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Comment by Dn_Ab | Hacker News Reader

One viewpoint I haven't see talked about is that Mars+ not only reduces extinction dangers via redundancy but also stabilizes Earth's geo-political landscape by extending the notion of local. A widening of the overton window.

Mars could be a place to start again, to get things right without all the historical cruft. And the culture, the kind of person who would take that kind of risk has to be interesting. We have examples of this turning out well from the past.

Back on Earth, this would have a uniting effect by completely changing the playing field. I expect Fox News would call for something to be done about those anarcho-socialist martians and the superiority of pure Earthicans. Paranoid military planners will be concerned about scenarios where Mars attacks earth, especially with the outflow of all those entrepreneurial, intelligent, individualistic, explorer psyches. Sounds dreary right? But at last we would be thinking at a global level!

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I don't believe in this at all.

I think it is probable that China start to colonize Mars before US has the ability to. Next, they start to claim area after area, while also dominating the earth economy. It will not stabilize the geo-political landscape - it will complicate it.

I'm an American, but I don't feel US has the god-given right to be the only super-power in the solar system for the next few hundred years.

If China establishes colonies, good for them. When England colonized America, it began the downfall of Spains empire (more or less), but no one is crying that Spain didn't become the global power it 'should' have become.

That's the spirit! To hell with us!

Did it ever occur to you that:

1. No Chinese would ever think such self-hating thoughts.

and

2. Such thoughts did not originate from your own reasoning, but were learned through various channels?

It's not like it matters, as Martian colonization is less likely than human extermination via a robot takeover, but still...

1. While I happen to be American, not all of "us" on HN are. In fact, I have a friend from China who is part of the HN community.

2. How is wishing that all of humanity makes progress rather than just your own country self-hateful? Isn't that the ideal?

3. I know a lot of Chinese people who went to the U.S. for undergrad and really care about both countries, which is a counterexample to your #1.

you have to wonder if the US govt has thought of that. Fear of another nation has spurred great advances in technology.

Perhaps. Or more likely private entities end up on mars first. One of us or someone in between is right. I hope however things end up being is close to my viewpoint =).

Have you read Red Mars by Kim Stanley? The first 100 people to Mars start to do what you suggest: start over with a clean slate without all the historical cruft.

And this works at first because most of the first 100 people are scientists, engineers and others of that sort. But after some time there are strong political moves made on Earth from countries that don't want to be left out of Mars. Rich oil shiekhs make large contributions to martian mining efforts as long as certain Muslims can relocate to Mars. Then things turn south pretty quickly.

That assumes that going to Mars is anything other than pointless, aside from the inspirational value.

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