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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30910 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Some may ask why we aren't building cities in Antarctica now before going to Mars. Building life support systems and growing food is easier there than it will be on Mars. Mars will be colonized first, though, and Antarctica may never be colonized. The reason is because international treaties prevent Antarctica from having sovereignty. But sovereignty can be attainable on Mars. The pursuit of sovereignty is what makes space exploration worthwhile. Sovereignty is unobtainium—the resource more abundant in space than on Earth. Men will endure bitter poverty, cold isolation, drink piss and eat lichen just for a chance to be free from the tyranny of the United Nations.

The colonization of outer space is prohibited by the very same kinds of treaties that prevent the colonization of Antarctica. If you can build a city on Mars you can build one on Antarctica. America and Russia could do so tomorrow, it would just be a waste of money and pointless.

It's not about America or Russia building a city in Antarctica. It's about declaring a new sovereign country. Even if you somehow manage to build a self-sufficient base in Marie Byrd Land and declare it Tworafia, the US will immediately extend their Antarctic claim over it and send a warship with jarheads in its hold to occupy and destroy it.

Mars is like the Thirteen Colonies, only much harder to send Redcoats and Hessians against. The only real threat is sending enough nuclear IPBMs to overwhelm the new country's defenses and destroy it.

You don’t need to destroy the new colony on Mars, since almost by definition for a long time it’s going to be supplied and supported by an operation on earth which will likely be situated in a rich and advanced country where the government maintains a strong monopoly on the use of force.

I'm talking about the moment when it's finally self-sufficient.

I have genuinely never understood why some people find the UN tyrannical. It seems to me that it is toothless, and even if it were not it would at worst be an institution of mediocre democracy (a bit like the EU or indeed the US). That is no tyranny. Yet "one world government" has been a meme since my childhood. That has always seemed like a worthy if probably far off goal to me—what about it do you find so objectionable?

What I really mean are the united nations (lowercase) that comprise the United Nations (uppercase). The UN is impotent. The united nations that comprise the UN are the powers that be.

OK, I agree that the nations of the earth are indeed the powers that be (at least to a very extensive degree). So your argument is that one would like to be able to set up a new country, but all the land on Earth is already spoken for? That is indeed an considerable difficulty, and plausibly a motivation for planetary exploration.

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