Say in a couple years we get unbelievable technology for spave travel. Let's assume we're alone in the galaxy. Governments announce missions to populate other worlds.
How do you feel about it? Do you hop in?
Agreed. The issue is that if we don't sort our shit now, it's gonna leak out all over everything.. And we'll never get it back in the box.
I feel angry that they're going to vandalise more planets.
Space should remain a place of scientific study only.
Thankfully it will never happen under capitalism. The economy is already fucked and Musk and his buddies are too incompetent and stupid to get onto other worlds.
but making socialists space stations on planets would be cool :rage-cry:
Maybe if it was under socialism and there was something in place to not exploit space
What's wrong with exploiting space?
Exploiting someone's labor is different from digging up some useful rocks.
You know, if the technology actually got made capitalist alienation would be a helluva driver for space colonists. How many millions of people would roll the dice on a better or more satisfying life, even knowing the danger?
I'd like to sort our shit here prior to exporting it, so far we're contained to one planet. I dont want whatever this is, in its current state, making it off planet lol
Doom/misanthropy moment I know. FALGSC or barbarism
I honestly have no objections to space colonization but I feel like what's never brought up in these conversations is the fact that sending 500 people to mine rocks on mars isn't going to fix any of our problems at home. I don't want to be a buzzkill but I really feel the need to reiterate the question: "What are we gaining by doing this?". I feel like a lot of my lib friends I know act like space minerals is going to reinvigorate the world's mining industry by literally expanding the potential areas for mineral extraction but I think what's ignored is the underlying statement to that which is "More minerals will help solve society's problems" which I just don't think is true
In a similar vein, I think a lot about GMOs being good or bad and ultimately what I think is that they're the answer to the wrong question. At the end of the day, GMO crops are about increasing agricultural output but greater agricultural output won't solve any of our problems with modern agriculture, and in many ways, only exacerbates problems and reinforces the very system that creates that problem in the first place. The globe easily has enough food to feed everyone but it doesn't. The vast majority of it goes to western nations that end up wasting about half of it anyway, meanwhile, the people of the global south struggle to afford food as it's being shipped off to the west. Growing more food isn't going to solve that issue, it's just going to line the pockets of some Cargill board member
mining anything on mars other than gold/platinum is never going to be profitable. and even those would be a stretch
Space dystopias are fun to watch on tv but fuck trying to make that a reality
Star Trek future or no dice, capitalism cannot be allowed to escape this planet
"Hello gentle united alien species of the galaxy, tell me, have you heard of the concept of land ownership?"
I fear that, if capitalism (or rather feudalism) somehow makes it off our planet and gets into contact with a peaceful communist/anarchist alien species, it´s going to destroy it. Who knows, maybe the aliens have stopped developing weapons beyond spears, because they realized how fucking stupid war is? Maybe they can´t even concive of another species that would try to massacre and oppress them just because in a pretty much infinite universe.
Seems kind of pointless until we fix things here. Under capitalism you'd just end up with neofeudal company towns INNNNN SPAAAAAACE
Didn't Elon Musk also say something about that earth governments should not regulate corporations on other planets?
The majority of the human experience is how we relate to other humans and sentient beings, not in how we relate to the inorganic world.
Additional human planets just for their own sake are not a good thing; in fact, they divide the human population to a point where human lands have only a scant, tenuous connection to each other.
Having billions more humans is a bad thing; each one's personal relevance to anything else becomes less and less, and human life becomes much more expendable.
The only reasons why a wise civilization would expand are scientific and security purposes. This is probably the answer to the Fermi paradox: aliens that haven't annihilated themselves are just living their best lives, with fairly tight-knit and continuous communities on just a few planets, refusing the option of exponential growth, maximizing the time span that their civilizations will last.
consider: seeing aliens would be cool
on the other hand other species might not even have the desire to socialize to the same extent as us which would make that specific motivation pretty much exclusive to humanity, though not capitalism so it wouldn't be inherently problematic but it would still explain fermi's paradoxbut space travel would still be bad under capitalism
No. Why are we talking about colonization as some "fun" thing to do? The resources required to make that a reality in the first place is only possible through exploitation of the earth's resources which you bet your ass will definitely involve exploitation of the global south, Africa and Asia.
The exploitation of the Earth might cook it before we even get serious space colonies as well.
I went on a rant recently about how Mass Effect's Reapers are a huge cop out because creating an enemy that doesn't have any rational political goals and that cannot be engaged diplomatically just gives you free reign to reproduce racist imperialist fantasies. Like half of science fiction stories are just "What if someone did an imperialism to us! Because they hate our freedom!"
But can you imagine being on another planet tho, with different constellations :isaac-pog:
Can name one with some dumb name
Oh yeah definitely. Exploring an alien jungle and discovering weird lil animals would get me soyfacing so hard :awooga:
And then seeing it bulldozed over by Musks new development program. Don't you want a new McDonalds?
You can't just randomly introduce these new characters Who the hell is Mr McDonald
I mean it's much harder to defend yourself against communism when you're materially separated from the imperial core by the void of space and the only retribution is delayed by 2 years because they need a good launch window in order to retaliate. Of course it's also easier to justify nuking a space colony given that it'll only kill the group of communist insurrectionists and no other civilization or lifeforms. Therefore I calculate that the first capitalists who live in space will have a base self-destruct button and/or personal nuke.
I don't think capitalism, communism, or any other known mode of production would survive contact with intergalactic settlement. The last time humanity had truly unsettled territory to explore was long before written history. Societal organization is determined by material conditions, and the material conditions are literally alien.
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