The traditional way of demarcating those interactions into categories would be on the basis of consent and coercion. For example, people in the Soviet Union wer

The traditional way of demarcating those interactions into categories would be on the basis of consent and coercion. For example, people in the Soviet Union were compelled where people in the US were allowed to choose amongst the options available. This information is not accessible by observing aliens because their observations are limited to material interactions and they lack implicit knowledge necessary to make inferences that would allow them to distinguish between the two. From a macro perspective the difference would be whether the owner of a firm or conglomerate is able to make decisions that would cause him to lose his conglomerate or if he can compel people to continue to support him. Of course in the US we have plenty of enterprise that are "too big to fail" but to my knowledge amazon is not yet one of them.