Every empire is fundamentally evil. They do invent legends, theories, counter arguments of progress in the name of abuse, violence and destruction. Empires often reduce options, distill communities down to gold or cash and finally as they decline (and all empires decline) they make moral arguments about the usefulness of its warmongering and conquests.

But as you see with wars – invading forces often might win battle after battle but always lose the wars. The natives only have to survive on their land to win!

This is the bit, why I always feel hopeful about open source software or open systems. They are the natives of our society and they only have to survive to win.

That said the closed source empires will not stop their attacks, even risking the complete destruction of society for a few favourable VC rounds.