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Even assuming it works and we never come across a power that manages to beat us or disrupt us in a significant manner (there's a reason peace is the default), genetic engineering and technology is multiple times more efficient for this purpose.
Because we already have a better method, it's called markets. They're naturally efficient and have consistently proven themselves to be better than centrally controlled economies. It's one of the reasons why even slavery has died off too, the free market is simply far more efficient than wasting resources on enforcement of what essentially becomes a mini form of a centrally controlled economy. Slave ownership helped to keep the American south in the past while markets industrialized the North and made them richer.
The empire model didn't go away because of morals. If that was the case, then the empires would have outcompeted the moral pussies who ceded power and they wouldn't be gone to begin with. The empire model is gone because it is inferior to the market. You notice how the three examples you gave of modern empires all failed?
The British empire kept losing territory and power, not just the US but plenty of other colonies. The American South lost to the North. The USSR racked up loss after loss until it fell apart. Over and over again the empire model is filled with losers.
The market model keeps winning. The US, one of the earliest and most ardent embracers of capitalism who largely kept war away from us is the greatest and most powerful country in the world. While Europe was ruined by war, we innovated and grew. The only thing now that is even close is China, and that's despite them having significantly more human capital to rely on because they insist on self sabotage with communism.
You're making the "end of history" argument ala Fukuyama. 20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but I think we're starting to see the cracks in this sort of market-focused liberal democratic model. Plumeting birth rates, rising social problems, and a general sense that people are not as good as they used to be. Technology is very good at solving market problems like "how can we target people with ads," but not so good at actually enhancing human lives. And genetic engineering has yet to overcome basic human differences, eg men and women are still different despite the best efforts of feminists and trans activists to erase those differences. Ditto the racial differences.
So what? The US has also lost lots of wars. Just a few years ago we had a humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of failing to accomplish anything there. It doesn't matter. The nice thing about being a big, powerful military empire is that you can afford to lose wars. Losing some random territory in Africa was hardly an existential threat to the British Empire- even losing their American colonies wasn't. The southern planter caste lost their slaves, but they kept their land and went right back to their traditional way of life after the war ended, just paying the former slaves a small amount. Even now they make up a disproportionate share of US military officers. And while the USSR fell apart (due to economic reasons, not from war—it's kind of amazing that they kept their empire running as long as they did when it was so ramshackle), Russia kept its nukes, its space program, and a lot of its power. Its former KGB leader became president. Its currently at war in Ukraine to regain its lost territory, and it will probably win despite the west sending significant aid to Ukraine. It's not just some minor footnote in history!
Then of course there's China, which seems to be charting its own unique path with both centralized state control and dynamic markets. I don't even know what to say there, except that it's clearly a rebuke to the idea that liberal free-market capitalistic democracy is the only model that will work from now on.
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