> In other words, the finite nature of resources will ultimately pit one civilization against another as they all struggle to sustain their growth. I absolutel

> In other words, the finite nature of resources will ultimately pit one civilization against another as they all struggle to sustain their growth. I absolutely can't see how that follows exactly. The Universe, hell, just our own galaxy, is pretty damn big. The time and fuel it could cost you to get to the adjacent civilization and steal its resources might be way too much compared to, you know, invest in some cosmic mining operations where you can get a Bonanza of resources just by poking into your local asteroid cluster. To address the rest of this argument, a civilization might be as malicious as they come and they could still be very powerless and can't just go terrorize somebody.