They are both trying to open up space to humanity, but they have fundamentally different philosophies:
“Let me assure you, this is the best planet. We need to protect it, and the way we will is by going out into space,” [Bezos] told Recode Editor at large Walt Mossberg. “You don’t want to live in a retrograde world where we have to freeze population growth.”
Bezos says tasks that require lots of energy shouldn’t be handled on Earth. Instead, we should perform them in space, and that will happen within the next few hundred years.
“Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet,” Bezos added. “Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. You shouldn’t be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space.”
Solar energy, for instance, is more practical for factories in space, he said.
“We don’t have to actually build them here,” he said. “The Earth shades itself, [whereas] in space you can get solar power 24/7. … The problem with other planets … people will visit Mars, and we will settle Mars, and people should because it’s cool, but for heavy industry, I would actually put it in space.”
This is the O’Neillian vision (which drove the founders of XCOR, and I continue to share, after all these decades. Mars isn’t the goal; allowing people to go wherever they want, including Mars, should be the goal. Elon’s vision (and that of the Apollo to Mars contingent) is actually quite blinkered. He is a romantic, and a planetary chauvinist (who, by the way, opposes space solar power, or at least thinks it won’t work).
But I’m happy to see them both pursue their visions. Competition is good.
“Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet,” Bezos added. “Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. You shouldn’t be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space.”
He belongs in Government….yet another person who thinks he KNOWS what tech innovations will and will not occur; KNOWS he can predict the future…….
….and therefore wants to suggest massive economic, structural, and sociological planning – telling us what we should and shouldn’t do – based upon his suppositions. Classic human nature example.
Just build and perfect the tech, Bezos and use it any way you like.
Good catch Gregg. Right on target. But even so he represents good competition and deep pockets for a risky endeavor. Musk has to succeed as a good businessman without an Amazon cash cow.
My ex-wife would say Bezos is smarter because she equates brain power with money (yet made an exception for poor little old me. She never doubted my wicked brilliance even though just a poor slob.)
Gregg and Ken never express any opinions about the future they’d like to see.
/sarc
Me? Naw.
The subtle difference that always seems to be ignored is I never suggest that my vision is the only one possible and everyone else is ignorant.
Recently I was told I’m missing the elephant in the room which is really funny since I’ve discussed all those elephants in the past. If I didn’t you’d really see some loooonnnng posts.
Fortunately, the only money and time he’s risking is his own. I hope he succeeds, but at least he won’t hobble the public with debt if he fails.
I don’t read it like that.. to me he is saying don’t shit in your only nest.
Vladislaw, those aren’t exclusive.
Except that he’s not prescient – he doesn’t know how nest technology will advance. Could be that in the future, nests will have bathrooms.
Yes he’s spending his own money and can do what he wants. He’s also welcome to his own opinions. So long as he’s not trying to force those opinions on anyone I don’t really care what he predicts.
All too often, though, people who have had a taste of success begin to believe they can predict the future. And then they often try to force their vision of the future on everybody else. Bezos simply cannot know what the future will bring tech-wise – or any-wise – and he ought to know that given that he’s successfully run a giant business.
So long as he doesn’t try to force massive changes based upon his opinions of what the future will be like, I have no problem.
I say good luck and I hope he succeeds with his space program. I’m impressed by what he has already achieved and applaud him for it.
But when I hear predictions like his, a red flag snaps up.
“I don’t read it like that.. to me he is saying don’t shit in your only nest.”
Both Musk and Bezos have that attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM&feature=share
I don’t think Musk sees SpaceX as a way to help the planet, though. Tesla and Solar City are Elon’s efforts to save earth.
I believe Bezos is way over optimistic if he sees space emigration as a way to relieve earth’s population pressure. I am hoping he sees space as enabling future population growth on other bodies. http://hopsblog-hop.blogspot.com/2016/02/limits-to-growth-logistic-vs-exponential.html
Space resources might be a way to avoid some of environment damaging mines. For example rare earth metals aren’t really that rare. But one reason China dominates that market is because they’re willing to inflict suffering on the people, flora and fauna surrounding the mines.
That was how I read it. It said he wouldn’t want to see retrograde growth.
I don’t think Musk sees SpaceX as a way to help the planet
Technically correct. He wants to help humanity by backing up the species.
I think you’re misinterpreting Bezos’s remarks. He’s just laying out a vision of the future – one I largely share, for what it’s worth – but he’s not calling for government force to make it happen. His remark about compulsory population control is a warning against the sorts of governmental coercion that always seem to arise when the “world as we know it” is too bounded. His specific mention of chip fabrication isn’t even particularly prophetic. More like blatantly obvious. A lot of the difficulty and expense of Earthside chip fabs is in achieving the insanely high levels of vacuum needed in order for the process equipment to work. Space is unlimited hard vacuum.
Dick, I take his words literally:
“Energy is limited here.
Actually no it’s not and who knows what happens if fusion ever works….
In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet,”
WILL BE……..
Bezos added. “Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial.
WILL BE……
“You shouldn’t ……
YOU SHOULDN’T……
be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space.”
He’s making predictions – not specifying a vision. And he’s using words that indicate he thinks he knows what he’s talking about, when it comes to the future.
If anything, fracking tech (for example) showed us that peak oil was not a good prediction.
The red flag would not be set if he said something like (capitals are my additions/modifications….):
“I THINK THAT IT’S POSSIBLE THAT In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry COULD be moved off-planet,” Bezos added. “IT MIGHT EVEN BE THAT Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. MAYBE IT WILL TURN OUT TO BE BETTER TO be doing heavy energy IN SPACE RATHER THAN on earth. We MIGHT FIND IT PREFERABLE TO build gigantic chip factories in space, FOR EXAMPLE.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUTURE WILL BRING BUT I’M BETTING THAT SPACE WILL BE AN IMPORTANT ENABLER OF A GREAT FUTURE. AND I’M PUTTING MY MONEY WHERE MY MOUTH IS.””
“
Dick, I take his words literally
You seem to be making the assumption that in not saying “in my opinion” he thinks he’s stating what he believes are facts rather than beliefs or opinions, I believe you are incorrect in that assumption, as there would be few people IQ over 90 who don’t recognize that the future is uncertain.
I agree that people should always make it clear that when they’re expressing and opinion they should state it as an opinion, unfortunately lots don’t, grown ups probably should just accept it rather than using the omission to contrive an argument.
Dick,
You seem to have overlooked the part where I said that he’s welcome to his own opinions and that so long as he doesn’t try to impose them on others or society I don’t care.
You think the argument is contrived.
I haven’t presented an argument. I simply said a red flag has snapped up. His future actions will decide whether there’s a problem.
Grown-ups should probably read everything before commenting, shouldn’t they?
I read your comment in full, How is his expressing an opinion “imposing” that opinion on society?
You think the argument is contrived.
Not “the argument”, “an argument”, you obviously disagree with him about moving industry off planet, but rather than argue that case you attack him for omitting to mention that what he was saying was just an opinion.
Man, if I had a buck for each time someone in the comments on this blog expressed an opinion as a fact I could retire. 😉
And no, I didn’t miss the irony in you accusing me of not reading comments in full when you obviously didn’t read my comment properly in thinking my comment was from Dick.
Andrew – I read your comment in full. But I relied later and forgot it was you.
Try not to think you’ve scored a major debate point because you haven’t and I’d hate for your self-image to shatter.
Try not to think you’ve scored a major debate point because you haven’t . . .
You state that as a fact, but I think it’s just your opinion.
🙂
You’re not taking his words literally at all. Sure, Bezos thinks he knows what the general shape of our spacefaring future will be and so he speaks in a way that assumes what he says will turn out to be true because it just seems so logical to him. You are assuming that there is a hidden coercive statist agenda at work, for which there is really no textual evidence.
Bezos is a Democrat and a tree-hugger, but he’s not a Deep Ecology advocate of human genocide or an Earth First Luddite. Bezos does still seem to buy the usual lefty assumption that Earthside population growth is immutable and inevitable. I run into a lot of people on these forums who think that. They think that because they are unacquainted with actual demographic trends in the world.
Given that Bezos is looking to do a lot of things that I’d like to see done, even though for different reasons, I’m content that he pursue them vigorously even if his central motivation is based on a fictive belief.
I’m no Marsophile either, but I’ll be cheering Elon Musk on anyway because, again, he’s going to get so much good stuff done that can be readily repurposed for free space habitation and industrialization that the truth or falsity of at least part of what underlies his motivation is essentially irrelevant.
Not everyone seeks world domination. I think you are picking up false positives on your Fuhrer-ometer.
Not everyone seeks world domination.
Yes, most would be perfectly happy just dominating those around them.
Space is also rich in radiation. Like cosmic rays. Which is not something you would want in a chip manufacturing plant. You also need solvents and water. Chemicals baths are used as well so I am not exactly sure how that would work in a low gravity environment.
I’m sure the problems are not unsurmountable. But AFAIK most of the energy expense in “chip manufacturing” is actually in producing the wafers. i.e. melting silicon into crystals. That process, seed growing, currently depends on gravity to work as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czochralski_process
In space it’s not that hard to have gravity levels form zero up to many g’s, even in one structure, on Earth we can and do have gravity levels from one g up in manufacturing, and there’s some brief processes using free fall where zero g is used. On balance I think starting with zero g, continuous sunlight and a hard vacuum rather than one g, intermittent sunlight and 101 kPa would be easier.
There are alternative methods of chip substrate fabrication that don’t involve making, then sawing up big billets of single-crystal material. Nor is photolithography accompanied by water-based resist and etchant chemistry indispensible. All of these techniques seem to be reaching scaling limits anyway.
A technique such as sputtering in which individual ionized elemental or small-molecule building blocks are created via electron beams, then steered to an in-process semiconductor chip rising from a reusable gold substrate is probably more suitable for space-based chip fabs in zero-G and native vacuum. Terminal guidance of flying atoms and molecules could be provided by using already-built layers to produce a positive charge at the desired deposition site. It should even be possible to detect the arrival of atoms and molecules via the charge neutralization that would result.
These are just a few notions I’ve been spitballing a bit recently. These processes would be entirely dry, bottom-up and would seem to permit a lot more precision in layer deposition than photolithography allowing far more layers to be fabricated per device. It also allows for a very high degree of parallelism and even enables something that would be very like the Ford River Rouge Plant, except on a microscopic level. Naked gold substrates, prepared to a state of extremely uniform flatness via use of atomic force microscopy, would enter at one end and pass through successive stations that add particular layers, emerging fully fabbed at the far end of the line.
He’s likely right though. Energy use on Earth is ultimately limited by the need to radiate waste heat to space. At current growth rates we reach this wall in a couple of centuries.
Paul D. writes “He’s likely right though. Energy use on Earth is ultimately limited by the need to radiate waste heat to space. At current growth rates we reach this wall in a couple of centuries.”
Tom Murphy makes that argument. If our energy production increases at a rate of 2.3% a year, he thinks we’d be cooked in 275 years. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
But Murphy’s assuming we’ll be limited to earth’s surface. With real estate in space, we’d have more surface area to radiate waste heat.
Even with respect to just Earth, Murphy’s thesis doesn’t hold water.
Murphy says, early on, “It is important to understand the future trajectory of energy growth because governments and organizations everywhere make assumptions based on the expectation that the growth trend will continue as it has for centuries—and a look at the figure suggests that this is a perfectly reasonable assumption.”
Well, no, it isn’t really. There is an important background assumption here which is never stated but seems to hold – that human population on Earth will continue an overall growth at the established rate of the last few centuries also and that this will drive a concomitant rise in energy demand.
But that population growth assumption, even though catechistic on the Left, is demonstrably not so in the current era. Dozens of developed nations actually have negative growth rates. Even nations with still-expanding populations exhibit current growth rates half or less their norms of as little as two generations ago.
Energy use per capita to support a modern lifestyle isn’t fated to increase without end until we all parboil in our own juices. We can see this even in Murphy’s first graph figure in which the actual growth in U.S. energy usage is, and has been for awhile (since the 1970’s, roughly), moving below his linear curve fit and is doing so to an increasing degree. Thus, the figure Murphy urges us to examine actually argues strongly against his core thesis.
This is largely because the rate of population increase in the United States is decelerating. We still use plenty of energy per capita, but it’s not obvious that the typical American of 2116 is necessarily going to be using a great deal more energy than his ancestors are in contemporary times. The energy used may well be quite different in form and origin, but there is no obvious reason to suppose it will be more, in absolute terms, especially given steady advances in energy efficiency with respect to virtually every aspect of modern life.
Current demographic trends strongly suggest world population will crest sometime around 2050, then begin a slow decline. Global average per capita energy use can be expected to continue to rise for perhaps as much as a century longer as nearly the entire world achieves living standards approximating that of the long-developed countries. After that, energy use will flatten just as population did.
As they say on those investment product TV ads, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
I’ve always thought that the industry that will dominate the post-scarcity society in the latter 21st century will be the construction of massive bronze statues of me.
Nice! I agree, and hope to commission many artistic metallic masterpieces of Your Greatness.
Back on topic… The guy’s just spouting his opinion, no matter how he phrases it. Let him and Musk spend their money and do what they think is best. Their competition and interplay will help define human expansion into space, much more so than any number of tired government bureaucracies.
To be used as heat sinks? 😉
Ya, I didn’t like the part about using zoning regulations to push some business and their employees off planet.
It would make starting a business that much harder.
Maybe its just a move to hurt his competition? Would Tesla survive if they had to make batteries in space?
It’s more that heat management becomes a problem if you double energy consumption 14 times. If we can figure out a way to manage waste heat then there’s no particular limit to energy use on Earth. Bezos marks the limitation at covering the Earth in solar panels. I’d mark it at covering the earth in heat fins which is about the same point.
He belongs in Government….yet another person who thinks he KNOWS what tech innovations will and will not occur; KNOWS he can predict the future…….
Back in the 90s Bezos thought he knew that people would buy more and more things online, so he started Amazon. No wonder he thinks he can make predictions about the tech future: doing so has worked out pretty well for him so far.
Yes he takes a business risk and it works out and so now he’s an expert on everything.
We see that a lot from people who make it big in one venue and therefore think they are geniuses in others – you know like Hollywood stars, for example.
Yes, it has. And it’s worked out very well for hundreds of millions of ordinary consumers too. I think that will continue to be the case with Bezos’s space efforts. The fact that part of his motivation for pursuing these activities is adherence to a demonstrably false meme that is, nonetheless, catechistic among his social circle is neither here nor there. Bob Bigelow believes in Little Green Men. As long as these guys get us, sustainably, into space, I don’t care if they think the Archangel Gabriel has a summer cottage on Ganymede and it’s their mission to visit him and say, “Hi!”
To not clutter comments (as I have much to say) I will comment here.
Ken, you would get more comments on your blog if you allowed anonymous comments like Rand does. Your old blog used to permit this and occasionally I would comment.
Any particular reason you require a Google account?
I changed the setting. So now I expect I’ll get lots of spam.
Excellent idea.
🙂
Nice summary of the Bezosian vs. Muskovite visions. I completely agree with your taxonomy and with your preference for the Bezosian view. But Mr. Musk will do what he can to pursue his vision and I will be cheering him on every millimeter of the way.
The obstacles to colonizing extraterrestrial planetary surfaces are many and formidable. They are also a proper superset of the problems to be solved on the way to colonizing free space. Mr. Musk, being determined to actually accomplish his vision to a degree that is not remotely to be found within NASA or anywhere else in government space programs, will, perforce, tackle all these problems and solve many. In the long run, I don’t think Musk’s vision of Mars as humanity’s second home is likely to play out as he thinks it will. But the work he does to make it so will be hugely helpful in enabling the free space colonization that I believe, will dominate human presence in space.
Concur.
Energy, resources & delta-v (from LEO) will define space development. Mercury’s S Pole will be developed before Mars.
You’re really missing the boat on indigenous development which can only happen when all the essential resources are in one place. Once a foothold is established the only thing mars will need is more people and their skills. This is not true anyplace else that we know of. It’s certainly not true in space or on the moon.
The reason people don’t get this IMHO is they can’t see past the way space and the moon HAVE TO BE developed and believe the same applies to mars when IT DOES NOT.
How can you not get this?
Because Mars has to be developed just as much as anywhere else, regardless of your unrealistic romantic delusions about it.
That’s exactly the mistake you’re making Rand. Unlike space, mars is self booting. In space all the infrastructure has to be transported. On mars, you just need the equivalent of a machine shop.
Most people can’t imagine a self sufficient operation since it’s not the norm on earth, but it does exist even here. SpaceX itself is a good example although there are better where everything is made in house. I know buildings in NY that are not machine shops but do have entire floors of machinists. When a machine (part of their actual business) breaks down, they don’t order parts. They make them and that’s with a schedule that doesn’t allow them a lot of slack time. The scale of their operations would even impress you and that all occurs in just one NY building.
I’m amused that you think I’m the one making the mistake.
Mars has to be developed
I have acknowledge this to be absolutely correct.
just as much as anywhere else
This is your mistake. I know you know what a bootstrap is, right? It allows you to start with just the essentials to load a full system (along with Bill Gate’s non essential ham sandwich!)
Space infrastructure has to be imported. Mars infrastructure can and should be built in place. The huge implications of this is what you continue to ignore. ISRU isn’t just about of few consumables ya know.
You’re really missing the boat on indigenous development which can only happen when all the essential resources are in one place.
All of the essential resources are not in place on Mars. Many resources will need to be imported, from vitamin tablets to computers to (most important of all) human labor.
Moreover, you continue to steadfastly ignore the question of *what* you will be developing and *who* the customers will be. So far, Elon has identified only a single customer — NASA — which is clearly inadequate to support a settlement of the size he envisions. You have the persistent fantasy that it’s going to be some sort of subsistence farming community, where everyone will devote their time to growing potatoes for their neighbors. But large numbers of people are not going to move to Mars just so they can be poor dirt farmers. They will go someplace where there is more opportunity.
Cities don’t succeed in certain locations and fail in other locations by random chance. Successful cities are established in specific locations that have geographical advantages. Those advantages may be indigenous resources (minerals, timber, etc.) or natural trade routes.
Does Mars have a geographical advantage for anyone other than NASA and a few researchers who want to study Mars? Is there a reason for a million people to choose Mars rather than Venus or the Moon or Ceres or any of the other options?
If you want to see what happens when you ignore such questions, take a look at California City. It was supposed to have millions of people and rival Las Vegas (but without gambling). Instead, it has a few thousand people living in something that resembles a ghost town — and most of those people commute to work in Mojave or Edwards. Because Vegas has an industrial base and California City doesn’t.
Many resources will need to be imported
They will need the initial bootstrap. The other resources are already there.
(most important of all) human labor.
You nailed it. Keep your focus on that and consider the implications.
Moreover, you continue to steadfastly ignore the question of *what* you will be developing and *who* the customers will be.
Not at all. But I’m not blinded by the idea that mars must export some unobtainium to be economically successful.
What they will be developing is all the things we take for granted. It’s a frontier. A real land of opportunity. Who the customers will be is both among themselves and earth.
They will not sell mass to earth. There is no business case for that. They will sell non-mass related services to earth. Do you not understand how large a part of our economy that already is?
America is not a manufacturing economy. Mars will be, but only for residence… and eventually the rest of the solar system since the earth will have a competitive disadvantage even in LEO!!!
This isn’t fantasy. This is basic physics.
Gemstone mining is done by mining down ancient volcano conduits. I believe gemstones will be one of the first exports from mars. light in weight, unique and rare. The perfect item to market on earth. Would not mineral rights will be a market in itself?
Not at all. But I’m not blinded by the idea that mars must export some unobtainium to be economically successful.
Yes, I know. You’ve shown time and time again that you have less understanding of economics than the average border collie. Unfortunately for you, the laws of economics won’t change simply because you choose to ignore them. Mars will be settled when serious people solve the hard problems that guys like you simply handwave away.
A million people are not going to move to California City simply because it is “the frontier.” People move to the frontier because there’s work to be done there and money to be made. Contrary to your fixed belief, Mars is not the only place off Earth where humans can live. You haven’t made a case that Mars can produce any “non-mass services” more profitably than the Moon or Ceres or a space station in free space. You haven’t even attempted to. All you do is keep repeating your conclusion, over and over again, without showing any of your work.
the laws of economics won’t change simply because you choose to ignore them.
I read the same book. It’s wrong.
Bill Whittle has a better take on economics. I suggest you look into that.
…Mars can produce any “non-mass services” more profitably than the Moon or Ceres
Pay attention and I will show my work…
There are two parts: 1) the costs. 2) the service.
I assume you’re not serious about Ceres due to travel time and lack of resources, so I will drop that from this reply.
First costs…
Due to the vacuum of space and aerobraking Dragon can go to either location for roughly the same costs (unless a moonshot can be done with the upgraded F9 FT. I haven’t looked into that yet.) So the difference in costs would mainly be operational rather than transport costs. At first the operational costs would be comparable since both would depend on earth supply to get things going. But within a few years operational costs on mars will significantly be reduced over that of the moon because mars ISRU is much more extensive than on the moon (having atmospheric gas to exploit is a huge difference by itself. The moon also lacks some basic life support elements for growing food.) The moons advantage is quicker supply but that advantage can be canceled out with good logistics. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.
Services…
The variety of services is pretty much unbound. Some services involve communication delay so the moon has the advantage for those, but many other services are insensitive to comm. lag.
I will pick a service as an example: commercial television. Raw footage can be produced for either location (however an atmosphere does help with the aesthetics. Indoors, this of course doesn’t matter.)
Post production happens on earth, no difference for either. Commercial time is sold on earth, again no difference. The only potential difference I see is market; would people rather follow martians or lunatics? I can’t say; however, fans may e able to directly communicate with the loonies so that might improve their market share?
To summarize before this gets too long… mars should have a cost advantage due to better ISRU but the moon may have an advantage in service market share.
Without looking into it further, it may be a toss up. What isn’t a toss up is life for martian will be much more independent (comm. lag and independent resource utilization.) Over time this independence will give mars further advantages… unless they are stupid enough to accept a socialist rather than free enterprise model which is a definite risk.
Again, I welcome correction.
or a space station in free space.
Sorry, I didn’t address this in the previous post.
Getting people to a station will be a tenth the cost; however, the number of people will be severely limited and the scenery never changes. They do have zero g, but overall not competitive with either the moon or mars (unless zero g manufacturing turns out to be more than the fantasy it currently is.)
the average border collie
Since you brought it up. I had a friend who entered his dog in the founders day dog race every year and he always came in second. First place was a trophy. Second place was a 50# bag of dog food. I think he had a pretty good understanding of economics!
I will pick a service as an example: commercial television.
At last. We finally get something approaching an intelligible answer from you. Although nothing remotely quantititative, of course.
So, you’re regurgitating the Mars One plan. Unfortunately, reality teevee isn’t nearly as lucrative as Mars One believes, and even they aren’t insane enough to think a reality show will sustain one million people.
And again, you deliver your usual load of bovine manure. It’s impossible to create gravity on a space station, and the scenery never changes? Wow, Do you think all those moving images from ISS are faked, like the Moon landing?
Sorry, Ken, but space frontiers will be opened by people who understand math and economics, not people who think they can they can ignore math if they just by say the word “bootstrap” a lot.
Edward, you can shove your insults. Not very adult.
You seem to ignore the majority of my response, so we’re done.
I still hold out hope of being able to book a week’s stay at the Ceres Marriott Residence Inn before I get composted.
Maybe you get a discount if you go there to get composted. Free trip and all the food you can eat.
Mars might become competitive as a source for nitrogen for use in other space colonies. But that would mean Mars would be secondary to establishing large colonies elsewhere in the solar system.
“I’m not blinded by the idea that mars must export some unobtainium to be economically successful.”
Yes, I know. You’ve shown time and time again that you have less understanding of economics than the average border collie.
Ya know something? Calling me ignorant in the same breath as making an ignorant statement is really galling.
It is economic ignorant to believe that only the transport of goods produces wealth. I worked for years in WA state. I lived in CA at the time. I could have just as easily worked from mars (the 24 minute time delay would only have been a minor nuisance and would actually have been welcome at times.) You are telling me my life experience is invalid, because why? Because you say so.
Any idiot can point to some trade of goods as a source of wealth. It takes a much deeper understanding of economics to realize it isn’t the only source. Yes, some opportunities are limited and many services are not applicable.
But what you are essentially claiming, by demanding only goods w/o considering service potential, is that worlds can never be independently wealthy. That’s hogwash. That doesn’t mean they should or will be independent either (I have to add these ridiculous clarifications or be accused of it.)
You can only be called ignorant so often before it gets under your skin. My apologies to any I’ve offended.
My wife has her MBA. I helped her get it. I understand what the books say. I’ve worked the formulas and read the charts. My life experience goes beyond those books. Books don’t tell the whole story for a number of reasons. Calling me ignorant is laughable.
If I express myself badly, which I admit I do. That doesn’t mean my points are not worthy of consideration. Just watch the next two decades. I’ve had decades of experience with people apologizing to me for their ignorance (not all, just the best of them.) That’s happened to me repeatedly since I was a teenager.
I do tend to not show my work. My calculus instructor in high school would ask me how I got the right answer w/o intermediate steps. I really didn’t have an answer. I admit I’m weird… but I’m not some lower form of life.
You don’t believe in reading comprehension, either? No one ever said “only the transport of goods produces wealth.” That’s a strawman you created, Ken. You’ve been beating it for ages, and it’s getting pretty thin by now.
You drag out that strawman to deflect attention from the fact that you haven’t indentitied a single product *or* service, except for reality teevee. And you haven’t even quantified that. For all your talk about formulas and charts and life experience, you have yet to produce a single number.
you haven’t indentitied a single product *or* service, except for reality teevee
Right, I’ve identified three (so far) and could identify many more (not just TV, but what’s wrong with a reality ‘stars’ million dollars a week anyway.?) I’ve pointed out that NASA could get a bargain by hiring on site researchers rather than deploying more robots. I’ve identified my own job as a programmer. Design work of any kind could be an earth paid job on mars. Financial and insurance services could work as well. I’ve also pointed out that some services are not workable. A waiter on mars could not serve a person on earth… so none of the service jobs in categories like that could work.
My position has consistently been that unless someone can identify such I don’t believe any mass can profitably be exported to earth from orbit or anywhere beyond. CJ may have proven me wrong on that point because the delta V from mars to anywhere (including LEO) is less than from earth, but to take advantage of that will take time to develop the infrastructure.
I do apologize on one point. When you asked ‘What’, I read ‘what product’ but you didn’t actually say that. For that I beg your pardon, but you did call me ignorant when it was uncalled for.
I don’t know what numbers you want? I made $70k per year as a programmer (doing multiuser client/server programming I should have demanded more, but I’ve never been greedy.) Reality stars without much actual talent do make upwards of a million dollars per episode. On average I’d say a martian service job should pay upwards of $100k to $200k per year (employers get a benefits discount.)
These aren’t huge sums but would be enough to impact a small community on mars that could mature over time.
I don’t mind being called ignorant in cases where I am. I actually appreciate having it pointed out when true. But I am not totally ignorant of economics (some of my education having come from this blog over the years.)
Not to add flame to the fire but I would consider unobtainium a product (you followed with your insult) but that would require you to be a mind reader so I can’t fault you for that either.
Damn it! You win! ;-(
I had an intelligent wife. Her first job with the state of CA was a bookkeeper which she described as a job for trained monkeys. She has since progressed into middle management. In Russia she was the top civilian boss in a regiment (her first husband, who shares my exact birthday was a captain and also a programmer.)
Every day of our marriage we argued, but after we divorced she didn’t remember us ever arguing. I realized then she was only practicing. In 3 years I never won a daily argument!
I really don’t like conflict.