Aliens may not be imperfect. They may not even be biological. We may have to deal with a machine civilization that doesn't even remember its biological creators. Remember V'ger?

Yes they may very well be flawed, but we may not be able to figure out how or why they are that way. They may also be crazy, violent, genocidal, even pathological, or worse, totally indifferent to us. After all, we don't have much of a relationship with our intestinal flora, do we?

Remember, the protomolecule is not an alien civilization, it is a weapon designed by an alien civilization to be used against another alien civilization..

Consider something like a hive of social insects, or a rain forest or coral reef that has evolved sentience. Or what about The Culture in the Iain Banks SF novels? Or how about a benign but massive bureaucracy of a number of totally distinct and independent races that takes millennia to arrive at even the simplest decisions, yet is still capable of conducting massive slaughter if it is convinced it is for "the greater good" of all the participants involved.

The point is we don't know. We don't even have a clue. The one point where I agree with you is that they will NOT be gods. I don't believe in gods. But they may SEEM like gods to primitives like us. Or worse, they may think WE are gods.

As for the "invisible hand of economics", what if they are communists? Or maybe they do believe in supply and demand, they just don't believe in applying it to politics.

Suppose they have evolved into something like mammals here on earth. But we could still be as different from them as cats are from dogs; two similar and related earth species that get along with us, and sometimes even with each other, yet have totally different personalities and ways of looking at the world.