Things I Take For Granted: Part I

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think it's plausible, but I certainly wouldn't call that destiny. Aside from the "society will collapse first" take (which I don't think we can entirely discount) it seems worth noting that we're right now in the process of filling Earth's nearby space with junk at a rate that will soon make it impossible to conduct space travel altogether. That seems like something worth worrying about for people who claim to champion space exploration...

The purely physical barriers to distant space travel are actually somewhat overblown, though. It's not true that you need FTL travel in order to have a realistic prospect of humanity colonizing other planets. Once you start meaningfully approaching lightspeed, special relativity actually works in your favor with time dilation and length contraction making the experienced travel time much shorter than it looks to a static observer. So places that are 100, 200 lightyears away could in fact be reached within a human lifetime - at least if we could get to 90-95% of lightspeed. Which of course we're nowhere near, but is at least theoretically achievable.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nonetheless, these poll results do help me to contextualize some of the political opinions I often see being expressed on this forum (and elsewhere). If you seriously think the Earth itself is humanity's final frontier, you are probably predisposed to wring your hands about billionaire spaceflights and minor ecological problems. Just know that to the rest of us, you sound like the people who said desktop computers would be "little more than a novelty."

It just strikes me as frivolous and frankly perverse to prioritize wild, distant fantasies over the things we need right here and right now to lead good lives. Even if we take everything you say as certain (which, frankly, you should be clear that this level of certainty is simply not supported, and you'd really be better off admitting that you're professing it as an article of faith like the rest of us do with other things), it's not exactly clear why the "sacrifices" needed to get there are worth it right now. Churchill's point that the good of distant future generations doesn't justify putting the current generation through untold misery was of course intended as a conservative argument against Stalinism, but it works just as well as a social-democratic argument against your technolibertarianism. If we have to let Earth rot away for a century for the vague promise of one day reaching for the stars, then frankly I'd just rather stay put.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nonetheless, these poll results do help me to contextualize some of the political opinions I often see being expressed on this forum (and elsewhere). If you seriously think the Earth itself is humanity's final frontier, you are probably predisposed to wring your hands about billionaire spaceflights and minor ecological problems. Just know that to the rest of us, you sound like the people who said desktop computers would be "little more than a novelty."

It just strikes me as frivolous and frankly perverse to prioritize wild, distant fantasies over the things we need right here and right now to lead good lives. Even if we take everything you say as certain (which, frankly, you should be clear that this level of certainty is simply not supported, and you'd really be better off admitting that you're professing it as an article of faith like the rest of us do with other things), it's not exactly clear why the "sacrifices" needed to get there are worth it right now. Churchill's point that the good of distant future generations doesn't justify putting the current generation through untold misery was of course intended as a conservative argument against Stalinism, but it works just as well as a social-democratic argument against your technolibertarianism. If we have to let Earth rot away for a century for the vague promise of one day reaching for the stars, then frankly I'd just rather stay put.

You are reading way too much into my post. I didn't propose any policies or ideological structures as the best way of obtaining this goal. I said that this should be the end goal for every ideology, whether it is libertarianism, communism, or fascism.

I mean, sure, I think it would be nice if we expanded to nearby planets. I don't think most people on the left are ideologically opposed to that goal (aside from a few anprim types). The point is that the priority really ought to be to preserve decent living standards for the coming generations before we start worrying about far-flung plans for cosmic expansion.