Geeze Louise/107

hold a view [belief] that they can “make people better”

An oblique ref to Serenity-Firefly, FYI.
It is also the basis of marxist … can’t use philosophy … crapulence. For some reason, it always ends up with a lot of people dead. Well, yes, they see it kinda like making omelettes.

And that is regardless the level of tech. Tech may make breaking eggs somewhat easier and more remote, automatized and clinical.

Sure new tech always causes frictions on the political scene, mostly by the nature of who has it and who does not and wants it bad to make better omelettes. But once we get into time control, then the real fun would start.

As for ME, the simple fact is that oil is a weapon. Though US imports only about 16% of oil from ME, there is no reason why it should be so. The Bakken fields hold 3 times as much oil as the whole fooggen ME. Mind boggles. True, if US was reliant on domestic, CAN and MEX oil only, the ME oil would be bought by Japan, India, China and Europe. So the sand oil tick would be still expanding their volume. No easy answers.

We need something like ZPE, then the ticks would go splat.