I feel like people really REALLY missed one of the central points of the Ringworld novels: a megastructure like that is a dead end. It's too big, it's impossibl

I feel like people really REALLY missed one of the central points of the Ringworld novels: a megastructure like that is a dead end. It's too big, it's impossible to effectively govern, even with near-magical tech and a hyperintelligent overlord it will eventually fail. A Dyson Swarm is an interesting idea, but it also seems to imagine that a civilization capable of such feats of engineering won't have figured out some better alternative.