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It boggles my mind, with the understanding and technology we have, that we have not leveraged our entire world economy to the single goal of eradicating poverty

by base 11y ago

It boggles my mind, with the understanding and technology we have, that we have not leveraged our entire world economy to the single goal of eradicating poverty of the world.

soperj 11y ago
Really it seems like just a distribution problem at this point.
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
There goes the "but we have so many problems down here" argument again. Starting a Mars colony would require the efforts of a few thousand people and cost a few percent of world GDP. Eradicating poverty would require the cooperation of millions of people, many of whom would sooner murder each other, and more than half of world GDP. So not only are the two projects not mutually exclusive, a Mars colony is actually much less difficult.
- sjcsjc 11y ago
  "the efforts of a few thousand people" Good point. And arguably that's actually happening.
- __jal 11y ago
  Depends on what the goal is. If your Mars colony is just a PR^H^H national pride game - you've got a handful of people, some high-school kids' plant experiment and the Little Box with the Antenna some TLA agency asked you to leave behind - then sure, it would be no more expensive than the SDI, the Libyan war or any other stupid boondoggle we can apparently afford. If you want an actual self-sufficient colony, you've got a much bigger project. I don't think we know what is actually required to create a self-sustaining technical culture in space, because we've only really done it by accident and not in space. But this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... is as decent a hand-wavey starting point as any. And it is quite a bit more resource-intensive than a few kilopeople/few percent of organized human output.
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    The comparison to those stupid boondoggles doesn't really do the scale we're talking about justice. A few percent of gross world product is 4 trillion dollars per year. That's more expensive than the entire Second World War. That's enough money to fund NASA for two centuries. That's enough money to launch the mass of the empire state building into LEO twice using current disposable rockets.
Rhapso 11y ago
As horrible as it sounds, from the perspective of species survival, poverty is not a big issue. The globalization of culture and ideology that such a movement would impose to eradicate poverty would itself be a bigger threat to survival than poverty. Diversity of thought and culture is a huge survival benefit, and to fulfill the western fantasy of poverty eradication we would have to impose a new set of values and thoughts upon all those affected. It would have to be built on the destruction of diversity that is of higher utility than those people's welbeing. But this is admittedly, from a perspective that would be cruel to a great many people. I can see strong arguments for modifying cultures worldwide to lower poverty, but only in ways that promote that they find their own varied and unique solutions to the problems, rather than imposing a single solution.
- finishingmove 11y ago
  You talk about ensuring the survival of the species, yet you downplay the suffering of fellow humans. What would there be left to save if everyone thought this way?
  - Rhapso 11y ago
    Not much. I'm not evangelistic about my ideals. Variety of thought, values and philosophy is a survival boon. We just need enough people to think this way, all of us would not be good. I don't want to save my ideology, i want to save the existence of any ideology.
    - finishingmove 11y ago
      Do ideologies of destruction and self-destruction get the same treatment as any other? Preserving them for the sake of preservation and diversity perhaps?
      - Rhapso 11y ago
        Yes. I hope people get the chance to re-invent slavery, racism, genocide and every other horrible thing over and over. I have strong ideas about all of those things, but they are part of what humanity is. Maybe humanity will change, maybe it wont. I want to save it either way.
cbhl 11y ago
Maybe we could "solve" both problems at the same time, similar to how the Europeans sent people to settle in North America once upon a time.
excalibur 11y ago
It boggles my mind that the phrase "Get your ass to Mars" took this long to appear in this thread.

by base 11y ago

It boggles my mind, with the understanding and technology we have, that we have not leveraged our entire world economy to the single goal of eradicating poverty of the world.

soperj 11y ago

Really it seems like just a distribution problem at this point.

thescriptkiddie 11y ago

There goes the "but we have so many problems down here" argument again. Starting a Mars colony would require the efforts of a few thousand people and cost a few percent of world GDP. Eradicating poverty would require the cooperation of millions of people, many of whom would sooner murder each other, and more than half of world GDP. So not only are the two projects not mutually exclusive, a Mars colony is actually much less difficult.

sjcsjc 11y ago
"the efforts of a few thousand people" Good point. And arguably that's actually happening.
__jal 11y ago
Depends on what the goal is. If your Mars colony is just a PR^H^H national pride game - you've got a handful of people, some high-school kids' plant experiment and the Little Box with the Antenna some TLA agency asked you to leave behind - then sure, it would be no more expensive than the SDI, the Libyan war or any other stupid boondoggle we can apparently afford. If you want an actual self-sufficient colony, you've got a much bigger project. I don't think we know what is actually required to create a self-sustaining technical culture in space, because we've only really done it by accident and not in space. But this: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insuffic... is as decent a hand-wavey starting point as any. And it is quite a bit more resource-intensive than a few kilopeople/few percent of organized human output.
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  The comparison to those stupid boondoggles doesn't really do the scale we're talking about justice. A few percent of gross world product is 4 trillion dollars per year. That's more expensive than the entire Second World War. That's enough money to fund NASA for two centuries. That's enough money to launch the mass of the empire state building into LEO twice using current disposable rockets.

Rhapso 11y ago

As horrible as it sounds, from the perspective of species survival, poverty is not a big issue. The globalization of culture and ideology that such a movement would impose to eradicate poverty would itself be a bigger threat to survival than poverty. Diversity of thought and culture is a huge survival benefit, and to fulfill the western fantasy of poverty eradication we would have to impose a new set of values and thoughts upon all those affected. It would have to be built on the destruction of diversity that is of higher utility than those people's welbeing. But this is admittedly, from a perspective that would be cruel to a great many people. I can see strong arguments for modifying cultures worldwide to lower poverty, but only in ways that promote that they find their own varied and unique solutions to the problems, rather than imposing a single solution.

finishingmove 11y ago
You talk about ensuring the survival of the species, yet you downplay the suffering of fellow humans. What would there be left to save if everyone thought this way?
- Rhapso 11y ago
  Not much. I'm not evangelistic about my ideals. Variety of thought, values and philosophy is a survival boon. We just need enough people to think this way, all of us would not be good. I don't want to save my ideology, i want to save the existence of any ideology.
  - finishingmove 11y ago
    Do ideologies of destruction and self-destruction get the same treatment as any other? Preserving them for the sake of preservation and diversity perhaps?
    - Rhapso 11y ago
      Yes. I hope people get the chance to re-invent slavery, racism, genocide and every other horrible thing over and over. I have strong ideas about all of those things, but they are part of what humanity is. Maybe humanity will change, maybe it wont. I want to save it either way.

cbhl 11y ago

Maybe we could "solve" both problems at the same time, similar to how the Europeans sent people to settle in North America once upon a time.

excalibur 11y ago

It boggles my mind that the phrase "Get your ass to Mars" took this long to appear in this thread.