Re: Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise in 20 Ye
Just saying, that technology/means/resources would be most efficiently spent in giving all the poor and hungry people something interesting to do with themselves. I'm suggesting we give them space suits and tell them "Go colonize the moon." Doesn't get more interesting than that.
Except that 'spacing' them is a solution that benefits the monetary system and the selected few.
Why not simply unite to overthrow the system and those in power and replace it with something that would benefit everyone and not just the selected few?
Why not run belowdecks and quickly weld watertight tops to the Titanic's bulkheads?
Because even if we have the time and the resources to do that (which is a whole different debate), that "selected few" have no interest in doing so, primarily because they've still sitting in the lounge telling themselves "This ship can't sink!" The most fundamental problem we're having is that most of us can't even agree there IS a problem, and those who command the largest portion of humanity's resources are doing so well that they're inclined to think that it's EVERYONE ELSE who has the problem.
Besides, spacing the poor benefits everyone, including the poor. Instead of having to bow and scrape and beg for access to economic resources they can use to make a living, they'd be in a position to search for and exploit those resources directly, becoming for the first time PRODUCERS of wealth instead of merely handlers.
We can use technology to release us from the burden of doing repetitive and mindless tasks, re-educate ourselves to be problem solvers (effectively creating a way of thinking that encourages creativity - think along the lines that every person would be similar to DaVinci, Tesla, Einstein, etc.), and pursue things that REALLY interest us...
Some of us can, yes. Are you prepared to accept the reality that many human beings are neither talented nor creative and their only hope for gainful employment is some sort of repetitive and mindless task that is nevertheless amazingly profitable?
You're fighting an uphill battle if you're expecting to convert all the high school dropouts and drug dealers of the world into IT professionals, musicians, artists and gourmet chefs. Not everybody has those kinds of high aspirations, but making progressive self improvement synonymous with economic survival is a shitty thing to impose on people.
You are forgetting that the only reason the 'ship is sinking' because of artificially induced conditions by man and the insistence of those who perpetuate the current system to keep themselves in 'power' (because its the only system that will sustain their kind).
I'm not forgetting that at all. But it doesn't change the fact that the ship IS sinking and the only way to stop it is to get several million incredibly rich and powerful people to do something they really don't want to do and -- in the short term, at least -- don't HAVE to do. You'd have an easier time trying to get a busload of five-year-olds to sit still for an hour.
That of course is a notion that again works from a monetary point of view and doesn't solve the underlying issues of our society.
The great majority of the planet probably would be in favor for a new economy that doesn't involve money, currency, credit, barter or life of servitude of any kind - one that allows them to pursue their own interests in life, free of worrying whether they have enough to survive.
A narrow majority of the planet would be in favor of exterminating the Muslims. That doesn't make it a good idea, even if it were practical.
Do you have an idea just what type of society we could make with that?
A society that has no coherent way of regulating the exchange of goods and thus no basic driving force for productive economic activity. Until and unless the means of production is fully automated, removing compensation from the equation is not workable.
Anyway, we're talking about solutions with the paradigm we have now; waiting for a Star Trekian technomiracle is really just wishful thinking. The fact of the matter is, if we devoted as much time and money on space exploration as we did to war -- even at peacetime spending levels -- we could have colonized Mars a dozen times over by now. The only thing we lack is political will and a strong reason for doing so. War is concrete; people understand war, they understand that there are bad guys (mostly imaginary) and the military exists to stop them (or at least discourage would-be enemies who may or may not even exist). Space exploration is too abstract for most people... UNLESS you put it in a more familiar context and bring it back down to Earth.
The monetary system was DESIGNED to collapse in on itself
No, it was designed to regulate fair exchanges between individuals so people could focus most of their energies on producing a single product and then exchange the excess of that product for everything else they needed (as opposed to having to produce all by themselves everything they needed, which is too energy intensive and requires too much knowledge). IOW, the monetary system is the result of specialization, which allows human beings to narrow the focus of their expertise in producing better products that meet the needs of everyone more efficiently.
That system is collapsing right now because a handful of very wealthy people and organizations are cheating their asses off. It's no different than if the richest five people in a town repeatedly swindle and blackmail everyone else in it, then bribe the Sheriff into giving them a pass, then bribe the mayor into covering it up. The social cancer has metastasized to the point that it can no longer be safely removed from the system without destroying the system entirely; that doesn't mean the system ITSELF was flawed.
Keep in mind that people are a byproduct of an environment/society we live in and not some 'genetic background' (that's a mere myth).
Actually your genetics is a considerably larger factor than most people (you, I suspect, especially) are willing to believe. There's what's sometimes called the "Blank slate" theory that children are born with a very small set of traits and the rest is filled in by their experiences; good or bad experiences makes them who they are.
This theory is loudly rebuked by anyone who has ever had children, or anyone who has spent a large amount of time working with small children. I can say with authority that MY children were born with very different talents and very different characteristics. Their experiences and education benefit them most when it strengthens them in their inherent weaknesses, but they wouldn't be the people they are today (or the people they will become) if they weren't born with those strengths and weaknesses.
In the past five years I've known close to nine hundred children under the age of five. It's been my experience that less than a quarter of them are anything you might call "gifted." Things come easy to them; you can tell those kids "Take five steps forward and then turn around and count to a hundred by fives" and they'll get it right on the first try. Then there's a huge group of kids who will be able to do that on the fifth or sixth try and won't really get the counting part down for a week. And about a quarter of them NEVER manage to do it; you tell them to take five steps forward, they'll either stand there and stare at you blankly, or they'll start kagaroo-jumping across the room, or they'll run to the other side of the room, sit down on the floor and shout "I did it!" at the top of their lungs.
Not half of these young people are starting from the same place. Some will become successful just by virtue of their gifts. Others will have to find something they're good at and then work their asses off to cultivate those gifts. But many others -- I dare say the majority -- either lack any particular talents or will go through most of their lives never having discovered them, and success for them is just a matter of hard work and diligence. Some of these people, you are not doing them any favors by handing them the keys to their future and say "Go be anything you want to be!" Their options are too limited for that, and most of them later in life are content to settle for not being poor.
And herein lies my basic point:
There's money to be made in space. ALOT of money. There is, in fact, enough untapped potential spread across our solar system to fill the needs of TEN Earths. The only thing that stands between us as a species and the resources of space is the will to get up there and collect them. Our astronauts and space agencies don't have the will; they're bogged down in government funding and regulations, appropriations and responsibilities. They have too much to lose. But there's always been a segment of our society that has very little to lose, and in space colonization they'd have an entire world to gain.
Literally.
As for 'greed' and 'competition' - those are byproducts of a system we live in (environment), they are NOT part of 'human nature' as many seem to think
Oh yes they most certainly are. In the same way that even one-year-olds exhibit the traits of curiosity, they too are no strangers to greed, and when it comes to commanding their parents' attention they can get alarmingly competitive.
Also... what is there to stop the people who are now in control and who 'space' the 'excess' of the population to fend for themselves come up there and just 'take' what they created for themselves?
You think it wouldn't happen?
Of course it would. It's happened before; several major wars have been fought over that very same issue.
And if it comes down to the colonists deciding to keep their own wealth rather than export it back to Earth, there will again be war. In this case, it's a war that those back on Earth -- sitting on the bottom of a tremendous gravity well -- would be at a substantial disadvantage. I think THEN we will begin to see ships like Enterprise being built; first for exploration and exploitation of the solar systems' resources and later, inevitably, to preserve control of those resources for the colonists who discovered them.
You cannot find solutions to problems using a way of thinking that created the said problems in the first place.
The thing that created the problem in the first place was human beings. The only real solution to the problems you describe is to destroy all humans once and for all.
Since we happen to find that solution distasteful, ANY solution we come up with is fundamentally imperfect. Since we have to work within the context of the existing system anyway, we might as well start with what we have NOW rather than wish for conditions to improve later.
people don't need 'money' or 'currency' as an incentive to work
Bullshit. If they didn't pay people to mop floors, pick tomatoes, stuff envelopes and wipe the asses of other people's children, nobody would be doing those jobs. My grandfather was a postal inspector for thirty five years; he hated the job and everything about it, and his only reason for sticking with it was the awesome pension plan and the fact that the Postal Service was paying him a ridiculous amount of money, money which he later used to put my father, two aunts and his own brother through college. His only aspiration in life -- as it turns out -- was to be professional gambler; in the pursuit of
that dream he was dismally unsuccessful.
There is a HUGE number of jobs in the world that are essential to our civilization that get done by people who have no other skills and no other motivation other than the basic "A paycheck's a paycheck." There are families that have lived this way for generations; you take away their paychecks, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves.
