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Your post has "false dichotomy" written all over it. Of course, space exploration is an international endeavor and most space missions are highly international.

Your post has "false dichotomy" written all over it. Of course, space exploration is an international endeavor and most space missions are highly international. Planning international space exploration missions doesn't force anyone to give up their nation, just as global trade does not imply that. Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run. Earth's nations change all the time, they are mere human constructs, and of course the same would happen in outer space. It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence. And afterwards, they form larger unions again, just like on earth, because forming unions is in their interests. > The idea of a society that big being governable is part of the science fiction. That's far off topic, but to reply to this aspect of your post: Claiming that you can govern countries like Australia, the US, and Russia, but not the world as a whole draws some pretty arbitrary boundaries. With a federal structure, it would be no problem. People said about every country before it was united that it will never be united. Before Germany was united, people said that it's absolutely impossible to govern such a big country and that the cultures of Prussia and Bavaria are just too different. Before the EU was funded, people said that certain European countries could never closely work together or even form a trade union and that there would always be war between some of them. Heck, probably settlers in the US also were convinced that the South and the North could never live together or be governed as one nation, because it's just too big. And so on, and so forth, you get the gist.

gandutraveler 7y ago
It's easy to say that it's an international initiative and ignore how we failed at others like global warming.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  Like Antarctica, exploiting off-world resources is not economically viable and thus remains mostly unaffected by the tragedy of the commons, for now anyway. Cooperation is easy when there’s little incentive for individual agents to defect.
rayiner 7y ago
The post I’m responding to went beyond international cooperation to address the concept of exploring space as a “single human race.” As to your second point—no government today is as large in scope as say Rome, the British Empire, the Persian empire, etc. The long-term sustainability of the EU and US are also far from certain. As we saw with both, federalism doesn’t work. As soon as you have a single voting polity, people will want to escalate everything to the federal level. It’s unacceptable to many in the US, for example, that Iowa might have a different minimum wage than New York. When climate change really hits, and California is fighting with Colorado over water and contemplating invading the PNW, we shall see.
- Shikadi 7y ago
  I don't think "a single human race" implies a single government, considering we are already a single human race and always have been...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- naravara 7y ago
  >s to your second point—no government today is as large in scope as say Rome, the British Empire, the Persian empire, etc. Utter hogwash. In terms of scale and intensiveness if state powers even small nations can easily outstrip the bureaucratic complexity of any ancient empire. The challenges of maintaining a welfare state is no small thing. And plenty of countries manage incredible amounts of diversity. India has 50 official languages on its own, and that’s ignoring dialects and weird subgroups. If things seem more similar in spite of that it’s because nation-sized economies are inherently homogenizing through creation of national languages and bureaucracies. But this is itself part of the complexity. Modern governments literally aim to educate ALL the children born within them. This would have been insane to a Roman.
  - BurningCycles 7y ago
    >And plenty of countries manage incredible amounts of diversity. India has 50 official languages on its own, and that’s ignoring dialects and weird subgroups. Indo-Aryan is spoken by ~74% of India, with Dravidian spoken by ~24% of India. So in practice the real-life language diversity is very small. As for 'managing diversity', India has historically 'solved' this through a caste system, not a solution I would propose.
PorterDuff 7y ago
"Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run." Assuming some sort of breakthrough in cheap propulsion and living systems, I couldn't disagree more. If anything, you'd see efforts at a sub-state level with the early colonies in the Americas given as examples. I think that states, and particularly nations, are well suited to large scale efforts with minimal or no immediate payoffs. It's hard to get a sufficiently large group to pull on a rope at the same time.
ekianjo 7y ago
> It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence. To think that in one hundred years any outer space colony will be self sufficient compared to whatever is produced and available on Earth is highly unlikely even in our wildest dreams now. We have literally no pathway for complete self sustainability on other planets in sight, and as long as this remains true space colonies will have no power to break out from whoever they depend on.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  There already exist successful sovereign states that have no pathway to self-sustainability at a modern level of living due to lack of food or oil production.
DataWorker 7y ago
The Roman Empire comes to mind also. But with new surveillance tech, ever more sophisticated methods of behavioral modification and better weapons, including autonomous drones and the like, it seems like the sky is the limit when it comes to mass crowd control. Look how well China does with little breakthroughs like their social credit rating system/5g
saimiam 7y ago
> With a federal structure, it would be no problem. In fact, you don't even have to look beyond India to see a country which is doing pretty well for itself (all things considered) despite each state being a quasi nation with distinct cultural and language mores.
- rayiner 7y ago
  India, which is currently stripping ethnic Bangladeshis of citizenship? That India?
  - saimiam 7y ago
    I feel you’re looking for a fight and I don’t want to indulge you. Hope you’ll understand.
    - cthalupa 7y ago
      People have the right to be upset about things they believe to be unjust. India is a wonderful country, but that diversity causes a lot of problems. I mentioned the Kaveri River water supply issues in a different comment, but there's also all of the issues in the Indian controlled portion of Kashmir... and just everything surrounding the whole of Kashmir The issue in Assam that the person you are replying to is mentioning is also important. It's quite similar to some of the issues we're facing in America, and it shouldn't be dismissed so quickly. For those unfamiliar, one of the states in India has a significant refugee population, largely from refugees fleeing Indo-Pakistani and Bangaldesh Liberation Wars of 1971. Millions fled, particularly from Bangladesh and the rest of east Pakistan, to India. India, since 1987, lacks jus soli/birthright citizenship. Many of the refugees did not bring with them any way to prove citizenship in other countries. Many of the refugees forged identities to be allowed to stay. While this obviously is technically illegal, the end result is that there are people that have been living in India for 50 years, or were born there and know nothing else, that are having their citizenships revoked. Without the ability to prove citizenship from their other countries, these refugees and their descendants are at risk of ending up totally stateless - there are millions of people at risk from this. Bangladesh has not committed to accepting these people, and neither has India said they will allow them to stay and give them a path to citizenship. It's hardly related to "big" problems like this, either. Casual statism and racism is a significant issue, both along the north/south divide, but also within regions.
starpilot 7y ago
> It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence Seems like a naive assumption. We don't see Virgin Islands and other US territories trying to sever their ties to the mainland. In fact we see the opposite with Puerto Rico.

gandutraveler 7y ago

It's easy to say that it's an international initiative and ignore how we failed at others like global warming.

Sharlin 7y ago
Like Antarctica, exploiting off-world resources is not economically viable and thus remains mostly unaffected by the tragedy of the commons, for now anyway. Cooperation is easy when there’s little incentive for individual agents to defect.

rayiner 7y ago

The post I’m responding to went beyond international cooperation to address the concept of exploring space as a “single human race.” As to your second point—no government today is as large in scope as say Rome, the British Empire, the Persian empire, etc. The long-term sustainability of the EU and US are also far from certain. As we saw with both, federalism doesn’t work. As soon as you have a single voting polity, people will want to escalate everything to the federal level. It’s unacceptable to many in the US, for example, that Iowa might have a different minimum wage than New York. When climate change really hits, and California is fighting with Colorado over water and contemplating invading the PNW, we shall see.

Shikadi 7y ago
I don't think "a single human race" implies a single government, considering we are already a single human race and always have been...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
naravara 7y ago
>s to your second point—no government today is as large in scope as say Rome, the British Empire, the Persian empire, etc. Utter hogwash. In terms of scale and intensiveness if state powers even small nations can easily outstrip the bureaucratic complexity of any ancient empire. The challenges of maintaining a welfare state is no small thing. And plenty of countries manage incredible amounts of diversity. India has 50 official languages on its own, and that’s ignoring dialects and weird subgroups. If things seem more similar in spite of that it’s because nation-sized economies are inherently homogenizing through creation of national languages and bureaucracies. But this is itself part of the complexity. Modern governments literally aim to educate ALL the children born within them. This would have been insane to a Roman.
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  >And plenty of countries manage incredible amounts of diversity. India has 50 official languages on its own, and that’s ignoring dialects and weird subgroups. Indo-Aryan is spoken by ~74% of India, with Dravidian spoken by ~24% of India. So in practice the real-life language diversity is very small. As for 'managing diversity', India has historically 'solved' this through a caste system, not a solution I would propose.

PorterDuff 7y ago

"Moreover, if mankind ever expands into space, it would be rather naive to think that earth's nations would play a role there in the long run." Assuming some sort of breakthrough in cheap propulsion and living systems, I couldn't disagree more. If anything, you'd see efforts at a sub-state level with the early colonies in the Americas given as examples. I think that states, and particularly nations, are well suited to large scale efforts with minimal or no immediate payoffs. It's hard to get a sufficiently large group to pull on a rope at the same time.

ekianjo 7y ago

> It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence. To think that in one hundred years any outer space colony will be self sufficient compared to whatever is produced and available on Earth is highly unlikely even in our wildest dreams now. We have literally no pathway for complete self sustainability on other planets in sight, and as long as this remains true space colonies will have no power to break out from whoever they depend on.

Marsymars 7y ago
There already exist successful sovereign states that have no pathway to self-sustainability at a modern level of living due to lack of food or oil production.

DataWorker 7y ago

The Roman Empire comes to mind also. But with new surveillance tech, ever more sophisticated methods of behavioral modification and better weapons, including autonomous drones and the like, it seems like the sky is the limit when it comes to mass crowd control. Look how well China does with little breakthroughs like their social credit rating system/5g

saimiam 7y ago

> With a federal structure, it would be no problem. In fact, you don't even have to look beyond India to see a country which is doing pretty well for itself (all things considered) despite each state being a quasi nation with distinct cultural and language mores.

rayiner 7y ago
India, which is currently stripping ethnic Bangladeshis of citizenship? That India?
- saimiam 7y ago
  I feel you’re looking for a fight and I don’t want to indulge you. Hope you’ll understand.
  - cthalupa 7y ago
    People have the right to be upset about things they believe to be unjust. India is a wonderful country, but that diversity causes a lot of problems. I mentioned the Kaveri River water supply issues in a different comment, but there's also all of the issues in the Indian controlled portion of Kashmir... and just everything surrounding the whole of Kashmir The issue in Assam that the person you are replying to is mentioning is also important. It's quite similar to some of the issues we're facing in America, and it shouldn't be dismissed so quickly. For those unfamiliar, one of the states in India has a significant refugee population, largely from refugees fleeing Indo-Pakistani and Bangaldesh Liberation Wars of 1971. Millions fled, particularly from Bangladesh and the rest of east Pakistan, to India. India, since 1987, lacks jus soli/birthright citizenship. Many of the refugees did not bring with them any way to prove citizenship in other countries. Many of the refugees forged identities to be allowed to stay. While this obviously is technically illegal, the end result is that there are people that have been living in India for 50 years, or were born there and know nothing else, that are having their citizenships revoked. Without the ability to prove citizenship from their other countries, these refugees and their descendants are at risk of ending up totally stateless - there are millions of people at risk from this. Bangladesh has not committed to accepting these people, and neither has India said they will allow them to stay and give them a path to citizenship. It's hardly related to "big" problems like this, either. Casual statism and racism is a significant issue, both along the north/south divide, but also within regions.

starpilot 7y ago

> It would take maybe a hundred years or so for space colonies to declare their independence Seems like a naive assumption. We don't see Virgin Islands and other US territories trying to sever their ties to the mainland. In fact we see the opposite with Puerto Rico.