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I think your first argument about sustainability has a key issue: An enormous proportion of Earth's current issues are historic in origin. The population explos

I think your first argument about sustainability has a key issue: An enormous proportion of Earth's current issues are historic in origin. The population explosion is a result of rapid development in SE Asia and Africa - developed societies hit steady state populations and actually shrink without immigration. Climate change is extremely real and dangerous, but ultimately historic. A society starting fresh from our current level of development, particularly one populated primarily by explorers on a foreign planet, will carefully find and account for externalities like damaging emissions. Automation-derived unemployment is the most historic crisis imaginable - the result is unalloyed paradise if you don't have a suddenly penniless underclass to account for or a societal structure obsessed with puritan work ethic. Your argument about new resource growth is interesting, but misses A) the previously mentioned steady state populations of developed society disproves the 'population explosion' and B) the enormous efficiency gains we'll reap from expansion to new worlds. For me at least, the drive to expand isn't Malthusian, it's roughly cultural. If you buy into Hirschman's Voice and Exit dichotomy[0], a frontier provides the ultimate exit to society's current structure. We're observing the effects of a voiceless society with no exit right now, and it's far from good. The last great round of expansion birthed all sorts of new societal structures, some of which ultimately out-competed those of the old world and now dominate this world. Lastly, beyond the social/cultural effects of the frontier, this frontier in particular is going to be really, really good for our technological development. The absolute quantity of resources available to us will only grow as n^2, but specific resources will grow by unimaginable factors within that. Platinum group metals will plummet in price[1], orbital manufacturing will enable amazing new materials, and built-in-space orbital structures are too transformative to even try predicting [3]. It's possible (though I don't buy it) that Earth society is unsustainable and doomed. Whether that's true or not, I think it has little bearing on our ability to create a 10,000x smaller society off Earth (1mm humans to start), and I think such a parallel society off-Earth would be enormously helpful in making Earth sustainable. Both through the effects of a frontier, and simple technological advancement. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-asteroid-platinum-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-as... [2]: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2421.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experime... [3]: http://madeinspace.us/archinaut/ http://madeinspace.us/archinaut/

visarga 9y ago
Problem is, immediately after the colonies become self sustainable, they will want independence and eventually become more powerful than earth.
- nickparker 9y ago
  This is too out there to predict with any hope of accuracy, but I suspect/hope planets will have a sort of anti-MAD, mutual perfect defensibility. Orbit is a very offense-biased environment. It's much easier to hit a ship / missile with some high velocity pebbles and ruin its day than it is to survive those pebbles. New tech could radically shift that balance, but I don't think it will. As long as war in orbit works like that, what you get is WW1-esque. An enormous no mans land with no cover and ample weaponry pointed at it. Now, if people are really insistent on fighting an offensive war that'll be WW1 style terrible. But I'm hopeful the only wars we'll see will be for independence, and that dynamic will just destroy the will to enforce control over distant bodies.

visarga 9y ago

Problem is, immediately after the colonies become self sustainable, they will want independence and eventually become more powerful than earth.

nickparker 9y ago
This is too out there to predict with any hope of accuracy, but I suspect/hope planets will have a sort of anti-MAD, mutual perfect defensibility. Orbit is a very offense-biased environment. It's much easier to hit a ship / missile with some high velocity pebbles and ruin its day than it is to survive those pebbles. New tech could radically shift that balance, but I don't think it will. As long as war in orbit works like that, what you get is WW1-esque. An enormous no mans land with no cover and ample weaponry pointed at it. Now, if people are really insistent on fighting an offensive war that'll be WW1 style terrible. But I'm hopeful the only wars we'll see will be for independence, and that dynamic will just destroy the will to enforce control over distant bodies.