Hacker News Reader

Comment by nwzpaperman | Hacker News Reader

Pass the pipe, yo! Who would want to live on Mars? Why not build a colony in the middle of a desert with no one but moneyed acquaintances and imported indentured slaves?

Oh wait, we already did over in Dubai! Bwahaha

Mars colonization is just a novelty to obscure reality and distract people from the bankruptcy of the debt-asset based financial-political system. Aka asset-based lending

The Tesla financing gimmick is nothing more than a retail level tax credit securitization scheme of the TIF pedigree that municipalities use.

View on HN

> Who would want to live on Mars?

The number one historical driver of wealth and geopolitical power: proximity to resources. On Mars, you're several times closer than Earth to the majority of the resources in the Solar System, on a planet that has terrestrial mineral resources and the ability to support agriculture. Also, not being at the bottom of such a deep gravity well, you're also at a strategic advantage.

Mars colonization is a PR boondoggle and there is no resource constraint on earth. Flying indentured servants and aristocrats to Mars to live in a manufactured community, in a manufactured environment to be closer to far-away minerals, sir, is idiotic when considered for what it is.

There is absolutely nothing scalable or sustainable about it. When people can build a sustainable community in our own deserts maybe we can talk about a sustainable desert community millions of miles away from our homeland.

Next!

> there is no resource constraint on earth

Again, you reveal your ignorance. Constraint isn't required for geopolitical advantage.

> closer to far-away minerals

And you are revealing an ignorance of orbital mechanics and their implications. The shift of geopolitical power away from Europe wasn't because resource constraints were starving certain powers. It was because even more favorable conditions elsewhere manifested even larger economic potentials.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com