New Mars Forums

While the idea of reviving latin pleases me, there's one thing that bothers me:  it's too, well, western... I wish we could know what a chinese speker or an Indian would think of this!  Nevertheless, barring the use of living languages and all the problems that would bring, or the invention of a new language, I can't think of any alternative to latin (with the possible exception of greek).

I second that!  But I don't think private industry will ever take over: they can't see any further than the next shareholders reunion...  They'll only move in when they think they'll be able to exploit something for a profit i.e. when all the space infrastructure is in place.  I can't understand why so many have such respect for private industry: since when has private industry done anything remarkable alone, without governments or citizens pushing them?  Some of the most stick-in-the-mud, conservative, no-vision, comformist people I've met worked in private industry: always scared of controversy, always looking for stability and hand-outs, never, but never rocking the boat.  And these are the same people that keep telling us to be individuals, to fend for ourselves!  Yeah, I love being told to be an individual by some glorified accountant who always dresses in black three piece suits, and spends his days worrying about his job security, his bank account, and fudging accounting numbers and firing people so that he can show a profit ...  The only thing they're creative at is charging more and more for less, increasing your workload while cutting on your pay check and coming up with nifty new publicity stunts to make them look like they're cutting edge and actually care about you, the consumer...Ok, ok, I know this is a caricature, that I'm ranting, but I'm willing to bet that many of you have experience this kind of thing, to one degree or another, while you were working for a big corporation.  And since now it's all the rage for governments to operate like big corporations, I'll bet you have experience this working for the gov. too... 

Don't you sometimes feel that we're living in a period of accelerated decadence?

And 40% of the US belongs to the richest 1% of the population, there are over 2 million people in jail, most of them members of visible minorities, and about 40 to 50 million people are struggling to survive while, in the last twenty years, the people in between (the so called middle class) have seen their quality of life and their purchasing power decrease.  Meanwhile, the richest 25% of the US became even richer...  The US spends over 300 billion dollars in defence projects that don't do anything to make anyone feel any safer, while refusing to participate in any international initiative that may compromise its power but increase world security!  The US may be the biggest economic and military power in the world right now, but this hasn't benefited most of it's population.  To me, this means that capitalism, US style, isn't working.

Yay !  Videogame wars!  Just what we need to make people more responsible for their actions. Oh joy!

Well, that is good news... Could you give us your source?

It seems to me that there's quite a lot of people arguing, directly or indirectly, for one of the latest US presidential follies i. e. militarisation of space, simply because they hope this will provide the incentive (and the technology) for space exploration.    This line of reasoning is, I think, a mistake: anything that might increase the chances for a devastating war in the near (or not so near) future must be actively fought!  I'm in as much of a hurry as anyone else here to see humanity stepping on the Martian surface, but first we have to keep from blowing ourselves up!  Putting weapons in Earth orbit increases the chance of sending us back into the stone age !  I guess that would be a big blow for Mars colonization, right?

I've read the Red Mars trilogy!  I'm going to look into that constitution thread.

Runnerbrax: "Surfer So Sad" ?!  What is this?  Look, if you can't respect people who don't share your opinions, I suggest you stop posting!  Now that has been taken care of...

I'm not proposing that Mars colonies should all be governed the same way.  If people want to be ruled under systems were they only have to "follow along", well, they can always arrange to do so.  However, I don't think many will really want to live that way, given the choice!  I think one of the reasons why most people in the so called western democracies seem apathetic is simply due to the fact that they know that they don't really have a say concerning the way how things are run...  Anyway, what if some people just follow along?  As long as they're a small minority, it will be ok.

But if you don't trust the people to govern themselves (that's basically what you seem to be saying), then what do you propose?

I think that the only hope left for the US civilian space effort lies in the Chinese doing something spectacular...  Sad!