Government, Get Out of the Way (We Can't Breathe)

On June 10th, I attended what I think of as a “Morning in America” meditation by Lynne McTaggart, an American alternative medicine activist, lecturer, journalist, author, and publisher who lives in London. “Our intention,” she said, “is that all of the energy of the Black Lives Matter protest be funneled into a positive and effective superordinate goal in communities across America to create positive change and positive connection between people of all ethnicities.”

This parallels a Discovery Channel presentation in the US about the injustices visited on Black people at the hands of police (and others), especially by the white Minneapolis cop who killed George Floyd (the most recent example, and the trigger for the COVID-19 post-lockdown riots). In response, Oprah Winfrey was sitting down with Black thought leaders, activists, and artists, guiding them in conversation and creating plans for our future to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?"

Biosphere 2 near Tucson, Arizona began as a project of Space Biospheres Ventures to engineer a closed ecosystem for eight human "Biospherians" in order to study the physical, biological, environmental, and behavioral problems of space colonization. At dusk, the view from inside actually has a Martian aspect. Presently in the custody of the University of Arizona, it has been divested of its first, best use and relegated to the status of an elaborate greenhouse harboring government-funded ecological science projects. Without exception, those would be better done in an ordinary greenhouse. Difficult and expensive to maintain and without benefit of a productive business model, Biosphere 2 has been falling into disrepair. Private ownership could reverse that if the stuffy academics were dropped.

I noted the comparison of the Black economic experience to the endgame of Monopoly, in which all resources are owned. After a certain point, you can’t win. Monopoly, like Capitalism, is a fun game, but it is only fun in the beginning, while there are still resources available. Now that we have come to the point where Capitalism is not fun for too many of us, an all-Black panel is trying to decide “Where do we go from here?” But “we” are all of us. Black people are just people, and they are not alone in their misery.

An entire generation, Generation Z, is faced with a similar dilemma, and they, too, are considering a massive redistribution of wealth as a possible solution. Probably, that would make matters worse. It is not possible to win a revolution without replacing the existing regime with one that is merely better at killing, unless you have a frontier. Frontiers offer both refuge and help.

More than four centuries ago, when minority Europeans experienced enclosure, which is what we are talking about here, they exercised an opportunity they had to leave for destinations that offered resources without proprietors. That saved Europe, especially England, from a bloodbath. The equivalent of those locations, a new frontier, now exists only beyond Earth. Accessing it will require a concerted global effort, and success will turn Earth into our first solar system park. It will do that by relocating the centers of industry and population off-world, solving yet another global problem, climate change.

The “frontier formation solution” is scalable, something that can be done locally as well as nationally and globally. It creates an explosion of entrepreneurship that will provide local and renewable sources of clean water, clean air, power, food, manufactured articles, housing, and it will make landfills obsolete. It can educate and entertain, build consensus and provide employment. These are the requirements of a colony in space, but they are also the requirements of a sustainable existence here on Earth.

We can replace fragile and unsustainable electrical and water infrastructures with microgrids that we build and maintain together. This creates multi-use communities that co-locate work, education, and family life, largely replacing transportation with communication. Local production and the absence of a need to commute and gather in crowded settings will help prevent future pandemics. Healthy communities also relieve the emotional stresses that compromise relationships and immune systems.

This is not only a worthy superordinate goal for humanity. It is also a means to bring us together in anticipation of a great adventure. This superlative journey, preparing to build colonies in space, finding the technology, building prototypes on Earth, creating the story, playing it out, making it the subject of art and letters, all of that is a great investment for people who make money by supporting startups focused on the future. Here is an opportunity for people to become, not cogs in a someone else’s industrial machine, but men and women of destiny.

We have already decided that the status quo will not do. Whatever governance we adopt in the new place will represent a chance to start something new, something from scratch, rather than rework something old against vigorous resistance from existing authorities. Our new venture cannot be a creature of government, but a commercial blend of entertainment, education, and co-marketing that bridges the gap between research and commercialization, provides startups with opportunities to prove value, and promotes market and regulatory acceptance of new and repurposed sustainability products on the path to space colonization. When we are done, governments will have little choice but to get out of the way.