I can buy that, but I don't necessarily interpret it the same way as you do. There are many examples of societies being ruined by contact with a much more technologically advanced society. The pace of change is too great and society falls apart. For example, most current jobs would simply cease to exist in any real sense. At best, people would be left doing their work as a charitable gesture to them, and that's not good.
Indeed, there would be negative effects. This could be why UFOs avoid direct contact a mass scale. It could be part of a gradual process.
Another reason I forgot to put for why the government keeps quiet is that if it did came out and it's discovered the government witheld information on something as monumental as the existance of ETs and had silenced people through intimidation and maybe killed some the would be a total collapse of faith in the government. Possibly resulting in many powerful people facing Nuremburg style trials and killed.
Angilion said:I don't see why an interstellar civilisation would necessarily have moved "beyond" a system in which people exchange things in trade.
There probably is bartering of some sort when needed but I doubt it's done with credit cards and loans from banks and house repoesessions if you can't keep up on your interest payments. I imagine by the time you've figured out how to transcend the laws of physics you've figured out how to tackle scarcity making the need a lot of business/economic practices redundant.