4 ms·

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 pla

• 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.