If you think it I should:

We are, like all (or at least most) primates, social animals; conformity is built into our genes. If this weren't so, memes wouldn't be as powerful as they are. This does not mean that conformity is absolute. We also have genetic mutations, plain vanilla genetic variance and incredibly pliable brains that hardwire as we age according to our experiences and schemas. Hence, a kid who grows up gay (or different in any way that's socially taboo) may feel extreme guilt about that and thus be motivated to remove themselves from the gene pool.

The point is that while a desire for conformity might be genetic, the contents of that conformity (and therefore its enforcement by society) are always cultural, not genetic.

Our focus should be on mammals, particularly primates, since animals below that intelligence level are motivated almost entirely by instinct, so size variance in lower level animal species really is not much of an issue.

It would be if we saw size differentials only on relatively intelligent species; but we don't, so something that does not depend on intelligence must be at play.

I don't recall reading that it had anything to do with "sultanism" as you put it (this sounds like a bias specific to your ethnicity and/or religion).

My choice of word is intended to reflect the "owner" of a harem. Which in some species is a male and in others is a female.

Elephant seals are an extreme example of what I mean here, due to the immense size difference, but the sexual power differential is relevant to a wide spectrum of mammalian species, and largely for the same reasons.

But again, polyandric species reverse that. Your quotation seems actually to agree with me.

First of all, given the resources it would require to do so, the possibility of interstellar travel is so remote that it's entirely unlikely we will ever have to contend with another species, period, much less one with both the technology and the goal of human domination requiring soldiers.

I know I sound like Dissident, but really, don't measure the far future by the limits of the present.

Clarke: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Secondly, what are war machines for if not reducing casualties on our side? At that point in the future are human soldiers even necessary? Look what we can do with drones even today.

They are autonomous flying, but not autonomous mission-plan and targetting. A flesh officer in the Pentagon designs the mission. A flesh pilot in Nevada controls their flight through a Wii.

But I am aiming higher than that. I am postulating that no matter what capacities, in theory, war machines achieve, there will be a human order needed to activate them. That human order needs to come from a warrior. And remember that war machines that are completely autonomous from humans do not have the incentives humans have; and therefore might very reasonably attack allies or their own "owners" because of this incentive disalignment. The human order is not superfluous.

Thirdly, arranging our entire species lives' around such a fantastically low possibility is ludicrous. Again, cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the costs would be far higher than benefits.

The benefit is surviving when the Sun eats the Earth. Why would we not do that if we arrived to that point? It seems stupid to survive natural or artificial destruction for billions of years only to surrender to the Sun unconditionally when the day comes. That's a civilization-scale suicide pact by another name.

Accumulation of goods/food for the benefit of a family or community is different than individual hoarding for it's own sake. There may even be a genetic component to hoarding more than we'll ever need, but we don't have to be slaves to our genes. At the very least we can channel this tendency towards community rather than self.

No, it's really not. It's just that we do not have an in-built alarm that tells us when we are crossing from one to the other. It is similar to our taste for fat and sugar. It makes sense when you consider evolution, and only doesn't anymore because we have a much greater access to fat and sugar now than we ever did before (or conversely, to wealth). I seriously doubt the best financial mind ever (whoever it is) would have accumulated more than one generation worth of wealth in pre-agricultural times. It was just impossible.

Ah, but of course we are too selfish for such socialist ends, aren't we? And yet not so selfish that we can't, on the whole, overcome our baser male instincts, I suppose.

I don't claim that male aggression can be overcome. I claim that it is not as negative or unneeded as the current feminist consensus puts it, to your agreement. No, we are not better off erasing natural male aggression from our gene pool.

So you see, you libertarians claim we're too self-centered to work together, and yet you make no such claims for the problems inherent to your position, like the fact that power vacuums like those you get with anarchies and minarchies always get filled, and usually by those you least want to have power over you--e.g. brutal warlords.

The fallacy is statist, not libertarian: how is a monopoly the best way to end monopolies? For that matter, how are brutal warlords prevented from exercising power by non-anarchies? On the contrary, they are legitimised by being in charge of the institutions of the state.

But - I will remark this has nothing to do with the topic of the thread.

Well, maybe we can. According to Stephen Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, setting aside a few spikes (like the eras of the two world wars) the death toll due to violence has absolutely decreased (statistically speaking) from our caveman days to now. Funnily enough, that decrease is concurrent with, among other things, the rise of female empowerment. Imagine that.

And the availability of guns.

And the invasive and totalitarian capacities of the state.

:p

And if I wanted to be even more obnoxious, with material wealth.

For example, the weaker, lazier, less intelligent pipsqueak who has more power and makes more money than you at work. Every major business has at least one of those guys. How he got there one can only wonder, and yet there he is. Without that artificial power structure there's no way he ever would've been there. He would've been dethroned long ago.

That's what I meant "power for the sake of power". It is a very prominent critique in left-anarchism, and only a little less prominent in right-anarchism because the right wing believes that any organization that accepts the practice will in turn be outcompeted by leaner ones (if not propped up by others, that is. [cough] bailouts [cough]).

To me the issue comes down to first off whether the collective good outweighs the individual good (I think it does),

So you would approve of a suicide attack being ordered if you approved of the cause?

There's nothing inherently valuable about hierarchies.

Yes there is: streamlined decision making.
Granted, that is a weakness in some contexts (notably, where there is no merit and no consultation). But most often it's a strength.

No, the driving force for innovation is need. Or, to put it more familiarly, necessity is the mother of invention.

Now I don't buy it. Uncontacted and many weakly contacted peoples don't seem to need White Man stuff. For that matter, the Amish don't seem to need White Man stuff. Through choice, disaster or history and geography, many people have proven that you really don't need all that much.

We are now near or at the point where machines can invent. Therefore, what need have we of males?

Same as with war - incentives are not similar.

I will put you a very simple example: machines have no reason to want to stop global warming (assumption here that it is both anthropogenic and reversible, of course); but humans do. Therefore, you cannot expect an intelligent machine to give you some "clean energy" solutions which a human would specifically seek.

"Forever" is not a useful time-frame to focus on, and I'm pretty sure I made no suggestions to that end.

Well if you mean in the short term, then I probably can agree. The world is moving towards the Stockholm Consensus; and it will take the failure of the Stockholm Consensus to re-value male features. But that is on a longer time frame, beyond your and mine natural lives.

Entirely possible, but it amounts to the same thing for me.

No it's not. The elimination of biological gender is similar; but there would be at least some grandfathering of live humans, instead of breeding of wholly new generations.