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I don't see how solving poverty on earth can't be more important than the endeavor of trying with the current rather limited tech to inhabit an as good as inhab

I don't see how solving poverty on earth can't be more important than the endeavor of trying with the current rather limited tech to inhabit an as good as inhabitable planet.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
It is more important. We spend > $2T per year fighting climate change. We spend > $10T per year on social welfare programs. We spend less than $10B per year on going back to the moon and trying to inhabit Mars.
- LunaSea 1y ago
  And both of these amounts seem to not be enough based on the resulting state of the world.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    Given that world GDP is only $100T, it's impossible to spend significantly more. (where significant is defined as an order of magnitude).
  - elefanten 1y ago
    As others in the thread mention, these are problems of political economy that no person or mega corp or even nation state can solve. So, continuing to also work on other things is both rational and morally sound. Progress in one area unlocks new possibilities in other areas. E.g. abundant near-free energy would make eliminating poverty a more tractable political problem than it has proven to be.
  - FredPret 1y ago
    > seem to not be enough This is an impossible way to get to a useful conclusion. Provide stats if you're going to make a claim like "the world is bad"
wyattblue 1y ago
Space exploration is merely a _technological_ problem. Solving poverty is a _political_ problem, one that is resistant to just throwing money at the problem.
- nuancebydefault 1y ago
  Both problems are technological as well as financial problems, with politics involved in choice of precedence.
Hemospectrum 1y ago
Even if we solve poverty, we can always turn right around and un-solve poverty. Something like this has happened in quite recent memory with a whole lot of other "solved" problems. Luckily, we can come back from that failure and solve those problems all over again, as long as we don't go extinct.
ericmcer 1y ago
It depends on how you answer the question "why are we here?" Is the goal is to create an earthly utopia with minimum suffering and maximum happiness? Is it aggressive progress so that we can't be wiped out by a random cosmic event? Or should we be eschewing all of that and living harmoniously with nature and dying spiritually content when our time is up? There is also the argument that if we had focused on solving poverty 150 years ago instead of prioritizing rapid industrialization and economic growth more people would be in poverty today. A 50 year period of scarcity would completely erase all progress we have made towards lifting people out of poverty, regardless of how equitably we distributed the scarce goods.

I don't see how solving poverty on earth can't be more important than the endeavor of trying with the current rather limited tech to inhabit an as good as inhabitable planet.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

It is more important. We spend > $2T per year fighting climate change. We spend > $10T per year on social welfare programs. We spend less than $10B per year on going back to the moon and trying to inhabit Mars.

LunaSea 1y ago
And both of these amounts seem to not be enough based on the resulting state of the world.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Given that world GDP is only $100T, it's impossible to spend significantly more. (where significant is defined as an order of magnitude).
- elefanten 1y ago
  As others in the thread mention, these are problems of political economy that no person or mega corp or even nation state can solve. So, continuing to also work on other things is both rational and morally sound. Progress in one area unlocks new possibilities in other areas. E.g. abundant near-free energy would make eliminating poverty a more tractable political problem than it has proven to be.
- FredPret 1y ago
  > seem to not be enough This is an impossible way to get to a useful conclusion. Provide stats if you're going to make a claim like "the world is bad"

wyattblue 1y ago

Space exploration is merely a _technological_ problem. Solving poverty is a _political_ problem, one that is resistant to just throwing money at the problem.

nuancebydefault 1y ago
Both problems are technological as well as financial problems, with politics involved in choice of precedence.

Hemospectrum 1y ago

Even if we solve poverty, we can always turn right around and un-solve poverty. Something like this has happened in quite recent memory with a whole lot of other "solved" problems. Luckily, we can come back from that failure and solve those problems all over again, as long as we don't go extinct.

ericmcer 1y ago

It depends on how you answer the question "why are we here?" Is the goal is to create an earthly utopia with minimum suffering and maximum happiness? Is it aggressive progress so that we can't be wiped out by a random cosmic event? Or should we be eschewing all of that and living harmoniously with nature and dying spiritually content when our time is up? There is also the argument that if we had focused on solving poverty 150 years ago instead of prioritizing rapid industrialization and economic growth more people would be in poverty today. A 50 year period of scarcity would completely erase all progress we have made towards lifting people out of poverty, regardless of how equitably we distributed the scarce goods.