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Do you honestly believe we will achieve post scarcity society without leaving Earth?

by friedman23 9y ago

vacri 9y ago
How is having a small dependent colony of tunnel-dwellers on Mars going to give us a post-scarcity society?
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  The same way Columbus gave us our massive modern international shipping infrastructure. It's a small step in a large process. You don't just jump from A to B. In this case, getting nearer to post-scarcity will undoubtedly involve capturing a much larger portion of the Sun's energy output (only one billionth reaches Earth), which will require significantly more developed space industries. Or if fusion becomes viable, we will need to harvest some of the more efficient inputs, such as He3 from the moon. The technologies we develop to accomplish these endeavors will provide enormous benefits to all humans, including those still living on Earth.
- friedman23 9y ago
  Mars has nothing to do with it. We simply do not have enough resources on this planet to provide everyone with everything they desire without destroying the planet in the process..
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Malthusians have been making and being embarrassed by that argument for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, the standard of living for all people on the planet increases, and the link between that increase and resource consumption is not linear. Given the history of the argument, it seems forgivable to assume that the people who make it in the context of space travel are simply besotted by the romance of space travel.
  - geofft 9y ago
    And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred? If you know what the bound is on the resources needed to satisfy people's desires, and that's a finite number of planets greater than one, sure. But if you don't have a bound, it's going to be far more effective to adjust people's desires. (And if you do have a bound, and it's slightly greater than one, it may still be more efficient to adjust people's desires to get it to less than one than to expend the engineering work needed to build a multi-planet civilization.)
    - friedman23 9y ago
      >And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred? Yes we do because human growth is not exponential and there are limitless resources in space.
geofft 9y ago
I have trouble believing that we'll have an easier time achieving it if we leave Earth. Sure, the amount of resources available to us in space is large, but there are plenty of untapped / inefficiently-used resources on Earth itself, and space travel, so that resources can move between planets, is technologically complex and subject to some inherent physical limits in terms of latency if not throughput. Certainly we will get good at the technology at some point, but the technologies that would let us Earth's resources more efficiently and sustainably are easier ones. If we can't get good at those ones, why believe we'll get good at space infrastructure?
- friedman23 9y ago
  I don't see how we can successfully make use of Earth's resources without destroying the planet in the process.
  - geofft 9y ago
    That's why I'm curious what the cost is for transporting both resources and communities between planets and especially between solar systems. If we can do so cost-effectively, then we can slowly destroy Earth, move people to Mars gradually as Earth becomes less habitable, and finally leave just a team of miners and nobody else on Earth, to slowly extract the last few resources. Then we need to do the same to Mars, and we need to find another planet, probably outside this solar system, to move people to as we exhaust Mars' resources. If we can't do that, then we will have Earth-humanity slowly die out as Earth's resources are exhausted, and Mars-humanity slowly die out as Mars' resources are exhausted, and nothing to do about it other than Mars-humans reading Earth's history books and realizing the farce. Alternatively, we can figure out, as a species, how to provide for everyone without destroying the planet we're on.

Do you honestly believe we will achieve post scarcity society without leaving Earth?

vacri 9y ago

How is having a small dependent colony of tunnel-dwellers on Mars going to give us a post-scarcity society?

dwaltrip 9y ago
The same way Columbus gave us our massive modern international shipping infrastructure. It's a small step in a large process. You don't just jump from A to B. In this case, getting nearer to post-scarcity will undoubtedly involve capturing a much larger portion of the Sun's energy output (only one billionth reaches Earth), which will require significantly more developed space industries. Or if fusion becomes viable, we will need to harvest some of the more efficient inputs, such as He3 from the moon. The technologies we develop to accomplish these endeavors will provide enormous benefits to all humans, including those still living on Earth.
friedman23 9y ago
Mars has nothing to do with it. We simply do not have enough resources on this planet to provide everyone with everything they desire without destroying the planet in the process..
- tptacek 9y ago
  Malthusians have been making and being embarrassed by that argument for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, the standard of living for all people on the planet increases, and the link between that increase and resource consumption is not linear. Given the history of the argument, it seems forgivable to assume that the people who make it in the context of space travel are simply besotted by the romance of space travel.
- geofft 9y ago
  And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred? If you know what the bound is on the resources needed to satisfy people's desires, and that's a finite number of planets greater than one, sure. But if you don't have a bound, it's going to be far more effective to adjust people's desires. (And if you do have a bound, and it's slightly greater than one, it may still be more efficient to adjust people's desires to get it to less than one than to expend the engineering work needed to build a multi-planet civilization.)
  - friedman23 9y ago
    >And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred? Yes we do because human growth is not exponential and there are limitless resources in space.

geofft 9y ago

I have trouble believing that we'll have an easier time achieving it if we leave Earth. Sure, the amount of resources available to us in space is large, but there are plenty of untapped / inefficiently-used resources on Earth itself, and space travel, so that resources can move between planets, is technologically complex and subject to some inherent physical limits in terms of latency if not throughput. Certainly we will get good at the technology at some point, but the technologies that would let us Earth's resources more efficiently and sustainably are easier ones. If we can't get good at those ones, why believe we'll get good at space infrastructure?

friedman23 9y ago
I don't see how we can successfully make use of Earth's resources without destroying the planet in the process.
- geofft 9y ago
  That's why I'm curious what the cost is for transporting both resources and communities between planets and especially between solar systems. If we can do so cost-effectively, then we can slowly destroy Earth, move people to Mars gradually as Earth becomes less habitable, and finally leave just a team of miners and nobody else on Earth, to slowly extract the last few resources. Then we need to do the same to Mars, and we need to find another planet, probably outside this solar system, to move people to as we exhaust Mars' resources. If we can't do that, then we will have Earth-humanity slowly die out as Earth's resources are exhausted, and Mars-humanity slowly die out as Mars' resources are exhausted, and nothing to do about it other than Mars-humans reading Earth's history books and realizing the farce. Alternatively, we can figure out, as a species, how to provide for everyone without destroying the planet we're on.