as soon as possible, large-scale extra-solar emigration will begin;
even before that, interstellar travel will generate immense profits;
therefore, "'...the balance of economic power will shift away from Earth...'" and from "'...governments, unions, giant corporations, toward small outfits and individuals.'";
therefore, the "'...world welfare state...'" will end.
Joelle asks why politicians like Ira Quick should try to preserve the welfare state when there has ceased to be any need for it. Brodersen replies that the welfare state, like any state, "...is an end in itself,'" a means of dictatorship, and he refers to no less than six Empires.
I am not sure that the welfare state compares to Empires? In any case, the bulk of the world population will not immediately emigrate for all sorts of practical and sociological reasons yet Earth will be in considerable turmoil while interstellar colonization and commerce begin. Therefore, there will continue to be a role for "welfare state" politicians as long as they are honest, admit their limitations and cooperate with entrepreneurs like Brodersen instead of trying to kill them. Instead of trying to control and delimit the future of humanity, Quick could have offered to join with others in building it.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
For once, I mostly agree with you here. My chief quibble being that I agree with Dan Brodersen that the state, any state, is perpetually at risk at becoming an end in itself. And such a state does not need to be an empire, whether in name or de facto.
Sean
Next we will discuss how that interstellar economy might develop.
Kaor, Paul!
For that, the example of the Technic Stories gives us Anderson's speculations on what interstellar economics might look like, assuming a FTL drive. E.g., many colonized planets would not be able to use the most technology for greater or longer periods of time due to first needing to amass the capital needed for buying/learning how to use it. Also, I would expect merchant adventurers and explorers to search out new markets for profitable development, in both trade and industry. And these persons would be organized into smaller or larger companies. We would probably see something like the exuberant laissez faire economics of the early Polesotechnic League.
Sean
Even cheap interstellar travel probably wouldn't extend to bulk goods like wheat, I imagine. It would have to be -really- cheap for that, some sort of free-energy method.
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