How do you build a physical economy?

Martian Republic · 2007-11-15 18:47:21

The reason that I ask the question of how do you build a physical economy, is there are many people that misunderstand how the process takes place. I have gotten into discussion on both this board topics on this issue in other places. The problem that I run into the most, is that most people don't understand how economic process works or how to promote economic growth. The reason that it is important to us is, any space effort that we want to do in space, will have to deal with this economic issue and we can't just build it because we want to. I have read of using a lottery system or selling private or corporate bonds stocks to finance building such major projects like putting a colony on Mars. Other people say that it will be the secret hand of the market forces that will make a space colonization happen or it will be the private sector that make it happen.

Although there is buying and selling in the private sector is that the basses for setting up a space based economy or is there something missing that we have not come up with yet?

To answer these question, we are going to take a backward glance at the United States and the economic principle that created the modern country of the United States. We aren't going to go over everything that made the United States, but we will pick just a few things that happened, so you can see what economic principle that were function that caused it to happen. The US Economy is a mixture of private and government enterprises that make up the economy, but it is a government regulated economy system.

So how was the economy of the United States created?

I will dispense with talking about those colonies or the earlier days of just after the revolution days, because we will only get a futile argument and achieve absolutely nothing in our discussion. We are going to concentrate on three major projects that the US Government did to develop the United States over the course of 80 yeas or so and how that created a unified US Economy and made the United States an industrial power. Now there were private individuals, companies and bankers which were involved in this process, but it was primarily a government project that did it. Matter of fact, it was these government project that created most of the private sector such as rail road companies, the need manufacturing in the new towns they built in the area that they were developing.

The three projects that I have picked was the transcontinental Rail Road, the Aqueducts of Los Angeles and the projects of FDR four river projects of dams and rural electrification project.

The invention of the steam engine for transportation on tracks was invented in England in 1829, when Abraham Lincoln was twenty years old. In 1831 Abraham Lincoln is about twenty two or twenty three old, hear about the rail road and was told what it did and almost immediately Lincoln start yelling and campaigning for a transcontinental rail road to be built in the United States. At this point Abraham Lincoln had not seen one or ridden on one, but only heard about it and they were just starting to build rail roads in the east. Lincoln living in Illinois where he migrated of Kentucky from. Just so you know that Abraham Lincoln was one of the Champions of the transcontinental rail road before there was need to build one out west even. We were just starting to build rails in the east and still had no significant amounts of track laid at that time. So he goes to Springfield the capital of Illinois along with like minded people to start a rail road in Illinois and Lincoln also ran and won in the statehouse seat too to promote that effort. In a very shore period of time, Illinois rail road became the biggest rail road in North America and maybe even in the entire world.

Now lets fast forward thirty yeas.

It now 1861 and Abraham Lincoln is now President of the United States and he has a civil war to fight to save the Union from being resolved and the United States being destroyed. We finished the project in 1869 or eight years after it was enacted by congress into law. We still had four years of a Civil war to fight, but they were even then getting the process going to build the transcontinental rail road even then. This was one of the first acts as President of the United States that Lincoln did, was to put this resolution before the congress to take up the issue of building the transcontinental rail road as a needed resolution to save Union after the Civil War. Lincoln understood that if the United States was going to survive then we needed a nationwide transportation system to pull the United States back together again. It was Lincolns National Mission Statement of the 19th Century of building transcontinental rail road that was like the Kennedy National Mission Statement that sent us to the Moon in the 20th Century. By an act of congress, they created two quasi public or private rail roads the Union Pacific and Pacific Central rail road companies. One of those rail road is going to start at Sacramento California, which had just joined the Union. And the other Rail Road was going to start from Omaha, Nebraska which was still a territory and was still basically undeveloped territory itself on the western edge of development coming from the east side. To my knowledge, we didn't have a rail road to Omaha at that time. So there going to have to supply trains and tracks to the small town of Omaha which didn't obtain being a city until later, so they could make there drive westward to meet the other rail road coming east to meet them. The situation was even worse for the rail road coming out of Sacramento, California and going east to meet the rail road coming out of Omaha, Nebraska. The California Gold rush that brought those people into California happened in 1849 or eleven or twelve years before the act of Congress in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. San Francisco was the only place in California that you could actually start calling a city in California at all. Sacramento which is the Capital of California, wasn't much of anything at that time. California didn't have any industry as in manufacturing capabilities at all. So all the trains, rail cars, tracks had to be shipped around South American to California, up the Sacramento River to the town of Sacramento to make there run to the east. We have something like 1,500 to 2,000 miles between those two points with only one human habitat somewhere in the middle and that it. We have Salt Lake City, Utah which is somewhere about half way point about where those two rail roads meet. Other than that, there is absolutely nothing out there in the western two third of the western part of the United States. So they were building towns and city as they were moving both eastward and westward building the rail road to both support the building effort of the rail road and to be serviced by those same rail roads that were being built. Then they got a government loan of sixty million dollars for thirty year to maturity date loan to build that rail road. They paid about hundred and thirty million back to the US Government. The City of Denver in Colorado was one of the cities that grew up along this rail road and it currently has a population of about 600,000 population.

Without this rail road, the United State would not have been able to develop as a nation and this rail road didn't not build itself. It would not and nor could it have been built by the private sector of that time, because there were no people in the projected area of development that needed there services, transportation system wasn't needed local population, because there wasn't any there to use those services. Beside that, the rail roads that were used to build the transcontinental rail road didn't exist until there was an act of congress that create those rail roads to do that job. The US Government basically created the physical economy of most of the western states economy of the United States by the rail road they had built as an act in 1861 Transcontinental act at the beginning of the Civil War.

Enough of the rail roads, let go to the Aqueducts of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is currently the second biggest City in the United States and either the second or third larges port in regards to volume coming into or leaving the United States port. Los Angeles has neither a natural harbor nor a major river that can support a major city of that size. Matter of fact, Los Angeles was built in a desert with only a small river to supply 10,000 named the Los Angeles River a small river.

The question is, how did Los Angeles become the second largest City in America and have one of the biggest ports in America too, if it can't be supported by the resources close by?

Los Angeles the town of 10,000 sold bonds to build an aqueduct from the Owens valley river system to Los Angeles and it was built in the 1903 to 1913 period. Los Angeles also engaged in a process to dredge out a port, because the current lay of land to the sea did not allow for the ships to come into the land dock. I am not sure how much US Government help on this projects or how much the Army Corp. of Engineers played in helping them build both projects. Also the greening of Los Angeles and surrounding areas started during the Civil War too. The Governor that was a Democrat, but one loyal to the Union vs those Democrats that were succeeding from the Union at the time. So he was a one term governor, before he was replace with a Republican Governor. But, that Democratic Governor started a process of bringing plants into California from other parts of the world to start the transformation of Both California and the Los Angeles area greening process. This greening Los Angeles and the San Bernardino valley was a slow process and I have no doubt that there were other government projects of either Federal or State or City levels of government, beside the projects already mentioned.

Even during the 1920, the area around Los Angeles was still not very green as it is today because of the shortage of water, but FDR is just around the corner with his four river projects of Dams and Hydro-Electric power plants projects. We built the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and some of that water was pumped to Los Angeles in Aqueducts to supplement that lack of water they have in that area. There were other local dam projects that were either started by the Federal or State or the different city government around Los Angeles area either working together or independently of each other. One of the other rivers that was targeted was the Columbian River in Washington and Oregon area. That where many of the Aluminum manufactures located themselves, because they need lots water and power to make there Aluminum. Now they were private industries that made real products, but they located themselves around government projects of Dams and Hydro-Electric Power plants to make there Aluminum. They need lot of water and cheap power which they got around those government projects. The third river was the Tennessee river with the Tennessee Valley Authority being setup as a Federal Government Project that owned and operated by the Federal Government. Another series of Dams and Hydro-Electric power Plants and the rural electrification to the local farming area that transformed that area of the United States. Now we go to the fourth river the St. Lawrence River with there dams and Hydro-Electric power plants that supply power to these areas New York State, New York City, Pennsylvania and the New England States of the United States.

Now I am not saying that the US, State and City governments did everything and that the private sector can do nothing good or anything like that. But, they definitely played a major part in developing the US Economy in the past and are the only ones that could have played that roll to develop the United States. They also have to play a major roll in developing the United States in the future too and for the same reason that develop happened in the past, they will have to be involved in it. Other such major project to continue the greening of the American desert that the US Government should engage in would be to go back to the NAWAPA project which would be to bring down 10% of either or both the Yukon and Mackenzie Rivers and then run it down the Rocky Mountain trench. It would look like a backward river going out to water the surrounding areas where it would flow. At the place where you lift the water up to flow in what would look like a backward river, you would have an amount of water that would be two to three times the average flow of the Mississippi River. So we are talking about a lot water to transform that desert. The more things change, the more they stay the same, because the United States needs a new rail system to replace that old system that we built century ago. Beside that, we need mass transit in most of our major cities and probably should build 70 mass transit in those cities too. We also need nuclear power plants and we need to develop fusion power for future energy needs, because fission power plants will be insufficient at some point in time. Most of the infrastructures in the United States is thirty year old or older, which means that it needs to be replaced, because it has reached point it has to be replaced. Our bridges will start collapsing. The water system isn’t capable to deliver clean water anymore, because the water system is compromised, it reached it useful life to deliver clean water to us.

Now what would all this cost?

Just to do minimum repair operation without building any new of aggressive programs for future development.

Oh, we would need two trillion dollars to repair the road system.
Maybe another trillion dollars to repair levees & dams system to protect city like New Orleans and other levees & dams for other cities that need them and repair of the lock system through out the American River system.
Then we have the rail road, power system, water departments, etc. maybe another trillion or two trillion dollars to rebuild or replace to bring it up to standard.
We are probably talking about five trillion dollars or so to just do the minimum that needs to be done to maintain a functional economy inside the United States. It will probably take us five to ten years to get it done.

But, if we do the kind of investment that I say needs to be done, then we are talking about, then we are looking at investing a whole lot more to get it done.

To do the NAWAPA project, it will probably cost one trillion dollars.
To build other water and dam projects or canal like making the Eire Canal deeper and wider will cost another trillion dollars or more.
To build the levitated rail system for Amtrak, will cost three trillions dollars.
To build the mass transit for those 70 Cities, will cost in the three trillion dollars range.
To develop fusion and build nuclear power plants to replace those old power plants and upgrade the US power grid will cost another three to four trillion dollars to build.
Then we need to start build City from scratch to go with that area that we built that backward river at, like they built towns and city to go along that rail road, which will cost several trillion more dollars.
Then I would like to add another one to two trillion dollars to building a City on Mars, just for good measure.

Oh, we are probably talking about twenty trillion dollars to do all this stuff in a thirty to forty year period.

So what is the private sector doing if the government is doing this?

Who do you think is building the levitated train system, and the subway system?
The private sector, that who.

Who do you think is building those nuclear power plants?
The private sector, that who.

The Army Corp of Engineers may do most of the Engineer work or surveying the what needs to get built, but they sub it out to the private sector to build it. That how it works in America when we are at our best when it comes to building something.

Questions or comments to my little piece here are welcome.

Larry,

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-15 22:27:23

...
So how was the economy of the United States created?
I will dispense with talking about those colonies or the earlier days of just after the revolution days, because we will only get a futile argument and achieve absolutely nothing in our discussion. We are going to concentrate on three major projects that the US Government did to develop the United States over the course of 80 yeas or so and how that created a unified US Economy and made the United States an industrial power. Now there were private individuals, companies and bankers which were involved in this process, but it was primarily a government project that did it. Matter of fact, it was these government project that created most of the private sector such as rail road companies, the need manufacturing in the new towns they built in the area that they were developing.
The three projects that I have picked was the transcontinental Rail Road, the Aqueducts of Los Angeles and the projects of FDR four river projects of dams and rural electrification project.
The invention of the steam engine for transportation on tracks was invented in England in 1829, when Abraham Lincoln was twenty years old. In 1831 Abraham Lincoln is about twenty two or twenty three old, hear about the rail road and was told what it did and almost immediately Lincoln start yelling and campaigning for a transcontinental rail road to be built in the United States. At this point Abraham Lincoln had not seen one or ridden on one, but only heard about it and they were just starting to build rail roads in the east. Lincoln living in Illinois where he migrated of Kentucky from. Just so you know that Abraham Lincoln was one of the Champions of the transcontinental rail road before there was need to build one out west even. We were just starting to build rails in the east and still had no significant amounts of track laid at that time. So he goes to Springfield the capital of Illinois along with like minded people to start a rail road in Illinois and Lincoln also ran and won in the statehouse seat too to promote that effort. In a very shore period of time, Illinois rail road became the biggest rail road in North America and maybe even in the entire world.

Oh my, have you not heard about those famous railroad tycoons? There was one who built a famous estate near my home, his name was Vanderbelt I believe, I do not think he worked for the government. Government's role is to get out of the way and let the private Entreprenuers do their work. Government knows very little on how to grow an economy, all they know how to do is how to not hinder the process.

Now lets fast forward thirty yeas.
It now 1861 and Abraham Lincoln is now President of the United States and he has a civil war to fight to save the Union from being resolved and the United States being destroyed. We finished the project in 1869 or eight years after it was enacted by congress into law. We still had four years of a Civil war to fight, but they were even then getting the process going to build the transcontinental rail road even then. This was one of the first acts as President of the United States that Lincoln did, was to put this resolution before the congress to take up the issue of building the transcontinental rail road as a needed resolution to save Union after the Civil War. Lincoln understood that if the United States was going to survive then we needed a nationwide transportation system to pull the United States back together again. It was Lincolns National Mission Statement of the 19th Century of building transcontinental rail road that was like the Kennedy National Mission Statement that sent us to the Moon in the 20th Century.

It was not a government railroad system though, all the railroads back then were in private hands. Frankly, the people in power back then did not feel it was the government's job to run a railroad, it was not the government's job to determine the price of the tickets, or how much to charge for hauling freight. Lincoln wanted to help out the captains of industry do this by granting them land from which to build their tracks. The railroad companies knew how to build a railroad, the government did not. The thing government did was to grant the land to the companies, they also granted land out of the frontier to individuals and families to all who wanted to make a claim, afterwards all that land was private property, not government property as was and is the case in Russia for instance. I think private property helped develop the economy, because then you could invest, sell, or use land as collateral for loans. The economy works best when individuals get to make their own decisions rather than have the government make decisions for them.

...By an act of congress, they created two quasi public or private rail roads the Union Pacific and Pacific Central rail road companies.

They were wholly private companies, Vanderbelt wasn't a civil servant, he was a capitalist, perhaps he got government to do certain things for him, no doubt he made plenty of donations to political campaigns, but that is part of capitalism too, he was in it to make money for himself. The Czar wanted to build the Trans-Siberian Railroad, now that was a government project I believe.

...One of those rail road is going to start at Sacramento California, which had just joined the Union. And the other Rail Road was going to start from Omaha, Nebraska which was still a territory and was still basically undeveloped territory itself on the western edge of development coming from the east side. To my knowledge, we didn't have a rail road to Omaha at that time. So there going to have to supply trains and tracks to the small town of Omaha which didn't obtain being a city until later, so they could make there drive westward to meet the other rail road coming east to meet them. The situation was even worse for the rail road coming out of Sacramento, California and going east to meet the rail road coming out of Omaha, Nebraska. The California Gold rush that brought those people into California happened in 1849 or eleven or twelve years before the act of Congress in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. San Francisco was the only place in California that you could actually start calling a city in California at all. Sacramento which is the Capital of California, wasn't much of anything at that time. California didn't have any industry as in manufacturing capabilities at all. So all the trains, rail cars, tracks had to be shipped around South American to California, up the Sacramento River to the town of Sacramento to make there run to the east. We have something like 1,500 to 2,000 miles between those two points with only one human habitat somewhere in the middle and that it. We have Salt Lake City, Utah which is somewhere about half way point about where those two rail roads meet. Other than that, there is absolutely nothing out there in the western two third of the western part of the United States. So they were building towns and city as they were moving both eastward and westward building the rail road to both support the building effort of the rail road and to be serviced by those same rail roads that were being built. Then they got a government loan of sixty million dollars for thirty year to maturity date loan to build that rail road. They paid about hundred and thirty million back to the US Government. The City of Denver in Colorado was one of the cities that grew up along this rail road and it currently has a population of about 600,000 population.
Without this rail road, the United State would not have been able to develop as a nation and this rail road didn't not build itself. It would not and nor could it have been built by the private sector of that time,

But it was. Government helped the process along, but those Chinese immigrants building the railroad were not government workers.

Commodore · 2007-11-16 00:16:22

The government does absolutely nothing without tax revenue. The government only gets tax revenue when suitable numbers of people devote their blood, sweat, and tears to bettering themselves and their surroundings (to suit them of course). Commerce starts do to the natural uneven distribution of resources required to do this. Governments develop to facilitate commerce and ensure it doesn't devolve into simple pillaging, and taxes are needed to make a government run, so they take a little of the top of the commerce, to facilitate the facilitating.

Nations develop when pioneers go to a (more or less) empty spot of land to build a better life for themselves independently or in a sufficiently different way than those already exist. People do the best they can with the patch of land they can exploit, sell whatever extra they don't need to live for something else they want or need to get by. They decide that this would be a whole lot easier if their was a road between us and those lazy guys would stop stealing our stuff, and create and contribute to a government to facilitate those things. Fast forward 250 years, and those people decide it would be a good idea to fund missions to other far far away plots of land cause the journey would create lots of new technologies that facilitate wonderful new things at home, plus people would do great things like pay lots of money and donate time and effort for the adventure of going to those far far away plots of land.

As for how all this applies to space, it is basically the same pattern, and is not at all unlike the public infrastucture projects mentioned above. People and governments with the fore site to do it invest in the technologies and hardware by giving out tax revenue to those who can figure it out, and launch the missions. Those on the missions get the land and resources, those companies that did the research get to sell the technology, and the government gets a slice of that commerce. With time those off world offer goods and services not available on, or more likely, provide things that can be made quicker and more conveniently than shipping from Earth to facilitate furthered expansion, or perhaps something that we don't know about that can only be had there.

On the tactical level, after a intense study of Mars and it resources, perhaps completely from orbit, multiple bases will be established based on abundance of various resources, be they water, various gases, minerals, convenient locations for habitation or access to orbit, ect. Trade develops between them, public infrastucture is established. Labor is imported. And so on.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-16 09:09:46

Some people want government to do everything though, they don't trust those "greedy Capitalists" and somehow they feel that "power-hungry politicians" would be so much better. My point is there are many "greedy capitalists" but only one government. The "greedy Capitalists" aren't guaranteed to get the monopoly they so desire, but the government starts out as a monopoly, so I don't know why some people would rather trust government to provide their basic goods and services.

Martian Republic · 2007-11-16 16:58:06

Where you like or don't like or agree with me or don't agree with me or were educated or mis-educated to what really happened about the building of the transcontinental Rail Road. The truth of the matter is, those two rail roads didn't exist before there was an act of congress to create them and they were created for the express purpose of building that transcontinental Rail Road. Matter of fact, California didn't even have a Rail Road at all, before that act of congress was signed into law that created that Rail Road. As far as I know, Omaha didn't have a Rail Road either, which was the eastern starting point for that Rail Road.

I am not going to argue against your ignorance, go check out what I have said and see if it true. It either is or it isn't and if you find that it isn't, then I would like your source so I can check it out to see if it true or not. I will also be checking those people out to see if there telling the truth too.

Larry,

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-17 18:52:21

I didn't just study it, I've had a full education on the subject and so recall it from various sources. The main thing the private railroad companies needed was some clarification on who owns the land on which they were going to build their railroads on. If they didn't secure official ownership of the land, which was recently acquired frontier, then they'd risk building the railroad and then having someone else claim the land underneath it and claim the railroad itself as their property since it was on their land. This whole idea was a common theme in many a Western, the railroad moves into town, the railroad magnet was often portrayed as the villian, they'd go up to some rancher and say, "we want to buy your land for X amount of dollars." And the rancher would say, "I've been hoeing this land ever since my grandpappy laid his claim, and he lies buried right there under that tree, and there's no way, I'd going to part with that." The greedy railroad magnet says, "We'll see about that," with a puff of his cigar and a snarl, he walks out the door with a tip of his stovepipe top hat, and bids "Good day." Lateron some cattle russlers break into the ranchers pen, steals some cattle and tramples the rancher's vegetable garden in the process.

Martian Republic · 2007-11-17 21:51:45

I didn't just study it, I've had a full education on the subject and so recall it from various sources. The main thing the private railroad companies needed was some clarification on who owns the land on which they were going to build their railroads on. If they didn't secure official ownership of the land, which was recently acquired frontier, then they'd risk building the railroad and then having someone else claim the land underneath it and claim the railroad itself as their property since it was on their land. This whole idea was a common theme in many a Western, the railroad moves into town, the railroad magnet was often portrayed as the villian, they'd go up to some rancher and say, "we want to buy your land for X amount of dollars." And the rancher would say, "I've been hoeing this land ever since my grandpappy laid his claim, and he lies buried right there under that tree, and there's no way, I'd going to part with that." The greedy railroad magnet says, "We'll see about that," with a puff of his cigar and a snarl, he walks out the door with a tip of his stovepipe top hat, and bids "Good day." Lateron some cattle russlers break into the ranchers pen, steals some cattle and tramples the rancher's vegetable garden in the process.

Most of what you are being taught in school or colleges isn't really the American History that really happened, it was re-written to conform to the British interest inside the United States. Not only does it apply to the rail roads issue, but it also to the US Economic policies to line of with British interest too. But, as to who built the rail roads at the time of the transcontinental Rail road and before that time when they started building rail roads inside the United States. I have already mentioned that the transcontinental Rail Road was created by two Rail Road Companies that were created as an Act of Congress and signed into law by the then President of the United States. I have also mentioned that Lincoln when he was still in Illinois as a State Congressmen helped to build the rail road in Illinois using state bonds. Every Rail Road that was built during this time was either built by the US Government or the State Government and I mean every one was built with Federal or State Money and some of them were even run them for a time. There was another act of congress that created about 50 Rail Road before the Civil War happened to get things going. After the Civil War, the US Government was still sponsoring building rail roads, because of the economic benefit to the US Economy and the advancement of business activities to do business inside the United States. Those land grants to to the rail road by the US Government was to advance the building of those rail roads and to build towns and cities along those rail roads like what they did along the transcontinental Rail Road. That why you see so many towns and city that grew up along those rail roads before there were cars or buses.

As far as the Rail Road Man being the villain against the Farmer in your story is just a Hollywood Movie. We need to live in the real world instead of thinking of it as being in some Hollywood Movie idea of what happened in the old west. I am sure there were some fraud by those Rail Road Men, like there is fraud on almost everything else where there money, power or resources at stack, but that wasn't the normal situation.

I got most of my information as to who built the rail roads up at the Lyndon Larouche site. I have also done some of my own investigation to check out what there saying about the rail roads to see if it true and it is. I also believe that we should re-regulate the rail roads and rebuild those rail roads as a national mission to rebuilding the physical infrastructure of the United States as a job creation process to re-vitalize the US Economy. That we should also build a national Amtrak Network System throughout the United States along with subways in every major city over 200,000 thousand people in the United States. We then bring these ideas of how we built the rail roads and re-vitalization of the current rail road system and the building of a new Amtrak Network with all the Subways Systems and we look out into space. We want to do the same kind of projecting into the future that Abraham Lincoln did when he heard about the Rail Road and what it did and started to be an advocate of the transcontinental Rail Road. It took thirty nine years to build it from when Abe Lincoln first heard about the rail road until the Utah where the Golden Spike was pounded into the last spot on the track. The space program will be a jobs programs that will create millions of new high paying jobs, besides developing new technologies and building the infrastructure. Our space program will be done the same way that Abe Lincoln built the rail roads and will actually just be a continuation of that process.

That why it important to know how the real a physical economy works and what real physical economy looks like and how to build real physical economy from scratch. Because, that exactly what we intend to do and so we need to know how to do it. Otherwise, we are just wasting our time and we will never see it happen.

Larry,

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-19 09:00:56

I didn't just study it, I've had a full education on the subject and so recall it from various sources. The main thing the private railroad companies needed was some clarification on who owns the land on which they were going to build their railroads on. If they didn't secure official ownership of the land, which was recently acquired frontier, then they'd risk building the railroad and then having someone else claim the land underneath it and claim the railroad itself as their property since it was on their land. This whole idea was a common theme in many a Western, the railroad moves into town, the railroad magnet was often portrayed as the villian, they'd go up to some rancher and say, "we want to buy your land for X amount of dollars." And the rancher would say, "I've been hoeing this land ever since my grandpappy laid his claim, and he lies buried right there under that tree, and there's no way, I'd going to part with that." The greedy railroad magnet says, "We'll see about that," with a puff of his cigar and a snarl, he walks out the door with a tip of his stovepipe top hat, and bids "Good day." Lateron some cattle russlers break into the ranchers pen, steals some cattle and tramples the rancher's vegetable garden in the process.
Most of what you are being taught in school or colleges isn't really the American History that really happened, it was re-written to conform to the British interest inside the United States. Not only does it apply to the rail roads issue, but it also to the US Economic policies to line of with British interest too. But, as to who built the rail roads at the time of the transcontinental Rail road and before that time when they started building rail roads inside the United States. I have already mentioned that the transcontinental Rail Road was created by two Rail Road Companies that were created as an Act of Congress and signed into law by the then President of the United States.

And you were there?
You see all we have to rely on for our information about the past is secondary sources, you pick yours and I pick mine. If some radical revisionist historian writes his own book about the subject you can use that book as your source of information, but I generally think, the further we get from a certain event in the past, the less we know about it, because information is lost over time. revisionist historians always have alot of time on their hands, they comb through secondary and sometime tertiary sources of information to support their thesis, and sometimes they reach and stretch a bit far. For instance there are some who allege that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual, there are people that want to prove that George Washington was a cruel man, there are people who want to prove that the pilgrims had nothing on their minds except slaughtering Indians once they arrived on our shores, and these historians will reach and stretch and reach some more for whatever scraps of information will support their conclusions, and if those scraps are of dubious origin, they won't look too hard just so long as those scraps support what they want to say.

Commodore · 2007-11-19 09:51:30

Most of what you are being taught in school or colleges isn't really the American History that really happened, it was re-written to conform to the British interest inside the United States. Not only does it apply to the rail roads issue, but it also to the US Economic policies to line of with British interest too.
Larry,

I thought the only interests the Brits had in spreading propaganda in the Colonies was to convince us the Huns where bayoneting babies so we'd bail them out of the world wars.

Back on topic, I don't think anyone is going to dispute that an overwhelming amount of the prosperity the US enjoys is due to investment of public funds into public infrastructure, and the economy is built on that foundation.

The trouble begins when the government trys to use the same kind of government infrastucture in the social sphere to change behavior, create dependance, and thus creating a captive voting block to preserve power. This conflict, the fight over the public treasury for social programs vs. "fiscal responsibility" and political distraction it has caused has taken a toll on our infrastructure. Settle that issue, and the focus will shift back where it belongs.

Martian Republic · 2007-11-19 17:41:26

And you were there?

Of course I don't claim to have been there, I am only 56 years old and most of what we are talking about happened about 150 to 200 hundred years ago.

You see all we have to rely on for our information about the past is secondary sources, you pick yours and I pick mine. If some radical revisionist historian writes his own book about the subject you can use that book as your source of information, but I generally think, the further we get from a certain event in the past, the less we know about it, because information is lost over time. revisionist historians always have alot of time on their hands, they comb through secondary and sometime tertiary sources of information to support their thesis, and sometimes they reach and stretch a bit far. For instance there are some who allege that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual, there are people that want to prove that George Washington was a cruel man, there are people who want to prove that the pilgrims had nothing on their minds except slaughtering Indians once they arrived on our shores, and these historians will reach and stretch and reach some more for whatever scraps of information will support their conclusions, and if those scraps are of dubious origin, they won't look too hard just so long as those scraps support what they want to say.

You make a good assertion as to historians rewriting history or giving us there take on our own history. You are correct that people will tend to see history within there own bias and will write it according to there bias whether they want to or not. But, most of American History is deliberately skewed and twisted out of shape to promote some hidden agenda. So there are several things that we need to do to know American History to the best of our ability and there are a few things that we can do to do that.

They are:

1. Know the pedigree of the person that supposedly writing the history and maybe see who there working for. For example: Adam Smith was hired by Lord Shelbourne to write the Wealth of Nations for the British Empire.

2. Where every possible read the original manuscript of the people created that history and see what they say about the matter and what they have to say about themselves.

3. When reading someone historical account, see if they reference there material and see if they accurately portray it or are making an attempt to accurately portraying it. Are those supposedly historians saying what the people themselves were saying they were doing or does that historian go out on a tangent and say wild thing that can't be supported and does he insist that you believe what he says, because he said and he the historian.

There are other things we can do, to try to keep the American History as pure as possible. But, this will give us a starting point to those ends.

Larry,

Martian Republic · 2007-11-19 18:24:09

Back on topic, I don't think anyone is going to dispute that an overwhelming amount of the prosperity the US enjoys is due to investment of public funds into public infrastructure, and the economy is built on that foundation.
The trouble begins when the government trys to use the same kind of government infrastucture in the social sphere to change behavior, create dependance, and thus creating a captive voting block to preserve power. This conflict, the fight over the public treasury for social programs vs. "fiscal responsibility" and political distraction it has caused has taken a toll on our infrastructure. Settle that issue, and the focus will shift back where it belongs.

The main problem you have Commodore is that you don't know American History and nor do you know about the conflicting concepts of what government should be about and/or the conflicting concepts of who or what man is. When America has done great things for the American people and even exported those great things, then the Americans that are controlling the American Government generally have a republican concept of Government. But, when America has done terrible things that we should be ashamed of ourselves for, then we generally have had an Oligarchy or Imperial type thinker controlling the United States. The most resent of both types of thinkers inside the office of the American Presidency is John F. Kennedy and the Apollo Moon Project or the republican thinker. The other would Be George Bush or Dick Cheney and our invasion of Iraq, or the Oligarchical or imperial thinker. You can tell which one your dealing with by who is defending the Preamble of the US Constitution, will be the republican thinker and the one that rejects the Preamble of the US Constitution will be the Oligarchical or Imperial thinker. George Bush said the US Constitution is just a scrap of paper, so he is the Oligarchical or Imperial thinker. There is also a monetary policy between these two group too. Oligarchical or Imperial thinker wants a private banking system that they own and control and can squeeze the rest of humanity for there own benefit and to there hurt and even to there own destruction's. The republican thinker want a public banking system so the government can finance building public works projects to the good of mankind and promote the welfare of the public good. Sometimes this promoting the public good could be financing building hospitals and/or paying for health care. Another time, this promoting the public good could be building a new generation of rail system like upgrading the current rail system and adding a levitated rail system to the mex along with subway system. Next time it could be bring water into the desert like with NAWAPA project and nuclear power plants. Kennedy Apollo Moon Mission project was a republican concept of government too, so we turn to space and plan even bigger space projects to continue this republican concept of government

The true measure as to what appropriate is what in the general welfare and what isn't in the general welfare of the American people and the world at large.

So now you have to know the difference of what a republican concept of government is and what is an Oligarchical or Imperial concept of government.

Larry,

Commodore · 2007-11-22 12:54:51

Tell me Larry, when JFK attempted to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, was he being a republican thinker, or and Imperial thinker? What about when he said that we would bear any burden, or face any foe for the cause of human freedom? Or when he declared himself a member of the besieged and oppressed people of Berlin? Or when he risked everything to deny the Soviets a first strike capability in Cuba? Is the idea that human freedom is the single greatest resource born of republican, or imperial thought?

You see you can have the greatest public infrastructure on Earth, but unless you have principles and willing to stand up for them, it won't mean a thing. The Roman empire had a nice infrastucture. For centuries they used it to enforce the glory of Rome on the Mediterranean basin and beyond. In the end they compromised, were compromised, and destroyed. Hitler too had the Autobahn, and all it did was give his foes a smoother road to the heart of the Third Reich. Infrastructure is means to an end. If that end is right and true that road is blessed, if not it is cursed. Our founding fathers gave us the right end, but the road to it often difficult. JFK knew this by learning it the hard way. He failed to give the Free Cuban forces the support they needed. As a result he found himself in a position of risking a nuclear exchange that would have destroyed civilization as we know it. We took the easy way out, hoping the situation would improve on it own. We are still paying the price for that as Castro inspires a new generation communist dictators in South America. There are many similar examples following WW2. President Bush is dealing with them, not in the most effective way possible to be sure, but stubbornly facing the uphill fight none the less. Which is more than his political opponents can say. You, and they, might say that such uphill battles are expensive, and get in the way of the many wonderful services we can provide our people and in some ways your right. But if you continue to take the cheap way out on international disputes they will not be solved, and they will pile up until are in a peril we can not yet imagine. And it won't matter how shiny our trains are. I do know history, and all these things have happened before, and they will happen again if we fail to heed them.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that our public infrastructure has been ignored too long and the a reinvestment into it would work wonders economically, but I also know that it ain't worth a hill of beans unless America stays free, and the same freedoms are not taken back by oppressed people the world over. You can have the nicest medical, transportation, or education system in the world, but unless its people have the liberty to build their lives within it as they see fit, or even try and fail, such a society will rot out and die.

If you want to argue the best monetary system to get there and the specific infrastructure improvements that should be made go right ahead. But don't mistake it for "imperial thought".

Martian Republic · 2007-11-22 19:59:28

Tell me Larry, when JFK attempted to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, was he being a republican thinker, or and Imperial thinker? What about when he said that we would bear any burden, or face any foe for the cause of human freedom? Or when he declared himself a member of the besieged and oppressed people of Berlin? Or when he risked everything to deny the Soviets a first strike capability in Cuba? Is the idea that human freedom is the single greatest resource born of republican, or imperial thought?

JFK made a decision to go with the republican principle of government and the defense of the US Constitution overall going into the Presidency of the United States. But, he did not know the power structure at the time or what the rules they were going by.

Was the Bay of Pigs a republican thinker or an Imperial thinker?

It was an Imperial thinker as such, in answer to your question.

When Kennedy came into the White House, the Bay of Pigs was already in the works and he went along with it and then discovered the fallacy of Bay of Pigs while he was going through it. The way that he choose to deal with Russia wasn't too cool either as such. His quot after that happened was: " He of anybody should have known better than anyone when dealing with these people". Or the people that were around him and supposedly giving him good advice, but didn't. Referring to the power structure inside the United States at that time or those supposed experts that gave him the bad advice that got him into that Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy did make that mistake and he did say that he made that mistake. That pretty much accounted for the first two years of his Presidency. And being a Playboy President also.

You see you can have the greatest public infrastructure on Earth, but unless you have principles and willing to stand up for them, it won't mean a thing. The Roman empire had a nice infrastucture. For centuries they used it to enforce the glory of Rome on the Mediterranean basin and beyond. In the end they compromised, were compromised, and destroyed. Hitler too had the Autobahn, and all it did was give his foes a smoother road to the heart of the Third Reich. Infrastructure is means to an end. If that end is right and true that road is blessed, if not it is cursed. Our founding fathers gave us the right end, but the road to it often difficult. JFK knew this by learning it the hard way. He failed to give the Free Cuban forces the support they needed. As a result he found himself in a position of risking a nuclear exchange that would have destroyed civilization as we know it. We took the easy way out, hoping the situation would improve on it own. We are still paying the price for that as Castro inspires a new generation communist dictators in South America. There are many similar examples following WW2. President Bush is dealing with them, not in the most effective way possible to be sure, but stubbornly facing the uphill fight none the less. Which is more than his political opponents can say. You, and they, might say that such uphill battles are expensive, and get in the way of the many wonderful services we can provide our people and in some ways your right. But if you continue to take the cheap way out on international disputes they will not be solved, and they will pile up until are in a peril we can not yet imagine. And it won't matter how shiny our trains are. I do know history, and all these things have happened before, and they will happen again if we fail to heed them.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that our public infrastructure has been ignored too long and the a reinvestment into it would work wonders economically, but I also know that it ain't worth a hill of beans unless America stays free, and the same freedoms are not taken back by oppressed people the world over. You can have the nicest medical, transportation, or education system in the world, but unless its people have the liberty to build their lives within it as they see fit, or even try and fail, such a society will rot out and die.
If you want to argue the best monetary system to get there and the specific infrastructure improvements that should be made go right ahead. But don't mistake it for "imperial thought".

So I will agree with you that the first two years of John F. Kennedy Presidency was pretty much a bust until he figured out what was going on in Washington and even almost got us into a Nuclear World War with the USSR. That same power structure that created the Bay of Pigs Mess for Kennedy to get into, also wanted Kennedy to get into Viet Nam mess. But, Kennedy had learned his lesson with this Bay of Pigs disaster. Kennedy talked to MacArthur and MacArthur told him to stay out of Asia and not fight a war there. MacArthur also told him about the power structure in Washington and about the different faction that were there. So at MacArthur advice, Kennedy was going to stay out of Viet Nam, which would have been another Imperial type move by the United States.

Now on his third year as President, John F. Kennedy makes his shift to a very republican concept of government and the promoting of the General Welfare of the American People and even a promise to make things better for the rest of the world too. He understood that unless the US Government controlled it own credit, that we could do absolutely nothing as a government to make things better. He understood that control over the monetary policies by the private bankers over the Central Bank of the United States rendered the United States powerless to control it own destiny and was violation of the US Constitution. So with a Presidential Order Number 1110, he gave the Treasury Department the power to generate credit. This is what FDR did and Lincoln did before him to create government credit to finance great government financed projects. The second part of his plan instead of having a war, was to have a great national goal like the sending a man to the moon and returning him back home again. Actually he had a series of things that he wanted to do as national mission intended for space too. He lined up a half dozen or so project for space. Fission powered space ship called the Orion Project. The development of Fusion powered space ship to follow the Orion Project. A mission to Mars by 1984 and other such space projects. He also created the Peace Corp for helping undeveloped nation to build themselves up. He also had atoms for peace project so the third world nation could have the electric power so they could develop there countries. These kinds of projects are definitely republican type projects of that kind of thinking. In addition to building project like that, we also have to be elevating the population too or other wise you could be using slave labor to be building those projects. If your using slave labor like in Nazi Germany or in Ancient Rome to build those infrastructural projects, then you are restricting the benefit of building those projects and those benefits aren't spread throughout the population like they were inside the United States. That the difference to what Abraham Lincoln, FDR and what John F. Kennedy were doing by elevating mankind. Abraham Lincoln started off the industrial revolution and ended slavery. FDR saved us from Fascism and rebuilt the United States infrastructure and most of Europe after World War II with the Benton Wood Agreement, beside defeat Fascism in Europe. Kennedy touched off a Great National Space Mission Goal to the Moon. This is how you develop mankind and push people to higher goals and better the human race at large. It has to be for all mankind and not just for the benefit of a few people. This is a republican concept in a nutshell.

Larry,

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-22 21:01:27

Tell me Larry, when JFK attempted to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs, was he being a republican thinker, or and Imperial thinker? What about when he said that we would bear any burden, or face any foe for the cause of human freedom? Or when he declared himself a member of the besieged and oppressed people of Berlin? Or when he risked everything to deny the Soviets a first strike capability in Cuba? Is the idea that human freedom is the single greatest resource born of republican, or imperial thought?
JFK made a decision to go with the republican principle of government and the defense of the US Constitution overall going into the Presidency of the United States. But, he did not know the power structure at the time or what the rules they were going by.
Was the Bay of Pigs a republican thinker or an Imperial thinker?
It was an Imperial thinker as such, in answer to your question.

How then do you explain our failure to conquer Cuba then? Cuba didn't have the forces to stop a full American invasion of their country had we really wanted to conquer them. There personal courage counts little against the preponderance of our forces, and If I live in your fictional little world for a moment, assuming we were an Empire, we would do what all Empires have historically done, which was expand whenever there was an opportunity.

Its quite a cop-out to assume that JFK was just a puppet controlled by his advisors, whenever he made a bad decision. I guess that's what Republicans are there for aren't they. To act as scapegoats whenever bad decisions are made. So when Kennedy makes a bad decision, he can take the cowardly cop-out and say, "I wasn't my idea, it was general so-in-so's, I was acting on bad advice, it wasn't my fault."

My main problem with Democrats right now is that instead of finding solutions to problems they look for someone to blame. When someone complains about high gas prices, they won't acknowledge that its because of high oil demand, because of the rapid growth of China and India, or even OPEC, because they can't do anything about those forces, but they can tax Big American Oil companies, so they blame "Big Oil" and they wonder aloud why the Bush Administration isn't doing more to penalize them by taxing their profits, and then they promise that they will tax their profits, but the oil demand curve is fairly steep, if they tax Big Oil's profits, the oil companies will simply pass these costs down to their customers so they can maintain their profit margin after taxes, that will only make gasoline prices even higher, but Congress never really intended to solve this problem, but merely to use it as an excuse to get on the high gas price bandwagon, and get their share of the profits from high oil prices as a new source of government revenue for their big government spending.

This all has little to do with Martian politics and neighter does the Bay of Pigs, Mars has no bays or any other open bodies of water.

Martian Republic · 2007-11-23 09:44:58

How then do you explain our failure to conquer Cuba then?

First of all, the United States never committed it armed forces to do an all out invasion of Cuba. If the United States had launched an all out invasion of Cuba, I have no doubt that we could have succeeded in that invasion. Now there was an alliance between Cuba and USSR that would have caused a problem and almost started World War III between the United States and the USSR.

Cuba didn't have the forces to stop a full American invasion of their country had we really wanted to conquer them. There personal courage counts little against the preponderance of our forces, and If I live in your fictional little world for a moment, assuming we were an Empire, we would do what all Empires have historically done, which was expand whenever there was an opportunity.
Its quite a cop-out to assume that JFK was just a puppet controlled by his advisors, whenever he made a bad decision. I guess that's what Republicans are there for aren't they. To act as scapegoats whenever bad decisions are made. So when Kennedy makes a bad decision, he can take the cowardly cop-out and say, "I wasn't my idea, it was general so-in-so's, I was acting on bad advice, it wasn't my fault."

Neither of your assertions are true:

1. That Kennedy never denied the responsibility for his decisions. He only complained about getting bad advice and that he should have known better than to take that advice.

2. I never said that he was a puppet like George Bush is of Dick Cheney and those other Neo-Cons. Now George Bush is a puppet in every sense of the idea of what a puppet would be. But, that not so with John F. Kennedy and he even started shutting down some of there operation. One of those operation that Kennedy shut down was the Northwood operation. They were going to do a state sponsored terrorist operation by destroying a passenger liner with children on it and say that Castro did it. It was John F. Kennedy that shut it down and not too long after that, changed course of which way this country was going.

Go do a Google search on the Northwood and see what come up as your own independent search into things like this and don't take my word for it.

My main problem with Democrats right now is that instead of finding solutions to problems they look for someone to blame. When someone complains about high gas prices, they won't acknowledge that its because of high oil demand, because of the rapid growth of China and India, or even OPEC, because they can't do anything about those forces, but they can tax Big American Oil companies, so they blame "Big Oil" and they wonder aloud why the Bush Administration isn't doing more to penalize them by taxing their profits, and then they promise that they will tax their profits, but the oil demand curve is fairly steep, if they tax Big Oil's profits, the oil companies will simply pass these costs down to their customers so they can maintain their profit margin after taxes, that will only make gasoline prices even higher, but Congress never really intended to solve this problem, but merely to use it as an excuse to get on the high gas price bandwagon, and get their share of the profits from high oil prices as a new source of government revenue for their big government spending.

At present, I don't claim to like either party as far as there promoting the American System of Economic or the General Welfare as mentioned in the Preamble of the US Constitution. That why I qualified my statement by saying the last man that held the office of the Presidency that had a republican view of what he should do. I also did not say that he was perfect either or that he had it all together. Neither party as they currently are, are worth anything at all as far as I am concerned. They all need to be thrown out of there respective Parties and out of congress and we need to get new people that understand these Principle that the US Constitution are based on.

This all has little to do with Martian politics and neighter does the Bay of Pigs, Mars has no bays or any other open bodies of water.

That where your wrong Tom!

The same faction that tried to thart the building of the American Rail Roads under a republican concept of government based General Welfare along with trying to start these wars, it the same faction that shut down what Kennedy wanted to do in space. This go to the moon was only part of what John F. Kennedy wanted to do in space and that other part of what he wanted to do was shut down by 1972 under Nixon. It was shut down, because under Nixon we went to a floating exchange rate Monetary policy and the end of the Brenton Wood Monetary policies. Money began to tighten up and those NASA future space projects and mission began to get slashed out of the budget, because now there too expensive to finance by the government of the United States.

Since they control the US Media, they started couching there question like this to get the answers they wanted to get:

Do you think that we should take care of the poor instead of wasting our money on these NASA projects like going to the Moon?

Which is a strange way to ask a question. But, that was the only way that they could get the answer that they wanted to get. At the time, most Americans were real excited about those Moon Mission and wanted to see more of those kinds of mission in the future. I was excited about it too and see more of those kinds of mission in the future. And go to Mars too? Why of course. Then they started asking those question on the US News Media to change public opinion to something more to there liking and away from that excitement of just gone to the moon and future space projects

Larry,

srmeaney · 2008-02-27 21:02:26

Martian Republic...How do you build a physical economy?

The reason that I ask the question of how do you build a physical economy, is there are many people that misunderstand how the process takes place.

Even the early American Colonies have what you need to know. In the lead up to colonization of Virginia, Raleigh had collected seeds from an earlier comlonization attempt that he saw the native peoples doing well with.

The Jamestown Colony of Virginia was established with the idea that one third of the colonists were to be employed in planting corn and other crops. Others would survey the James River for minerals, and there was total censorship on what colonists could say about it. You couldnt write home and tell them that the Aristocracy is alive and well and telling people to grow food for them...while people doing the work go hungry.

To the Detriment of the colony people were busy digging roots, cutting timber, and looking for minerals to profit from. As a consequence It wasnt until the Tobacco breakthrough that the colonization of Virginia realy kicked off.

It was still in a crisis, so they started offering free land, land at a cheap rate, in 1616 you could get 50 acres if you purchased 12 pounds 10 shillings in shares. Then they sold it to people who would migrate with family.

1000 in 6000 had survived colonization to 1624 when it was declared a colony and an elected assembly was established which met once a year.

Well what do you learn from that? Every colonist is going to have to work. There can be no hierarchies of wealth or authority, or self pursuit that might put the colony survival at risk. Every body must produce their own food. every body must mine their own minerals, everyone must cut their own building timber and firewood.

Every one must put in an equal share of the responsibilities of Citizenship to get the equal share of benifits of citizenship.

PS CUBA already had short range ballistic nuclear weapons when the blockade went active. Those weapons probably put all of Florida in strike range while the Spyplanes were still circling.

Gregori · 2008-03-18 09:17:30

To build a physical economy will require INVESTMENT, INVESTMENT, INVESTMENT etc etc

The kickbacks for this will never be immediate. It will a program a government does to protect its future.

Martian Republic · 2008-04-05 10:52:28

To build a physical economy will require INVESTMENT, INVESTMENT, INVESTMENT etc etc
The kickbacks for this will never be immediate. It will a program a government does to protect its future.

There is an immediate benefit of the Federal Government financing those massive project like subways, super trains, dams, levees, NAWAPA, nuclear power plants.

The short term benefit is the millions of jobs that being created to build all those things and the tax base that being created from those new job that the American people are being employed to do.

But, as you said, there is a long term benefit that take time to get it. It would probably take twenty years to build a national levitated rail system for the United States. Then that infrastructure has about twenty to thirty year life expectancy before you have to replace it. So we are looking at a forty to fifty year life cycle for our national levitated rail system to build it and pay off those bonds and using it.

Larry,

louis · 2008-04-05 12:04:56

Martian -

You can't just will jobs into being. Essentially space jobs are not productive in themselves at the moment, although they do help the USA and other countries maintain themselves at the forefront of technology which makes their labour much more productive generally in the economy.

When you look at what wealth is, it is essentially what we value. Any economy (and essentially earth is now a global economy, not a national one) has to be built pyramid fashion. There has to be food either grown locally or imported. The other necessities of life have to be provided for: housing, plumbing etc. Raw materials need to be gathered. The government and business administrations need to be in place. Investment is the ability to command resources. Poor countries always have investment problems. Just like poor people, they are too poor to put aside money to undertake long term projects.

The USA clearly had a huge number of advantages from the outset. Not least it could easily feed its growing population and then become a huge food exporter (particularly grain). Blessed with essentially good government the country was able to create huge amounts of money that could command resources to be deployed on long term projects.

There is no reason why the rich countries on earth shouldn't devote large sums to space investment. In due course it will be an investment that pays. We are already seeing pressure on earth resources as countries like China and India get rich. We will eventually need to mine those asteroids.

In terms of Mars economic development it has to be remembered that the real monetary costs of production on Mars are lower. You don't have to buy or rent land. You don't have to pay for licences. You don't have to pay for policemen or security guards to protect property. There are no utility bills to pay. No lawyers to pay. No taxes to pay. You don't really have to pay your labour force. They are there already, ready to work. They'll be there anyway, whether they engage in economic activity or not. Their economic cost is effectively zero, as a marginal cost.

These are all huge advantages.

So if for instance we were interested in gold mining, the real cost of the enterprise from an earth-based point of view would be getting the necessary equipment to Mars to allow mining and processing of the gold ore. That - at say $20,000 dollars per Kg. is going to be expensive. Flying the gold home is probably less, since you have a craft going to MArs and coming back. However, they will be essentially all the real costs. Once the gold is back on earth you will of course have to ship it to a recognised entrepot for gold, which might be several thousand miles away from your spaceport.

You could assign some infrastructure costs to the gold mining operation, but then the situation is analogous to a road being built to serve a mining settlement. Often governments build the road and the road will then serve many incidental purposes.

I am quietly optimistic that gold mining will become economic at some stage as the cost of space launches reduces and the price of gold increases (Indians LOVE gold. AS they get richer and richer, they will want more and more of the stuff.)

louis · 2008-04-05 12:06:39

Martian -

You can't just will jobs into being. Essentially space jobs are not productive in themselves at the moment, although they do help the USA and other countries maintain themselves at the forefront of technology which makes their labour much more productive generally in the economy.

When you look at what wealth is, it is essentially what we value. Any economy (and essentially earth is now a global economy, not a national one) has to be built pyramid fashion. There has to be food either grown locally or imported. The other necessities of life have to be provided for: housing, plumbing etc. Raw materials need to be gathered. The government and business administrations need to be in place. Investment is the ability to command resources. Poor countries always have investment problems. Just like poor people, they are too poor to put aside money to undertake long term projects.

The USA clearly had a huge number of advantages from the outset. Not least it could easily feed its growing population and then become a huge food exporter (particularly grain). Blessed with essentially good government the country was able to create huge amounts of money that could command resources to be deployed on long term projects.

There is no reason why the rich countries on earth shouldn't devote large sums to space investment. In due course it will be an investment that pays. We are already seeing pressure on earth resources as countries like China and India get rich. We will eventually need to mine those asteroids.

In terms of Mars economic development it has to be remembered that the real monetary costs of production on Mars are lower. You don't have to buy or rent land. You don't have to pay for licences. You don't have to pay for policemen or security guards to protect property. There are no utility bills to pay. No lawyers to pay. No taxes to pay. You don't really have to pay your labour force. They are there already, ready to work. They'll be there anyway, whether they engage in economic activity or not. Their economic cost is effectively zero, as a marginal cost.

These are all huge advantages.

So if for instance we were interested in gold mining, the real cost of the enterprise from an earth-based point of view would be getting the necessary equipment to Mars to allow mining and processing of the gold ore. That - at say $20,000 dollars per Kg. is going to be expensive. Flying the gold home is probably less, since you have a craft going to MArs and coming back. However, they will be essentially all the real costs. Once the gold is back on earth you will of course have to ship it to a recognised entrepot for gold, which might be several thousand miles away from your spaceport.

You could assign some infrastructure costs to the gold mining operation, but then the situation is analogous to a road being built to serve a mining settlement. Often governments build the road and the road will then serve many incidental purposes.

I am quietly optimistic that gold mining will become economic at some stage as the cost of space launches reduces and the price of gold increases (Indians LOVE gold. AS they get richer and richer, they will want more and more of the stuff.)

Martian Republic · 2008-04-05 16:16:29

Martian -
You can't just will jobs into being. Essentially space jobs are not productive in themselves at the moment, although they do help the USA and other countries maintain themselves at the forefront of technology which makes their labour much more productive generally in the economy.
)

I have already answered your question further up in the post and so I won't waste my repeating my answer to you. What suggesting on doing Alexander Hamilton, Lincoln and FDR did it and on a limited bases John F. Kennedy did it. So I am not suggestion on doing something that never been done inside the United States. Kennedy Moon Mission is also an example of that policy that I suggest on doing in space too.

Go do a study of those people and then you can come back and we can have an intelligent discussion on how we set up an economic system. That the problem that I have with most Americans, they don't understand what kind of economic system that the United States is suppose to be. We aren't a free market and trade system which is basically British Colonialism. The US Economic is a Government credit system of financing public infrastructural project and partly financing the private sector in the productive sector like farmer, manufacturing and mining. It a government regulated system with trade barrios and such.

Larry,

louis · 2008-04-05 19:00:29

Larry,

I'm not sure we fundamentally disagree about anything. I'm just trying to suggest there are many other aspects to the problem of economic development. An extra terrestial world is a very strange place economically. This is a new chapter in human history. It does require some new thinking I believe.

Whilst the US government's investment programme has some relevance, it is not a defining template for how to take the Mars colony forward.

Martian Republic · 2008-04-05 22:46:47

Larry,
I'm not sure we fundamentally disagree about anything. I'm just trying to suggest there are many other aspects to the problem of economic development. An extra terrestial world is a very strange place economically. This is a new chapter in human history. It does require some new thinking I believe.
Whilst the US government's investment programme has some relevance, it is not a defining template for how to take the Mars colony forward.

The basic economic principle do not change whether it was the past colonization of the Americas or Africa or today for our plan to colonizing Mars. It will be government sponsored whether you like it or not or choose to agree with me or not. It a battle between two world views and two different banking system and concepts of what wealth is. It a battle between the British Empirical system and the American System of economic based around the US Constitution. It is the United States based on that republican government banking credit system that made the United State a great and mighty country and wealthy country compared to the rest of the world that was victims British Empire during most of the last 200 hundred years or so. Matter of fact, if the United States doesn't put the Federal Reserve into Bankruptcy and reorganized into a Third National Banking System and derivatives are canceled out because there worthless paper, then the United States will collapse and disintegrate as a nation. Bear Stearns has collapsed with it the sixth larges Wall Street derivative dealer. A major bank in Ohio has also collapsed and people can't get there money there. The US Dollars is dropping like a rock and other countries are starting to drop the US Currency as the world reserve currency. It was the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression in 1929 and it was the Regulation that FDR put into place and the credit that he generated to build those government projects that restarted the US Economy. It is the removal of those regulation and the going to a floating exchange rate by Nixon in 1972 that put us in the economic problem that we in now. This putting the Federal Reserve as the sole regulator for the banking and Wall Street is exactly what caused the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve is a private bank with a government charter to act like the central bank of the United States.

If you don't think that the Federal Reserve is a private bank, go to this web site for more information.

http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5933

Larry,

louis · 2008-04-06 08:49:04

Larry,

Why does it have to be a government? Space philanthropists are disposing of hundreds of millions of dollars. Clearly Musk of Space X has a strategy of creating a space business in LEO and GEO. Combine his space philanthropy with a space business that could be generating hundreds of millions of dollars every year (which can then be used to borrow from banks) and there could be the billions available for colonisation.

"It was the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression in 1929 and it was the Regulation that FDR put into place and the credit that he generated to build those government projects that restarted the US Economy."

This is the received story. If you actually look at what happened, the FDR measures had little general effect in the seven years after 1933 (although they certainly helped out poor people). There was actually a further depression in the late 1930s. It was rearmament that really got the economy going, around 1940.

Gregori · 2008-04-06 15:53:51

Trust me, It'll will be government(s) that do it. Governments can invest on infrastructure and research without promise of a return profit. This principle has driven the development of high technology in the US. Government spends a ridiculous amount of money, privatizes anything profitable or useful later on. NASA and Military have been used as a type of corporate welfare system traditionally.

Corporations and private companies depend on governments to enforce property rights, provide policing and military. Governments can build efficient and harmonious infrastructure that ensures the profitability of private industry and minimizes investment costs and risk.

Maybe some privates and rich kids will do their little part, but they won't take on the role of government however.

At some point, a colonized Mars is going to need a from of governance. I only hope that it takes on a more democratic form than any of the excuses of ones we have on Earth.

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