sympathetic.
“Your concerns are duly noted, next time evolve faster.”
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the American Indians? Isn’t that essentially what the Europeans and later the United States government did? Basically coming in with their advanced technology and cited or inventing whatever legal precedent they needed to make themselves feel good about it?
The “right” we have is that it is our planet, not the alien’s. As the occupants of our planet, it is ours to do as we see fit. The only “right” the aliens have is the fact that we probably wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them.
You want to kill all humans and almost every other species on the planet, to make some aliens look bad to other aliens, in a report none of us will live to read?
Ok, I’m in.
The aliens will react to a cease and desist demand from the U.N. pretty much the same way anyone else does.
“Ooooh, the U.N is pissed, ooooh, we all scared now!” Then after the aliens have all had a good laugh they will keep doing what they want.
Nah, but considering the political situation that Skald mentioned, any reaction other than a beneficial one towards humanity would be corporate suicide for DI. He mentioned that about 50% plus of the federation was either sympathetic or undecided towards us. If they use their tech to negate our threat, they are bullies. If they continue unabated while stalling, they are bullies AND sleeze. If they call our bluff, they are bullies. THEY know and WE know that we’d never actually do it, but they don’t really have the political goodwill behind them to steamroller us if we play the card. The worst we come out is the plucky little earthlings, valiantly and perhaps stupidly trying everything to preserve their resources. 
We say “OK, whatever, please don’t kill us all or mess up our planet, thanks.”
There’s no such thing as a “moral right” when two different societies are interacting. We do not have the power to force them to stop doing what they are doing, so all the “moral right” in the world (or the universe) amounts to absolutely jack shit.