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tahanson43206,
I was afraid someone would take that attitude. I'm disappointed that the New Mars forum has become just the few of us. It used to include most members of the entire Society. But you're obsessing over one point, and attributing features based on your bias.
Have you watched the movie "Passengers", staring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence? At one point while the two are strolling through the chamber with hibernation pods, Aurora said "Do you know how much the Homestead Corporation made on its first planet? $8 quadrillion dollars; that's 8 million billions. Colony planets are the biggest business going." She also said they charge 20% of everything you make for the rest of your life, not to mention the debt you run up on this fancy starship." I am not talking about charging income tax. In fact I said no tax what so ever. However, you do have to pay for your ticket up-front.
I should address some of your specific points. Your claim that leadership is entirely male, is incorrect. Queen Elizabeth I was monarch of England from 1558 until her death in 1603. She was a strong ruler, showed no significant gender difference. Queen Victoria was monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain 1837 to 1901. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK 1979 to 1990. If you think any of them were different because they were female, you are sadly mistaken. Kim Campbell was Prime Minister of Canada for only a few months: June 25 – November 4, 1993. She proved to be just as arrogant, condescending, and entitled as the man she replaced. Because of an idiosyncrasy of the Canadian system, she became PM when her party replaced its leader. Technically she could have completed his term, but the voters of Canada expect and demand an election very soon after someone becomes PM that way. However, it was so late in his term that a full term would only have been 1 more month anyway. Voters hated their party, they would have lost no matter what, but Kim Campbell's attitude was so condescending and entitled that her election loss was the epic. So don't give me guff about "male" this or "male" that.
Corporate government is the only practical method. Government just won't do it. Private individuals don't have the resources. Even Elon Musk cannot do it himself, SpaceX is a corporation. If we don't establish something up front, then expect Earth governments to try to establish dominion. I waffle between claiming governments just can't, even the richest nation that ever existed in recorded history: USA. NASA developed the SLS rocket: Robert Zubrin reports development in 1988, it didn't fly until 16 November 2022. That's 34 years. If you include all the many proposals for modification to Shuttle to produce a heavy lift launch vehicle, that started in the late 1970s, when Shuttle was still under development. Today SLS costs $2 billion per launch! That's not practical. At that price, Congress will never approve settlement of Mars. But if SpaceX establishes affordable transportation to Mars, then various nations will start making their claims. The US will claim any operation by any American individual or company are under jurisdiction of the US government, so will charge US taxes and impose US laws. So much for escaping government. And yes, I do expect there will be armed conflict between competing interests: US, China, India, some Arab country, Russia. We don't want that.
Possible models: the fishing admirals of Saint John's Newfoundland who ruled 1497-1729. That's over 2 centuries. The captain of the first fishing ship to arrive in St. John's that season would be fishing admiral. Effectively he would be governor for that season. However, this was captain of a fishing ship, with no legal training and no experience other than running a fishing vessel. The fishing admiral acted as judge for any transgressions, and records show judgments were arbitrary and harsh. In 1699 the British government created the King William's Act which stipulated that the commander of the naval convoy accompanying the English fishing fleet would act as an appeal judge to the decisions of the fishing admirals. But that didn't work so well. In early years, there was no recognition by the British government; in fact there were fishing vessels from several countries. In 1583 a British admiral arrived with a 3 navy ships loaded with armed marines, declared all of Newfoundland as British territory and collected tax at the point of a gun. The largest ship returned to Britain with the booty, but was mysteriously lost somewhere in the North Atlantic. That admiral had crossed the North Atlantic many times before, but this time he carried a known amount of money, and locals in St. John's were angry at what they saw as armed robbery. Piracy had begun, so did someone tip off a pirate? The British didn't attempt to lay claim to Newfoundland again until 1634, when fishing vessels needed protection from pirates. Naval escorts started in 1634, and a governor was appointed in 1729.
I could cite various movies, but I'm sure someone would claim it's just fiction. It shows several writers hard work to imagine how an off-world settlement would work, but again, it's fiction.
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RobertDyck,
This is getting frustrating. kbd512 demands Mars be a copy of the US
Since kbd512 never said that the Mars government should or would be a copy of the US government, anywhere in this entire thread, imagine his frustration over having words imputed to him that he never wrote.
People do expect Mars to be a place to escape government, to escape the "Karens".
If I understand this correctly, a corporatist government, which would be the dictionary definition of fascism, is going to "save us from the Karens".
How?
Before our leftists overran academia and redefined what fascism meant to "far right dictatorship", fascism was traditionally and colloquially the collusion between government and corporations to wield absolute power. This was great for the absolutists, but fairly terrible for everyone, given what that inevitably leads to... W A R.
Now it's more of a footnote about how control was established over the economy by the fascist regime:
Corporatist economic system
The fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-fascist trade unions. The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes. In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and the employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.
...
Fascist governments typically established close connections between big business and the state, and business was expected to serve the interests of the government.
If we deliberately combine corporatism with government, then we get dictionary definition fascism, assuming you have a dictionary that was written before leftists hijacked western academia so they could redefine the essential differences between their precious communism and fascism. In actual practice, you either had a deliberate merger between business and government (fascism) or a hostile takeover (communism). That was one of the very few ways in which national socialists materially differed from garden variety socialists / communists. In one case, the government wasn't opposed to corporations so long as the company spouted off the party line. In the other, the government violently replaced the heads of all corporations with their own party officials. I have no idea which was meaningfully worse, but both sure as hell killed a lot of people.
If you're like me, then you're wondering what overwhelming benefits we're going to get from an intentional merger of both systems of governance, given the propensity of both systems to treat their people rather poorly if they think they can get away with it.
He wants war because he served as an enlisted crewman on an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, and is proud of it. I have more respect for members of the US military who served in ballistic missile silos in North Dakota. I've met a few. They're mild mannered, peaceful people who hate war. I'm sure they were chosen for that job because of their temperament. But war is bad. War is nothing but mass murder for the purpose of armed robbery.
You really like gaslighting people, but again, this kind of false premise personal attack only proves to me that you're unwilling to consider why it is that people have differences of opinion with you.
As long as anyone is arguing in favour of war, then I have no respect for that person. I could be more rude if necessary.
Nobody here is arguing in favor of war. We have a difference of opinion about how to best prevent wars. You seem to think we can come up with a system that ignores past human behavior. I'm telling you that as long as humans are involved, the results will be similar to whatever they were in the past, from a similar style of governance. The "evidence" for that is all of human history.
If you're outright telling me that you're being deliberately rude and disrespectful to another member of this forum, then I would ask you to stop. I still have respect for you as a person, and your opinions, even if I disagree with some of them, and would hope you would grant the same courtesy to others. If you cannot, then we're going to have to go our separate ways.
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Wikipedia: Fascism
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to Marxism, democracy, anarchism, pluralism, free markets, egalitarianism, communism, liberalism, and socialism, fascism is at the far right of the traditional left–right spectrum.
What I am proposing is a decentralized federalist system where the federal government has very little authority. Considering fascism is "centralized autocracy", that's not even close. Also note involvement of corporations has not to do with it.
My system has a federal government that ensures no war, by halting anyone who attempts war, and seizing weapons of war. The federal government allocates land. The federal police would ensure no one tries to become a roving pirate, driving a vehicle around the outback, stealing people's stuff and taking captives as slaves. Federal police would stop that. I read ancient Greece had a problem that individuals travelling from one Greek city-state to another could be captured on the road, taken as slaves. For a long time, city police of the capital city would double as federal police, but only federal laws enforced outside city limits.
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Business Aspects
For Mars to happen at all, the Corporation must be profitable. No profit, no Mars. The price of a ticket to Mars will be an individual's entire life savings. Sell your house, sell your car(s), liquidate your life insurance and retirement savings. This gives you a ticket for Mars. For a tradesman, that could mean a bunk in an economy class cabin with strangers. 2 bunks up (not 3), with storage under the mattress. The base of the mattress will be a hard platform which locks so only the owner can open it. Under the lower bunk will be 2 rows of drawers: one for the passenger in the top bunk, one for the lower bunk. Three bunk beds, 2 bunks each, total 6 per cabin. With a toilet and sink as small as an airline washroom (restroom). Beside the washroom, a 30"x30" (76cm x 76cm) shower stall that opens into the cabin.
A professional couple with a two-story house in the suburbs could afford a whole cabin. The two lower bunks facing each other can be pushed together to form a queen size bed. Night stands can be moved from the isle between lower bunks, to outside the bed. Upper bunks can fold up against the wall like a Pullman bunk of a train. If the couple only has 2 children, the bunks across from the washroom can be removed, a single chair installed. And/or use that space for luggage. If the couple has 3 children, perhaps leave the upper bunk across from the washroom in place, remove the lower bunk for chair/storage.
Larger cabins the size of those on a cruise ship would be available for more money.
Upon arriving on Mars, if you don't have any money left, you could get a job with the Corporation. All passengers will arrive on Mars at the Capital City, built and owned by the Corporation. The Corporation will only build one city, but will have various mines to provide raw materials to supply industry. At arrival of the space port, multiple posters, possible large flat-screen high-def TV monitors with animated displays, will try to recruit you to work for the Corporation. A job with the corporation includes a free apartment, free utilities, free health insurance with full coverage. The Corporation even has a cafeteria with free food, but only employees allowed. Food cannot be taken out of the cafeteria, and no visitors/friends/family allowed. Grocery stores in the Capital will sell groceries, you can cook at home if you want to eat with family. Nice restaurants in the city will require payment. The company store in the Capital will sell all the tools and supplies needed to build a homestead in the outback, complete with life support. Of course with all that free stuff, salaries are relatively low. (Oops! He he he he!) Can you save enough to build your homestead?
If someone builds a homestead and starts a cottage industry to provide something that a Corporate factory in the Capital city manufactures, that's good! Can you build a spacesuit helmet better than the Corporation? Can you grow better fruits and vegetables? Perhaps make fruit flavoured candies. Or chocolate. A better Mars rover. Whatever, Mars will require so much stuff that it will be difficult to manufacture/produce it on Mars. If you make something better than the Corporation, then the Corporation can always re-purpose the factory to make something else. And that's good! Of course realize once you're successful, you will be the poster-boy back on Earth to recruit new settlers. The Corporation gets the vast majority of its money from settlers, so if you are a success on Mars and encourage others to come to Mars, then that benefits the Corporation.
Once operational, the Capital city on Mars will manufacture all food for the Large Ship, for trips in both directions. One of the Moons of Mars will be mined for ice, which will be processed to methane/oxygen propellant for the Large Ship. An propellant depot on that Moon will store propellant until needed. Robotic tanker spaceships will ferry propellant from the Mars moon to the Ship. Long-range robotic tankers will ferry propellant to a depot in Earth orbit. That depot will refuel the ship for it's departure from Earth, back to Mars. All equipment for maintenance, repairs, and upgrades to the ship will be manufactured in the Capital city on Mars. This means the Mars economy will provide everything needed for the operation of the ship. Building everything will be very expensive, but once operational, all operating expenses will be from the Mars economy. That means ticket prices will pay for a trip from Earth surface to Earth orbit, and to repay initial investment. Once that investment is fully recovered, all further ticket prices will be pure profit.
Side operations:
Automated mine of a metal asteroid in near Earth space. About 1km diameter, orbiting the Sun closer to Earth than Mars or Venus. There are a few asteroids in such an orbit. They will be mined, ore processed using the Mond method using a parabolic mirror to concentrate sunlight as the heat source for refining. This will separate pure iron, pure nickel, pure cobalt. Further increasing temperature and adding fluoride gas can purify platinum and most of the platinum group metals. Bars of gold/silver alloy with ~98% purity, along with bars of pure platinum group metals will be transported back to Earth. An expendable capsule of inconel (nickel/chrome) will crash with the bars into a desert on Earth. This will add money. Iron, most of the nickel, and industrial metals will stay at the asteroid until needed for construction of the Large Ship. These metals can be sold in space for other construction jobs.
Mine the Moon for aluminum. Process to produce aluminum metal, as well as Aluminum-oxynitride (ALON). ALON is transparent like glass, but a lot stronger. Ideal for windows of the Large Ship.
A mine on the Moon to produce titanium.
Propellant depot in Earth orbit can be used to refuel satellites in Earth orbit, or other spacecraft.
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RobertDyck,
Let's start with something more fundamental. There are no native born Martians. The only nations I'm aware of with the potential ability to send people beyond LEO, some time during the next 20 years or so, are America and China. As near as I can tell, nobody else even thinks it's worth doing and has no serious funding devoted to sending humans to Mars. If the people from either nation refuse to relinquish their status as American or Chinese citizens, then they fall under the jurisdiction of whichever nation provided all the funding to send them there in the first place. It's not as if they're entirely independent actors with zero ties to Earth. That is the reality-based starting point.
So as to convince these people who decide to live on Mars that they should form their own government, separate and apart from whichever government sent them from Earth, what do you do to convince an overwhelming majority of them to renounce their citizenship and form a new government?
Presuming the effort to convince a majority of the people already living on Mars to form their own government was broadly successful and no violence results from that course of action, what particular net benefit is there to those two nations, which were previously sending their people and cargo from Earth, that convinces them to continue sending more people and cargo?
If the Mars colonization endeavor is consuming people and money which could be devoted to other productive uses, without the promise of an eventual return on investment, why would they continue funneling people and money into Mars colonization?
Even if they don't lift a finger to stop you, they don't need to lift a finger to help you, either.
What negotiating tactics or economic offers will be used to entice those host nations to continue their support?
This is where declarative reality fails, so tell the rest of us how you plan to convince them to do that, because it sounds like you're planning a "mostly peaceful insurrection".
For all of human history, the success or failure of colonization efforts has been determined by two forms of capital, monetary and human labor. You need both.
Annual Space Program Spending by Agency
NASA: $25B to $33.7B (2025)
CNSA: $14.2B
ROSCOSMOS: $11.4B
ESA: $8.7B
ISRO: $1.6B
JAXA: $1.5B
CSA: $0.9B
There seems to be quite a monetary disparity there. One nation is clearly doing the heavy lifting, and it's definitely not Canada, so I would think if Canada is the world power they claim to be, there'd be something approaching a real space program, but your national leadership, regardless of party, doesn't seem too interested. Thus far, there has only been one nation that's ever sent anyone beyond LEO, but the Apollo program ended 50 years ago. In terms of today's money, the Apollo Program cost about $280B. SpaceX has improved the cost per mission metric by leaps and bounds, but any serious colonization effort is going to require money coming out the wazoo and a stream of volunteers, because most of them will wash out of training or decide to pursue other options.
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For RobertDyck ... It seems to me your initiative here has potential value, to help readers to think about the issues of governance.
In Post #305, kbd512 has just provided a reasonable projection of the most likely future for space development and specifically Mars settlement. Your topic here is (presumably?) based upon the idea that a capitalist enterprise might undertake an effort this massive, and your thinking about economic justification for such an effort fits into the theme that I am looking for from this topic.
In both the US an China, corporations are very much under the thumb of the management.
In any case, I can see no possible scenario in which war can be prevented, except by "eternal vigilance" and constant honing of war making capability. As we look out over the human landscape in 2025, we can see that war is happening in many locations because parties to the various conflicts cannot overwhelmingly defeat each other, and at the same time, powers that ** could ** end the conflict are holding back.
It seems to me that one reasonable scenario for reduction of warmaking tendencies in the human population would be to breed violence out of the genetic structures we pass from one generation to the next. Evolution seems to be driving the population in the other direction.
You created this topic with a name that has a very specific meaning to most readers.
I am doubtful you share that understanding of the term, because it seems to me you have gone off in directions that are not compatible with what anyone else would recognize as a corporation.
Neither you nor anyone else is going to be able to eliminate the potential for war/violence in the human population, so it seems to me it would make sense to settle on the tried and true formula, which is to accumulate and then maintain overwhelming force.
You can see the thought process you need in many of kbd512's posts about military preparedness. Your Mars government, whatever form it takes, must inevitably allocate a significant part of it's energy to defense.
(th)
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Humans have been domesticated for a very long time. Neanderthals had a brain 25% larger than our own. Homo heidelbergensis was the common ancestor between ancient modern humans an Neanderthals; they also had a brain 25% larger than we do today. We already are domesticated.
Humans are intelligent. We are capable of ending the cycle of continuous wars. Europe ended the cycle of continuous wars after World War 2. That's why it's so offensive that Russia has started a major war in Europe. That's supposed to be ended. That's also why I proposed a federal government on Mars. To ensure wars do not start on Mars.
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One friend said we will have to rename Mars to planet "X". You know why.
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One other idea. One already posted early in this thread. If a person is unemployed on Mars, a "job bank" website where job opportunities are posted. And government would have a job training program. An individual would be interviewed by potential employees. If an employer accepts that person, then the employer must sign a contract. The individual will be trained for that job, but all expenses including living expenses would be treated as a student loan. The employer must hire that individual when their training is done. Loan payments would be deducted as a payroll deduction until the student loan is paid off. The employer would not be allowed to fire the employee until the loan is completely paid. So this is not paid by taxpayers, it's paid entirely as student loans. However, if the employee does not perform well, the employer can assign that individual to the worst, nastiest jobs, but can't fire him/her until the loan is repaid.
Also, every ticket to Mars includes a "free" return to Earth. The ship has to make round-trips to travel multiple times, and if this works then most people will not return, so most cabins will be empty anyway on the return trip. So that's not a great expense.
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The point of starting over on a new planet is to fix stuff, not continue mistakes of today. The US dollar used to be based on gold. After World War 2 the US dollar was chosen as the world exchange currency because it was based on gold. Part of the Bretton Woods Agreement. For Knox held a reserve of gold to back all US paper money in circulation, and individuals could exchange paper money for gold if they wished. Unfortunately Richard Nixon abolished the gold standard, and result was inflation. To prevent inflation, I propose Mars money be far simpler: no paper money, just electronic currency and coins. "Electronic" means debit cards and credit cards. No, I don't mean crypto-currency, what I mean is bank accounts with debit cards and credit cards.
Coins: Historically coins were made of precious metal. The value of a coin was literally the metal it was made of. The Roman denarius was made of sterling silver. Pure silver is soft, can be bent with fingers. Sterling is an alloy, today about 92.5% silver, the rest other metals, usually copper. Sterling silver is strong enough to hold it's shape, such as silver jewelry or a dime. A Roman denarius was small, but the size of a dime or penny, depending which time period. American pennies used to be made of copper, nickels were made of pure nickel (hence the name), dimes and quarters were sterling silver. Silver dollars were also sterling silver.
From 1864-1962 (except 1943), the American penny was 3.11 grams of 95% copper. The rest was zinc, or tin/zinc, depending on year. The Canadian penny from 1920-1979 was 3.24 grams (50 grains) of 95.5% or 98% copper, the rest also tin/zinc.
From 1922-1981 the Canadian nickel was 4.54g (70 grains) of 99.9% nickel. From 1858-1968, a Canadian dime was 2.33g (36 grains) of silver alloy: 1858-1919 92.5% silver, 1920-1967 80%, 1967-1968 50%. American coins something similar.
I propose Mars currency be coins: pennies made of copper alloy that is mostly copper. Nickels made of 99.9% nickel. Dimes, quarters, and silver dollars made of sterling silver. Obviously quarters will be 2.5 times the weight of a dime, and a silver dollar 4 times the weight of a quarter. Gold and platinum could be used for coins of higher denomination: $20, $100.
The point is to stabilize currency by basing it on something physical, not fiat currency.
One example: if a dime is 2.33g sterling silver, the current spot market price is US$1.08 per gram. So a Mars dime would be worth US$2.32767. That makes a Mars dollar worth US$23.2767 (round to a penny?) Quite an exchange rate, but that undoes decades of inflation. Current spot price for gold is US$106.90 per gram. So a coin worth 20 Mars dollars would be worth US$465.534. Divide by spot price: 4.35 grams. Density of gold is 19.3 g/cm³ while sterling silver is 10.36 g/cm³ so volume would be equal to a dime. This means a dime size gold coin would be worth 20 Mars dollars. A 100 Mars dollar coin made of gold would be 5 times the mass, so just 25% larger than a quarter.
Is a 1,000 Mars dollar gold coin necessary? It would be 217.5g (7 troy ounces) worth US$23,276.70
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RobertDyck,
I agree that "real economy" should be based upon things of real tangible value so people don't do absurd things with money, but the US untethered the global economy from the global Gold and Silver supply because those two metals either had to have exorbitant prices if they were the only recognized stores of real wealth, or other stores of value had to be included in the representation of real wealth. For better or worse, we decided that all the goods and services in the "present and future economy" should represent real total value.
The mistake, at least from my perspective, of including "all the instruments of economy" (including future economic transactions before they took place) opened the door for speculators to manipulate the value of the materials, labor, and/or services by manipulating the represented value itself. Our government thought rational self-interest and existing regulatory controls (nobody actually practices laissez-faire economics) were sufficient. What rational government would deliberately devalue their own currency, keeping their people poor in the process? It turns out that the communist Chinese government did just that, in order to remain cost-competitive.
We could include various other metals, as you suggested, but at some point all the existing instruments of real economy must represent stores of real tangible value, else we're only recreating the problems associated with The Gold Standard. We ought not transact in terms of metal unless Martian society is dominated by the availability of metals. If such is the case, then yes, we should probably represent real tangible value in terms of various metals.
What valuation do you assign to new inventions that don't use metals as inputs, in terms of metals?
That was the fundamental reason for dropping The Gold Standard. After a certain point, using metals, even Iron, didn't make much sense.
Use your plastic greenhouse concept as an example. Presume it requires Martian-made plastics and sintered regolith to fabricate, but not much metal.
Real economy must somehow include food products made in greenhouses for the settlers, so how do we equate the value of said greenhouse, or the resultant food products, in terms of metals?
Whatever valuation we choose to assign to the greenhouse and the food, how will it be any more or less arbitrary than "all the instruments of economy"?
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I had posted that a science mission could use a plastic film greenhouse. This wasn't my idea, I got it from the Mars Direct mission plan, which in turn got it from "The Case For Mars" conferences before the founding of the Mars Society. I believe Dr. Penelope Boston did the first work. I just tried to find a polymer film that could do it. However, I also said a permanent settley would require something more durable and easy to make on Mars. I came up with tempered glass. One of the Mars Rovers found a deposit of white sand, opal sand, ideal to make glass. How common is white sand on Mars?
At the 2004 Mars Society convention in Chicago, I presented a way to make aluminum from anorthite or bytownite, two types of plagioclase feldspar that has been found on Mars. Immediately after the convention I discovered a mining company in Sweden is already doing it. Well, I may have reinvented the wheel but that proves it works. A byproduct of that process is silicon dioxide. If there isn't enough white sand on Mars for glass, that byproduct can be used for glass.
You don't want to base your economy on an agricultural product. Something that can be made easily in large quantities could destabilize the currency. Conversely, consuming that product would rapidly deplete the basis of your economy. Oversupply and consumption would make currency fluctuations so common and so radical that the economy would be trash. Whatever you use must be relatively rare so it doesn't flood the market, devaluing the currency. And it must be durable, so it isn't just consumed. Precious metals were chosen many thousands of years ago when that was the only metal they knew how to make. Gold nuggets would wash down streams, and wouldn't corrode, so it was the first metal discovered. Looking for more gold, they discovered a green rock commonly found with gold will release another metal when heated in a furnace. The metal drips out of the rock, forming a pool in the bottom. That was copper. Found by accident when trying to get gold. I could go on about early, middle and late bronze, and how iron was discovered due to a shortage of bronze. The problem with iron is current industrial methods prode so much so cheaply that it could easily flood the market, destabilizing currency.
Thorium will be valuable on Mars, as fuel for nuclear reactors. The problem with that is it's radioactive. The very thing that makes it valuable as fuel, makes it not safe to carry in your pocket. Silver is used for silver-solder, an alloy of 60% tin/40% silver-copper. That's used for electronics in Europe. Solder used to be 40% lead, but Europe was concerned with lead leaching into ground water from land fills. Gold is used for contacts for modern electronics: electroplated just atoms thick. So they do have practical uses. Platinum, palladium, and rhodium are 3 of the 6 platinum group metals. They're used as catalysts in catalytic converters on cars, and by oil refineries to convert heavy oil into something lighter, such as converting crude oil into gasoline or diesel fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells use one of the same 3 metals to combine hydrogen with oxygen from air to produce water, and generate electricity. Iridium is another platinum-group metal, used for points of spark plugs in cars. Mars won't have gasoline engines because the atmosphere doesn't have oxygen. We could include platinum-group metals in the mix as the basis for currency. I'm concerned that too many metals would cause a problem when the relative value of one metal vs another changes.
Battery-electric vehicles will be used on Mars. Lithium is key to the battery, but pure lithium metal bursts into flames on contact with oxygen from air. Not so much a problem outdoors on Mars, but is a problem in a pressurized habitat. Again, not something you can carry in your pocket. Besides, it turns out although lithium is required for batteries, there's actually not that much lithium in batteries. There's more nickel and cobalt. Some batteries use magnesium, others aluminum. Magnesium and aluminium are common because they're light metals that "float" to the surface of any rocky planet, so they're extremely common in the crust of planets. Rock is mostly aluminum-silicate: aluminum silicon oxide that forms a salt with light-weight alkali metals and alkali-earth metals also found in the crust of planets. Those other metals are sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. Sodium and potassium are combined with chlorine to form salts, so they're extremely common. Calcium is necessary for biological function. Again, aluminum and magnesium could flood the market. They could be used for low value coins like a penny or nickel. The original alloy for a Canadian one-dollar coin was copper-aluminum because it looked very much like gold. They got cheap, today a Loonie coin is bronze: copper-tin. Using nickel as a coin: a "nickel" already has been used as a 5¢ coin. That should tell you how common it is. Cobalt could be used; it's important for industry and sufficiently rare. It wasn't used in antiquity because ancient people didn't know how to mine or smelt it.
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Current US practice isn't based on any commodities, it's just fiat currency. That means it has value just because the government says so. The problem with that is government can just print more money to pay bills. Flooding the market with currency drops the value of currency. Most people call that inflation, but it really means the value of a dollar drops. Basically take the value of everything in the country: houses, cars, laptop computers, lawnmowers, etc. Total currency in circulation will equal all that, or be a fixed fraction of it. Print more money, the value of all currency in circulation will drop until the total was what it was before you printed the money. So printing so much money that you increase total in circulation by 10% will drop the value of a dollar by 10%. You could play with math to get more precise, but after adjusting for inflation, total of all currency in circulation will equal what it was before you printed the extra money. Think of it as a hidden tax, because it drops the value of whatever you have saved in a bank account.
Quantitative Easing is a complicated way to hide the fact they're just printing more money, using that to pay government bills. Again citizens are screwed by inflation.
The US dollar was chosen for foreign exchange, known as a reserve currency. It was chosen as part of the Bretton Woods System after World War 2 because the US dollar was convertible to gold bullion. Now that the US has gone off the gold standard, this has undermined the Bretton Woods System. The US dollar is still uses for foreign exchange, but due to instability in the dollar, many countries are looking for alternatives: Euro or other.
With a world-wide foreign exchange currency, printing money gets more complicated because the stability of other currencies help stabilize the exchange currency. If the world abandons the US dollar as exchange currency, then the value of a US dollar will depend solely on the US economy. That means much more inflation and volatility when the government prints money.
When an economy truely expands due to making stuff (cars, houses,. computers, etc) the money supply must increase accordingly. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the US, and must print money to ensure the money nsupply follows the economy. Tracking that is a tricky balance, and the job of the Chairman of the Fed. Canada has a central bank, called the Bank of Canada. Canada's central bank is an agency of the federal government, not a for-profit private corporation. That makes the Canadian one more stable, but the Canadian dollar is not a foreign exchange currency. So the Bank of Canada has a.kore delicate balance to follow, since small changes can cause big fluctuations in value of currency. The central bank also sets key lending interest rates. Another tool to stabilize the economy.
Should platinum or cobalt be added to the mix as the standard for currency? Could. Again I am afraid that too many metals will cause problems when relative value of one vs another changes. When battery technology changes, how will that affect value of cobalt? Aluminum used to be more valuable than gold; when Napoleon Bonaparte was ruler of France, he gave an aluminum plate to the US President. Today technoly makes producing aluminum so cheap that it's an industrial metal. What will be stable on Mars?
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Gem stones could be a basis for currency; they're rare, durable, and compact so can be carried in a pocket. But as you pointed out, not the basis of a Mars economy.
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Platinum spot price is US$30.90, so 5 Mars dollars will be worth US$116.4835 or 3.7665 grams. Density of platinum is 21.45 g/cm³ so volume would be 175.6 mm³. Hmm, too small.
Recalculating... a 10 Mars dollar coin of platinum would be 1.22 mm thick (same as a Canadian dime) and 16.966 mm diameter. A Canadian dime is 18.02 mm diameter. So a 10¢ dime of sterling silver, a $10 coin of platinum, and a $20 coin of gold? All roughly the same size?
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