3 ms·

Is capitalism compatible with human survival? You can't have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Maybe that's why people are trying to commercia

Is capitalism compatible with human survival? You can't have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Maybe that's why people are trying to commercialize space/exploration?

fargolime 13y ago
They're trying, but a cursory evaluation shows it's a lost cause. Much easier to achieve a sustainable civilization (zero growth), as hard as that is.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  What has a higher probability (honestly): - getting an increasing majority of the population of people who for the most part of their entire lives are taught/live/believe by certain ideals (i.e. are not doing anything different now), to the benefit of the few, to convince themselves of another way. - convincing the few who benefit now who have the means to try something new (or old) (i.e. who are doing something now)? Meta: I wonder if people thought exploration of the globe was a lost cause a millennia ago?
  - fargolime 13y ago
    I don't understand your choice descriptions. What are you getting at? "Exploration" is the tying concept but other than that it's apples and oranges. Colonizing / terraforming another planet may be theoretically possible but also possibly require more expendable resources than our planet has to offer to the cause. Unlike Earth exploration.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Colonizing / terraforming another planet may be theoretically possible but also possibly require more expendable resources than our planet has to offer to the cause. Unlike Earth exploration. It's easy to say that looking back, but there were people who believed the earth was flat. Blasphemy! But not then. Might have just as well been like comparing apples to oranges for them… Colonizing and terraforming are both processes that can exist on a spectrum, and in that spectrum human beings to this point have proved to some degree that we can survive, not enough to make people believe ("but you can't grow your own food on ISS, it must all be for naught!") but enough progress to build upon by people who work within possibilities and not self imposed binary states that "complex" life forms themselves didn't come into existence as under such simplified states. I think its more feasible that humans as we exist now, augment our bodies to exist in different places; We already do this on earth depending on the physical ailments that may affect people…

Is capitalism compatible with human survival? You can't have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Maybe that's why people are trying to commercialize space/exploration?

fargolime 13y ago

They're trying, but a cursory evaluation shows it's a lost cause. Much easier to achieve a sustainable civilization (zero growth), as hard as that is.

cinquemb 13y ago
What has a higher probability (honestly): - getting an increasing majority of the population of people who for the most part of their entire lives are taught/live/believe by certain ideals (i.e. are not doing anything different now), to the benefit of the few, to convince themselves of another way. - convincing the few who benefit now who have the means to try something new (or old) (i.e. who are doing something now)? Meta: I wonder if people thought exploration of the globe was a lost cause a millennia ago?
- fargolime 13y ago
  I don't understand your choice descriptions. What are you getting at? "Exploration" is the tying concept but other than that it's apples and oranges. Colonizing / terraforming another planet may be theoretically possible but also possibly require more expendable resources than our planet has to offer to the cause. Unlike Earth exploration.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Colonizing / terraforming another planet may be theoretically possible but also possibly require more expendable resources than our planet has to offer to the cause. Unlike Earth exploration. It's easy to say that looking back, but there were people who believed the earth was flat. Blasphemy! But not then. Might have just as well been like comparing apples to oranges for them… Colonizing and terraforming are both processes that can exist on a spectrum, and in that spectrum human beings to this point have proved to some degree that we can survive, not enough to make people believe ("but you can't grow your own food on ISS, it must all be for naught!") but enough progress to build upon by people who work within possibilities and not self imposed binary states that "complex" life forms themselves didn't come into existence as under such simplified states. I think its more feasible that humans as we exist now, augment our bodies to exist in different places; We already do this on earth depending on the physical ailments that may affect people…