I agree with you, my reasoning is motivated, by reasoning.

We would never see them if they were capitalist, as they would be bound to their planet by the same Grand Energy Ponzi as we are, until or if we break that, or go extinct.

The grand energy Ponzi starts with something like cutting down the first tree, and selling it at profit.

It becomes capitalism when we sieze or buy a piece of land, for example, to take all the trees from it, all the oil from it, mine all the gold from it, rent all of its area, etc, etc, leading eventually to the depletion we currently see on Earth.

Even if we had somehow kept plowing public money in each “developed” country into a space race from when the first moon landing was made, until now, we still wouldn’t be interplanetary, as we can see the resources on Earth are not sufficient alone to “fuel” our competive leaping into space in any substantial way, and we can’t truly collaborate, pooling resources, as long as we compete for capital.

Elon dreams for the delight of capitalist investors, but recycled rocket technology from the sixties, sportscars, and shrapnel satellites in orbit, are not going to cut it, unfortunately.

Capitalism is an illusion of wealth which requires the sacrifice of the majority of people on Earth, if not just their ingenuity, their actual lives, to sustain it while it lasts, whether they are just another business person that almost “made it” to the dizzying heights of Elon, before falling by the wayside, a slave that died on a cross like Jesus, or one of the millions of children that died or are dying in the desert now in one of the many impoverished, war torn countries like Yemen, their lives were and are all taken by capitalism.

Their genius could have done great things in a different system, as could the resources of Earth.

Monetising sunlight is something that might lead us out of capitalism, I would say, because it utilises energy not from our planet, and alone has unlimited potential to fuel all kinds of collaborative endeavour, whilst also removing the need to compete for limited resources and capital.

It seems to me, that is the only way any species could ever become interplanetary, to attain Kardashev level greater than zero, and expand on the energy of their local star.

So they would have left capitalism behind long ago as a bad idea.

Aliens, just by being here, would be proof there are other, better ways than capitalism, I would say.

I thank you for prompting me to expound on this, as something becomes apparent; capitalism, by definition, is amost a self proven rule, that we can never be interplanetary by it, the biggest lump of capital is our planet.

Capitalism is Planet-bound by definition.