Humanity & The Alliance

Humanity is not a member of the Alliance.

There, now you can stop claiming Federation-ripoff and focus on what the Alliance is (League of Nations rather than UN) rather than what it isn't.

What humanity is, as far as the Alliance is concerned, is a bunch of too-clever upstart monkeys who stumbled on technology way out of their league who should have stayed in their backwater hillbilly sector of the galaxy, preferably for good.

...no, wait, that's just the Veen who think that. But the Veen thinks that about anyone who isn't Veen.

In truth, Humanity is not a unified whole, as such. While the nations have changed and grown or shrunk, borders have shifted and political power has moved around. Europe is now mainly controlled from the economically powerful Scandinavian countries, and the center of the EU is located in Copenhagen, Denmark. France, Germany and the UK being the impoverished, debt-ridden nations of the bunch...Italy is still a total mess, though. The South American Nations (SAN) is what came out of a grass-roots movement tired of Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Dole running their affairs, it's a solid union of power, money and resources, and it has more financial, military and political might than the US ever had. The United Nations of Africa (UNA) is still riddled with financial troubles and war, but they're no longer owned by oil and diamond-tycoons. In fact, the big losers of the late 21st century and the leap into space were the US, Russia and China, who all moved too slow for various reasons.

Human planets, corporations and star nations are all falling head over heels trying to cut deals with Alliance nations, and this is driving a massive surge in funding for xenobiology, xenosociology and all-round xenology. Scientists are having a field day (well, except for when they have to report things like "We're sorry, but the Blurnfs have no economy and find the idea of ownership of anything offensive to the point where they will attack anyone trying to exploit anything within their territory...and yes, we realize that sounds like an oxymoron."), human tech is making leaps and bounds and opportunist con-men, thieves, exploiters and smugglers are making a fortune on the way things don't quite work yet.

There is a movement for unification of human interests, usually derided as being too pie-in-the-sky-libertarian, seeing as their main plan for how to do this seems to be "Step 1.) Everyone joins our movement, Step 2.) All taxes and laws regulating commerce go bye-bye, Step 3.) ???, Step 4.) Profit!". As things look right now, more regulation seems more likely, and perhaps a separate judicial branch run independent of nation borders to police things...