only when a total idiot is in charge would any government ignore a potential source of instability
Which they do! So many low-hanging pirate and indie worlds Hegemony and Church could rough up and decivilize, but they do not. They attack only the player's worlds, even after the player's faction has grown to major faction size.
Yeah, but Hegemony, League and Church are too busy trying to rough each other up... even Alex has stated that the pirates and indies are more "factions" than actual factions (ie, no single government is in charge compared to actual factions). Luddic Path prolly falls in this category also. Quite frankly, dropping the concept of the indies and pirates as actual factions might actually improve the game, or at least render it somewhat less confusing. But since game seems to lack any sort of governing mechanism beyond factions as nation states as opposed to nation states containing multiple
political parties factions... prolly just one more thing that'll get fixed/added with rest of that mythical colony update. Put another way, your critique seems to turn on the fact that factions as nations lack basically any form of interaction beyond basically putting boots on the ground, like real actual tariffs between polities, espionage, diplomacy, and so on. Game is still single player, not a sci-fi socioeconomic simulator. I mean, colonies at level 3 are white-listed, but as soon as you hit that magic 4... player gets stomped unless they saved up enough cash to build some defenses while waiting for that magic 4. If anything, the current lack of an alternative to the colony system is the game's primary weakness right now. Either save up $$ and start a colony (and deal with all ramifications of having a colony), or finish the Galatia quest line with frequent stops to make $$ on the side (selling all colony stuff you don't need), OR take a commission with a faction. Where can the player just buy bonds and clip some coupons?
As for another attempt at a real world example... nobody fixes Somalia, they just deal with its ramifications; theoretically Somalia gets the honor of fixing itself, but in practice, it generally doesn't and prolly won't until something radical occurs. I mean, America tried like 30 years ago, but all it succeeded at was generating a decent Ridley Scott movie. But I think it was Histidine that pointed out in his Nex thread that the game lacks a lot of stuff under the hood that one would expect should be there, like that tariffs in the game only exist to force player to risk using black market, doesn't actually change value of goods being shipped between factions. Some of this is prolly necessary abstraction, some is necessary to reduce game data requirements, some hasn't been added yet, and some that seems unnecessary is probably due a compromise in coding. I mean, game technically isn't even finished yet. C'est la vie.
Edit: forgot to include Luddic Path as a "faction"